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Many children grow up with the idea that all they have to do is say “please” and their request will be granted. As they grow up, however, they realize that there is nothing magical about this expression. It can even be counterproductive, according to an American study published in the journal Social Psychology Quarterly.
The researchers affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who wrote it came to this conclusion after studying the words, facial expressions and behaviors that appeared in 17 hours of video recordings. We see members of the same family, friends and colleagues discussing and interacting with each other in everyday situations.
A diverse use of “Please”
It appeared that the phrase “please” is used less often than one might imagine. In fact, academics have found that we only hear it in 7% of the videos analyzed. Most of the time, people say this expression when they anticipate a refusal from their interlocutor. One of the recordings shows a woman saying “please” to her husband after asking him several times to sit at the table, without much success. In another, we see a man using this polite formula to try to convince his partner to prepare the meal, while she is busy with something else.
Interestingly, children are not more polite than adults. They say “please” just as much as they do, and often in similar contexts. One of the videos analyzed by the researchers shows a teenage girl using this formula while asking her mother to buy her a new dress. She knows full well that her request is unlikely to succeed given that her mother had already opposed it in the past.
A weapon of persuasion
Everything suggests that the expression “Please“is less about politeness than the art of persuasion.”Any generic rules – like saying “please” and “thank you” – do not take into account the situation in which we find ourselves and these formulas are not always a guarantee of respect or politeness“, says Andrew Chalfoun, lead author of the study, in a press release.
For good reason, it is entirely possible to be derogatory, or even disrespectful, towards someone without flouting the basic rules of good manners. Passive-aggressive individuals are masters at this: they manage to push those around them to the limit without deviating from the rules of good manners. In their mouth, “please” can be a sign of insolence, not politeness.
That's why the study's co-signers encourage us to be more flexible when it comes to politeness standards. Perhaps they should not be taught too rigidly. “Each community has its own explicit standards that define what is considered polite or respectful conduct; and they are taught, for example, to children or to anyone new to the group“, explains Andrew Chalfoun in the same press release.
In the future, Andrew Chalfoun and his colleagues want to determine whether politeness norms are really respected in everyday life or whether there are other, more tacit norms that better explain people's behavior.