All gas, no breaks

A nice thing about having sisters, in my experience, is that they are not just throwing around compliments. When a kind remark shows up — like seeing a tiny dog walk across a bartop — you really notice it. Sisters are not trying to fluff your pillows; they say what they mean.

Perhaps we could take a page from the sibling book and make our feedback a little more meaningful. The way everyone has become so agreeable — bots and people alike — has become incredibly suspect. There are too many tiny dogs on the bar. It’s not special anymore. In fact, it’s a little annoying.

A new study was recently published in the journal Science about how leading chatbot models have a tendency to take the user’s side in interpersonal conflicts 49 percent more often than humans did — even when the user described situations in which they broke the law, hurt someone, or lied.

That wasn’t the core finding, though. What these accommodating responses did was cause users to be less willing to take responsibility for their actions, and more likely to think that they were in the right. Those who chatted with the sycophantic model were far less likely to say they would apologize for what happened or change their behavior. Users also preferred the sycophantic model, deeming it more trustworthy and moral.

“The results of the study raised alarm bells for social psychologists, who believe that conversations about interpersonal conflicts serve a critical purpose,” The New York Times reported. “Feedback from a friend — even if you don’t want to hear it — helps you learn what is socially acceptable and forces you to confront other perspectives.”

But I think we’ve gotten a bit rotten at being honest with one another, of offering critical feedback, either good or bad. Have we just begun relentlessly gassing one another up to everyone’s detriment?

I know someone whose compliments I once really appreciated — until I heard this person tossing out those same compliments to almost everyone else like beads at Mardi Gras: Everyone’s wearing the same jewelry now, and it’s pretty cheap! It started to feel as though the goal was for them to seem likable, rather than to offer any of us real praise.

The argument isn’t about becoming more withholding, but more thoughtful. And — permission to approach the bench, your honor? You might as well get my state-issued orange jumpsuit ready, because I’m also GUILTY. I have tossed out “That’s awesome!” and “Wow, hottie alert!” with the strength and precision of an ailing harbor seal (slippery!). I’m not making anyone feel better with those loose accolades; the real benefit would come from offering a more specific credit to their worth.

The detriment of blanketing people with support is popping up in child-rearing as well, with some questioning whether gentle parenting had turned into permissive parenting. Writing in The Cut, Monica Corcoran Harel mused on whether her desire to be an agreeable parent had backfired.

“For more and more parents like us, what started out as a well-intentioned rebuff of how we were raised has become the reason we fear our kids will one day resent us,” she wrote. “We smother them. We cater to their worst whims. We try to be cool around them, so we become allies instead of authority figures.”

As someone who isn’t a parent, I am going to set that information down and back 18 miles away from it. Taking it to the level of friendship, though, I think the point stands: We risk giving our pals carte blanche to be a bit insufferable when all we do is cheerlead. And what’s our goal, anyhow? Nothing shows you’re standing more firmly in someone’s corner than giving real feedback, especially when you're at risk of irritating them (or worse). But you’re no help to your friends if your support amounts to, “Yaaas, queen!” and then they get heartbroken/laid off/disrespected/take a bad photo.

I’ve bit my tongue when I thought a reality check could be “taken the wrong way.” But when I consider whether I’d want someone to be honest with me, the answer is always YES. I write and edit for a living, and I know how critical feedback has improved my work exponentially. Does it hurt sometimes? No doubt. But I am more than willing to hear someone out who may have the perspective of not being inside my own head.

This all comes with the precaution of: How we say things matters. There is thoughtful criticism and then there is “telling it like it is” — which is really just an incredible way of telling someone that you take sweet joy in being an unfiltered ass hat. Taking a beat is never a bad idea.

It’s probably somehow beneficial that I am a human Muppet, someone whose reactions are immediately and comically displayed on her face. That tends to catch a person’s attention first, providing an initial dose of honesty, and that surprise usually buys me just enough time to carefully measure my verbal reaction down to something that is — I hope! — a thoughtful, perhaps even illuminating response.

Real feedback, the positive and the difficult, may be yet another thing that separates us from the robots. And yes — for real! — those pants make your critiques look great.