The Platinum Rule
robertgreiner.com
robertgreiner.com
I default to treating people how my mental model of a "normal person" wants to be treated. For example, most people in most circumstances want minimal interaction with strangers. I then modify that by what I can vaguely infer about their preferences based on their background. For example, women going to be not just annoyed, but creeped out by random strangers. I then modify that based on setting: at a conference, people are far more interested in meeting new people. I then try to pay attention to their body language, tone of voice, and words to see if I can read anything about them as an individual. If a person looks alert and open-stanced, they are probably more interested in meeting people. And of course, if it is non-awkward, I'll just ask them about their preferences.
The core thesis of DISC is that there is not a "normal person" (even though we intuitively think there is). Rather, there are normal archetypes of people, and understanding those archetypes makes it easier to interact with them. You assert that "most people in most circumstances want minimal interaction with strangers", but this is wholly untrue (and indicates that you are a relatively low "I", which is fairly typical of tech types). Some people actively seek out interactions with strangers (strangers are just friends they haven't met yet!), and understanding that makes it much easier to interact with and communicate with them. High-I types actively seek and crave social interaction. They may modify their behavior to the situation, but they are most comfortable when they're socializing; in fact, the further someone's adapted (environmentally-imposed) behaviors are from their natural (preferred, given a lack of other constraints) behaviors, the unhappier they tend to be. While it may be culturally verboten to strike up a conversation with the person next to you on the subway, the high-I would like nothing better than to chat about their day with the person next to them (and the low-I wants nothing more than to be left alone).
Since there are only these four major attributes to learn, you can read people that you don't know intimately - sometimes from across the room!
For example, if you can recognize a high "D" personality (which is frequently easy to recognize, but also relatively rare), you will make them feel most at ease by not having to be in charge of an interaction - behaving cooperatively and deferentially will make it much easier for them to feel comfortable with you than if you are attempting to be in charge. This doesn't mean to be a doormat, but simply that if you can give up some non-critical control, they will feel that the interaction is much more "natural".
By the same token, interacting with a low "D" requires you to step up and take the reins. Being assertive and confident with a low D will result in a smoother experience, because their natural tendency will be to be deferential and unassuming, and it's actually more comfortable for them to be given some direction and to have someone else make the decisions.
Think about the age-old "where do you want to go for lunch?" question. When interacting with a high D, make suggestions, give input, offer opinions, but try to let them make the decision. When interacting with a low D, you might need to be the one to define the boundaries and make a decision about where you're going to go. The high D doesn't like other people making decisions for her, and the low D doesn't like having to be the one on which the decision rests. Understanding that lets you interact smoothly with both of them, even though they require diametrically-opposed approaches.
In _This Alien Shore_, by C.S. Friedman, one planetary culture, the Guerans, is essentially a human colony, but one where gestational biochemistry has been mutated to the extent that every adult exhibits at least one type of human mental disorder. They adapted by adopting a system of face markings so that people don't make simple but potentially dangerous mistakes--like hugging someone with an autism spectrum disorder, or holding eye contact too long against someone with a dominance disorder.
The point is that you would really have to either put extensive research into the preferences and personalities of everyone you know, or everyone would have to write key information across their foreheads every day.
Our society, lacking a dire need, does not care to invest in that level of effort and openness. It is far easier to follow the silver rule (don't do things you don't like to others) and the golden rule (do for others what you would like them to do for you), because those do not require extraordinary knowledge of other people's preferences.
In the age of social network oversharing and augmented reality, perhaps we can run an application that will superimpose another person's preferences over their faces automatically. But for now, the platinum rule is going to be pretty hard to use outside the bounds of your own family.
I have never been quite as strict as Dr. Masada about my external world, but I do definitely share some of those core feelings. Always wish I could get my wife to read it so she could see Masada and maybe draw some helpful parallels. Alas, she reads very little hard SF.
Which is why being actively assertive is a good choice to make. Not sure how someone wants to be treated then ask them. What if the don't want you to ask them? Then they should have been actively assertive and wore a sign/shirt that says "Don't ask". (I realize that doesn't help the blind). Also, perhaps we should rephrase "how someone wants to be treated" to "how someone prefers you to act toward them"?
The golden rule is great for matters of ethics (i.e. I shouldn't steal from you), but it can cause tension when we discuss communication behaviors.
This concept shows up in a few books and was made popular by Tony Alessandra.
* http://www.alessandra.com/abouttony/aboutpr.asp
* http://www.amazon.com/People-Smart-Powerful-Techniques-Encou...
* http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Styles-Effective-Performance-...
As a member of a minority group, this statement is sadly something we hear all the time if we object to people asking what should rationally otherwise be considered highly inappropriate questions. For example, just because someone is highly open about their sex life doesn't make asking a lesbian completely out of context how she has sex any more appropriate.
"Well, I would find it useful and be thankful"
Anyone who is a wheelchair user or has friends and family who are will probably know this one. People (strangers) have a habit of pushing wheelchairs around without asking the person within the chair first. Just because a currently abled body person might find the idea of someone helping them personally by pushing their chair if they used one, doesn't make it any more acceptable to completely ignore the wishes of a wheelchair user they don't know.
Clearly one can interpret the Golden Rule two ways depending on whether you take into account the other person's different values or not.
For example, you're probably patting yourself on the back for being "concise" despite using more words to praise your original comment than it would have taken to clarify it, whereas I'm resenting you for the way you've ostentatiously foregone social niceties at my expense.
Is that really what you would have wanted in my place? Despite your ability to parse it, I don't think you understand the Golden Rule very well.
The reason the golden rule works is because it places you in the position of the other. If I accidentally killed someone due to carelessness, I would want myself to be imprisoned for some time.
That said, I'd also observe that your rule,"do unto others as they want done to themselves", is not the same as my point. My point is that "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you" itself already encompasses the idea of honoring preferences, on the grounds that you would already like your preferences honored. It isn't a free-floating rule that I would advocate you adding to your ethicals on its own, it's a second-order consequence of the already-existing Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule, while it does not proscribe an exact solution to your hypothetical, at least gives guidance, inasmuch as if you'd like to live in a just world, it implies that you should approach your hypothetical with justice in mind. Presumably you have not encountered a free-floating, context-free fight between two otherwise identical men who are for some mysterious reason asking you and you alone to resolve the fight in favor of one or the other, with no other options permitted.
(I dislike ethical hypotheticals, or at least, I dislike hypotheticals when people lose track of the fact that they are inevitably incredible, massive simplifications of any real situation you might experience. One should either highlight that the hypothetical is deliberately abstracted, in which case math-style logic-chopping is what is called for, or that it is intended to be a real question about a real situation in which case what is called for is almost certainly a logically-complicated set of "if-thens" to flesh out the hypothetical, with general understanding that there is no one "true" answer because there is no one "true" situation being given.)
It is, in my opinion, a very thin and perhaps downright sophmoric interpretation of the Golden Rule to read it hyper-literally and incredible "thinly" and apply it only to your own literal preferences about exactly what you'd like done to you this second. I say this to lay down a marker, not saying that you are necessarily doing that. For instance, it certainly does not mean that if you are hungry right now, your ethical imperative is to go around feeding everybody you see, regardless of their own state. It's deeper and richer than that... again, probably not deep and rich enough to be a full ethical system on its own (I don't think it is), but it's not that thin.
Once you can learn to read how others want to be treated and know how to modify your own interactions with them accordingly, your ability to successfully interact with a wide variety of people vastly improves. It seems obvious and handwavey, but in my experience, the vast majority of tense relationships or awkward interpersonal interactions are because of a failure of two people to understand each other. Even if they're both behaving in the way they'd want to be treated, that doesn't mean that they're treating the other person as they'd want to be treated.
http://www.amazon.com/Personal-Styles-Effective-Performance-...
You just use yourself as the litmus test - i.e. "would I like this?" is waaaaaay easier to answer than "would they like this?". The former is an immediate gut-reaction; the latter requires a certain amount of empathy and insight.
In Reciprocal altruism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism there must be a way to detect "cheaters" otherwise you will spend your life breaking your back for others and have nothing to show for it except the feeling of being abused. Sure, if everyone did it, that would be great. But the more people who use the "Platinum Rule" the more advantageous it is for some to abuse the system - criticizing others for not doing enough for them while never doing a darn thing for anyone else.
If you follow this rule, you are a total sucker, but hey you live like you want to live. It affects everyone else, however, because it creates an environment where unethical bullies and liars can thrive and gain power.
You can respect people and treat them the way they want to be treated without being a sucker.
Extrapolating from this, we can surmise who wears the pants in OP's relationship.
The position is not hypocritical. It just doesn't expect that one should mindlessly apply one rule in all situations. Life isn't that simple. People aren't that simple. Also, hypocrisy has nothing to do with whether something is zero-sum.
> A proponent of this rule is not egalitarian but means to treat those above him or her in the social hierarchy they way he or she thinks their superiors wish to be treated, while expecting those he or she thinks less of to treat him or her they way he or she wishes to be treated.
This is a straw man. Proponents of this rule can easily apply it equally to everyone regardless of authority or power. Doing so doesn't make one a sucker because they can easily decide to stop applying the rule to a particular relationship if it becomes apparent that the other party is using it to bully/manipulate. Just because it's not a black and white thing doesn't mean it's not egalitarian.
> Extrapolating from this, we can surmise who wears the pants in OP's relationship.
Funny how you pay lip service to egalitarianism while revealing your actual view of relationships to be far from equitable.
Hypocrisy is not required for something to be zero-sum, but it is a common symptom. I said it was evidence, not proof. Zero-sum games always require a winner and loser and therefore a double standard - what is good for one is not good for the other. It's a stretch, I know. It's probably too weak to make a good case for.
I don't think my argument is a straw man - I do believe that there is inherent inequality (and therefore hierarchical jockeying) when one moves from the treatment like oneself in the golden rule to the "special treatment" of the platinum rule. Again, I can't think of a way to make a strong case for it at this time.
I vehemently disagree with your claim that it is simple to stop this policy if it is clear a person is abusing it. Because the test depends on the desires of another person, and that cannot be measured, it is not easy to know if they are being sincere or manipulative. Only after a many experiences could one make that assessment and by then you have lost so much or worse, married them.
Ok, I'll give you that, having been in situations like that myself. Remove the word easily from my above statement. So it's not always easy to stop applying the policy, but I believe (at least in my life experience) that the benefits of intelligent application of the platinum rule outweigh the costs imposed by those who abuse it.
> Because the test depends on the desires of another person, and that cannot be measured, it is not easy to know if they are being sincere or manipulative. Only after a many experiences could one make that assessment and by then you have lost so much or worse, married them.
The test only depends on you. Applying the platinum rule depends on the desires of the other person. But deciding when to stop applying it does not. I firmly believe that you cannot effectively help other people unless you yourself are healthy (not in just the medical sense, but the whole life sense). So it's your job to decide on the application of the platinum rule based on the dynamics of each relationship in question.
Have you taken a DiSC assessment? I find they are accurate for me and the people I work with who have taken them - anecdotal I know.
I am only half kidding, of course :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing
This is covered here: