"Likability seems to have emerged as an important personality trait in the late 19th century, when it became closely associated with male business success."

"Before this, people liked or disliked one another, of course, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War, when middle-class men began to see virtue and character as essential to personal advancement, that success in business required projecting likability.... Americans were also taught that being likable was a quality that could be cultivated as a means to get ahead. In 1936, Dale Carnegie’s 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' warned that those who tried too hard to be liked would fail: Theodore Roosevelt’s naturally friendly greetings to everyone he passed, regardless of status, Carnegie noted, had made it impossible not to like him, but Henrietta G., now the 'best liked' counselor at her office, had been isolated until she learned to stop bragging. (Though looking back, we have to wonder: Would Henry G. have needed to hide his accomplishments?).... But as Dale Carnegie might have told [Hillary Clinton], if there is anything worse than being unlikable, it is wanting too badly to be liked.... That Mrs. Clinton lost the nomination in 2008, to a political virtuoso but still a virtual novice, seemed for some illustrative of the troubled relationship between gender and likability in politics. But then she lost in 2016. That voters could see Donald Trump’s rambling and bullying as authenticity seemed proof for many that the likability game was permanently rigged in favor of men.... Likability is associated with an emotional connection between candidate and voter that makes a politician worthy of trust. And yet because that connection is forged almost exclusively through the conduit of mass media, it can never be really about the candidate but only voters’ fantasies about how a politician they can never know ought to be. That women are disadvantaged by a dynamic that emphasizes fantasies over real achievements should perhaps come as no surprise: Popular fantasies about women, sadly, still don’t tend to feature intelligence, expertise and toughness at the negotiating table.... What would it mean if we could reinvent what it is that makes a candidate 'likable'? What if women no longer tried to fit a standard that was never meant for them and instead, we focused on redefining what likability might look like: not someone you want to get a beer with, but, say, someone you can trust to do the work?"

From "Men Invented ‘Likability.’ Guess Who Benefits/It was pushed by Madison Avenue and preached by self-help gurus. Then it entered politics" by Claire Bond Potter (NYT).

Potter fails to make a serious attempt to understand what people who like Donald Trump like about him. She tosses out the Trump hater's aversive summary, "rambling and bullying." Potter purports to be interested in "reinvent[ing]" what likability is, but she never takes the trouble to consider the ways in which Donald Trump has reinvented likability. She does breeze through the historical example of Theodore Roosevelt, though she only looks at him second hand, letting us know how Dale Carnegie saw him — "naturally friendly."

Potter rankles at the contrast between the male Roosevelt and the female ("Henrietta G.") who tries too hard, and she jumps to the feminist question whether the problem people had with Henrietta was her femaleness. Carnegie may have been right. People responded to the naturalness of Roosevelt's interactions and felt put off by the artificiality of H.G.'s trying too hard.

If we reframe likability as a sense that you can trust the other person, the distinction between Roosevelt and Henrietta G. already fits that frame! Roosevelt seemed natural, as if he really was friendly and showing his real self, and Henrietta felt like a phony who was trying to extract something from us.

Now, Trump haters, think about Trump and why the people who like him like him, and think hard. Don't shield yourself from the truth by reflexively interposing Trump-hating ideas like "rambling and bullying." Trump stands up in front of crowds for an hour and more at a time and speaks directly, without a script. You get to see how his mind works. He's a real person. It's weird but it's natural— natural in some way that's available to a 70ish billionaire TV-and-real-estate man from New York City.

By the way, if you're going to study "likability," you ought to also study hateability. It seems to me, the guys who've been winning the Presidency also have hateability. Speaking of trying too hard, maybe female politicians try too hard to expunge or hide any hateability, and that's what makes them seem to lack qualities — Potter's trio is "intelligence, expertise and toughness" — that we sense are crucial in the Leader of the Free World. We're not electing a Friend. We're electing a Protector.

IN THE COMMENTS: Automatic_Wing said:

"You're likeable enough, Hillary" was funny because everyone knew she wasn't.

Let's see it again:



What I notice, watching it again today, is that Hillary was ready with a funny response. The question seems planned, and her response seems to have been practiced, and it is funny. She says "That hurts my feelings" in a mock-feminine way, then adds, sarcastically, "but I'll try to go on." I think the idea was to insinuate that her critics were sexist to talk about likability and to be likable by displaying that she didn't really care about those criticisms. Obama stepped on her little routine. (Paradoxically, that routine of hers was very feminine.) And he was actually kind of mean, saying she was "likable enough," which is to say, not all that likable, certainly not as likable as I am, but I've got so much likablity that I can spend some of it on being kind of an asshole to you, Hillary. Ironically, that ad lib meanness was likable! And it underscored how practiced and phony her effort to please us really was. She was trying too hard, like Dale Carnegie's Henrietta G.