Researchers: Watch Out for Overly Polite People

Let’s say you are at a social function and you meet someone new. Immediately this person comes off as overly polite, complimentary, and nice. Our natural reaction is to immediately like this person, but new research released in December of last year is warning us that overly polite people are more likely to betray us.
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The Study

To conduct their study, researchers at the Association for Computational Linguistics annual conference in Beijing (AMACL) staged a game the called “Diplomacy”. The participants were broken up into countries simulating Europe before World War I. There are no dice or game pieces of any kind, just the social interactions and communications back and for between the countries. What researchers found was that as soon as a participant (country) changed their conversational tone. in 57% of the conversations where someone was being overly nice or polite, they ended up betraying the other person.
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What we Learned from “Diplomacy”

Although the participants were simulating a historical situation, the conditions of the game have their roots in human nature. Think about it: when someone is about to screw you over they aren’t mean to you. They are nice to you. Politeness can be a way to disarm us, and get us to drop our guards. It is a form of manipulation that we experience every day. So how do we not become jaded to anyone who is nice to us?

Be Aware

One thing that was a constant in the betrayals in the study was a change in conversational mood. One second the teams were suspicious of each other, and then they became quick friends. The same thing can happen in life. If someone who has never really paid much attention to you all of the sudden is extremely nice, your deception radar should be blaring. The same is to be said about someone who has been a known enemy suddenly changing their tune. The trickiest aspect of detecting over-politeness is when it comes to meeting new people. You don’t know if they are being too nice, or if this is just how they are. Go with your gut, and ask yourself “what does this person stand to gain from me?”
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Now I don’t want to sound like I am saying be wary of everyone you meet, but just keep in mind: there are people out there who live to feed off of the kindness of others. I hate seeing good people get used up, so if anything this article serves as a simple reminder: things aren’t always what they seem.

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