Caution: Outrageous generalizations ahead (but interesting, and perhaps useful).
One of the things I've learned about the human animal (that I neglected to include in my last list) is:
What people seek from others, more than anything else, is attention and appreciation.
I've
observed that to be true in boardrooms, bedrooms and barrooms. You want
to win over your boss, give him or her your full attention, and
acknowledge his or her successes, without being a suck-up about it. You
want to win over your audience in a presentation, make lots of eye
contact, show empathy for their situation (which means doing your
homework in advance) and thank them more than once for their attention
and their awesome questions. You want to win over that attractive
person next to you, make lots of eye contact, listen and feed back, and
give lots of compliments (but sincerely -- don't try to fake it).
Now lately I've discovered a corollary to this maxim:
Men tend to offer more appreciation than attention (though sporadically); women tend to offer more attention than appreciation.
This
may be a Darwinian thing, or it may be merely a cultural evolution, but
it is now reinforced by our society to the point that, I think, it is
more pronounced and culturally expected.
A bunch of guys together are often focused on something other than
themselves, but they are a 'mutual admiration society' -- the 'high
five' is a guy thing. By contrast, a bunch of women together are often
focused on matters personal to them, and comprise a 'mutual attention
society' -- the 'support group' is a woman thing.
Watch a little
girl performing dance or gymnastic moves in front of her parents: What
she is looking for from Mom is attention ("Mom, you're not watching!"); what she is looking for from Dad is appreciation ("Didn't you like
it, Dad?"). She (like all of us) is confused if she gets the opposite:
If Mom is effusive in praise but doesn't notice the small fall and
suggest how to improve it, she's not behaving in an accepted, expected
way for a Mom; if Dad does notice the fall and suggests how to improve it, and fails to beam with unqualified pride, he'll get the scowl for behaving 'inappropriately'.
To
some extent this 'specialization' in providing our deepest social needs
makes sense. Generally, men are not very observant, so it's not
surprising they get selected to provide praise. Women are generally
more muted and balanced in their expression of emotions, and more
observant, so they get selected to provide attention.
Couples
(traditional couples anyway) seem to follow the same pattern of
expectations from others. Men look to their wives to pay attention to
them ("Dear, your tie is crooked and it doesn't go with that suit"),
and while their wives (at least early in the relationship) are
demonstrably appreciative, as the relationship matures men tend to get
more and more of their needed appreciation from other guys (in sports,
in bragging about a promotion at work, in card games and drinking
competitions etc.)
Women, by contrast, look to their husbands for appreciation (there is only one
correct answer when a woman asks a man "How do I look in this?"), and
don't expect a lot of undivided attention from men (learned from
experience). When they want attention, they get it from other women,
who actually notice things and sympathize. At one point we might have
argued that this behaviour was situational (until two generations ago,
the social roles of men and women were markedly different), but now
that many men and women fill identical social roles, the perseverance
of this 'specialized' behaviour suggests it may have a deeper,
genetically-based cause.
Why are the majority of women more observant, more perceptive, more attentive
than most men? This might be because, since women have had the dominant
role in child-rearing, unattentive mothers lost their children to
predators and hence selected themselves out of the gene pool. Or
perhaps the explanation is more cultural than genetic -- none of us can
be good at everything, so it makes more sense to divide up the critical
work of paying attention and giving appreciation, and at some point the
culture evolved so that women were expected to do the former and men
the latter. Whatever the origin, this system of specialization works, and we depend heavily on it for our psychological health.
What
happens when a child is starved for both attention and appreciation?
They start acting out, in aggressive ways. In serious cases it can lead
to a psychosis -- committing violent acts like arson or animal abuse to
get attention, lying and cheating to get appreciation.
What
happens when a whole generation of children is starved for both
attention and appreciation, when their parents are too busy looking
after their own selfish needs (perhaps because they themselves are
starved for attention and appreciation) to provide psychologically for
those of their children? You get an epidemic of bored, anti-social
people suffering from "low self-esteem", and thrill-seeking to get the
attention of others. You get what Michael Adams described
as the newly-prevalent (and growing dominant) behaviours in the lower
right quadrant of the matrix above, to the chagrin of both liberals
(whose nurturing/perceiving style, in Lakoffian terms, is more focused
on matriarchal attention) and conservatives (whose strict/judging
style, in Lakoffian terms, is more focused on patriarchal appreciation).
Perhaps what lies behind a lot of this bizarre and inexplicable (to liberals and conservatives) behaviour, this anomie,
especially of today's young people, is a desperate cry for attention
and appreciation, followed (when that cry is ignored by us self-centred
baby boomers) by an angry and resigned determination to wean themselves off the need for attention and appreciation ("Well fuck you, then, I'll just look after myself"). Please note: I'm not
saying we neglected our children or that two-income families are a bad
thing -- baby boomers so outnumber other generations that it's not
surprising we have always received the lion's share of attention from
everyone. I don't think the cause is that important -- I just want to
know what we can do about it now.
Well,
that's all I have to say on this. All generalizations are annoying,
including this one, but there is something important at work here, and
it affects our psychological health at a time we all need to be healthy
to face the great challenges ahead. Please jump in to the discussion --
you have my attention and appreciation. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
