Comment on Do you ever worry that you're secretly a psychopath that unknowingly manipulates people around you?

• idiomaddict@feddit.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is a cultural value, fyi. You might enjoy another culture more if that’s an option for you.

  I’m an immigrant in Germany studying to be a German teacher for new immigrants. As part of our curriculum, we were given this question to answer for ourselves and share with the group (about 80% German, with one each South American, North American, and Russian student, plus five Asian students, in grad school):

  your roommate, whom you like and want to preserve a good relationship with, has spent many weeks knitting herself a sweater and she’s really excited about it. You see her around campus and can tell from afar that she’s wearing the sweater and that you don’t like it. What do you say to her?

  The Asian and Russian students wouldn’t address it; the American students would say that it was very cool that she’d actually made her own clothing, which they both believed would be true, if oblique; and the German students would tell her it didn’t look good, though about half would also try to find something they did like about it (fit or color or knit pattern) to compliment as well.

  That’s a tiny sample size, obviously, but it was interesting to me and I found it completely insane that some Germans would just tell their roommate that they didn’t like her sweater. My old roommate told me he thought my lipstick was too dark on my wedding day when I was showing him pictures several weeks later, though. Unfortunately the class came afterwards and I was very annoyed with him at the time. I still kind of am, but I’m trying to be culturally accepting 😅

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• TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Yeah I kind of feel that way too. People will even say they want the truth but they often don’t. I even fall into that category sometimes though I generally think I would much prefer the truth. I kind of get it, the truth is really hard to deal with sometimes. But I can’t understand always putting it behind “being nice”.

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  • snooggums@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have learned to not volunteer anything that is less that gushing praise if someone doesn’t ask first. I also don’t ask questions where I might not like a negative response, although that hasn’t even come up in a few years as my ability to take and process criticism is pretty solid.

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