The trick to playing dumb is appearing as if you don’t know anything, while still knowing everything.

The idea of impressing other people by looking as smart as possible may seem like a basic interpersonal strategy.

Wouldn’t you like other people to admire you for your intelligence, wit, skills, and general insight into life?

Playing dumb doesn’t require much elaboration. Stick to three rules to make sure that the topic, question, or comment you are trying to ignore goes away.

Three rules of playing dumb

Rule #1: Hide nonverbal signals that you are playing dumb; Rule #2: Don’t oversell your dumbness; Rule #3: Don’t play dumb too often.

Rule #1 is the notion that you should never admit that you are playing dumb. Put on your best poker face and don’t give away that you are ignoring something.

Rule #2 will help prevent your dumbness from being perceived as a permanent state,

Rule #3 will ensure that you aren’t masking larger interpersonal problems by playing dumb. Heed these three rules, and you can safely play dumb occasionally.

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.

Thank you …. Think of all the times you want to engage in this form of impression management.

It could be competing with your social media followers in an online game, coming up with little factoids during conversations, or just trying to get a boss or relative to think better of you.

Given this general bias toward showing off your intelligence, you might wonder why on earth anyone would want to convey the opposite impression of “playing dumb.”

Indeed, isn’t this a relic of some earlier period in gender  relations when women, the “dumb blondes,” sought to benefit themselves by disguising their abilities?

 “Employees do hide their knowledge in their everyday work”… are most likely to occur when an employee has an axe to grind.

Stress and the Tendency to Play Dumb

The idea that people act out by playing dumb fits in with this approach to a response to stress.

When you hide knowledge, you do so at a possible cost of serving to annoy the people who think you should have the answers, but could it also make you feel better?

Do you want to add a word or two?

Think back on a time when you deliberately withheld the answer to a question you knew perfectly well. Perhaps you were feeling resentful toward your partner for constantly needing to be reminded of upcoming appointments.

 Why can’t they just keep track of their own schedule?

You’ve got enough on your mind. The next time your partner asks when their next dentist’s appointment is, you lie and say you don’t know. It’s not particularly nice of you to do this, but you still feel a sense of control.

Technically, you didn’t have to fill in your partner’s missing knowledge, so you didn’t.

The idea of a transactional approach to stress is based on the premise that there’s nothing inherently stressful about a situation. It’s all in your perception of that situation, along with your perception of your ability to manage it.

 Knowledge hiding is a strategy known as “emotion -focused coping, thus potentially being instrumental to oppose short-term psychological strain responses”

Your Comments……

To put it plainly, playing dumb works beautifully when you are trying to throw someone off the scent.

When you are up against someone else, you can gain an advantage if they underestimate you. Their guard will go down, and they may even share valuable information with you!

Pretending that you don’t know much about a situation will encourage other people to open up first. You can then gauge their true character and communication skills.

Many times, when your gut is telling you that you’re being taken advantage of, played for a fool, or simply being mistreated, and you confront a disordered character about it, they’ll act like they have no idea what you’re talking about.

They’ll pretend to be totally unaware and in the dark. Sometimes, when you have received information from a reliable source about something you suspect they’ve been doing, they’ll pretend they have no earthly idea where anyone could have come up with such an idea about them.

Feigning ignorance is an effective tactic that manipulates the person confronting the behavior into having doubts about the legitimacy of the issue they’re trying to bring to the other person’s attention.

It invites them to see themselves as a false accuser and victimizer, instead of being the victim of the disordered character’s malicious behavior.

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