Would you say Americans tend to hide when they’re insecure?

18 comments

1. What’s insecure? Can I eat it?

2. I wouldn’t say that we hide, we just don’t draw a lot of attention to ourselves.

3. Yeah. I do think Americans hide vulnerability.

4. What group of people would you say don’t hide it?

   Not saying Americans do, just want a point of reference.

5. I think most Americans project confidence in their take to cover the insecurity. Most arguments made stem from some sort of insecurity. The best example of this is with Homophobia. The more they spew hate for gay people (just the most common for me here, it happens to all LGBTQ+) the more it makes me feel they are insecure with their own sexuality.

6. There’s nothing standard, but we definitely don’t have a shortage of people who overcompensate for being insecure. If you’re loud and unwilling to concede or apologize when you’re wrong, or if You’re a bully, I 100% assume you’re insecure.

7. yeah, of course. I think it’s kind of the nature of being insecure about something to want to hide it?

8. That isn’t just an American trait.

9. I don’t think this is a stereotype you can apply to 330M+ people.

10. What kind of contact do you have with Americans? You might just not have any reason to interact with them when they’re feeling insecure, you know?

11. Until you realize that American’s and men imparticularly are socialized to cover their insecurity with bravado, and to act extroverted even if they don’t feel like it. We’re hiding in plain sight.

12. My assumption would be that most people hide their insecurities from anyone who isn’t close and safe enough to share it with. It may be, if you’re not American and only interact with Americans in a business or tourism context, that they have no particular reason to open up to you.

    American culture *does* value confidence but I think that gets exaggerated a bit in some discussions. For one thing, America is large and diverse and so some people have a family culture that values high self confidence and others a family culture that values humility. There are also tons of personality differences and situational differences that make people behave differently. I think most Americans probably believe that it’s safer act more rather than less confident: if you’re in a foreign city, all things being equal, the person who is looking around shiftily and seeming nervous is more likely to get mugged or pickpocketed than the person striding confidently forward.

13. Bravado is often the biggest farce.

14. Really? I see rampant insecurity everywhere.

15. We’re a nation of 320 million people. There are some insecure people around.

16. Do you mean to ask if we physically hide ourselves when we become insecure? No that takes time out of our day when we could either be productive or relax.

17. Hiding insecurity is a base human trait. Not doing so is a risk evolutionarily speaking leaving you vulnerable to others and so every culture has developed the habit to one degree or another.

18. I dunno- Maybe it’s just an online thing, but I see people taking a *lot* of interest in displaying how sad, depressed, pessimistic and generally insecure they are. Like an inverted status-grab.

    But yeah- that whole “don’t let ’em see you sweat”, “don’t cry about what ‘they’ did to you because half the people don’t care, and the other half might be waiting to see ‘them’ come back to finish” thing is part of standard advice for Americans.