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Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

news.gallup.com

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Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#151

Post by smodo »

jacquesm wrote: post #120
kibwen wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In linguistics these are called "phatic expressions", and are far from unique to American English. Similar to idioms, phatic expressions don't have the literal meaning implied by their component words and instead serve a social purpose (in this case, serving to signify the beginning of a communication protocol). In British English the analogous phrase would be "you alright?" https://youtube.com/watch?v=eGnH0KAXhCw

Interesting: so this is one of those things where my ESL background is shining through. I'm sure if I introspect on Dutch I'll find equivalents that I might be using myself which when literally translated to English would upset an English or American counterpart in the same way. Never thought of this. And I didn't know the term Phatic Expression. Thank you for posting this and the video link.

There is a perfect equivalent in ‘hoe is het?’ or ‘alles goed?’ Those are mostly used as a syn/ack-phrase so to speak.

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#152

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #115
AlbertCory wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a mind reader? no, it's fairly clear in your writing.

Forgive me if I think you're offensive. If it would please you to ignore my writings and refrain from commenting from now on that would help to reduce the discomfort. Unbelievable.

[deleted]

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#153

Post by RajT88 »

viridian wrote: post #48
RajT88 wrote: post #11

I can see how this increases your wellbeing. But what about your neighbor's? Maybe so as well, unless you are that weird neighbor people talk about when they are not around. And let's be honest. You are that weird neighbor.

People don't care about you nearly as much as you think. Everybody has their own shit going on.

Whoosh

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#154

Post by paulmd »

smohnot wrote: post #35

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000, while I was at CMU. He would really go out of his way to have social interactions. He would always say hello and ask how you were doing in a way that felt like he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer. Case of the person in real life being exactly like what he seems like on TV.

Candid camera set out to test this theory, and found that underneath the softhearted exterior was… exactly what it seemed.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vV-eVYahckA

http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/misc/candid_camera/index....

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#155

Post by rimunroe »

midasuni wrote: post #130
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve never need to rely on anyone, other than of course normal economic transactions. That's funny. You are relying on thousands of other people every day, all day long. you just don't realize it. And not all of those are economic transactions there is plenty of goodwill involved. For instance, you rely on other people not to kill you when you are driving. Every time a stranger saves your bacon when you make a mist…

Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not. I’m sure it was decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world. Certainly not for me any my peers. any interactions I make are slot my own choosing, that I happen to live near someone is of no consequence. If I did park my car in a ditch t…

> Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not.

Given how our language has a word, "neighborly", to describe friendly, helpful behavior, I think the burden is on you here for explaining why talking to your neighbor isn't a thing one can normally expect. I don't think you've done that yet.

> I’m sure it was decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world. Certainly not for me any my peers.

How old are you? I'm in my mid 30s and this describes none of my peers, including the younger ones in their late 20s. I can imagine younger folks wanting this. I certainly remember having friends who talked about wanting to move around to different cities/countries all the time in college and shortly after, but their priorities shifted over time. I have friends who love to travel, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't love either a house or an apartment they didn't have to worry about losing each year due to the landlord jacking up the rent or the building being sold to someone who wants to convert the building to condos.

> any interactions I make are slot my own choosing, that I happen to live near someone is of no consequence.

I'm not sure what this means. I can't imagine it's literally true as you can't really control if someone else approaches you, unless you just flatly refuse to acknowledge their presence.

> If I did park my car in a ditch there a plethora of recovery services that will retrieve it, whether I’m a mile from home of 200 miles from home.

I've had to wait a long time on a tow truck before when the weather was pleasant. When there's a snowstorm emergency services get slammed and delays increase. My neighbor has a truck and a snow plow, and I wouldn't hesitate to ask him if he could help unstick my car if it sank into the mud a bit. Also, he plows my driveway when the snow is heavy. We do neighborly things for them as well, like helping out when a tree falls in their yard.

I don't have kids yet, but from our experiences helping our neighbors out and having grown up with neighbors we knew well, they're invaluable for raising kids. "It takes a village to raise a child" is quite real!

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#156

Post by JohnFen »

smohnot wrote: post #35

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000, while I was at CMU. He would really go out of his way to have social interactions. He would always say hello and ask how you were doing in a way that felt like he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer. Case of the person in real life being exactly like what he seems like on TV.

Mister Rogers was a genuinely wonderful person, who I always strived to emulate (and always failed to do as well as I should).

The world is much poorer without him.

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#157

Post by brailsafe »

One of the reasons I love living where I do, is because while I don't know any of the neighbours who live directly adjacent to me in their $2m houses, it's a relatively dense and active neighbourhood because of all the people forced to rent rooms from them, and we all walk to get our groceries or to the bars down the street, or meet at the gym, or see each other in the park. There's not a chance I'd move to some cul-de-sac, and it's frustrating that the possibility of securing a longer-term stay here isn't really possible any more.

Aside from that though, in my first 12 years as an adult, I've learned that if you see someone you know when you're out and about, wave to them, always, unless they're really occupied by something else; they might be gone/dead tomorrow, and nobody hates being acknowledged in a friendly way.

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#158

Post by rootusrootus »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #55
rootusrootus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you responded to, but I'll bite. I live in an affluent nearly all-white suburban neighborhood. I know everyone within two houses in any direction, and a few that are even farther than that. We have one recluse and one Karen, but everyone else is super laid back. It's delightful. I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is…

No shade but I'd like to hear from one of the non-white neighbors about how delightful it is? I do generally assume the white people living in all-white places are having a good time with it.

I've never felt quite that comfortable that I'd ask. Our token black family is a pair of lawyers who seem plenty affluent and comfortable, and they certainly socialize with the rest of the neighborhood as much as anyone else. Are they consciously aware of their minority status? I imagine so. I feel the same way when I'm the only white person in a black neighborhood. It's a pretty laid back neighborhood, and I've seen zero indication that anyone here is racist.

But this is the PNW, and while our history is far from crystal clean, we mostly don't have anything like the tension that is normal in areas of the country farther south.

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#159

Post by dang »

jmbiven wrote: post #3

Original Study (with pretty charts!): https://news.gallup.com/poll/509543/saying-hello-linked-high... Interesting, "No meaningful increase in wellbeing is seen for additional neighbors greeted beyond six."

Ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/mister-rogers-had-a-point-ro..., which points to this and seems a little spammy.

I guess we'll keep its title though because the top comment ("Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor") won't make sense without it.

Re: Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

#160

Post by vidarh »

jacquesm wrote: post #54
smohnot wrote: post #35

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000, while I was at CMU. He would really go out of his way to have social interactions. He would always say hello and ask how you were doing in a way that felt like he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer. Case of the person in real life being exactly like what he seems like on TV.

This is one thing that always got me about the United States: people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it, it's just a required pre-amble, a bit like the tones a modem uses to sync up with the other end. If he did it in a way that he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer that alone would set him apart in a very distinctive way. Most people really don't want to know the answer, but th…

The first time I experienced it, I was dumbfounded when someone asked "How are you?" and then just kept walking past. It took me a while to accept certain questions like this have become greetings and often aren't actually intended as questions.
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