I've heard many out-of-staters comment on how friendly Kansans are--greeting passersby, opening doors for people, smiling at strangers, or giving a two-fingered wave to passing cars on country roads. However, others, such as a Chinese student who'd previously lived in New York, consider us quite unfriendly and standoffish because we are more task-oriented than people-oriented and rarely strike up conversations with strangers and inquire about their lives. One could say these people with divergent experiences have simply met different Kansans, which is surely true, but I think it's more than that; each person evaluates a new society based on their own society and social expectations.
To Kansans like myself, small talk in the grocery checkout line, with someone asking to borrow a pencil, or with fellow students and coworkers seems suitable. However, we often consider small talk--and certainly consider deep talk--with strangers in other circumstances as an intrusion, most notably when one party is engaged with a solitary activity like reading or is working on a particular task that needs to be finished. A person who insists on conversation in such circumstances, despite covert signals of dismissal, strikes us as either shockingly rude, or mentally or socially deficient; we might call such behavior nosy, prying, or forward.
Particularly if the person is of the opposite gender, we may consider insistent, unwelcome attempts at conversation as the inept flirting technique of the socially unschooled, to be avoided at all costs by respectable persons--and not without reason. I had such an encounter with a student at HCC a few semesters ago who kept finding strange excuses to come up to the front desk to chat about inane topics despite gentle hints that I had work to complete. He finally admitted he was trying to glimpse of the ring on my hand to find out if it was a wedding band. (I strongly assured him it was.) Incidentally, the same person later came up with a friend "to conduct a behavioral science experiment" by discussing uncomfortable subjects in front of me. I immediately took my mug and left to make tea, and thankfully, they'd gone when I returned. As expected, future contacts felt awkward for me, but they fortunately never again roved into unpleasant territory.
While some people, such as this young man, don't catch social cues that they're intruding because they are untutored, others don't notice the signs because their culture either employs different cues or has different social expectations. This can make interactions a little awkward, as in the case of a certain Muslim man, originally from Pakistan, whom I often met in Topeka's Barnes and Nobles one summer during college. I spent quite a bit of time there, reading books the library didn't have in stock, and when that man was there and an open seat was nearby, inevitably, he'd sit down near me and start chatting. Not wanting to be rude, I'd chat back, and certainly our conversations were a little interesting, but I really wanted to be left alone to read; I felt amazed that he didn't understand that. We were in a bookstore. I had a stack of books with me. I'd chosen a spot alone. I kept my finger in my book to mark the spot where he'd interrupted my reading . . . an hour before. To my way of thinking, what more clues did a person need? Yet, oddly, it seemed too impolite to say so; future avoidance seemed more diplomatic.
Given my social background, I'm also glad I don't live in one of the African countries where people commonly sit down for a half hour with everyone they meet on the road to go through a lengthy list of polite questions and answers (How did you sleep? How did your mother sleep? and so forth through the family and probably on to the well-being of the livestock and fields). As one might expect, this culture doesn't have a concept of "lateness," and people often arrive hours after the arranged time to meet for school or a wedding or church or whatever other event was scheduled. Naturally, Westerners find this frustrating; why not pass friends with a simple "hello" and talk with them later, or get where you're going together and discuss life there? Still, one can't think ill of a culture whose customs place such high value on community.
Even within a society, people may have circumstances that make themselves or others uncomfortable during interactions. For instance, a loner may feel terrified and unable to relate to anyone in a crowd, and someone unaccustomed to people of a different age group or gender may feel uncomfortable or interact awkwardly with people from such groups. Furthermore, a person used to dealing with the hard of hearing--or who is hard of hearing himself (or herself)--may speak far too loudly around others; a parent or teacher accustomed to dealing with rambunctious kids may repeat themselves too often or speak in an unintentionally condescending or campy manner that alienates older conversation partners; a person accustomed to the company of adults may not know how to interact with children and may ignore them or fail to use vocabulary they understand and conversation topics they enjoy. Other challenges like social phobias, ADD, autism, and dementia can also make interactions difficult for all parties. Success in these cases, as many experts will advise, only comes through patience and experience--and often a conscious effort to shift gears and modify one's interactions to the specific party at hand.
Interacting with people is so difficult that it takes up a huge chunk of the self-help and etiquette sections in bookstores and is the primary topic in periodical advice columns--and to confuse matters, one will find that advice, theories, and conclusions on human relations vary. Among other worthy sources such as the works of Dale Carnegie and Emily Post, I recommend the website The Art of Manliness (which is also the title of a book by, I believe, the same authors), which has several excellent articles, among them, some explaining the art of conversation: dos and don'ts, how to make small talk, and how to avoid conversational narcissism. (Thanks, Tessa, for the links on Facebook!)
How I wish polite human interaction were taught in upper elementary schools and middle schools! How much more pleasant society would be if people learned and embraced the common-sense "rules" of conversation at a young age! However, learning to understand, appreciate, and follow our own or another society's expectations for conversation and the like goes against our natural proclivities as fallen people to be self-centered. We prize our own perceptions of what human interaction should be like over the perceptions of others; we prefer to gain attention rather than to give it and to focus on ourselves and our interests over the needs and interests of others. Alternately, in an alternate selfishness, we may disdain necessary and polite human interaction in our desire to be alone with our tasks, being passively rather than actively rude.
To sum up my view of the matter, education, experience, and an intentional, selfless effort to "read" situations and tailor each encounter to the other party is the the best way for all concerned to enjoy the most satisfying and productive interaction possible.
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