Are mean people aware of how bad they are making the other person feel?

[Mrs_shy]

I'm talking about when it's completely uncalled for.

Someone was mean to me today, and I still feel bad. (Not gonna say who)

Did they want me to feel bad?

Do people enjoy/feel proud of making you feel intimidated?

Do they know you feel like this?

 

[Section_31]

I find if someone is acting like that they typically dont think much about the other person, usually because theyre too self centered or focused on their own thing to stop and consider the other human being theyre belittling.

Or they can be on a power trip. Sometimes ive found people in authority get off on being in control over others.

Depends hugely on the situation.

 

[upndwn]

Mostly I think they are aware, but they just don't care. As I have gotten older I have found that you care less and less about how others feel. If people give me a bad vibe I generally make some disregarding remark which may or may not be offensive.

People with SA are often unusually sensitive to critique and rejection both to themselves and others but this is because of our condition. Most people without SA are much less sensitive to receiving and giving out critique and insults.

 

[upndwn]

I have found that it is easier to be mean to strangers, but this may just be me though.

Warning: Armchair psychology (I might be completely off here )

People have a tendency to step on others in order to improve their position in a social situation. I think this comes naturally for many people. Our minds are programmed to be competitive, from an evolutionary point of view it is important to show dominance to prove that you are strong and on top of the food chain. A strong and dominant creature has a much better chance to survive and produce strong offspring. These primal urges still lingers in us even though we have advanced a lot since then. Some people feel these urges stronger than others, and to them the ego is the predominant factor which controls their actions.

I think they are somewhat aware of their actions, but their drive to win at any cost is to strong for them to ignore. Their empathy is secondary to their primal urges, and even though our society teaches that peace and understanding is the key to a good society and a good life, the sad truth (at least as far as I see it from my experience), Is that those who disregards others much more easily prosper in life. They seem virtually unaffected by the fact that their actions may have destroyed lives and left irreparable emotional scars. As they see it the victims may have deserved to be hurt as they didn't put up a fight.

 

[NathanielWingatePeaslee]

As I have gotten older I have found that you care less and less about how others feel.

As I have gotten older, I have come to care more about how other feel. My empathy has increased substantially.

I have found that it is easier to be mean to strangers, but this may just be me though.

Why would you want to be mean to a stranger?

 

[Niteowl]

Sometimes I think, as Gunman says, it's to do with their own problems and they just take it out on others because they're not really thinking properly or maybe they think that if they're not happy, then nobody else is entitled to be.

Other times I think it can be about genuine ignorance and arrogance. People like to impress others. Sometimes they'll think the way to do that is to be mean to somebody else - they'll think that if they do that, then it will make them look powerful/clever/funny and most importantly - somebody who's good side you'll want to stay on.

I'm agreeing with this. In school, there were some people that did seem to have anger-related issues, and they took it out on their own friends almost as often as they did on us unpopular folk. Not that we ever received any apologies, but I think it's fair to say that they couldn't really help it sometimes, and if we were there, we were just easy to take it out on.

The majority of them definitely knew what they were doing, though, and it was pretty clear that they did it to impress their friends, knowing that they wouldn't get a reaction out of us. This one time, one of these popular kids must have been getting a little desperate for attention, so he beat up one of my friends for no reason at all, making up some story involving my friend saying something about his mum. I will never, ever forget his face when he found out that that friend's dad is a policeman, but anyway... I don't think there's any reason that this sort are mean aside from wanting to amuse their friends at our expense, but from my experience they definitely know how bad they're making the rest of us feel.

 

[Beatrice]

People with SA are often unusually sensitive to critique and rejection both to themselves and others but this is because of our condition. Most people without SA are much less sensitive to receiving and giving out critique and insults.

I hate this part of it ::