As a father of a 3 year old daughter, I have the pleasure of watching a young human being develop into her personality. As she experiments with different ways of interacting with the world, one thing has become abundantly clear: this little person is fucking manipulative.
My daughter doesn’t just have emotional experiences, she uses emotions as a weapon to get what she wants. And she has different emotions around me and her mother because she wants different things from us and we react differently to her tactics. Watching her develop and perfect her techniques has opened my eyes to something that most of us don’t really want to admit about ourselves. Even our emotions are strategies for getting what we want.
I used to think of emotions as something that happened to me — as a reaction to circumstances. But this is only half of it, and perhaps not the most important half for understanding ourselves. Our emotions aren’t just how it feels when things happen to us, they are how it feels when we are trying to get what we want.
As an example, let’s talk about enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is one of my daughter’s most powerful weapons. She can pull off a radiant ‘Dad, you’re a hero!’ or ‘Oh, I just love this hotel!’ without even seeming insincere. The reason she does this is pretty obvious. When she smiles at me, I give her what she wants.
I am a big believer in evolutionary psychology. When we have an emotional response there is almost certainly a good reason for it. They are part of our genetic strategy to survive and reproduce. The fact that we express emotions also says something about them. They aren’t just for our own consumption. Expressing emotions is one way we get what we want from other people. This isn’t to say that our emotions are sincere. We really do feel those things. The point is that we feel them for an purpose because, well, evolution.
I once had a boss that was very enthusiastic. When he talked to people he gushed. To this day I am not really sure whether he was sincere about it. Probably at least a little. But eventually the enthusiasm became a little off putting. When you start to realize that enthusiasm is effectively someone’s attempt to get what they want in exchange for a warm fuzzy, it can start to get old. Especially from a boss who isn’t paying market value.
Do I want warm fuzzies from my boss? Maybe. Sometimes. But what I really want is a straightforward relationship where I do good work and get paid for it. If you get the sense that the enthusiasm is an alternative to a fair exchange, it can get old really fast.
Maybe it’s for this reason that enthusiasm can be off-putting in people of authority. Do I want the president to be enthusiastic? It isn’t really a good trait for a leader to have in too much of abundance. A leader should be able to get what they want by being competent or mobilizing resources they control. So why are they acting like a cheerleader?
Enthusiasm just isn’t an alpha strategy, but it works great as a beta strategy to make the alpha feel secure. And we aren’t always going to be the alpha dog. I have actually suffered from a lack of enthusiasm, personally. For example, during my school years (which lasted a long time because I have three different degrees and one more I never bothered to finish) I always lamented that I had a hard time finding a good mentor. Now I know the reason. Mentors are looking for enthusiastic followers. In most cases, they specifically want someone who expresses enthusiasm for the mentor’s own agenda. I always did such a terrible job of that it is no wonder I was always struggling to finding a damn thesis adviser.
The bottom line is that there is a time and a place for enthusiasm. My daughter is in an ideal position to lay it on thick because she relies on me for pretty much everything. But if you find yourself in a position of leadership, you may actually want to tone it down a little and find other ways to encourage a positive atmosphere. Maybe even hire someone else to be your cheerleader. But showing too much enthusiasm yourself can undermine your authority.
