Why You Should Considering Caring About What (Some) Other People Think

If you are a normal human being who already cares about what other people think, and know how to discriminate between the ones you should care about and the ones you shouldn't, this post isn't for you. Please look away.

In childhood, I often got this advice: you shouldn't care about what other people think. I wonder if this advice is given less true now then when I was a kid. It certainly is given less often in most other countries relative to the hyper-individualist culture of the U.S. But in my early life, it came from multiple quarters - parents, advertising, peers. And like many things in life, part of the social test is knowing how seriously to take the repetitive slogans broadcast everywhere. I probably took it more seriously than most, hence the italicized disclaimer that began this post. If, like me you need a reason to be a normal healthy fully socialized human, then here are some reasons why you might consider caring what other people think.

1. Someone who truly does not care what others think is much more likely than the average person to be a psychopath. Consider whether you want to be like a psychopath.
   
   
2. Related, a big part of caring what other people think is empathy; if you don't care what they think, you don't care if you hurt them or offend them. Announcing that you don't care what they think and don't care if they're offended is broadcasting that you may hurt them, if not hurting them would inconvenience you. At the very least, it suggests you're not a reliable cooperator. (Story time: I used to love going out of my way to tell people I thought sports were a waste of time. I once did this at a small social gathering, and in a later discussion, one person I'd just met for the first time that day said "You already announced you're incapable of loyalty, no need to weigh in further." While that's not true - I am capable of loyalty where it matters - i.e., not sports - I've realized that intentionally announcing this in a casual social setting to someone who clearly does like sports, does nothing but potentially leave certain kinds of people with this impression, which doesn't help. I'm taking a risk here because this isn't a casual social setting, and it's much less combative to say this in an essay sitting inert online than to choose to say it at an oppositional moment.)
   
   
3. Rejecting and denigrating another person's cherished beliefs in public, is a dramatic announcement of #2 above. You're announcing that you don't care if you're hurting people and disrupting their culture. That may be worth it to you, but be clear and honest with yourself WHY it's worth it to you, before you do it. Also, confirmation bias is a bitch - if you let a black cat cross your path, call a superstitious person a moron for saying something about it, and then lose your wallet that same day, you'll be ridiculed and (when you've rejected more serious beliefs) a self-destructive moron that others should avoid. So they have a false belief - so does everyone! If it harms you or people you love, fine, call it out.
   
   
4. It turns out you can benefit from interacting and coordinating with irrational people. The company you choose to work for may even be an example! But, you should balance the benefits you gain from such coordination against exposure to these people because you may reinforce their irrationality and bad values, you will become more like them, and they will have more influence over your life.
   
   
5. It also turns out that people sometimes have to rapidly (in literal seconds) make snap judgments about you, using easily available information - your appearance, your clothing, your reputation. Even if you think you're valuable in the context where you're being evaluated (meeting with senior leadership at your company, a speed-dating lunch, salesman OR customer), they have no way of knowing that in the seconds where they're making a first impression. (The need to make snap judgments on increasingly dubious proxy indicators starts happening more and more when a small company grows rapidly beyond a certain point, meaning you can no longer know everyone.) AND even if you're so high-value that you're initially rejected and then an evaluator runs across you again later and realizes you're valuable, the evaluator might still think "That person could have succeeded/built confidence sooner/faster if they had just worn the thing/acted the way that they were supposed to; that shows arrogance, passive-aggression, and/or poor social awareness, and remains a negative predictor for the future."
   
   
6. For rationalists: it's actually not good to change your mind in public too often. Each time you change your mind to another position in public, your audience's "needle" quite rationally edges over toward "listen to someone else besides this person, because they're an inferior decision-maker" (at best) to "they are capricious and unpredictable and their commitment is not meaningful." The exception is if you're so powerful you can afford to be capricious, because you have something others want and they have no choice but to put up with you. But, you're almost certainly not that powerful.

IMPORTANT: it's hard to start caring what others think later in life, because it doesn't come automatically, and you might start caring about everyone, or caring about the wrong people. It's kind of like trying to pick up a sport in adulthood. You're just not going to be as good at it as people who have been practicing since they were kids. So once you start caring about other people, as a guide think: does this person share my values? Do I want to be like them? Am I likely to spend more time around them in the future? Pragmatically, do they have some impact over your life? Then that's a good candidate for caring what they think about you. (Notice that this is still focused on real actual people, not some hypothetical person on the internet or at a club that you haven't met.)

You might say, "Well, you're still a psychopath. Everything so far has been about how you have learned to react to what other people say and do, rather than whether you actually care." Controlling your response is the beginning of caring. For those people who you've realized are specifically worth more of your attention than the average human, what they say and do (about and to you) is worth more of your consideration, as are the way they feel when they're around you. And you just can't care about everyone: not only do you not have the bandwidth, but what people care about frequently conflicts in important ways.

You (or my naive past self) might ask, "Great, so then we should just tolerate everyone's religions, superstitions, and irrational beliefs?" No, but you don't have to announce your negative impressions and beliefs about the people around you every time they pop into your mind, even the people you don't care that much about. "Oh, so we should be sneaky and lie and smile while silently detesting and devaluing them?" Also no. In any given moment, there is a literally infinite number of true statements you can make to another person, and an also literally infinite number of reasons you might say them. Take your, and your fellow humans', social reality into account, and how it is likely to affect your future.