This is a funny question to pop up for me at this exact moment.
I am in a room of 50 or so people, 49 of whom are clustered around some tables in the center of the room, and I am sitting by myself in the corner. I am here, with them, but apart.
I happened to have picked a spot that is next to the restroom (hadn’t realized that at the time), so people are coming over and talking with me as they go in and out of there, but others are coming up and chatting at various times as well, but I am not actively going to interact with them.
By some (alright, all) definitions, today I am exhibiting anti-social behavior.
Am I introverted? Absolutely. Do I prefer to sit quietly in the corner and observe rather than get up and mingle? Big thumbs up there. (I think anyone who chooses to exert themselves is immediately suspect.)
But am I anxious, afraid, embarrassed or anything similar to go over and talk to people? Absolutely not. I chat with strangers in line. People wouldn’t be making the effort to come over to talk to me in my little corner over here today if I hadn’t made the effort to connect with them previously.
Who truly “thrives in conflict”, by the way? Having differing opinions is awesome, but if you are spending all your time dealing with conflict, that’s simply exhausting and rarely allows for forward motion.
As far as having social biases, one of my favorite thought experiments is what would it take to create a computer/robot/android/etc that had no Bias (of any kind). There would need to be an large number of programmers and QA testers, each set to program and test particular sets of the program where they have no measurable bias. Once it was done, it would truly be a program of pure logic and reason, which has never in the history of man been accomplished. It would also require that the entire world collaborated, as in order to eliminate a bias you have to first turn it from an implicit to an explicit bias, as most of the world has implicit biases that drive their cultural views.
In America, for example, the average person has no real opinion on which type of camel is better, but I can assure you there are people who are biased pro-Dromedary or pro-Bactrian or pro-Hybrid. Pick any thing, there’s someone who has a bias.
Lack of knowledge of a thing does not make you exempt from bias, as that simply makes you uneducated on a subject, not unbiased.
Additionally, bias != prejudice. Simply because you have an implicit or explicit bias toward something does not mean you are prejudiced toward or against something. It would theoretically be possible to have a bias-free entity that still chooses to participate in prejudice against a group or entity.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/How-does-it-feel-to-be-anti-social
Originally Posted On: 2015-12-10