Are you a jerk, or a liar?

On talking past each other

Illustration by Alexander Naughton

I can’t tell whether this is so obvious it doesn’t merit mentioning, or so fundamental it’s hard to see, but I’ve noticed recently that there seem to be two core approaches people take to establishing trust in communication. Call them “truth-seeking” and “community-seeking.” Most people seem to have a dominant social mode in which they operate basically all the time, to the extent that “what communication is for” doesn’t even register as a belief, more a background principle of the universe. Thus, when they see someone operating under the other model, it just registers as the other person being a bad communicator, or even a bad person.

This didn’t click as an explicit model for me until recently. What did it was hearing my husband, again and again, say things to people that made me cringe because to me they sounded hostile or disingenuous. And again and again, I was confused when people’s reactions to him were almost universally positive. Clearly, the issue was that I was lacking some essential piece of human software, not his sense of propriety.

Now, I’m not a total dolt — I’m familiar with the classic wisdom that a large proportion of communication is non-verbal. I can read body language quite well, thanks to deliberate study as a poker player, and I know to smile, send out friendly vibes, mirror the other person, all the things you can read in a book. But until I watched Sasha in action, and we tried to analyze my hang-ups, it really didn’t sink in for me just how much less important what you say is, to most people, than how you say it.

I can see now some of the ways this has been a costly mistake for me. Lifetime, I’ve certainly put too much pressure on myself in conversations by trying to figure out the right thing to say, when for like 90% of people it just doesn’t matter that much. They’re communicating on a different level, playing a different game.

Let’s lay out the rules of the game more precisely.

To a truth-seeker, communication is literal — what you say is what matters. The goal of communication is to convey information content; the output is the point. Conflictual words delivered in a warm tone are threatening. Open-ended communication may feel strange, even uncomfortable, since the purpose of talking is to share information, and at some point you run out of information that seems worth sharing. To a truth-seeker, “improving communication” means learning to identify areas of disagreement at finer and finer levels of detail and to navigate those conflicts skillfully.

To a community-seeker, communication is affective — how you say it is what matters. The goal of communication is to play a game, and keeping it going is the point, so open-ended communication is welcome; it is an invitation to connect. Conflictual words delivered in a warm tone are a form of play. To a community-seeker, “improving communication” means learning to identify and resolve the blockers that prevent you from connecting more intensely.

To a truth-seeker, “do I look fat in this outfit?” is a request for information that deserves an honest response. Coercive/implicit requests for white lies are bad, because they limit people’s ability to understand what is true and therefore undermine the purpose of communication. Dissembling undermines trust; a truth seeker might say “If I don’t tell you when I don’t like something, how will you know to believe me when I say I do?” When someone comes to them with a problem, they reflexively interpret it as a request for advice and default to problem-solving mode. The idea of “validating” someone’s emotions before definitively determining that they are, in fact, valid, seems patronizing.

To a community-seeker, “do I look fat in this outfit?” is a request for affirmation that deserves a considerate response. Coercive/implicit requests for white lies are perfectly okay, because having accurate signals about the specific things people believe is less important than conveying friendship and solidarity, which is the purpose of communication. Dissembling under appropriate circumstances reinforces safety and not only is it acceptable but its absence is considered rude. In the words of my husband, “sometimes people just want speech acts.” When someone comes to a community-seeker with a problem, they reflexively interpret it as a request for commiseration and care. They understand that offering advice when it hasn’t been explicitly requested may feel patronizing, or like it minimizes the importance of the other person’s emotions.

To a truth-seeker, community-seekers can seem low-integrity, even machiavellian, because they are willing to say whatever is expedient to navigate a social situation. Projecting warmth for the conscious purpose of getting someone to like you is manipulative, as is “buttering up” someone for an ask.

To a community-seeker, truth-seekers can seem cold, even sociopathic, because they aren’t willing to make standard moves in a conversation to make the other person feel comfortable. Projecting warmth for the conscious purpose of getting someone to like you is just how communication is meant to work. You’re supposed to buy a girl a drink first.

Some correlations I’m less confident of, from most confident to least:

• Truth-seekers tend to be mistake theorists, who find tribal politics confusing and grotesque, while community-seekers tend to be conflict theorists who recognize that tribe is a fundamental dimension of the human experience. Possibly, mistake/conflict is just a special case of truth-seeking/community-seeking, as applied to political disagreement.

• Truth-seekers tend to be high-decouplers, able to separate a factual question from its cultural context when examining it, while community-seekers tend to be low-decouplers that reject the notion that facts can be examined free of their implications. An example of this phenomenon, if you’re unfamiliar: At a party recently, I heard two people get into a debate about whether a universe full of Hitlers would be “the worst thing ever.” To one person, it was really important that words actually mean something (truth-seeking), and they could literally imagine things worse than a universe full of Hitlers (high-decoupling). From the other person’s perspective, what the actual fuck?

• Truth-seekers tend to be “ask culture,” and community seekers “guess culture”:

In "ask culture," it's socially acceptable to ask for a favor — staying over at a friend's house, requesting a raise or a letter of recommendation — and equally acceptable to refuse a favor.  Asking is literally just inquiring if the request will be granted, and it's never wrong to ask, provided you know you might be refused.  In "guess culture," however, you're expected to guess if your request is appropriate, and you are rude if you accidentally make a request that's judged excessive or inappropriate.  You can develop a reputation as greedy or thoughtless if you make inappropriate requests.

• Truth-seekers tend to venerate science as a source of fundamental truth, and to be suspicious of others’ reported experiences unless they can identify a sufficiently persuasive mechanism underlying them/an explanation for how they might work. Community-seekers tend to venerate spirituality as a source of fundamental truth, and reported experience as the most relevant thing — so they have no issue with crediting people’s accounts without understanding the mechanism behind them (aka “woo”).

• Truth-seekers’ core fears tend to be about being wrong, misunderstood, or disingenuous, so they are over-represented among Enneagram types 1, 5, and 8. Community-seekers are more concerned with not being loved, being isolated, or being seen as unpleasant, so they are over-represented among Enneagram types 2, 3, 4, 7, and 9.

You can get pretty far in life by sticking to one style. But to achieve great things, you probably have to learn how to code-switch. If you’re a maximally community-seeking founder, you might be great at fundraising, but all of the emotional intelligence in the world won’t matter if you can’t have truth-seeking conversations about whether your product is any good. If you’re maximally truth-seeking, your rationally derived plans are going to be implemented by human beings, and many of them will appreciate a well-timed compliment.

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