Someone I barely know contacted me the other day, and it creeped me out a little bit. I had just met her a few days earlier, and she said “Hi” to me on Facebook. Immediately I thought she was crazy.
Ironically, not two weeks before this I sent a Facebook message to someone I have only talked to a few times in person, to share something I thought she would potentially find interesting. A mutual friend of ours told me the next day that the person I had messaged thought it was weird because I did not normally talk to her.
Looking back, I find both situations hilariously unnecessary. Despite how they began, each led to me and the other person becoming better friends. If it makes getting to know someone so much more difficult, why do we get creeped out so easily?
When we are not familiar with a person, we have no idea what that person’s intentions are. So any time someone we do not know very well wants to talk to us, we are on guard. Naturally we have to protect ourselves from all the lunatics out there. But most of the time when we are weirded out by someone, we have more of a connection than we think. Being iffy about a complete stranger makes sense; we have no reason to trust their intentions. When the person is someone we know through a friend or talked to at a party, however, we could stand to be a bit more open to communication.
As it turns out, it can be counterproductive to avoid people we do not know well. For example, in the peer-reviewed journal Personal Relationships, an article fittingly titled “I do not know you and I am keeping it that way” reveals some of the effects it has on us. When people are more hesitant to interact with strangers, they are worse at being able to figure out the feelings and intentions of people they have just met. This implies people who get creeped out easily are more likely to misunderstand others they do not know well. This should seem obvious — friendly people relate to others better than reserved people.
A few days after I was messaged by that girl unexpectedly on Facebook, I decided to respond to her. After thinking about the situation, it felt stupid to think she was weird just because she said hello. But responding to her still made me feel a bit uncomfortable in a way, as if I was not supposed to let her talk to me just because she started the conversation. Of course, once we actually started talking more those feelings went away, and I miraculously discovered she was not actually creepy.
Until you are sure of someone’s intentions, they will always seem like they might be kind of creepy. The article “Trust Building Among Strangers,” published in Management Science clarifies this effect. Being open-minded enough to learn a person’s intentions was shown to be the key factor in how much people trusted others they did not know.
In the movie “21 Jump Street” from earlier this year, there is an amusing moment where this is summed up during a conversation between Eric, a high school student, and Domingo, a one-eyed member of a drug-dealing motorcycle gang. Domingo asks Eric about the companions he brought with him to the deal, and Eric attempts to vouch for them.
Domingo: I don’t like strangers.
Eric: How do you expect to make any new friends with that attitude? It’s like, everyone’s a stranger until you give them a chance, man.
Unfortunately Eric is later arrested by someone he thought was his friend, but this was his own fault, and the premise is still valid. We do not have to be friends with everyone, but we can miss out on a lot if we are too quick to judge how creepy someone actually is. Sure there are actual creeps out there, but probably a lot fewer than we let ourselves believe.