7 ms·

No feigning surprise

82 points by sndean 10y ago

Neliquat 10y ago
This is good for techie types like me who unintentionally talk down to people in ways like this.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Related topic: using the word "just" when telling someone how to do something.
- Grue3 10y ago
  What about non-techie types who are suprised you won't just make a website for them (for free) in one day, or that you aren't an expect in all things tech by the sole virtue of being a programmer. Or, not being able to do mental arithmetic very well when you tell them you're a mathematician.
  - exolymph 10y ago
    What's stopping you from explaining the reasons sincerely? E.g. "I know how to make a website, but it can still be time-consuming, and that's work that I'm usually paid for. You are asking for a bigger favor than you realize."
pwpwp 10y ago
Somebody being surprised that you don't know what a stack is is a super useful cue for anybody serious about a topic, telling them to learn something new. This rule is therefore harmful to learning and IMO bullshit.
- lfowles 10y ago
  Why not cut to the chase and tell them that a $THING is important to know about in $FIELD rather than acting surprised that they don't know?
- smacktoward 10y ago
  It is possible to teach somebody about something without being a jerk about it. (Some people may find it difficult, true. But I assure you that it is not impossible.)
- scott_s 10y ago
  I strongly disagree. People tend to experience embarrassment when someone else is surprised they don't know something. It trains people to not say "I don't know what that is", which is harmful. It's also just plain rude.
- oconnor663 10y ago
  The meta lesson here is that different people prefer different ways of talking. Something that might've helped your learning can hurt someone else's.
wfunction 10y ago
Yeah. But I'll point out that this assumes that person doesn't have responsibility to go with it. You should be surprised if your CEO didn't know what supply and demand are (unless you have a small company and no else one in your company does either, I guess). You should be surprised if your boss doesn't know who works under him. You should be surprised if your prof doesn't know what concepts he's supposed to be teaching. You should be surprised if your doctor prescribes antibiotics for a viral infection. The list goes on and on...
- smacktoward 10y ago
  These are all examples of surprise directed upwards, at people who are in more elevated positions in some social organization than you are. The principle is speaking about directing surprise downwards, at newbies and others who are less established in some social organization than you are. The power dynamics in the two cases are different, which is why the one case intuitively makes sense where the other does not.
  - wfunction 10y ago
    I don't think "upwards" or "downwards" is meaningful here. If I were CEO I would be surprised if a manager at my company didn't even know who was working under him. If I were a math professor I would be surprised if the TA I just hired didn't know two quarters is the same as one half. If I were the president of the United States I would be surprised if my vice president thought he was president. etc. Why? Because all of these cases involve someone's lack of knowledge almost certainly resulting in someone else getting completely screwed over. It doesn't matter what the ranks of the people involved are, it just matters if there are serious potential damages at stake.
- pazimzadeh 10y ago
  Viruses can associate with glycoproteins on gut bacteria which can stabilize and and protect the virus, so while antibiotics don't directly act on the virus, taking antibiotics could in principle prevent viral infection. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3754087/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3754087/
dec0dedab0de 10y ago
I never feign surprise, but there are plenty of times where I am actually surprised, and should keep it to myself. Part of the issue is that I Absolutely love when someone else is surprised I don't know something. It usually means they're going to tell me something that they feel somewhat pationately about. I forget that not everyone is the same.
ape4 10y ago
You don't know not to feign surprise?!
chroma 10y ago
I think it's wrong to feign any reaction when others expect sincerity, but I also think this post causes more harm than good. Let me explain. First: Feigned surprise is rare. I've never done it. I doubt the author has ever done it. What is far more common is genuine surprise. I've definitely been surprised by others' knowledge gaps. Heck, I've been surprised to discover my own ignorance in some areas. (eg: thinking, "How did I get this far in my career without knowing Python's defaultdict!?") Second: Without access to someone's internal mind-state, you cannot reliably tell the difference between a feigned response and a genuine one. You may think you're able to, but the main factors in such judgements are your own biases. This inaccuracy combined with the rarity of feigned responses means that people are far more likely to judge genuine surprise as feigned, and condemn someone who is acting in good faith (albeit impulsively). More useful advice would be: Don't get upset if someone is surprised you don't know something. If anything, take it as a compliment. It means they have high expectations of your level of technical knowledge. eg: I wouldn't be surprised to discover that my mother doesn't know to use git, but I would be surprised to discover that about a coworker.
- scandox 10y ago
  I think feigned surprise is exceptionally common. Your description of it makes it seem like a very thought out or premeditated behaviour. The kind of "feigning" the author is referring to is a reflex behaviour. If you confronted a feigner of surprise immediately afterwards they might be genuinely unable to say truthfully if they were really surprised or just reacted with surprise to satisfy an inner desire to assert the superiority of their knowledge. Such behaviours have strong roots in childhood and often a rational adult who has it brought to their attention will easily be able to never do it again. But it really is quite common in my experience.
  - andreyf 10y ago
    Feigned reflexive behavior? That's some sociopathic shit. > Such behaviours have strong roots in childhood and often a rational adult who has it brought to their attention will easily be able to never do it again lol! no. I do agree that this rule is encouraging people to be ever-self-conscious and overrule their social reflexes and would be more accurately called "repress surprise".
jancsika 10y ago
> A key trick here is to not act surprised even if you’re actually surprised. (because whether you’re performing surprise or just genuinely a bit surprised, it has the same negative effect!) I think you mean "show surprise" rather than "feigning surprise". "Feign" means "to pretend", while people who express genuine surprise are still "showing" surprise.
- matthewwiese 10y ago
  I'm glad somebody else noticed the incorrect use of `feign.` If anything, if one feigns surprise, they are acting in bad faith. I agree with the title of the article -- don't feign surprise, e.g. if somebody gives you a gift you knew was coming and pretend you're baffled by its appearance -- but do show surprise when someone you know who is intelligent is missing a small puzzle piece in their knowledge space. Not in a belligerent way, of course, as the author points out: use it as an opportunity to educate. I ain't about to berate a friend of mine for not knowing something, but it would be quite disingenuous to hide my surprise; in my eyes, that's comparable to talking down to them.
  - Swizec 10y ago
    > if somebody gives you a gift you knew was coming and pretend you're baffled by its appearance I never know what to do when somebody goes through a lot of trouble to surprise me, but I figure it out anyway. Usually I play along and act surprised because it makes the other person feel good. Imagine your girlfriend was planning a surprise birthday present for six months and somehow the secret leaked. You saw an open tab, or one of your common friends spilled the beans, or whatever. Are you going to ruin her excitement about surprising you just because "feigning surprise is bad"?
  - skybrian 10y ago
    I think the author was using "feign" to mean "express in a negative way" - focus on what it looks like, not how honest it is. At the point where someone is saying "how can you not know that" they've already gone beyond their immediate honest reaction into moral judgement.
andreyf 10y ago
This rule always struck me as a bit fundamentally blind to and micro-managing of human interaction. Why would someone ever feign surprise? I feel like I rarely feel the need to feign emotions and surprise have never been one of them.
- patio11 10y ago
  It's a learned behavior, similar to how repeating memes is also a learned behavior. People use it for various purposes (signaling ingroup membership, belittling others, etc) and for no particular purpose at all, just like people often say things for no deep reason at all. I believe that considered reflection of all of your expressions of emotion in a day is highly likely to come up with many which are for purposes other than desire to express that emotion. Many of them are culturally ingrained, much like (for some folks) feigned disguise is culturally ingrained or for other folks feigned distaste when a tribal enemy is mentioned is culturally ingrained. A common emotional response you almost certainly fake without every thinking you're faking: how would you answer someone who asked "How are you doing today?" Virtually no one who is socially well-adjusted has a wide range of responses to that question despite there being a wide range of emotional states in life. (I have fairly developed thoughts on the question of modulating emotional response to fit into a particular culture because of deep necessity to get better at it, including taking formal classes, at different points in my life.)
  - andreyf 10y ago
    > signaling ingroup membership, belittling others, etc Good call. I'm certainly not an authority on being well-adjusted, but for me personally, those sound like seeds planted in insincerity leading to a varied bouquet of suffering. In the context of creating a sense of community around us, we are better off if we learn to strive to act thoughtfully and sincerely from a young age, and encourage others who do likewise. I'd much prefer this rule to be a minor counter-example beneath "empower others". Answering sincerely-yet-appropriately to "How are you?" isn't trivial, but it's worth it. In the past week, I've responded with a wide variety of sighs (to friends), "ok. I'm ok." (to a doctor who I was seeing after being kept awake by excruciating pain), "right now? good, happy to see you!" (to a less frequently seen acquaintance), "oy, don't ask, there's a line. but I'm looking forward to this porkbelly!" (to a grocer). I imagine I might come off as a brash American if I were to try what I perceive as sincerity in more reserved cultures, but in middle class America it seems to work at-least-OK :-)
microcolonel 10y ago
The recurse center seems like an unpleasant and pedantic place, but I guess to each one's own. Their documentation seems to assume that impostor syndrome is a bad thing because it feels bad, I don't think things are that clear-cut in life. I just don't see why organizations feel like anything is helped by attempting to police social behaviour.
- psyc 10y ago
  If they were really interested in reducing condescension and ego-tripping, a great place to start would be "No nannying other adults."
js2 10y ago
There's a parallel to this of course: don't be afraid to ask questions when you don't know something.
furyofantares 10y ago
Surprise is a mechanism that alerts you that your understanding of the world doesn't match observation -- it informs you that either your expectation was in error or your observation was. You should not be surprised to often be surprised about others' understanding -- the typical mind bias means our models of others track far more closely to our own internal state than reality. It can make sense to confirm the observation -- "you don't know about X?" -- but you don't have to do it condescendingly. You can do it in an excited manner, both in tone and in words: "You don't know about X? Awesome, I didn't know I was going to get to tell someone about X today!" This is easier done once you train yourself to notice surprise as being a signal about your own ignorance rather than being about the other person, and once you know to expect such surprises.
psyc 10y ago
Fine, but you can't just slip in a tut-tut about expressing genuine surprise, in a post titled "No Feigning Surprise." I express emotions. It's honest. It lets people know what I really think, and what I really care about. If I lose my shit when you say you never saw Fight Club, that's my way of telling you how much I loved it.
gooseyard 10y ago
even more socially savvy than "don't feign surprise" is "don't ask questions that might lead to answers that might lead the asker to feign surprise". In any situation where you're assuming the role of teacher, assume that the answer to any "do you know about ..." question is always no. It's much easier to preface a question with "forgive me if you already know this but ...", than to go through the feigned surprise song and dance.
CosmicShadow 10y ago
I can't believe how many comments there are here nitpicking the misuse of feign or not actually understanding the lesson of don't be a douche because someone doesn't know something you assumed everybody knew. All folks don't know something that seems common knowledge and you are a dick if you over-react to make them feel bad, so try to be a better person and not do that. I feel like it should be pretty easy to understand the core lesson she is trying to teach if you read the entire post even without her using the exact proper words. The xkcd comic at the end drives it home.

82 points by sndean 10y ago

Neliquat 10y ago

This is good for techie types like me who unintentionally talk down to people in ways like this.

rhizome 10y ago
Related topic: using the word "just" when telling someone how to do something.
Grue3 10y ago
What about non-techie types who are suprised you won't just make a website for them (for free) in one day, or that you aren't an expect in all things tech by the sole virtue of being a programmer. Or, not being able to do mental arithmetic very well when you tell them you're a mathematician.
- exolymph 10y ago
  What's stopping you from explaining the reasons sincerely? E.g. "I know how to make a website, but it can still be time-consuming, and that's work that I'm usually paid for. You are asking for a bigger favor than you realize."

pwpwp 10y ago

Somebody being surprised that you don't know what a stack is is a super useful cue for anybody serious about a topic, telling them to learn something new. This rule is therefore harmful to learning and IMO bullshit.

lfowles 10y ago
Why not cut to the chase and tell them that a $THING is important to know about in $FIELD rather than acting surprised that they don't know?
smacktoward 10y ago
It is possible to teach somebody about something without being a jerk about it. (Some people may find it difficult, true. But I assure you that it is not impossible.)
scott_s 10y ago
I strongly disagree. People tend to experience embarrassment when someone else is surprised they don't know something. It trains people to not say "I don't know what that is", which is harmful. It's also just plain rude.
oconnor663 10y ago
The meta lesson here is that different people prefer different ways of talking. Something that might've helped your learning can hurt someone else's.

wfunction 10y ago

Yeah. But I'll point out that this assumes that person doesn't have responsibility to go with it. You should be surprised if your CEO didn't know what supply and demand are (unless you have a small company and no else one in your company does either, I guess). You should be surprised if your boss doesn't know who works under him. You should be surprised if your prof doesn't know what concepts he's supposed to be teaching. You should be surprised if your doctor prescribes antibiotics for a viral infection. The list goes on and on...

smacktoward 10y ago
These are all examples of surprise directed upwards, at people who are in more elevated positions in some social organization than you are. The principle is speaking about directing surprise downwards, at newbies and others who are less established in some social organization than you are. The power dynamics in the two cases are different, which is why the one case intuitively makes sense where the other does not.
- wfunction 10y ago
  I don't think "upwards" or "downwards" is meaningful here. If I were CEO I would be surprised if a manager at my company didn't even know who was working under him. If I were a math professor I would be surprised if the TA I just hired didn't know two quarters is the same as one half. If I were the president of the United States I would be surprised if my vice president thought he was president. etc. Why? Because all of these cases involve someone's lack of knowledge almost certainly resulting in someone else getting completely screwed over. It doesn't matter what the ranks of the people involved are, it just matters if there are serious potential damages at stake.
pazimzadeh 10y ago
Viruses can associate with glycoproteins on gut bacteria which can stabilize and and protect the virus, so while antibiotics don't directly act on the virus, taking antibiotics could in principle prevent viral infection. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3754087/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3754087/

dec0dedab0de 10y ago

I never feign surprise, but there are plenty of times where I am actually surprised, and should keep it to myself. Part of the issue is that I Absolutely love when someone else is surprised I don't know something. It usually means they're going to tell me something that they feel somewhat pationately about. I forget that not everyone is the same.

ape4 10y ago

You don't know not to feign surprise?!

chroma 10y ago

I think it's wrong to feign any reaction when others expect sincerity, but I also think this post causes more harm than good. Let me explain. First: Feigned surprise is rare. I've never done it. I doubt the author has ever done it. What is far more common is genuine surprise. I've definitely been surprised by others' knowledge gaps. Heck, I've been surprised to discover my own ignorance in some areas. (eg: thinking, "How did I get this far in my career without knowing Python's defaultdict!?") Second: Without access to someone's internal mind-state, you cannot reliably tell the difference between a feigned response and a genuine one. You may think you're able to, but the main factors in such judgements are your own biases. This inaccuracy combined with the rarity of feigned responses means that people are far more likely to judge genuine surprise as feigned, and condemn someone who is acting in good faith (albeit impulsively). More useful advice would be: Don't get upset if someone is surprised you don't know something. If anything, take it as a compliment. It means they have high expectations of your level of technical knowledge. eg: I wouldn't be surprised to discover that my mother doesn't know to use git, but I would be surprised to discover that about a coworker.

scandox 10y ago
I think feigned surprise is exceptionally common. Your description of it makes it seem like a very thought out or premeditated behaviour. The kind of "feigning" the author is referring to is a reflex behaviour. If you confronted a feigner of surprise immediately afterwards they might be genuinely unable to say truthfully if they were really surprised or just reacted with surprise to satisfy an inner desire to assert the superiority of their knowledge. Such behaviours have strong roots in childhood and often a rational adult who has it brought to their attention will easily be able to never do it again. But it really is quite common in my experience.
- andreyf 10y ago
  Feigned reflexive behavior? That's some sociopathic shit. > Such behaviours have strong roots in childhood and often a rational adult who has it brought to their attention will easily be able to never do it again lol! no. I do agree that this rule is encouraging people to be ever-self-conscious and overrule their social reflexes and would be more accurately called "repress surprise".

jancsika 10y ago

> A key trick here is to not act surprised even if you’re actually surprised. (because whether you’re performing surprise or just genuinely a bit surprised, it has the same negative effect!) I think you mean "show surprise" rather than "feigning surprise". "Feign" means "to pretend", while people who express genuine surprise are still "showing" surprise.

matthewwiese 10y ago
I'm glad somebody else noticed the incorrect use of `feign.` If anything, if one feigns surprise, they are acting in bad faith. I agree with the title of the article -- don't feign surprise, e.g. if somebody gives you a gift you knew was coming and pretend you're baffled by its appearance -- but do show surprise when someone you know who is intelligent is missing a small puzzle piece in their knowledge space. Not in a belligerent way, of course, as the author points out: use it as an opportunity to educate. I ain't about to berate a friend of mine for not knowing something, but it would be quite disingenuous to hide my surprise; in my eyes, that's comparable to talking down to them.
- Swizec 10y ago
  > if somebody gives you a gift you knew was coming and pretend you're baffled by its appearance I never know what to do when somebody goes through a lot of trouble to surprise me, but I figure it out anyway. Usually I play along and act surprised because it makes the other person feel good. Imagine your girlfriend was planning a surprise birthday present for six months and somehow the secret leaked. You saw an open tab, or one of your common friends spilled the beans, or whatever. Are you going to ruin her excitement about surprising you just because "feigning surprise is bad"?
- skybrian 10y ago
  I think the author was using "feign" to mean "express in a negative way" - focus on what it looks like, not how honest it is. At the point where someone is saying "how can you not know that" they've already gone beyond their immediate honest reaction into moral judgement.

andreyf 10y ago

This rule always struck me as a bit fundamentally blind to and micro-managing of human interaction. Why would someone ever feign surprise? I feel like I rarely feel the need to feign emotions and surprise have never been one of them.

patio11 10y ago
It's a learned behavior, similar to how repeating memes is also a learned behavior. People use it for various purposes (signaling ingroup membership, belittling others, etc) and for no particular purpose at all, just like people often say things for no deep reason at all. I believe that considered reflection of all of your expressions of emotion in a day is highly likely to come up with many which are for purposes other than desire to express that emotion. Many of them are culturally ingrained, much like (for some folks) feigned disguise is culturally ingrained or for other folks feigned distaste when a tribal enemy is mentioned is culturally ingrained. A common emotional response you almost certainly fake without every thinking you're faking: how would you answer someone who asked "How are you doing today?" Virtually no one who is socially well-adjusted has a wide range of responses to that question despite there being a wide range of emotional states in life. (I have fairly developed thoughts on the question of modulating emotional response to fit into a particular culture because of deep necessity to get better at it, including taking formal classes, at different points in my life.)
- andreyf 10y ago
  > signaling ingroup membership, belittling others, etc Good call. I'm certainly not an authority on being well-adjusted, but for me personally, those sound like seeds planted in insincerity leading to a varied bouquet of suffering. In the context of creating a sense of community around us, we are better off if we learn to strive to act thoughtfully and sincerely from a young age, and encourage others who do likewise. I'd much prefer this rule to be a minor counter-example beneath "empower others". Answering sincerely-yet-appropriately to "How are you?" isn't trivial, but it's worth it. In the past week, I've responded with a wide variety of sighs (to friends), "ok. I'm ok." (to a doctor who I was seeing after being kept awake by excruciating pain), "right now? good, happy to see you!" (to a less frequently seen acquaintance), "oy, don't ask, there's a line. but I'm looking forward to this porkbelly!" (to a grocer). I imagine I might come off as a brash American if I were to try what I perceive as sincerity in more reserved cultures, but in middle class America it seems to work at-least-OK :-)

microcolonel 10y ago

The recurse center seems like an unpleasant and pedantic place, but I guess to each one's own. Their documentation seems to assume that impostor syndrome is a bad thing because it feels bad, I don't think things are that clear-cut in life. I just don't see why organizations feel like anything is helped by attempting to police social behaviour.

psyc 10y ago
If they were really interested in reducing condescension and ego-tripping, a great place to start would be "No nannying other adults."

js2 10y ago

There's a parallel to this of course: don't be afraid to ask questions when you don't know something.

furyofantares 10y ago

Surprise is a mechanism that alerts you that your understanding of the world doesn't match observation -- it informs you that either your expectation was in error or your observation was. You should not be surprised to often be surprised about others' understanding -- the typical mind bias means our models of others track far more closely to our own internal state than reality. It can make sense to confirm the observation -- "you don't know about X?" -- but you don't have to do it condescendingly. You can do it in an excited manner, both in tone and in words: "You don't know about X? Awesome, I didn't know I was going to get to tell someone about X today!" This is easier done once you train yourself to notice surprise as being a signal about your own ignorance rather than being about the other person, and once you know to expect such surprises.

psyc 10y ago

Fine, but you can't just slip in a tut-tut about expressing genuine surprise, in a post titled "No Feigning Surprise." I express emotions. It's honest. It lets people know what I really think, and what I really care about. If I lose my shit when you say you never saw Fight Club, that's my way of telling you how much I loved it.

gooseyard 10y ago

even more socially savvy than "don't feign surprise" is "don't ask questions that might lead to answers that might lead the asker to feign surprise". In any situation where you're assuming the role of teacher, assume that the answer to any "do you know about ..." question is always no. It's much easier to preface a question with "forgive me if you already know this but ...", than to go through the feigned surprise song and dance.

CosmicShadow 10y ago

I can't believe how many comments there are here nitpicking the misuse of feign or not actually understanding the lesson of don't be a douche because someone doesn't know something you assumed everybody knew. All folks don't know something that seems common knowledge and you are a dick if you over-react to make them feel bad, so try to be a better person and not do that. I feel like it should be pretty easy to understand the core lesson she is trying to teach if you read the entire post even without her using the exact proper words. The xkcd comic at the end drives it home.