I feel like I'm a chameleon in social situations. Why is this?
An asker on Quora was wondering about this common social tendency.
There's two sides of this puzzle:
You, and your ability to be comfortable with your own opinions and ideas.
Other people, and their ability to be receptive and not disparage ideas they don't agree with.
Not comfortable with your opinions + People who disparage = Chameleon
This isn't fun.
I did this a lot as a teenager because teens are vicious when it comes to peer pressure and creating social stigma when you have an unpopular opinion. That one guy that everyone looks up to and admires makes fun of you? Well, he's doing it, so obviously everyone has to go along with it in order to "stay cool" with the popular kid.
Being the chameleon is the only way to protect yourself in this situation. When your individuality isn't celebrated, but scorned, the normal person's defense mechanism is to hide under a mask.
And that's fair. No one likes to be the brunt of all the jokes, and the worst thing about high school if you were the recipient of that is that there's no escape. You have to go to school. I hated that part.
That's why some people choose to completely reinvent themselves after high school or college. They want to abandon the reputation they had, start off with a clean slate, and set off to find more supportive friends and more accepting people.
Not comfortable with your opinions + People who are open minded = A sense of freedom to be yourself
This tends to happen more when you are in big cities/metropolitan areas where many different cultures and ideologies exists, so people tend to be more open minded than most rural areas.
So having lived most of my adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area has made it a lot more easier to find people who don't gather simply because they agree. Different opinions are welcome and supported, and this was a super helpful environment for me when I was "figuring" myself out and learning to be comfortable with who I was.
Comfortable with your opinions + People who disparage = Agree to disagree
This is similar to when a little kid is trying to be annoying and diffusing them by simply not reacting -- it no longer seems fun and along goes with any reason to continue.
When you learn to be comfortable with your opinions and someone tries to disparage it, it can be defused with a simple, "Well, you're entitled to your own opinion as well."
Comfortable with your opinions + People who are open minded = Fascinating Discussion
With people who aren't intimidated by an opposing/differing opinion, are open-minded to learn, and are curious about others, this is where friendly banter can happen, and is an environment where both parties can learn.
I met a guy who said he "optimizes [his] life for pleasure." This fascinated me, because I'm one who tries to optimize life for meaning/fulfillment.
We ended up grabbing dinner and it turns out, he has many other worldviews and interests that differ from mine. But neither of us disparaged the other, we were both ultra-curious about each others' stories, and because of that, we're actually good friends.
Bottomline, reiterating what I began with, I stopped being a chameleon when:
I started to be comfortable with my own thoughts and opinions, even if it was a minority opinion and
I stopped hanging out with people who disparaged those they didn't agree with
Part of this phrasing, I learned from Ramit's called the D-to-C principle (Disparagement to Curiosity). You can read more about it here.
Learning to turn on curiosity instead of disparaging things I don't understand off-the-bat has helped me make the most unlikely of friends and enriched my life in so many ways.
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