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Social Inertia

Present interactions influence all future interactions.

Contents

Background

My barber, whom I see once every month, and I have tenuous relationship. We don't have much in common interest- nor personality-wise, so we get stuck with the normal barber small talk at the beginning, which is quickly followed by silence sans the clippers doing their job.

However, it didn't start this way. We talked all throughout my first cut, then a majority of the second cut, and at some point just stopped talking altogether minus the initial pleasantries. The decline was noticeable and fairly steady, and I attribute it to our previous interactions being a tad awkward or quiet, leading to the term I have coined as social inertia.

Definition

Inertia is defined as "a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged". Social inertia is the tendency of a future social interaction to be similar to the most previous social interaction. In other words, if social interaction n is fun and happy, then, ceteris paribus, social interaction n+1 is more likely to be fun and happy than otherwise.

Speed also plays an integral role in this concept and represents the pleasantness of the interaction. The faster the relationship is moving, the more pleasant it is. The slower, the worse, all the way down to full rest, or effective death of the relationship. Inertia, and thus speed, is hindered by external forces—gravity, friction, brick walls.

A few conditions to consider:

  1. Magnitude of the type of social interaction does not necessarily increase, only likelihood. For example, if an interaction with a good friend is 6/10 awesome where 5 is the breakeven point between awesome and not, then it is not necessarily more likely to be >6/10 awesome the next time, but rather more likely that it will at least be >5/10 awesome.
  2. Inertia applies to all types of interactions and emotions.

Suggestions

The first thing of any relationship is to start it off on the best terms as possible. This does not necessarily mean happy or fun, just whatever the relationship calls for. A romantic relationship may require flirting and kindness, while a business relationship requires honesty and seriousness. Read the room and make the decision as needed.

Remove roadblocks that hinder both inertia and speed. These may be physical discomforts, controversial topics, other people, environments, memories, atmospheres, and more.

Forcibly inject positive emotions and notes into the interaction, ignoring (within reason) previous interactions that may have stifled inertia.

See Also