5 Ways to Handle a Snob ... and how to address to your own snobbery. 1. Don’t buy into it. For a person’s snobbery to work, you have to agree that you are inferior. The antidote isnt reverse snobbery; that only reinforces the notion that one of you must be better than the other. Instead, just use the behavioral method of extinction in which you just don’t respond to a snob’s attempts to impress you. This includes, for example, not staring jealously at the person’s expensive purse, car, or phone, or even sneaking a peek at it out of the corner of your eye. Learn to be blind to status symbols, and the snob will take less pleasure in flaunting them. 2. Recognize where the need to be a snob comes from. If you can assume that, as with at least some narcissists, snobs harbor feelings of insecurity, then you can take such peoples self-aggrandizing comments with a huge grain of salt. Let’s say your sister-in-law can’t stop talking about her own family in glowing terms, while putting yours down for lacking in manners and refinement. People who genuinely felt their families were great might not feel the need to criticize others. Your sister-in-law may have real reservations about how great her family is, and it’s only by making you feel that something is wrong with yours that she can allay those concerns. 3. Avoid acting on the inferiority impulses that the snobbery triggers within you. The flashy-brand snob can set you down a path of spending too much in order to keep up. There’s no need for you to try to emulate a wealthier friend’s preppy or high-fashion big-budget style. It’s possible that this person isn’t trying to be a snob, but that you’re projecting your own feelings of inadequacy onto him or her. If you start making sacrifices in order to keep up, you’ll only put yourself deeper into emotional (and financial) debt. 4. Take pride in the characteristics that make you unique. As you’ve probably figured out by now, one reason snobbery works is that it triggers feelings of envy within you. If you take pride in the qualities that within yourself as an individual, you’ll be less likely to feel envious of what others have that you don’t. In an analysis of workplace envy, University of Connecticut business professor John Veiga and his co-authors (2014) proposed that we become envious when we believe our social standing is being threatened. If you don’t allow yourself to draw that conclusion, you won’t feel threatened and that envy will never materialize. 5. Separate the past from the present. Veiga and his colleagues also make the fascinating point that we often project our own past insecurities onto our present circumstances. A co-worker who seems to be putting you down for having less education may mean nothing of the sort. However, the situation reminds you of past experiences in which you were made to feel inferior, maybe even back in childhood. The envy you experience is a carryover from those earlier days and doesnt accurately reflect the present moment. With no reason to feel inferior now, there’s also no reason to feel envious. The person you thought was a snob had no intention of putting you down, and you can focus on other, more pleasant features of your experiences together. Snobbery is a two-way street. Most of what I’ve focused on here is from the point of view of the person at the receiving end. Recognizing you’re the victim of a snob is a much easier process than admitting that you’re the perpetrator. To decide whether in fact you are the snob you wish you weren’t, consider your behavior and answer these questions: Do you care more about the label of your clothes than their functionality? Do you stay away from people who you think are “beneath” you? Have you become more fixated on the outward trappings of success than feelings of inner contentment? How conspicuous a consumer are you? By confronting snobbishness in yourself, by refusing to let yourself be the victim of someone else’s snobbishness, and by avoiding ingroup-outgroup bias, you will be able to take pride not in feeling better than someone else, but in overcoming this all-too-common human frailty. Success that comes from inside is, after all, the best source of true long-term fulfillment.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 06:31:38 +0000
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