Something people don’t often consider is the politeness tax. It’s not always a monetary tax. Although, occasionally you’ll end up paying for things you shouldn’t if you’re too polite. The politeness tax takes many forms. Being polite requires time, self-control, and mental customization to suit the unique needs of the person you’re interacting with. As a result, politeness is complicated. Unfortunately, being too polite can also be self-harmful.
You can end up wasting valuable time and energy on other people’s business. People who are typically polite also sometimes expect reciprocity of that politeness that they don’t get. This can lead to them resenting their loved ones because they feel underappreciated. It can also lead to a lack of self-understanding. When you always do what other people want, you may lose touch with what you want. Let’s look at 15 things you might do if you’re too polite for your own good. (You might also want to look at what your body language reveals.)
To determine what belonged on this list, we looked at various, reputable psychology and sociology-focused sources, like PsychCentral and PsychologyToday to see what experts believed were the signs of a person who is too polite. Then, we ranked those based on the presence each issue had over several articles. We sourced expert opinions on whether these issues have tangible harm, but we are also voicing our personal opinions on how these issues make us feel.
Always Complimenting People’s Appearances
Complimenting people’s appearances can feel like a polite, kind thing to do. After all, who doesn’t want to feel attractive? However, if the only compliments you give people are about appearances or you compliment everyone’s appearances all the time, it can actually make you seem fake and insincere. Additionally, when you only compliment people’s appearances, it can make you seem like you don’t pay attention to people. After all, if you know someone well, couldn’t you come up with something a little more personal to compliment them on? Additionally, when you compliment people’s appearances, you may end up accidentally bringing up a physical feature that someone is insecure about. Even when you compliment something, if someone is insecure about it, they may feel overly vulnerable, as if their insecurity is obvious and everyone is looking at it.
Instead, psychologists recommend focusing on people’s achievements when you compliment them. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, achievements are objective. Unlike subjective compliments about appearance, a compliment on someone’s achievements isn’t something that can simply be brushed off. They’re also more personal. People won’t feel like “they say that about everyone!” when you compliment their achievements because an achievement is a personal milestone unique to an individual.
Giving Extremely Long Answers to Questions
Sometimes it feels like the polite thing to do is to give someone all the information they could possibly need when they ask a question. You might feel like you’re saving them the time and effort of asking a follow-up question by giving a long, in-depth answer. However, giving an answer that’s too long can actually be really overwhelming and you run the risk of people tuning you out because you’ve talked for so long. At that point, they’re not retaining the information you’re giving them anyway, and your explanation becomes useless.
Most of the time, when people ask a question, it’s better to give them the basic facts they need to be informed about a topic and let them ask follow-up questions if they want to. This is especially true in professional settings, where brevity is crucial. You don’t want to come across as someone who rambles because people will be less likely to come to you for help. Additionally, allowing someone the opportunity to ask follow-up questions facilitates a back-and-forth conversation that feels more equitable than one person talking at the other for a long period.
Holding Eye Contact for Too Long
Eye contact can make you seem confident and help you connect with the person you’re talking to. Too much eye contact is, well, frankly it’s extremely creepy. No one likes to be stared at. Sorry to the people I stare at on the train because I’ve spaced out! It’s especially odd when someone is staring directly into your eyes for an extremely long period. It makes people feel like they’re under exceptional scrutiny. Additionally, when you stare into someone’s eyes pointedly, it creates an expectation that they stare back. Essentially, you’ve turned the conversation into an aggressive staring contest, and that’s absurdly uncomfortable for most people.
Some people don’t like being looked at altogether. It might be unavoidable to avoid being perceived completely, but you don’t have to make it worse by staring at them. Also, the longer you stare at one thing, the more likely you are to develop a strange facial expression, sometimes referred to as a “lead paint stare”, that can make people uncomfortable.
It’s natural and polite to look away and look around the room, even when you’re engaged in an active conversation. So, make sure your eyes move and try not to let your facial expression fall into an uncomfortable look.
Always Saying Yes to People
Agreeing with people is good and easy. When there are no disagreements, there are no conflicts, and that makes people comfortable. However, if someone acts as a “yes person” and always agrees with everyone, their agreement starts to feel ungenuine rather than polite. People start to wonder if you’re just holding back your real feelings to keep the peace. This issue becomes especially problematic when you always say “yes” when people ask you to do things for or with them. While doing a favor for someone once in a while is good, doing too many favors can be bad for the person doing those tasks.
When you agree to do things for everyone, you can end up overwhelmed, which can lead to exhaustion and failure to deliver on your promises. A broken promise is generally considered to be ruder than simply saying no in the first place. Additionally, if someone pitches an idea to you, and you know it’s a bad idea but agree because you’re afraid of saying no, you can end up being the fall guy when it goes poorly. So, make sure you don’t get trapped in a cycle of always saying yes to people.
Using Too Many Superlatives
The truth is that not everything is “Fabulous!”, “Amazing!”, or “Wonderful!” The point of superlative statements is to express that something is far above the average or standard. Just statistically speaking, if everything is above average or standard, that new point becomes the new average and will typically be implemented as the standard. If every time someone comes to you with work, you rattle off a list of superlative statements, it makes you seem fake and insincere. Everyone knows that not everything can be the best. Most people are acutely aware of when they’ve turned in work that isn’t their best, and if you respond to it with superlatives, you might make them feel like you’re lying to them about the quality of their work.
Instead of using blanket superlatives, make specific comments about what you liked about someone’s work. When you make specific comments about someone’s work, it feels more sincere. It shows them that you’ve looked at their work closely, rather than just glancing over it quickly, and makes them feel like you’re giving them feedback instead of just dismissing them.
Not Expressing Your Real Opinions
A lot of people are acutely aware of when someone is hedging their opinion. We can see it in your facial expression and hear it in the tone of your voice. You might think you’re doing a good job of hiding it, but some people can feel the hesitation in your voice, the active thought you’re putting into coming across as impartial. When you don’t express your real opinions, it makes you look weak-willed and indecisive, like you can’t think for yourself and you rely on others to do that work for you. It also makes you seem insincere and ungenuine like you’re unable to be yourself, and some people will wonder if that’s because they’ve done something to offend you.
Ultimately, you can’t agree with everyone. It’s completely impossible to refuse to take sides in every situation. Additionally, there are some situations where refusing to take sides isn’t just impolite, but actively harmful. In a situation where someone is experiencing discrimination, or other untoward behavior from another person, refusing to take sides can lead to empowering discriminatory behavior and making the victim feel like you agree with those behaviors because you’re refusing to enforce an equitable space.
Apologizing Too Much
Most people, on some level, acknowledge that apologizing too much is problematic. No matter which side of the conversation you’re on, it can be incredibly irritating to hear “I’m sorry” every time the slightest thing happens. Apologizing too much can have negative effects on your life both interpersonally and intrapersonally. On an interpersonal level, it can make you seem like you have low self-esteem. Some people with less than good intentions might try to take advantage of you after seeing you apologize so much because it indicates that you don’t have a good sense of self-worth. For people with good intentions, it can make them feel like you’re afraid of them or that they’ve done something to offend you.
Intrapersonally, apologizing too much usually stems from one of three factors, often a combination of the three: false guilt, carried guilt, and people-pleasing. Maintaining a sense of false or carried guilt is bad for your mental health, and people-pleasing behavior can result in resentment and exhaustion. It also prevents you from having a good sense of your own wants and needs, which is detrimental to your overall well-being as it prevents you from taking care of yourself effectively.
Touching People Too Much
Most people know someone who is just way too handsy with everyone. You know they don’t mean any harm and they’re not doing it to be weird. However, that doesn’t make it feel better and sometimes you just want to curtly tell them to stop touching you. Many people think that being a little handsy is polite. In their eyes, it’s an expression of friendliness and interpersonal warmth. However, it’s not always appropriate to touch people.
A firm handshake might be polite, or even a quick hug or kiss on the cheek in some cultures. Going past that, though, can be quite uncomfortable, especially if the person you’re touching is of the opposite gender. Even when the contact is with the same sex, it can be really strange when someone just won’t stop touching you. Additionally, many people don’t like being touched. In some cases, the person might have trauma that makes being touched intolerable. Other people simply dislike the feeling. So, it might be a good idea to forgo that pat on the back.
Always Deferring to Others’ Preferences
You might think it’s a nice gesture to always do what your friends or coworkers want to do, but always letting other people make the decisions can be annoying or uncomfortable. Some people don’t like to make decisions and foisting the decision-making onto them all the time can make them uncomfortable. It can also make you seem disinterested in the activity when you claim you don’t have an opinion. You’ll seem like your heart and mind are elsewhere. Additionally, you should always avoid making someone else make a big or personal decision for you. While it’s fine to ask your friend what they recommend if the restaurant was their choice, don’t make their preference the deciding factor in your choice. That’s just weird!
Not Speaking Up
Some people aren’t very talkative and that’s okay. However, if you have something to say, you should say it. Never speaking up, even when doing so would be appropriate, can make people feel uncomfortable. You might think no one notices if you don’t say anything, but they do. If you never speak up or respond in a conversation, people will start to feel like they’re talking at you rather than with you. Most people want some level of back and forth in their conversations and it’s really uncomfortable to be the only one talking for a long period.
Additionally, not speaking up can have tangible effects on your personal and professional lives. You can miss out on opportunities that instead go to the person who spoke up. It can also make you look like you have a poor sense of self-worth and don’t value your own insight, which are traits that can cause people to get passed over in professional environments. In personal interactions, you can end up getting taken advantage of by people with less than good intentions.
Being Too Politically Correct
Political correctness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When properly employed, it creates a welcoming, accepting, and safe environment, especially for people who belong to marginalized communities. However, it is impossible to never offend anyone. No one in the world has all the knowledge. You will eventually say something wrong because the tenets of political correctness are living concepts that change constantly. When you try too hard to always be politically correct, you can seem uppity or patronizing. More importantly, you don’t seem genuine. Even though your intentions are good, it can seem performative when someone seems to always say the “right” thing.
A better way to approach sensitive topics in a polite way is to be a good listener. Instead of trying to say the right thing, ask the affected people what they feel is the right thing to do and employ those tactics when speaking with them. Most of all, be graceful when you make a mistake. Instead of trying to explain and justify your mistake, sincerely apologize, listen to marginalized voices, and try to do better as you move forward.
Clearing the Table When People Are Still Eating
You might think it’s polite to start clearing away dirty dishes the moment they appear during a dinner party, but it can actually make people pretty uncomfortable. We typically associate clearing the table with the end of the meal. So, if you start clearing the dishes right away while people are still eating, it can make them feel like you’re trying to tell them you want them to leave. No one likes feeling like an interloper in someone’s home.
It’s especially important not to start cleaning and clearing the table if you aren’t the host of the meal. While it may seem polite to try and help out—after all, there’s the old adage that the person who cooks shouldn’t do the dishes—it can be insulting to the host. It makes it seem like you think the host’s table and home are dirty.
Wait until people are done eating to clear the table, and if you’re not the host, make sure you ask if the host would like assistance with cleaning.
Giving One-Word Answers
While giving answers that are too long can make people tune you out, giving answers that are too short isn’t good either. It can seem dismissive or disinterested when you only ever answer with one word. Brevity can be good. Too much context can be hard to sort through and remember. However, too little context can make people feel like you’re upset with them or don’t want to talk.
Having the conversation through text can exacerbate this issue. While people will still notice if your answers are too curt in verbal speech, it’s even more noticeable when you respond with just one word in text. When texting first became prevalent, character limits and message rates meant that brevity was crucial. A simple “K” cost significantly less than “OK.” or “Sure thing!” However, in the modern day with unlimited texting being standard for most phone plans, messages that are too short sound passive-aggressive.
Refusing Small Talk
A lot of people dislike small talk or find it daunting. Too much small talk can feel ungenuine. After all, there’s only so much surface-level conversation you can have before it feels like you’re not trying to have a better conversation. However, a little bit of small talk is necessary to facilitate a comfortable conversation and establish a relationship between two people. While “How’s your day?” and “Man, the weather is pretty bad today!” might be inherently boring and slightly uncomfortable, it would be even more uncomfortable for someone you just met to jump right into a deep and personal topic.
It might seem polite to try and skip the small talk, but getting too personal too fast can make people uncomfortable too. Try to strike a balance between small talk and increasingly personal conversation topics. Building a relationship takes time and you’ll want to start with something light before you start to slowly ease into a closer relationship.
Refusing Compliments
While you might think you seem humble and polite when you refuse compliments and downplay your successes, it’s incredibly uncomfortable when someone is constantly putting themselves down. A little bit of self-deprecating humor can be a good thing, but it has to actually be funny. Flagrantly insulting yourself all the time makes you look like you have no sense of self-worth. It can also attract people who want to take advantage of you. Someone who doesn’t value themselves or seems like they don’t looks like an easy target for people who want to do them harm.
Learning to graciously accept compliments isn’t just good for your mental health, it’s also good for your career. When looking for people to promote or give other opportunities to, employers look for people who have good leadership skills and a strong sense of self. Someone who seems like they don’t have a good sense of self-worth wouldn’t be a good fit for a lot of high-level positions, where personal insight is crucial to the role. (And here are some etiquette mistakes that can make you look rude.)