From the Vault: On Teasing

thing we call teasing? And how does it factor into the complexities of human communication and our social structures. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I've got a question for you. You ever find yourself in that situation where you're hanging out with people, it's all good fun, everybody's

there's banter going on. One person is teasing another person over something kind of funny, some funny foible of their personality, and there's that moment, there's that awful little moment where there's kind of a pause after somebody says some some teasing joke and then you realize like, oh no, suddenly it has gotten serious. Oh yes, I mean it's especially if it it's a multi person group and and there's

a bit of piling on occurring. They'll be there, I've seen this, this happened, where they'll they'll be a breaking point where the person has had enough and and and you realize, oh, no, lines have been crossed and now this person is gonna leave and we're gonna have to resolve this uh via emails later. Uh yeah, And it's as ter it's a terrible feeling because things have spiraled out of control. Something that was playful and um and

just part of hanging out has now become divisive. Male the best place to work out tents, social disputes, Well sometimes sometimes it depends, and I mean, I guess it depends on what role one had in the in the breakdown. I've been fortunate enough to to not be like at the epicenter of the of the breakdown generally, so um email tends to suffice for me. You know, you never have to worry that when you type a smiley emoji

that will look like a fake smile. When you actually smile at somebody, you always gotta worry like does this look real? Is my face moving? Right? So you just have to use the authentic smiling emoji, not the unauthentic one. You know, it's all on the micro expressions of the emoji. What's the inauthentic one that's like colon and clothes brackets. Oh no, I'm talking about the ones that actually, like the little yellow face with a smile, like you'll know

it when you see it. Okay, but is everyone can realize that at this point we're talking about teasing today on the show, and teasing is weird territory to try and figure out deceptively, so really um for many of us looking back on our child hoods, it's it makes up some of our worst memories of social interaction. And as as a parent, I have a lot of apprehension about it, you know, regarding my own child, the inevitable

struggles that he's gonna gonna face. And at the same time, there's this weird cult of the tease that is often difficult to understand. We see teasing in our media and it's sometimes presented as in a fun comical light. We also see adults for whom teasing is a standard part of their interactions, not fighting with each other, but but just picking in various ways that it's it seems like

they're just terms of endearments, joking, benign criticism. Yeah, and it and uh, it's often a case where I look at it and I realized, well, this is clearly part of their social dynamic. It wouldn't necessarily work in my social dynamic, but I guess it's okay. Uh. We see it factor into courtship as well, which also has a way of of seeming weird and sour at times of an outside perspective. Well, I mean, there's there's two very

different ways it can take place. There's a kind you can see, a kind of friendly sweet teasing that takes place between people in the courtship relationship. And then there's like the pickup artist version of it, where somebody's clearly like making a power play, right. And then likewise, we also see this this space, this sort of ambiguous space where playful teasing gives over to what is clearly something based in hate and abuse name calling, uh, that occurs

among children and even among adults. Obviously, even at the highest levels of government, you see name calling used in a in a hurtful fashion. So if you start, if you start picking out, and I imagine a lot of your doing this as well, thinking of all the varying levels of teasing that are going on in your immediate environment and um in politics and the media, etcetera. On the street as you're driving your car and listen to

this podcast. You know, it's enough to make you wonder if if we're just nothing more than just cruel apes jockeying for social position. Uh, And it's any wonder we managed to emerge from these social interactions with self esteem and respect for our fellow humans. But part of the issue here is that while all forms of teasing share common features, there are at least three distinctive forms of teasing that are often signal, that are often singled out

and definitely deserve mention here. Okay, well what would those forms be? All right? Well, the first is pretty obvious, and that is that is the hurtful teasing. And I think it's one of those things where we all we all know it when we see it right or hear it. This is obviously the domain of bullying and harassment, and yet at the same time it's the sort of teasing you might see in a celebrity roast, or some of

you are more viciously charged humor or political humor. I guess you could also say it's maybe the domain of the jesture, the fool and the clown. Uh and important. These are important roles throughout human history. Oh yeah, well, I mean I might argue that the fool in the Shakespearean sense requires its own category here, because the fool has a lot of power and freedom, and that's important

power and freedom. Like they're the only member of the lower classes who can point out the flaws of the monarchs and the upper classes and get away with it. There's something about the ridiculousness of the fool that allows a critique of power that might result in a beheading if you made the same critique in a serious tone. And likewise, a king who beheads a jester every week

is a terrible king. They look weak. Yeah, it makes the king look foolish if the king overreacts to a to a comical critique, right, I think you're pointing Joffrey from Game of Thrones, is this type of ruler where you realize, oh, he's terrible, he's totally incompetent. Look how thin skinny is against uh, the humorous criticism of the

court fool. Well, it codes so easily for us. I mean, one of the clearest signs of a toxic personality is somebody who's unable to accept criticism and even benign criticism, or to be the butt of a joke, you know, somebody who cannot tolerate that, right, especially because of the positive role that teasing plays in our culture. I mean,

there's so much teasing that is not hurtful, hateful. I mean it is a constant feature of conversation between friends, between couples, between family members, between educators and the people they educate. Teasing, you know, there's like a sweet, benign form of teasing that's absolutely essential to these relationships. You know.

I do have to add one more thing about the gesture first, though, Okay, And there is there is this this curious aspect of the dynamic you see with kind of a classic gesture situation, but also in modern political humor, there are two extremes that are both equally well maybe not equally, but they're both cringe worthy, certainly when the king, the rule, or the politician, whoever the celebrity is too thin skin to let humorous bashing go where they have

to call out, say, you know an episode of Saturday Night Live, right, if you made a joke about me, how dare you? Right? Yeah, that is is cringeworthy and awful. But on the same hand, and this is something that I believe It was pointed out on an episode of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist history podcast, there's also this danger in what happens when the king says, yeah, this gesture guys great, I'm going to hang out with him and do a skit with him, or yeah, that's Saturday Night Life skit

is funny. I'm gonna appear on that Saturday Night Life skit with the person doing an impression of me. There can be uh, too much protection of one's dignity is a bad sign, but too much surrender of one's dignity also looks kind of bad. Like, you gotta find the middle ground. You want the ruler that that ultimately has very little to do with the gesture and doesn't politely laughs perhaps but leaves it at that. I know exactly what you're talking about, Like when presidential candidates go on SNL,

that's always like, I don't know, it's just always terrible. Yeah. But one of the points that Malcolm Gladwell made in his shows that it takes the punch out of the political humor, like you managed in a way, it's like it's a genius move I guess for the politician, because you have you have killed the humorous skit. You have you have killed the power of the humor in a way that you could never do by attacking it. Well, yeah, I guess it doesn't make you look great, but it

also is a type of defense mechanism. It undercuts any truly biting criticism that's hidden there in the in the comedy if you go on stage with the comedian. Yes, but before we were talking about the Jester, we were we were about to get into playful teasing, you know, the sweet form of teasing, right, And obviously there's a line between hurtful and and u and playful teasing. Good luck finding, especially with people you're maybe not that familiar with.

But yeah, especially in close relationships, you tend to see these you know, you see in jokes and you see established safe zones for playful teasing. Uh. For instance, if my wife teases me about some nerdy hobby of mine, Uh, it's it's really more of a form, more of a term of endearment. Or if she teases me about liking robot music, like like really robotic sounding electronic music, and uh and teasing me about how awful it sounds. Uh, like like this is that this feels good when we're

doing it. I don't feel hurt or defensive about you know, my my love of dungeons and dragons, or or or my miniatures painting miniatures, or yeah, or my affinity for the music of autech or that sort of thing. Yeah. I think almost all good romantic relationships include an element of teasing. I don't you know. I don't want to be overly general. So maybe some people people make it work in all kinds of ways, but I rarely see what seems like a happy couple that doesn't tease one another, right,

I mean, it seems like you do. And this is something we're gonna return to throughout this episode. This idea that that teasing it is is an opportunity for bond for me and the establishment and the maintaining of bonds. And but obviously you need a safe place for the teasing just you know that all of us, I think we're going to have unless we are some sort of like inhuman politician type, you know, we're going to have those areas that we are cool being teased about in

areas that we're less comfortable being teased about. You know, thinking about several of the areas that that teasing functions in our our social interactions, one of which is sort of reminding people of hierarchies or establishing hierarchies. That it does something of enforcing a pecking order. Number two is maybe like establishing a criticism of somebody's behavior, and number

three is allowing bonding. Put these three things together, and it seems like a key place where teasing should come into play is education, right, because that's a place where you need a hierarchy between teacher and student. You want to teach lessons and you also want to have a good relationship. That's right. So this brings us to this third area of teasing, educative teasing, and this pops up in areas that you wouldn't quite expect it as as

we'll discuss a little later. One example is that is that of a frat boys giving each other's nicknames based on, you know, various bone headed things they've done. Uh and and this can be viewed as a way of of educating, of laying down various um moral rules or or social expectations. Right d a teasing, you might get nicknamed like, I don't know, toilet head because you fell asleep with your head in the toilet, right, And the idea is, don't do that, don't drink so much that you sleep in

the toilet. But then again, one of the things I noticed about that kind of teasing is that toilet head might originally be applied as a sort of like moral injunction, but the toilet head make may well come to identify with the nickname and say, that's right, that's who I am.

I am toilet head forevermore, and I will embrace it. Yeah. Now, some anthropology just point to specific traditions of educated teasing between parents and children in various Indigenous American um cultures, and the idea here is that it's a form of teasing that can work better to impart knowledge of social rules and emotionally instilled ideas. However, we We didn't really focus on any of that for this research, but I just want to let everyone know that that that is

an area of study now. As far as these three terms for types of teasing go, I I feel like there's some difficulty in how we use terms here because I admit that I would typically reserve the word teasing for the more benign or playful forms, like what we were calling hurtful teasing, the kind that's actually cruel and mean spirited. I would not usually call teasing. I'd probably call it bullying or harassment or something. Um though. It's what What this highlights is that the line between playful

teasing and hurtful bullying is not always clear. It's not always clear to the person doing it, It's always not always clear to the person receiving it. What sometimes ment is benign or playful by the teaser can feel like bullying to the tea Z and sometimes more benign or playful forms of teasing. I bet you've been there for this. I think we sort of talked about it at the beginning. It starts off as a friendly and playful session of

ribbing that somehow catches this terrible momentum. I don't know what causes it, but that momentum it edges into harder and meaner stuff as it escalates, and it's this enormously painful and uncomfortable thing to witness. And looking back, I can remember instances of this in my life where I watch something like this happened to somebody else, and in retrospect, like I wish I'd found a way to step in

in the moment and stop it. But it's so much easier to to to feel that kind of policing authority in retrospect in the moment, to step in like that into clear teasing to have gone too far requires you to take this major risk. It feels like you're violating a taboo. You're making it weird. You know you know about making it weird right um, And in the moment you're never really sure if you've like misread some kind

of unspoken set of cues. Maybe everything's actually okay, and you're the one who's making people feel bad by getting serious from out of nowhere. It can be a really difficult and complicated UH dance to to navigate. All right, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna we're gonna really get into the question of teasing and what purpose it truly serves. Alright,

we're back. So one of the big names that comes up in teasing research is that of psychiatry and psychology researcher Dr Keltner, who has written on this, researched on this, and one of the big pieces that is often circulated is a two thousand and eight New York Times piece titled in Defense of Teasing. Uh, And he also directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab, So this is like right

in his uh, his area of focus. Yeah. Kiltner makes an interesting point, which is that a lot of our social conventions in the modern age, I think, are centered around trying to make social interactions more safe, which in a way is a good thing. Right. We we all know how destructive and terrible bullying can be. We've all seen the kind of teasing in a relationship and you know, uh, somebody's somebody's got a new boyfriend and he's teasing her, but he's like going a little hard. It doesn't quite

seem so sweet. And when you think about stuff like that, it can be very easy to start to start to view teasing is this really negative thing. It's this this cruel, malicious force that permeates our culture and and make you want to do things to eliminate it. Right, Well, how can we get people to not act like this? But I feel like teasing is a situation where you really don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Well you don't, but you you want to protect the bank.

That's the thing. I mean throughout this episode, I kept coming I keep coming back to UM, my own son, and I just want to protect him so much from these things. At the same time, I realized I can't protect him there from everything. I can't just chadow him through school and you know, feed him excellent, you know comebacks. Uh, anytime anybody is is trying to tease him, he's going to be teased. It's it's inevitable, and he it's probably

inevitable to that to engage in teasing Um. But at the same time, it is hard for me to just really get behind everything Kelton is saying about just the importance of teasing, Like I still my impulse to protect is too strong. Well, I mean, I think the point he would be making is the good kind of teasing is not actually hurtful. It's not actually something that needs to be protected. And he's not advocating that that bullying

should be permitted. It's very clear about that. But but but he does, let's make this strong, strong case that that teasing is an essential part of our social interactions. And in fact, he points out that the teasing is

pervasive in the animal world. Right now, we generally think of teasing as uh, well, you know, as a verbal phenomenon, right, and I guess you do have to think of of human teasing as as a lot of things with humans happens to be you think of it as a linguistic and cultural complication of an impulse that may also be

found within uh languageless animals. And so, for instance, Keltner says, quote, the centrality of teasing in our social evolution is suggested by just how pervasive teasing is in the animal world. Younger monkeys pull the tales of older monkeys. African hunting dogs jump all over one another, much like pad slapping joking football players moments before kickoff. In every corner of the world, human adults play peekaboo games to stir a

sulking child. Children as early as age one and mimic nearby adults and teenagers prod one another to gauge romantic interest. In rejecting teasing, we may be losing something vital and necessary to our identity as the most playful of species. I mean, I think I'm pretty on board with his message there. It's the the difficulty comes in our uncertainty about recognizing the line between benign teasing and hurtful teasing.

And and I think it's because there's that ambiguity, because there's always the danger that you you're not necessarily going to be able to recognize immediately the difference between one or the other. It's exactly the same problem I was mentioning a minute ago, where you like, think back on a time you saw somebody getting teased and went over the line, but you didn't stop it. Um, it's because of that ambiguity, like you didn't know if you should

step in or not. And that ambiguity makes us uncomfortable because we know teasing this over the line is wrong, but you can't always see the line in the moment. It would be interesting to hear from from Edrick writers out there who are listening to the show on this because it does make one think that the message should not be hey, kids don't tease one another. It should maybe be more here areas where it is not cool to tease. You like, it's not cool to tease someone

about their physical appearance or the characters or stereotypes, etcetera. Um, but various behavioral teasing. I don't know how, I mean, how do you end up teaching such nuance? Maybe you to a certain extent, you can't. It has to generate via the social interactions. Here's something I would say, Um, well, with a with a big exception for we can talk about the jester in a second. With a big exception

for the jester. Maybe one thing is that you shouldn't tease somebody unless you like them and they know you like them. That's true because otherwise, if the if the existing social dynamic is is anything different than you are perhaps not engaging in pure teasing. No, I mean, then it becomes bullying. When you tease somebody you don't even like her respect obviously you're you're going to be tempted

to edge over into some form of cruelty. Now, speaking of cruelty, we have to think a kaind of of kings, and of course the jester. Keltner points out that that in the tradition of the court jester, you could say teasing is quote, a playful, provocative mode of commentary. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, as Touchstone said and Shakespeare's as you like it quote, the fool don't think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to

be a fool. You know, that's hundreds of years before all the modern research on illusory confidence and dunning Krueger and all that. I think this reveals that a key social good of even harder edge teasing is that when it's properly applied, it can be kind of a leveling tool, Like it knocks down the wicker men of big egos and and pops the balloons of unearned self confidence that we see so often in our highest levels of leadership. But of course, just as often it's applied the other way,

and in a very bad, destructive way. It gets applied from the top down by the inflated ego against the less empowered. I guess it's sort of like a hierarchy enforcement mechanism. But the bottom up form, the jester driven form. I think that's a that leveling instinct is a useful social good and a form of freedom. Teasing is an arena that allows us to experiment with language, with personality and relationships. It's sort of an open ended game that

we can use to manage relationships and learn about each other. Now, Calton and Keltner also turns to the work of linguistic anthropologist Penelope Brown and cognitive anthropologist Stephen Levinson, who I believe we've we've touched on both of their work before on the podcast, but their work that he's referencing here

is more specifically aligned with the study of politeness. But of interest here is the their focus on two forms of communication, like basically breaking down communication into two forms. So we're talking mostly about linguistic communication here, but on the on record communication and off record communication. Okay, so tell me the difference. Okay. So on record communication is just literal direct speech. You take it literally. It's meant

meant to be taken literally. It's clear, and it's direct. This is the kind of speech you would want from your doctor or your lawyer or whatever. Right if you if someone were to come up to you on the street and uh and say, hey, you've got something on your face? Um, Like that's clear, Like, hey, I think there's some food on your face. You need you might want to get that off Like they're they're not playing around. They're just letting you know. It might be socially awkward,

but they are being direct in their communication. They're they're not they're not joking, they're not being vague about it. Off the record is veiled meeting metaphor alternative meaning. So this is if someone were to come up on your street and be like, hey, um, you got a little something right there. Hey, if you you know, if they were kind of kind of beat around the bush a little bit, you know, you might want to take a

look in a mirror. Bro right, Yeah, that kind of thing where it can it's off the record, and it can be in a way that is meant to, uh to make the the the message softer, or it can go the reverse, right, it can it can make it harder. You could be straight up mocking somebody on the street for the little bit of lunch they still have, you know, caught in their beard. Yeah, it seems the key to the off record communication is is some form of ambiguity.

And one reason is that off record communication is sometimes risky, right, people want deniability if their message is not well received. Off record communication is the kind of communication where you can say I was just kidding. On record communication, you cannot plausibly say I was just kidding. And you've all been there when somebody delivered on record communication and then

tried to I was just kidding afterwards. It doesn't work there. No, there's generally no room for for retreat, except to like physically retreat. So the point here is that in modern human interactions, you don't always want to be direct on record. Your communication doesn't always work for the same reasons that it's not practical to always be truthful. White lies are

sometimes required or lies of emission. Uh, And so it's it's sometimes necessary to communicate via off record communication to say something and signal some other meaning, as annoying as it can be at times. Obviously, we can all think too situations where someone is not direct with us and we wish they were direct. Oh yeah, I mean pretty much everything we're talking about today that has a possible good social good, you know, useful social role also can

be used for evil. I mean, every shifty, dishonest guy you know uses a lot of off record communication and always wants to be able to kind of weasel around about what he said or what he meant, And so Kellner argues that teasing is quote just such an act of off record communication. Provocative commentary is shrouded in linguistic acts called off record markers that suggests that commentary should

not be taken literally. So there's some sort of uh, there's some sort of a wink there, right, But I don't think this should cause us to sort uh communication into like on record which is important, and off record which is not important. Yeah, I mean, to your point,

it may be very important. It just might be socially delicate, or you don't want to overstep the boundaries of your established relationship with someone, and it may be essential to to to to to to provide that wink to let them know via you know, some sort of hand signal or some alteration of your voice, or even the use of rhyme or the mimicking of of of of some other individual. It could be key to letting them know I'm I'm using off record communication here, even even though

what I'm about to tell you is important. Well, yeah, it's on record communication and off record communication. I would say our respectively analogous to work and play, and play is very important. Play is where we learn how to work. Ultimately, it allows us to send messages in a in a masked way or at least a kind of like a lubricated way. Socially. Uh, this this may be a terrible example,

but but one that I have observed before. If you've ever seen say an individual come out of a public restroom and uh, and they say, who do not go in there, or give you some sort of like joking warning, that's a good one. Made. It tends it are it Definitely I would say definitely works better than if they were to look you square in the eyes and say do not go in there. Though that's sort of like five minutes, you know, Like then that's self deprecating. Yeah,

but it's also it's like awkward for both parties. But if but if there's a joke there, like then it's kind of like I'm kind of making fun of myself and I'm also kind of making fun of fun of you. But I'm also providing definite information that you should be aware of regarding the the the aromatic state of this bathroom. You're about to enter well to to incorporate teasing. I can see how in that situation, teasing if somebody else could actually be used to diffuse tension and make them

feel less bad. So like say you have to go into a bathroom after somebody else and it smells bad, and the other person knows that they've been in there, and you know they're probably feeling embarrassed. You might be able to say something that's like a tease of them that indicates that they shouldn't actually be You know, you can both laugh about it, which actually feels better than just leaving it, leaving it unsaid and the person feeling

awkward and embarrassed. Though I'm not necessarily advocating making fun of people's body smells, You've got to judge the situation case by case, Keltner says. Quote in teasing, we become actors, taking on playful identities to manage the inevitable conflicts of living in social groups, which is as kind of crude as this example we just laid out, is it. I mean, that is an example of what we're talking about here.

I mean that is the inevitable conflict of living in social groups, of going to restaurants and sharing restaurants, and they also may allow us Keltner argues to engage in the sort of social contest that may prove physical and deadly in other species and ded we see plenty of non human species that have evolved drama dramatized status contests that don't involve combat. You know, uh, some sort of like feathery display or or even a display of something

that might otherwise be used for for combat. But some mean, some means of of engaging in social contest that doesn't actually require two individuals to to fight until one backs off. Yeah, I don't know if this is the kind I would

call teasing. I guess there might be elements you call this gets up against when exactly I would actually use the word again, But it's clearly Yeah, it's clearly part of human culture that we use words and like insults and humor and stuff like that to manage hierarchy navigation. You're trying to take down the person above you, and you can do it with a witty comment. But stuff like that isn't always isn't always in this playful, sweet realm of teasing. I mean that kind of stuff can

actually you pretty biting, right. But but the argument here is that even in playful teasing, there is this potential for uh for establishment of a pecking order. And that's just another way that teasing and requires us to walk a fine line right enhancing social connection while also establishing

a pecking order. Like it's sounds it's one of those things that when you when you boil it down, um, like imagine like setting out to do that consciously, like all right, I've gotta I need to walk into the office today. I needed I need to tear everybody down just the appropriate amount so that we all feel a little closer, but also that it's so that everybody thinks that I'm superior or that I have the appropriate place

in the social dynamics of the office. You're describing management strategy probably probably so no, no, no, that's not fair. But yeah, I mean, I unfortunately, I think there are some people who are that deliberate and that calculating about the kind of stuff they say in a workplace. They're not just talking to you about whatever they're thinking abou out. They're making a comment to you in front of an audience based on how it will benefit them. Now, we

mentioned frat frat brothers. Earlier, Keltner observed it among frat brothers. In one study, teasing nicknames seemed to be quote more morality plays based on misdeeds that they were encouraged to move beyond. And among teens, teasing is a vital part of a flirtation, a way of testing out others and looking for genuine signs of interest. Yeah, and as I mentioned earlier, I mean I feel like this can easily

go two ways. There is a very sweet kind of teasing that takes that takes place in courtship, and then there's definitely a gross form of it that's some kind of social leverage trick, right, And then there's also something problematic too about like if you established this rule that like, oh, they're teasing you because they like you, like, then that that and that may be the case, I mean that it often is the case. It clearly is. But if

you but then it goes too far. If you established it, then is this excuse for for problem amatic teasing, right, like oh, that's just boys being boys or girls being girls? Then you know, is it or are we using that to cover up something that should be um policed in some fashion? Well, often we are. This is yet another case where it would be great if we could always clearly see what the line is. And people's discomfort comes in because sometimes it's not clear where the line is. Now.

On the subject of of teasing among committed partners, uh, he points out that there is a language to it, you know, they're all these little in jokes, and he points to two studies that have shown that married couples with a rich vocabulary of you know, various teasing nicknames and ends of formulate insults, they tend to be happier

and more satisfied. And that's the sweet kind. Yeah. And he also adds that it may help diffuse arguments over really explosive issues, and that the terminology of the teasing as well as often drawn from the same metaphors we use for for love. They have to do, for instance, with with food or small animals, right, like referring to somebody as like a dum playing or a muffin or something like that, or a or a bunny. Yes, though apparently they did. It does depend on the language. Here.

I remember speaking with U, an individual of Thai descent, and about how the use of pig or piggy or you know, it's tie equivalent was a term of endearment, especially for young children, whereas in English that the term maybe has a has a bit more like spike to it, if you're gonna call someone a pick or a piggy. So a term of endearment in one language or culture is not necessarily going to translate equally into another language.

Oh but I can actually see, like even in English, a great novel where you establish a character's relationship, what we're like, a wife calls her husband little piggy or something. That seems that that's good, that's good character right there. Yeah. Now, there's a ton of material out there on teasing, and we can't possibly touch on all of it here today. After all, it does seem to be a major aspect of human social dynamics, and the legacy of childhood teasing

seems to be quite long. A lot of studies look at childhood teasing and and the ramifications of it for adults. Yeah, a lot of what I saw was just study after study looking at whether child whether children perceived teasing as harmful or not, and generally they did. Now, one of one of the problems here is that it does come down to that perception, how is the instance of teasing perceived?

And and and here we see this this this this case where an instance of teasing might well be perceived by one party as being playful and another party as being harmful. I mean, going back to our initial example. You know, in in group social dynamics, where someone goes over the line, I mean most of the most of the cases, and the person is not thinking I'm going over the line, I'm going for it, I'm gonna go for the hurt point. Here, well, sometimes they are, I mean,

there there are clearly different categories here. There is like very often teasing is going to be perceived as good natured by the person doing the teasing and as mean and hurtful by the person receiving the teasing. But also there there are two different versions of what's going on in the perpetrator's mind. You've definitely seen cases where somebody who genuinely meant no harm accidentally hurt somebody's feelings with teasing.

And then you see cases where people try to cover their butts afterwards, like clearly they let some you know, hurtful inclinations reveal itself too much. They were being mean, but then afterwards they can be they can retreat. It's off record communication, so they can be like, oh, I was just kidding. I didn't mean any harm, don't you know, don't get upset. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,

but they kind of did, right. Yeah, I was looking at a paper here, two thousand paper titled I Was Only Kidding Victims and Perpetrators Perceptions of Teasing by Robin M. Kowowski, and he points out that via seventy two person study, I found that perspectives might refer lect of the views of perpetrators and victims. The teaser remembers it more as fun and focused on behavior, and the person being teased remembers it more as hurtful and potentially focusing on their appearance. Yeah,

that's another thing. So one area in which teasing, I think is just never acceptable. I mean you just never want to go there is teasing about innate characteristics, not not like about what somebody just did, but about what they look like about their body, about fundamental personality issues. It comes back to like the educative aspect of teasing, like you can you if it's if it's if there's something educative about it, it's like you should be doing

this differently, where you should have done this differently. But I mean, you know, people for the for the vast most part, cannot do anything about their their physical appearance, you know. But but I've I'm sure you've seen this where people tease somebody and it edges into teasing about innate characteristics, and when they get called out, they try to retreat to to like pretending they were just reacting to behavior or something. No, no, no, no, I didn't

mean that, I meant this other thing. Yeah, Or they're kind of like, oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were just being mean, and so I was going to be mean too. I didn't realize that we were being playful or that we were critiquing things they had choices about. Now, this this leads me to a question that I've I've had in my mind for a little while here, and that is, do certain people invite more playful and potentially hurtful teasing than others, and if so, what are the factors?

So I've observed this in social situations in the past. I'm sure a number of our listeners have as well. In social dynamics, some individuals seem to attract more teasing attention than others. And why is that? I think based on some of what we've discussed here so far, we could we could really point to various causes apparent social status, attractiveness and desirability, but also difference outside or status, really any area that would seem to invite, invite off the

record linguistic attention right. Well, because teasing has so many different uses and meanings, there are a lot of different ways that it can be attracted. I mean, one thing that you can see is that obviously in hurtful teasing, you know, the kind of cruel the thing I wouldn't usually call teasing cruel, mean spirited bullying. I think the people who attract that are people who look like easy targets, people who are lower status in the community where they're

being teased, people who have less power to respond. I mean, bullies pick on people they perceive to have a weakness. Now, when it comes to the jester type of of teasing, I think obviously they're the people who are going to be attracting it, are going to be prominent, high status people, and high status people also tend to invite the different kind of teasing that's not even really teasing. But Keltner talked about it in this article when he talked about

how frat brothers give each other nicknames. There's a kind of teasing as praise that frat pledges show towards the senior brothers of the fraternity. Uh. So it's structured like teasing, but it's really more of a veiled compliment. Do you know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you've seen this before, where like people will be obsequious by pretending to rib somebody above them, but in a way that's not actually for anything bad they did, but really is more for

something good about them. Yeah. Yeah, you do see examples of this, uh from time to time, almost kind of getting into the idea of like hot shaming somebody, right, like making fun of them for being attractive, making fun of them for being successful or something that in that regard. I mean, obviously in the fraternity context, a lot of this is going to be like pretending to rib an older frat brother for his you know, drinking ability, or

his sexual prowess or something. Uh. It's not really in that context perceived as an insult, but they structure it like one. It's a strange phenomenon. But but come back to other people who seem to invite I think one thing that is common to most forms of more barbed teasing is that it's invited by people who do not appear to have a very well developed sense of humor,

or people who appear to take themselves very seriously. I'm sure you've observed this, right, Robert, Yes, I've definitely seen this h in play, you know, in various work environments over over the years, where the person who takes themselves very seriously just it almost requires you to to take them down a pay not if they can't laugh at themselves, right, I mean, and then this is something that's not necessarily going to take place like face to face obviously, Like

like if you have a say you have a boss that is just really self involved, you you cannot help but make fun of them with a co worker, you know, regardless of if you if you ever do anything or say anything that you know that that that individual is ever gonna hear, you still have to at least joke

about them, uh with your other coworkers. Right, And as Keltner points out, the dynamics of teasing tend to change dramatically around eleven or twelve, around that that kind of age, which is about the age that he says kids most often learn to hold contradictory ideas about the world in their head at the same time these you know, that's the the idea of negative capability, the thing that allows the ironic stance, and this allows them to see subtleties

of teasing and participate in it, especially on the receiving end, in a more graceful way, without interpreting all of it as bullying and bad. You know, that's one big difference is that when you're an adult, it becomes you learn how to take a joke usually, you know, like you learn how to be the butt of a of a good natured piece of criticism as long as it's not like really cruel, uh, to be the butt of a good natured piece of criticism or or teasing, and to

not get too upset about it. But kids don't have this ability. They are not good at this at all. Kids take themselves very seriously. All right, Well, on that note, we're going to take one more break, and when we

come back we will discuss teasing in bonding. Thank alright, we're back, So one of the funny things I discovered in this episode is there's this entire academic journal called Discourse Studies, all all kinds of research about the ways people communicate, and they have this amazing way of like mapping out conversations in a way that includes all this information about tone and about gestures and laughter and how different kinds of laughter sounded. It looks like computer code.

It's like conversations translated into cobal. You should look this

up if you get a chance. It's it's pretty interesting. Um. But I was just looking at one study from Discourse Studies in that was published this year in called getting to Know You Teasing as an Invitor Patian to Intimacy in Initial Interactions by Michael Hall and Danielle pill at Shore and so that they write about how before the study, teasing was often assumed to take place mostly or exclusively between people who have previously who have previous relationships, who

have some degree of intimacy. But this article examined conversations between unfamiliar people who were becoming acquainted, and I thought

this was interesting. They found that teasing does play a role, uh, and the role it seems to play in this kind of conversation and the getting to know you conversation is a sort of experiment, is testing the new acquaintances willingness to become more intimate, because I definitely know this feeling like you're at a party or whatever, you know, any place you've got to meet new people, and you're talking to somebody new for the first time, and for a

while in that first conversation, you don't know if this conversation will sort of escalate into a relationship and a point of familiarity where you might start to think of this person as a friend, or if you're just exchanging pleasantries until you can move on, right, Yeah, So you never know. Some sometimes you think it's gonna go one way and it goes to the other. And this study found that teasing plays an important role in this and getting to know people as a bid for increased intimacy.

So the researchers taped and studied thirty initial interactions, twenty four of which twenty four out of the thirty featured one or more sequence of teasing. And the teases were produced by and directed at both male and female speakers of varying ages. And this is fascinating. The researchers discovered that there was a clear pattern to the teasing exchange in the initial conversations. So first, something teasable would happen.

There's a triggering action by the tease target that affords the tease, and then second there's the tease at a quote, a teasing action directed at the tease target. And then third there's affiliation, a mutual ratification of the non seriousness of the tease and the author's right quote given. Teasing is one way of criticizing another. It constitutes a potential

breach of tact or interactional propriety in initial interactions. However, participants can construe this potential impropriety as an invitation to intimacy, as it involves the proposal of a shared ironic stance that may be either accepted or declined by the target of the tease. So teasing in initial interactions, teasing while first getting to know somebody can essentially be an off record invitation to escalate the interaction and open up possibilities

of friendship. It's a sort of ambiguous, off record way of saying will you play with me? And of course reading through these you know these like Cobal conversations. You see that a lot of the signaling both ways here is relegated to nonverbal signals. There's intonation, uh, facial expressions, laughter, And you know, one thing I think about it is how sometimes a teasing interaction doesn't even necessarily involve words,

Like think about this situation. Somebody says something teasable, and all you really need to do for a subtle tease is to respond with a certain facial expression or type of laughter, and the teased person has the option of either joining you and and laughing along with you, or rejecting the bid to join you in the river of irony and staying on dry land, at which point you realize like, oh, okay, this conversation or this relationship is not going to a friendly place, or that this is

not the this is not the safe point for teasing. Yeah, I mean it's very possible. I think we can all think the situations like this where you're kind of doing this playful teasing and then you realize, oh, maybe this individual is very serious about this particular aspect of their personality or the world. Like they do not They're they're not game for say, uh, you know, political based humor or teasing, but they may be open in other areas.

And then it's also ultimately part of the social dynamic, right, figuring out like what is the shape of my relationship with this person and what is the shape of this relationship going to be? What are the avenues for bonding and teasing that can take place. Yeah, I was reading another article about teasing as bonding and it talked about how one of the main features of teasing is the

creation of distinct alliances between participants in a conversation. Of course, you know, we we see this happen all the time. Teasing is going on, and it forms factions in a conversation. People can either join in with the teasing and now they're on a team together, or they can like resist, or they can you know, it's often a form of like joining people together against an isolated recipient. And this

can take very cruel forms. Of course, this is where it can very easily turn into bullying, where in group members strengthened bonds by teasing somebody from the out group or somebody new. But I've also noticed that this form of teasing as alliance formation can be really positive. It can have really really sweet forms. Here's one very specific benign way I've seen happen a lot in my life. It's when there's someone who's uncomfortable or unfamiliar in a

social group. Say a person's over at your house for the first time and they've never been there before that you know that they're not one of this this social in group yet, and a member of that social in group tries to make the new person feel comfortable and welcome by inviting them to participate in teasing of another member of the in group. Like A very common version of this is I see, um, a wife trying to make somebody feel welcome in her home by inviting that

guest to join in with her in teasing her husband. Okay, yeah, I mean I can think of examples where my wife has done this, where essentially what she's saying is like, this is my husband, here's this nerdy thing he likes. It's okay to tease him about it because as it is part of our dynamic, and you can share to a certain extent in this dynamic as well. Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's an inviting thing, and it also tells that

person it's safe here. It says you're not going to get your head cut off for mocking the king, right right, Yeah, beheading always a sign that that that a dinner party is going terribly wrong. It's it's a demonstration that there is no Jeoffrey in this house. But it's also a form of social bonding and alliance formation. It allows the person to feel like they are you know, the that the crucial that the bull's eye of the in group

right now. Though then again, because because teasing has all this in built ambiguity and risk, there there's always the risk of seeing something like that edge into actual mean spiritedness in a couple. You know, I hadn't really thought about this before, but I was thinking of my own house. A lot of teasing, linguistic teasing, mind you, is aimed at our cat and our signing engaged in this is well, you know, we we treat the cat obviously like a

like a queen. You know, she has even has a pedestal that she lays upon, and you know she hasn't made in the shade, and you think, yeah, we we love the cat. But at the same time, we have all sorts of ridiculous names for the cat. We're always going, oh, what is the cat? Doing. Now we're essentially teasing the cat, and it is a very safe zone for linguistic teasing, you know, because the cat doesn't care. The cat doesn't know what we're saying. Well, you know why cats are

great to tease. It's because they take themselves very seriously. They do that, They are very to take themselves very seriously, whereas there is there is certainly more of an air of the jesture to the dog. Though we make fun of our dog too, and he deserves it because he's very funny. But it does make me wonder to what extent pets then, you know, they they are enabling this avenue of bonding. Uh that that that that involves teasing.

I think in this world where we're trying to be sensitive and socially conscious and not and not hurt people and necessarily but at the same time, but where we also recognize the absolutely necessary value of positive teasing. If we need like a theory, we need like a theory of teasing to guide our teasing so so that we we always understand where it's going and we don't accidentally pilot it into the rocks of of of bullying. I agree.

I wonder if we need like posters, you know, sort of like a military propaganda posters that are instructing us about teasing, Like what is good teasing, what is bad teasing? What is teasing accomplished? What should we tolerate? What should we not tolerate? Yeah, I don't know exactly what the best rules of the road are. I mean, I know some things you should not do, but it would be good to have positive rules as well. How do you know you're on the right track when you're teasing somebody? Yeah,

for the most part, we're all just winging it, aren't we. Well, I mean you're trying to you're trying to read read their reaction, Like if it's good natured teasing, if it's between people who are friends or in a relationship, they're teasing each other that you know, you read their their facial expressions and all that, and you can generally tell if things are going well. But it's harder to tell for some people than others. And it's harder to tell

in some situations than others. All Right, we're gonna go and close it out there. But obviously this is a topic that everyone is going to have some contribution for. I mean, everyone has experience with teasing or being teased both of you know as children is adolescence as adults and UH, and we'd love to hear how you take some of the ideas that we've discussed here to UH to dissect teasing that has occurred in your life where you see occurring around you. We'll tell you how to

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