Where and how are you supposed to learn human interaction?

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kuchitsu
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Where and how are you supposed to learn human interaction?

Post by kuchitsu »

In school there were a lot of different subjects, often IMO pretty useless stuff like chemistry where I couldn't understand anything at all. But what about human interaction? How to properly hold a conversation, how to be attentive and respectful of other people, how not to be an egotistical douche, how to be a good friend/lover? I was never taught any of this aside from some extremely basic stuff like "treat others the way you want to be treated", which I guess helped a bit but not much. So how am I expected to gain all that knowledge? You could say that it should naturally come with experience. However, I'm 23 years old already and yet I still suck a lot at most of that stuff. So what did I miss? Maybe there was a special class on one of these days when I decided to fake illness, stay home and play some Diablo 2?
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by roope »

It's a huge subject with millions of variables, but to put it simply IMO it just comes from life. At least for me. Everyone's given something to start with, "stats" if you will, and those stats evolve as the years pass by and you experience different stuff and interact with people - that is if you're the kind of person that absorbs the knowledge, for some it's easy and for some it's not that easy. Related to this is simply practicing. I used to hate doing important phone calls and I didn't know what to say and it was almost unbearable, but because they had to be done, I did them. Over time I've gotten over it. I still dislike doing them but now I can just pick up the phone and do the call instead of sweating about it for 2 hours prior. Of course if you mostly sit at the computer home alone, you won't get to practice different social situations that much. I've been hugely blessed with a couple of close friends that over my youth have taken me out of my dark hole and to meet new people and interact with them. Hokkuspokkus especially made me grow in so many ways (dirty mind!!) because he almost forcibly took me to situations and conversations I was not comfortable in.

Another thing is feedback. If you're acting like a douchebag, you probably will at least at some point get some feedback about it, preferably as a child from your parents. It's kinda their job to weed out the biggest personality flaws before they're too rooted. However if you grow up to be a douchebag: maybe at some point you realize "oh this isn't a nice way to act" or maybe you don't, or maybe you just don't care. Sometimes you realize years later what kind of man you used to be and cringe, like me. Actually that happens quite frequently for me. Every year I look a year or two back and think like "god, what an idiot I've been", and sense a little growth. Or maybe I'm not learning and that feeling is just because of mood swings, dunno.

It's all very subjective too. There isn't any one way to be a good friend/lover that is compatible with all; that's what makes is hard but also interesting.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by FinMan »

(this post is written before i saw roope's)

Generally I think you are supposed to learn human interaction through interacting with other humans, which starts to happen when your parents visit other peoples parents, then in school you do stuff with other folks, and when you get a job you are supposed to be able to do all this shit. Some people fail the stuff even with the best possible environment and still become dicks though.

Well, I never learnt this as a kid, had to do it later on in my late teenager years, was very lucky to find people to learn this stuff from. I only was able to hold a conversation with my siblings, other people looked at me as if I was a retarded-looking painting or something and just casually walked away without blinking an eye if I tried to start something.

A lot of this has to do with how you are grown up, what and how you do in your home as a kid and how you are treated. Especially stuff like respect, equality, being able to see other peoples needs seem to some of the most important things that a good family can offer. A lot of only childs in the family are really selfish, or at least more selfish than their counterparts, and don't really care what happens to others, same thing easily happens to the youngest kids of bigger families. This stuff affects relationships quite directly, someone who learnt this stuff dating someone who didn't isn't going to be an easy job.

How to learn this stuff? Well, of what I have seen you can still learn it if you aren't so good at it, even if you are like 30 or so. In my experience you just have to try stuff out, try to be nice to someone and then later analyze it if you aren't comfortable with such, try something else and look back at it and see what you could do better etc etc. It's a learning process at that point, just like learning anything else like elma or something and thinking about the already happened situations is really beneficial.

It often can just be a result of bad luck and a sum of bad incidents that led to a bad situation. But as always, you just need to play the cards you were given and just start going forward from there.

I do think that this stuff should be taught in the school and it would be a great idea to have a discussion/social skills class since the first grades, which could then evolve into a more specific stuff like how to argue, how to do presentations etc.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Lousku »

Nice tropic. I agree and this should be given more attention in society, probably in school. School could be a great setting to learn social interaction with random people of your age, but the vast majority of it is having to sit quietly. The best opportunity to learn interaction is during recess, but there's no direction or even supervision, just a freeforall fuckfest that often leads to bullying. So the kids do learn social interaction. They learn bullying and the different ways humans can hurt each other. That of course continues to later life, and many kids just learn to avoid it altogether and become isolated.

The best way to learn is of course practicing and not giving up from mistakes, but I guess you can pick up some things from the School of Life channel which is kinda relevant to this question. Of course it's not a substitute to practice but there could be some helpful things.

Anyway you're not alone with the issue here. Thanks for bringing it up.
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Zweq »

well, nobody knows the right answer and i don't think there is one. Life is full of imperfection, some just deal with it better than others. And those of us who have problems, probably have different levels of social anxiety. Overthinking some basic discussion that happened 2 hours ago where nothing special happened in reality. In my theory when you can stop this overfuckingthinking you are a step closer to learning human interaction, because you can hopefully be your true self. (And ofc it's a plus if you're also not an ashowl etc etc)
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by niN »

I am teaching that exact course in my school. The course is called communication and the course criteria looks something like this:

The theory of human interactions: body language, tone of voice, eyes, posture etc.
How communication works and how it can lead to misunderstandings
How culture, class, gender and generation can affect communication
Group dynamics and how to interact in a group
How to handle a conflict
Human defense mechanisms
The theory of a conversation: how to be a good converser, what to do what not to do
Social media and how easily it can affect on our lives
Presentations, basically everything on this. How to become a good presenter and what makes one good.

I'm sure there's more but that's most of it anyway. It's a great course and we do a LOT of team building exercises and then sit in a circle and talk afterwards. Most subjects are based on internationally accepted models like for example FIRO (group dynamics) and it's just great for the teenagers to learn this. Although some of them are negative with a sort of "why are we learning this bullshit"-attitude, I'm sure they will be thankful when they mature because it's such a good thing to have when you're an adult.

I also think that it's awesome that the schools teach courses like this today. Not every school - as you know- but a few do. And other subjects like leadership, entrepreneurship etc. It shows progress in the right direction as we're replacing some of the old school bullshit with new social science :)

EDIT: Oh and one more bit topic in this course is how to critically analyze sources of information and with that we talk about rumors etc. It's usually great to do this with teenagers as they have always heard a rumor and sometimes there's a few rumors going about at the time and then they get to learn how to handle them.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by niN »

roope wrote: Another thing is feedback. If you're acting like a douchebag, you probably will at least at some point get some feedback about it, preferably as a child from your parents. It's kinda their job to weed out the biggest personality flaws before they're too rooted. However if you grow up to be a douchebag: maybe at some point you realize "oh this isn't a nice way to act" or maybe you don't, or maybe you just don't care. Sometimes you realize years later what kind of man you used to be and cringe, like me. Actually that happens quite frequently for me. Every year I look a year or two back and think like "god, what an idiot I've been", and sense a little growth. Or maybe I'm not learning and that feeling is just because of mood swings, dunno.
In the communication course, we learn this. We base on the Johari window model and talk about how learning to see the way others view you is a great way to become a better person and to learn more about your relationship with others.

This is indeed a very interesting topic and it's nice to hear that your people felt like this was missing in school. It gives me a little motivation to teach the new coming teenagers this next year.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by roope »

Wow, that is awesome niN. What kind of school do you teach in? High school? Is it a voluntary course?

What you said about some kids probably thinking that it's bullshit is what I'm afraid of. For a teenage mind acting like a decent, nice, mature person might be a huge red flag and could cause some counteraction. I'm afraid the more socially awkward quiet people who would really need that course could be bullied if they showed much interest in participating. This of course depends largely on the environment and age group; in the brutal environment that is the junior high school bullying would 100% happen and it would be bad, while in actual high school most of the bully types have taken different paths.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by FinMan »

Zweq wrote:well, nobody knows the right answer and i don't think there is one. Life is full of imperfection, some just deal with it better than others. And those of us who have problems, probably have different levels of social anxiety. Overthinking some basic discussion that happened 2 hours ago where nothing special happened in reality. In my theory when you can stop this overfuckingthinking you are a step closer to learning human interaction, because you can hopefully be your true self. (And ofc it's a plus if you're also not an ashowl etc etc)
Yeah, this all makes sense. What I am trying to say with thinking obviously isn't to overthink but to actually try to see what went wrong in a situation and this way try to improve your future performance. Being yourself is always a thing that should be encouraged, it's a really good point and I do agree that you should try to get away from thinking within the situation. What everyone basically has to learn or have by nature is how to actually be themselves in a way that others can understand you and you don't look awkward or retarded.

If you do something really stupid that ruins the mood, you talk over others, whatever uncomfortable you do during these situations, that stuff can just stick to your every-day situation.exe, and this is where looking back and thinking how to deal with it comes in handy. Just a look back into the situation with your realism-glasses on and you may see something that you otherwise wouldn't and next time you can try to do that same thing better. This is of course not the way to go for everyone but hey, at least I and my dumb head work this way.

Social anxiety is a problem that imo mostly is a result of not enough experience in social situations or really bad experiences, i.e. bullying in school or similar. Again, thinking back to see why you are anxious could give you some answer in the latter case, in both of the cases just going there and getting your hands dirty with those scary social situations that you would rather not go into. I have had and still have social anxiety but slowly getting done with it which feels amazing, mostly thanks to a nice rng luck in finding a couple of nice friends in the past years.

ps. i hope i am not saying something i'm not trying to say, i suck at these
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by kuchitsu »

I agree a lot of this is about experience and not theory or whatever. But still I feel like knowing some basic stuff can help tremendously. IMO there are so many problems that could be easily solved by approaching them properly, yet often they remain unsolved just because people don't really know how to recognize them and how to deal with them. Random example: a husband that fails to satisfy his wife in bed. He doesn't notice that because he was never taught how to figure out whether your spouse is satisfied or not. She won't talk to him about that because she has no idea how to approach such a sensitive topic. At the same time she freely complains about that to her friends. Sometimes the entire neighbourhood knows that John doesn't satisfy Mary with the exception of John himself. He just doesn't notice, and Mary simply wasn't taught how to approach such problems. An extremely silly situation that can lead to a lot of frustration, cheating and eventually perhaps even a divorce. I think it would be very nice if people were trained to deal with such issues in advance and I'm sure the divorce rate would be significantly lower. But instead in school we mostly get to learn from other kids who try to act tough, while in fact they are very insecure and confused about life. Boys are often taught to suppress their emotions and feelings, all they have are angsty quotes from pseudointellectual nihilistic movies, etc. These same people then proceed to universites and jobs, where even more pressure is put on them as they are expected to act as adults now, but they aren't even sure what that actually means. So they have to try to figure that stuff out by themselves, again usually learning from quite dubious sources of information and colleagues that act like jerks.

So imo that thing niN is doing sounds very good. I wonder how old his students are? I think roope is right in that most of the students might not be ready to appreciate these classes for what they are, but I feel like later in life they will be grateful to you.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Tigro »

I guess the great role is played by your parents. How they teach you to behave and communicate pretty much sets the course for the rest of your entire life.
I'm writing this from my own experience, since I have something like Asperger's (I guess many elmans do have teh), and if my parents weren't leading and teaching me how to interact I would be even bigger freak than I am (I still have big difficulties, but they are overcomable).
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by gimp »

I think this class is called recess.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Hosp »

I dunno, you tell ME!
naw seriously tho where??
like some mcdonalds that sells social skills would be cool (+ a bag of extra crispy pills for anxiety)
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by teajay »

You learn human interaction by interacting with other humans. The more the merrier. You could come up with a mathematical model that describes the growth of your interaction experience with each added human to interact with and with each act of interaction, but it'd be a generalisation nonetheless. If you live on an otherwise uninhabited island, human interaction is not necessary. Human interaction through the internet abides by totally different rules than human interaction in reality. From my own experience, you can learn a lot about this subject through your working life, where you are pushed to do things outside of your comfort zone and where you are obligated to communicate with other people eventhough you'd hate to. You learn to open up your mind for new impulses and to deal with compromise. It also depends on the kind of work you do.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by ribot »

There are so many aspects of this, but to boil it down to how I see things:

- education can be done in a way that is fun, and you can observe those you consider successful (rather than trying to learn objectively), and you should try things out rather than taking peoples' word
- when it comes to human interaction, you can choose many paths, for example to become happy, to contribute your most to others, to avoid conflict, to please others, to be popular, to revenge, and more... when you learn something you choose an approach which suits you...
- get to know yourself - for example you might not really like to interact that much with humans, or you might prefer only certain kinds of contexts.. some people don't like to chit-chat but they might like to hold lectures, others only want to be open minded people, and others just like any company whatsoever
- you can gather life experience much faster if you try out new things (those who do the same things all the time gather it very slowly)
- do a lot of meditation to get a better overview of things

one more thing, when it comes to being a lover and sex appeal, it deserves a topic on its own.. i höyled this myself so i can help you out if you want
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Mats »

Lauta is were its learned! :P

Small lesson of some social stuff:

Most mistaken term in this situation is: be yourself.

You never improve if you act the way you normally do. The more you hang around other humans, the easier it is to get rid of anxiety towards other people, and the longer you stay away from people, the more anxiety grows.

An easy way to improve social skills that I tested out, is to talk to strangers, doesn't matter how awkward you feel or act, because you probably will never talk to them again.

Easiest situation to contact others is if they seem to need help. There was this woman in front of me buying 4 dinner packs in the grocery store which was half price, like 4 portions for her family it seemed like. then the counter guy said it was max allowed to buy 2 packs per person. So I said I could buy them for her, and she got very happy about it. So I felt good after that the rest of the day, win win :) .
I also helped a woman in wheelchair get on and off the bus this thursday actually, without even hesitating or asking just pulled out a ramp for her. She didnt seem to wanting to bother anyone, and was really happy by my initiative. Most people in public try to ignore things like that, hoping that others will do it instead, but it feels amazing to be helpful.

I like to say hi to everyone I never seen before in social gatherings, kinda open up for easier approach later on. If someone is rude don't take it personal.

Be nice to strangers and dont blame them for your anger, best example of this is getting angry at an employee in a store because something is expensive or something, like its their fault. Would you do your best to help a person blaming you for something thats not in your control?
Its really hard sometimes, but saying sorry later on usually solves it.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Tigro »

I recently talked with my (much older) friend, who advised me to visit one organisation in my city. This org helps people with disorders of autistic spectrum to communicate with other people. For free. Basically I can just walk to them and ask them to help me learn human interaction, since I have slignt Asperger's. I will probably try that, and then share the results. But it's a long run, it can last ~2 years or so.
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Re: Where and how are you supposed to learn human interactio

Post by Mats »

I think most elmans has slight aspergers :P

I know a guy who had quite a lot of asperger social troubles but now he is like way more social and normer than me,. He changed completely after he started working out and hanging out with a max social guy.
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