Why waiting feels kinder

If you put off difficult conversations, you may have decided that you're a coward. I don't think you are, and the research doesn't either. Reluctance to pass on unwelcome news is ordinary human behaviour, and it shows up even when people have nothing at stake.

In 1970 Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser gave this reluctance a name. They called it the MUM effect, as in keeping mum. I haven't been able to read their original paper, so I'll describe a later experiment that I could check. Jayson Dibble and Timothy Levine asked 114 people to pass on a test result to a stranger. Some had a high score to report, some a middling one and some a low one. The lower the score, the longer people took to start speaking and the more reluctant they said they felt. The person hearing the news was a stranger, and the messenger bore no blame for the score. They still hesitated. People are quick to share good news and slow to share bad, and that seems to be built in fairly deep.

Work is no different. Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison and Patricia Hewlin interviewed 40 employees about speaking up to their bosses. Most had been in a situation where something concerned them and they said nothing. The reason they gave most often was fear of being seen or labelled in a negative way, and of damaging relationships they valued. That's a small interview study and I wouldn't lean on its numbers. But the reason will be familiar. People mostly keep quiet because they're afraid of what speaking will do to how they're seen and to the relationship, and hardly ever because they don't care.

So here are the reasons for waiting, as I understand them, and each of them is real.

It keeps today pleasant. This evening is fine as it is. Raising the thing would make this evening worse for certain, in exchange for a benefit that's uncertain and later.

It seems kind. They're tired, or stressed, or happy, and you don't want to be the one to bring them down. Holding back looks like consideration.

It protects how they see you. You'd like to be thought of as easy-going, generous and low-maintenance. The thing, once said, might make you look petty or demanding.

It might go away. Some problems do. Perhaps the cycling season will end, the flatmate will move out, or the colleague will get a different job. Waiting costs nothing, it seems, and might save the whole ordeal.

And you're afraid of the reaction. They might be hurt, or angry, or turn it round on you. They might say something back that you don't want to hear.

Underneath these are needs nobody should be ashamed of. You want a peaceful home and good relationships. You want to be kind, and to be liked. You don't want a scene. The question for the next several chapters is whether waiting gets you any of those things. I'll argue that it gets you none of them for long.

One distinction will help before we go on. There's a difference between deciding not to raise something and putting off raising it. If you decide not to, the matter is closed. You've judged that the thing is too small, or isn't your business, or can't be changed, and you've let it go, and it stops taking up room in your head. If you're putting it off, the matter is still open. You still intend to say it, you still rehearse it, and it still leaks. This book has no quarrel with the first. It's about the second, where the conversation has already been decided on and only the date is missing.