The Perils of Familiarity

Expertise is a highly rated attribute among service professionals. We praise it, aspire to it, and reward it.  Yet with expertise we also risk losing some of the very qualities that got us there in the first place: the learning mind, the openness to mistakes, the striving edge of improvement. 

Relationships can follow a similar pattern.  With new colleagues and first dates we’re open, curious, excited.  With time and familiarity, we lose the fresh green excitement of budding connection, and fall more easily into the familiar repetition of seasonal cycles and ebbing vitality.   

Why does this happen? And what can we do to prevent it?

Work expertise and the trap of confidence

Humans are notoriously well-equipped to fool ourselves about our own abilities.  The term “illusory superiority” is used to describe this well-documented facet of human psychology.  Illusory superiority causes us to exaggerate our own abilities, under-estimate the performance of others and remain ignorant of our own ignorance. 

The phenomenon is well documented in research.   When students were tested on their use of logical reasoning, humour and grammar, those who scored in the bottom quartile estimated their ability to be in the upper percentiles, while those who scored highest underestimated their abilities. When the low performers were shown the answers of their better performing peers, they tended to be unaware of how they could improve and instead reacted by inflating their already over-estimated abilities.  Studies of U.S attorneys which compared their self-assessed scores across a range of indicators of ability with the scores given by peers and supervisors who the attorneys themselves had chosen, showed a poor level of correlation between the self-ranking and the peer-ranking, notably lower than the level of agreement expected on traits across the population in general.  Research of patients who had died in ICU which compared autopsy results with diagnoses given when the patients were alive, showed that clinicians who were “completely certain” about their diagnoses were wrong 40% of the time (for more on this: see Kruger and Dunning, Psychology, 2009, 1, 30-46; Kiser, Soft Skills for the Effective Lawyer (CUP, 2017), pp43-47; and Kahneman, “Thinking Fast and Slow” Penguin, 2011, pp261-264). 

These positive illusions serve an important purpose. They increase well-being, satisfaction and a sense of control, and they foster confidence: itself a highly prized and rewarded attribute in the professional market.  

So we find ourselves susceptible to a cruel seduction. We are internally and externally motivated to see ourselves as more competent that we are, even though by doing so we risk undermining the very competency which we’re being rewarded for.  

Relationships and the trap of familiarity

As the well-known saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt.  From our own experience, we know that the early stages of relationships can be exciting, full of promise and dreams, but the honeymoon period does not last. Personal relationships tend to find a natural depth, a level of connection which we naturally guard ourselves from straying beyond. Current divorce rates would tend to indicate that the initial wonder of the early years is not a reliable guide to on-going success.   In work relationships, we treat new acquaintances differently from old ones, often giving people more leeway and the benefit of doubt than we do when once we get to know them better. 

How does this happen?

Researchers have suggested a mechanism by which this process works. They suggest that generally speaking - and unless someone is disliked after minimal interaction – when first meeting others we tend to read into them what we wish, and to approach our initial interactions with a bias towards seeing evidence of similarity. In social psychology, evidence of similarity is known to lead to greater liking.  By this process, as more becomes known about the other, liking tends to increase. 

But this relationship between increased knowledge leading to increased liking only extends so far. As even more information about the other is acquired, dissimilarity starts to reveal itself. Dissimilarity is known to decrease liking.  Since we all hope to find evidence of similarly, our encounter with dissimilarity is unexpected and thus more impactful.  This initial encounter then causes subsequent information to be interpreted as further evidence of dissimilarity, causing a cascade of effect which negatively impacts the previously good relationship.  In this way, as relationships progress we acquire greater knowledge of the other, the relationships may become strained as dissimilarity reveals itself. The dream of the like-minded soul mate starts to evaporate (see the fascinating paper by Norton, Ariely and Frost, “Less is More: the Lure of Ambiguity, or Why Familiarity Breeds Contempt”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, vol. 29, No. 1, 97-105).

How can we counteract these effects?

Stay Curious

Curiosity is an antidote to familiarity and complacency.  Staying curious maintains our open-mindedness, our listening and our receptiveness to the new and unexpected.  It can support our capacity to hold-off judgments, and help us see a territory far wider than our current knowledge.  This is important for work performance and personal relationships. 

If familiarity breeds contempt, curiosity maintains wonder.

We can enhance our curiosity in several ways. 

First, by being mindful of our state. 

Research suggests that curiosity increases with well-being and self-confidence, and decreases with anxiety and lack of self-esteem.  How do you want to show up today? What do you need to achieve that?

Second, by raising our standards. 

Aiming for higher standards can reduce complacency and increase engagement, leading to enhanced interest in the task.  Believing we are already good enough breeds complacency.  How can you be better today than you were yesterday?  What can you improve?

Third, by varying our process. 

By engaging in tasks in different ways, by being more creative in our processes, we can maintain and enhance our interest in them. Varying our process maintains curiosity by introducing novel perspectives.  Tasks that are seen as boring or mundane diminish curiosity.  How will you keep things fresh?  How can you grow the excitement?

Fourth, by building reflective habits.  

Some can be done alone: journalling, meditation, keeping a work diary.   Others require outside eyes: mentors, supervision groups, coaching. All help keep our outlook fresh and inspiring and avoid the slip into complacency.