Rejection Sensitivity (or RS)–for those of you who don’t read Psychology Today–has been on the rise of late. Parents are overprotecting and overpraising children. (Well, except me. As noted previously, I’m training mine to be professional negotiators by making nothing easy.)
Over at Free Exchange they’re blogging about how the various Facebook Crush apps can reduce RS. They make the point, in their inimitable English way, that this will reduce the income inequality between men and women because men have historically had lower RS. After spending their formative years being rejected by women, men become rejection insensitive. According to the blogger, the average male has been rejected scores of time by the time they are 25. Yes, yes, I know, but I’ve spent time in England and will verify that Englishwomen are notably hard to charm. Or maybe just for those of us who read the Economist, I don’t know.
Their point is that having a low RS is a benefit in the risk=return world of business. I have a different worry: every entrepreneur I’ve ever met has a vanishingly small rejection sensitivity. If these Facebook apps raise RS, then there will be no entrepreneurs, no startups, and our economy will be cooked.
This is a disaster in the making. What can we do to stop the Facebook Crush apps, before it’s too late?