Pain Leveling
This post was written by Scott Adams March 18, 2008 but disappeared from his blog the day after. I have therefore copied it here. The url would have been http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/03/pain-leveling.html
Back in my corporate days, I had a coworker who seemed to be happy almost all of the time. He didn’t do much actual work yet he was paid well, and he didn’t let the little things get to him. The interesting thing about him is that when anyone asked how he was doing, he’d always say things were awful. In fact, he had a handful of sayings he used almost every day.
“I’d complain, but no one would listen.”
“I’m putting out fires all day long.”
“I’m just jumping on hand grenades.”
“I’m slogging through the swamp.”
“I’m up to my ass in alligators.”
“It’s a rat race and the rats are winning.”
For a long time I thought the complaining seemed dishonest. It was only years later that I realized how brilliant he was. He understood the concept of pain leveling.
The way pain leveling works is that when one human encounters another who is in a different level of comfort – either higher or lower – they reflexively look for ways to transfer some pain from the least happy person to the most happy, until the pain is more level.
For example, when you run into a friend who is down on his luck, you listen to his story of woe until he feels some relief in telling it, and you lose some happiness in listening to it. Or you might offer to help in some way, with time or money. At work, this effect translates into the overworked person transferring some work onto the less busy and happier employees. My ex coworker understood this principle and used it to his advantage. In every social exchange, he tried to establish himself as the person in the most pain. This caused other people to become reflexively extra nice to him, to try and ease his burden.
It was a fine balance because he was always somewhat upbeat about the “mountain of work” he was under. He seemed noble – soldiering on despite all that work. None of it was real. Sometimes his entire day consisted of walking around with a coffee cup, chatting with people, and making a few phone calls.
I was reminded of this the other day when I overheard a kid bragging about something that was going well for him. The other kid reflexively called him a bragger and did a few other tricks to level the pain. I think this instinct is built into our DNA.
You can use this natural phenomenon to your advantage. Try to establish yourself as the least lucky person in every social encounter. If you see a friend coming toward you with a new ankle cast and crutches, grab your side and start rolling on the ground yelling something about internal bleeding. If you sell it, you can get the cripple to carry your groceries and drive you around.
