Social Interactions, Essay Example

I had occasion the other day to respond at length to the question, “how are you?”, several times. There were instances when the question was asked, but the circumstances did not allow for a full answer; in the supermarket check-out line, for example, answering as I wanted to would have created unwelcome situations. There were, however, interesting reactions when I was able to give a lengthy reply to the question. Sitting down to get my hair cut, the stylist asked me how I was doing, and I proceeded to go on about the way I was feeling physically. I then talked about certain concerns I was having, and I maintained all of this as a single answer. The stylist, I noticed, initially reacted by nodding her head, indicating sympathy and listening. As I went on, I observed that she both stopped this motion and actually created a little extra distance between herself and me. She needed to get near, of course, but she was holding her arms and her body in a taut, removed way. During my entire time there, she never asked me anything else. In fact, instead of the normal inquiry about my being satisfied with the haircut, she only gestured at the mirror. She was not overtly rude, but I sensed tension. This was also evident in her fast, abrupt movements when I paid her, and her unwillingness to make eye contact.

The second time I attempted this experiment, it was out of doors. I passed by the mailman and, again, began to fully answer the quickly said, perfunctory question. I stopped as soon as the question was asked, causing him to stop as well. Within seconds of my reply, however, he held up a hand, smiled, and proceeded to pass by me, to deliver mail into a set of boxes. The moment was fascinating; feeling reckless, I kept speaking, and I saw him smile and shake his head as he worked. He did not give the impression of mocking me, but of mild disbelief. When he finished his work, he walked by me very quickly, still smiling, and telling me to, “have a nice day.” There was also a kind of defiance in his movements then, almost as though he were bracing himself physically for a challenge.

One other incident occurred, and all that is worth noting about it is that I witnessed reactions similar to those of the mailman, which I attribute to the fact that this individual was also outdoors. The stylist was constrained to do her job, so her reaction reflected someone more threatened; the latter two were not so obligated to remain, and each quickly expressed the same kind of amused disbelief, and less actual tension. Based on the third incident, in which the individual did not remain after I spoke only a few sentences, I believe the mailman would have departed sooner also, had he been able to. It seems that defying expectations when a perfunctory, “meaningless” question is asked elicits responses at least partially influenced by the specific circumstances of the encounters.

Beyond this, and after giving some thought to these experiments, it seems that casual, social interactions are potentially less casual than they appear. More exactly, there are strict parameters surrounding them, and violations of expected behavior create at least some level of unease, and certainly a mild form of shock. It seems that the completely unanticipated response actually makes people question their own sense of reality at that moment. This quickly passes, and body language then blatantly points to impatience, distanced amusement, and/or a state of being “on guard”. More importantly, I felt guilty after these exchanges because I was breaking through a social understanding, which was clearly intrusive. If strangers trade polite remarks, it is with the awareness that they are still strangers, and my answers were those more appropriate for a friend. This strikes me as an interesting element in interactions, in that even relatively ordinary information, and certainly not of especially intimate nature, is both intrusive and intimidating to strangers. The wariness of the reactions points to an alert, that they may be exposed to some knowledge of a person of whom they have no interest. One thing was clear to me: going beyond expectations to a polite question invariably makes the asker of it extremely uncomfortable.