A short excerpt from a YouTube talk by Eric Edmeades ("You Learned to Be Nervous") recounts a school presentation anecdote: a confident student presents flawlessly and receives modest applause, while a nervous student struggles but receives larger applause, sympathy and rewards. Edmeades argues audiences reward perceived difficulty and vulnerability, and people learn to behave nervously to receive more positive attention.
Chapters
You've all had this experience. You're in school and there was some kind of presentation day. One kid gets up and does the presentation. Nicely dressed, has props. Everything works beautifully. The child presents it perfectly. It's amazing. What kind of applause does that kid get? Next kid comes up, kid's freaking out, sweat, stuttering, scared. The slides didn't work and all this stuff's gone wrong, but the kid works through and goes through it. Tears, gets through it, cheeks blushing, finally gets to the end of the presentation. It was the hardest thing in the world for them. You can see how hard it was for them. It was so scary and so painful. Painful. What kind of applause does that child get? That child gets a way bigger applause. And you notice that child gets. That child gets pizza and hugs and loves. And every kid in the audience goes, well, shit, man, I got to make stuff look harder than it really is. That's what happened. And you started doing it. You didn't do it on purpose. You didn't do it consciously, but you're getting ready to do a presentation and you said, oh, this is going to be fun. Yeah, but, you know, got to make it look hard. You act your way into. Well, most of us acted our way into it, and now we can't get out.
