An Experiment with Observations

I think for someone who does not care much about people in general, I find myself rather concerned with everyone around me.

I think I'm learning how to deal with people better and better everyday. I think I've grown to understand how the general normal thought process works, though I get the occasional curve ball thrown at me. Considering I at one time could not deal with anyone at all, ever, this is a rather grand leap.

Understandably, everyone reaches out to touch, to connect, to feel like someone is listening. Everyone, even I, desire an outside connection. It is an ingrained physical need. We are damaged mentally without those connections.

I've experimented at work with an interesting concept. Mirror neurons in a person's brain cause people to mimic the emotions another person exhibits. If someone else smiles, you will smile in return most of the time, as long as you are in a neutral or happy mood. Even in a poor mood, you are compelled to respond with a smile. My own mirror responses are repaired enough that I react appropriately now, but I'm still able to reteach myself to not respond in the proper manner.

Namely, not smiling when someone smiles at me. Children with autism, or emotionally damaged people often don't respond with a smile when one is offered. Sometimes, such as with autistics, they are simply unable to comprehend the emotion. Someone with some level of sociopathy, as I had at one point, is able to understand and imitate the emotion, but can just as easily choose not to do it. Naturally, a normal thinking person will find this disturbing.

Connected with this is the pleasent tone of voice. Children learn music, in a way, before anything else. The sing-song voice delegated to babies, pets and idiots is meant to soothe (or in the last case, patronize) a person's anxiety. A person will react positively, most of the time, to that soothing, melodic voice tone. With this cheery tone, people know that you are in a good mood. I've greeted many customers with this sing song, cheery tone only to receive blank stares or even glares back.

Now you know why I decided on this experiment. The experiment is to greet in the same cheery tone without the cheery expression. Apparently, this is very confusing to some people. While often people will declare a great amount of frustration with a smile and happy tone, it is not often that a person will greet another with a bright tone without even the hint of a smile. A person is compelled to match their expression with their voices, so its difficult to resist smiling when you can hear yourself sound so cheerful.

The most this experiment has rendered is that people are going to react to a pleasent tone no matter what your expression is, but usually become confused as to why you aren't smiling. This leads to inquiery on your emotional state. Its rather fun, in the end, though I reccommend to anyone dealing with the public to try and smile and bear with it.

People have that habit of wanting to connect to their cashier. If its not connecting with them, then it is treating them like lesser beings. I'm still unsure as to which one annoys me more. I'm tempted to charge a co-pay with how much therapy I'm apparently expected to give, though on the other hand, I really hate being treated as a slave. I do believe that both these urges are perfectly natural.

We want someone to care, so we tell even strangers everything. Otherwise, we want someone that reminds us of how good we have it, so we spit on the people that we can. Anything that results in some kind of connection, and depending on your own personality, it can be positive or negative.

Either way, I am a strange person. I would rather not have any of that unless I pursue it myself, particularly of the negative. I won't smile when I sound cheerful, and I cry when people try to cheer me up. I'm an emotional person living under a self enforced pressure of logical thinking. I think, most of all, I want to catch up to everyone else, because I'm so very behind. Excuse any odd behavior, and be sure to let me know if I'm making mistakes.