Random thought: revealing something personal about yourself is a very powerful “dark art”. People will feel strong pressure to reciprocate.
I confess that I’ve sort of used it before. Ie. if I want to get information out of someone, I might reveal something personal about myself (I’m comfortable talking about a lot of things, so often times it really isn’t even that personal).
I can’t recall ever having had bad intentions though. I recall using it to get a friend to open up about something that I think would be beneficial for them, but that is difficult for them to do.
The real trick to both use and deflect this is to have some piece of information about yourself that sounds very personal but that you would be fine sharing with everyone. I use autism disclosure this way, not only for this purpose, but also so that when people who I have met try to think of examples of autism, they don’t just think of fictional evidence.
Also, this shows up in HPMoR’s chapter 7, titled Reciprocation.
It’s not just pressure to reciprocate—revealing something very personal is an extremely strong signal of honesty. (Edit: And also confidence)
And while I didn’t do this intentionally per se, I do remember the first conversation I had with my girlfriend involved me telling her about the time I failed out of my program in university. That worked out pretty well, I’d say.
I think that depends on whether the personal detail in question helps or hinders bonding.
There are many personal things people (strangers mostly) could tell me about themselves that would put me off rather than get me to reciprocate, and probably I’ve awakened such reactions in other people in the past as well.
Confess something embarrassing or awkward enough, and wave your success goodbye—just when you thought you were improving social skills by consciously applying social strategies...
Tip: an unflattering but ordinary and relatable experience is best for this. Internet meme images and funny pics are full of those.
Whenever you discover a social “dark art”, look for a countermeasure.
Of course, in most cases this isn’t a “dark art” at all: It can just be a signal that you’re okay talking about X or moving the conversation in the direction of X, without explicit requesting to talk about X, because an explicit request would require an explicit refusal in the case where they truly didn’t want to talk about X. Whereas if you use the ambiguous signal, you’re giving them the option of an ambiguous refusal (often by reciprocating with a superficially equal but actually trivial “yeah me too” disclosure). I think this holds for the case of “difficult” issues between friends, and well as things like flirting (ambiguous introduction of a sexual topic), and moving to informal topics from a formal context.
Random thought: revealing something personal about yourself is a very powerful “dark art”. People will feel strong pressure to reciprocate.
I confess that I’ve sort of used it before. Ie. if I want to get information out of someone, I might reveal something personal about myself (I’m comfortable talking about a lot of things, so often times it really isn’t even that personal).
I can’t recall ever having had bad intentions though. I recall using it to get a friend to open up about something that I think would be beneficial for them, but that is difficult for them to do.
The real trick to both use and deflect this is to have some piece of information about yourself that sounds very personal but that you would be fine sharing with everyone. I use autism disclosure this way, not only for this purpose, but also so that when people who I have met try to think of examples of autism, they don’t just think of fictional evidence.
Also, this shows up in HPMoR’s chapter 7, titled Reciprocation.
It’s not just pressure to reciprocate—revealing something very personal is an extremely strong signal of honesty. (Edit: And also confidence)
And while I didn’t do this intentionally per se, I do remember the first conversation I had with my girlfriend involved me telling her about the time I failed out of my program in university. That worked out pretty well, I’d say.
I think that depends on whether the personal detail in question helps or hinders bonding.
There are many personal things people (strangers mostly) could tell me about themselves that would put me off rather than get me to reciprocate, and probably I’ve awakened such reactions in other people in the past as well.
Confess something embarrassing or awkward enough, and wave your success goodbye—just when you thought you were improving social skills by consciously applying social strategies...
Tip: an unflattering but ordinary and relatable experience is best for this. Internet meme images and funny pics are full of those.
Whenever you discover a social “dark art”, look for a countermeasure.
Of course, in most cases this isn’t a “dark art” at all: It can just be a signal that you’re okay talking about X or moving the conversation in the direction of X, without explicit requesting to talk about X, because an explicit request would require an explicit refusal in the case where they truly didn’t want to talk about X. Whereas if you use the ambiguous signal, you’re giving them the option of an ambiguous refusal (often by reciprocating with a superficially equal but actually trivial “yeah me too” disclosure). I think this holds for the case of “difficult” issues between friends, and well as things like flirting (ambiguous introduction of a sexual topic), and moving to informal topics from a formal context.