Is a Job Interview a Good Example of Healthy Human Relationship?

No, definitely not. Job interviews are more typical of deranged relationships. Very bad.

No, they're a good example of the exact opposite. Lying through your teeth, being fake, telling them what they want to hear, acting all pleasant, tight control of your body language and mannerisms...

And yet a date, often the entry point to the most important relationship we might ever have, is usually pretty much just like a mutual job interview. And part of the job being applied for might be "Mr. Right", the person who will fulfill all her childhood dreams and tick off all the items on her list of what she wants in a man.

I've often thought that as a man, if I am seeking to be accepted by a woman, and there is some possibility of reproduction being explored, even if unconsciously, she is basically in a position more powerful than that of a job interviewer. She is deciding whether I am worthy of existence. Should more of me exist? Should my genes continue? It is up to her. For her to accept me, especially sexually, is for her to affirm my existence, to essentially redeem me. For her to reject me is in some sense for her to decide that the form of humanity I represent is not acceptable and should not continue. My genes are on trial. My conditioning is also on trial.

And in her evaluations, she is essentially a eugenicist, not unlike a Nazi, whether she realizes it or not.

This causes me feelings similar to those I feel in a job interview. Who is this person to decide my worth? Why is my fate in this person's hands? How dare you presume to be a position to evaluate me! Is this person really worthy of deciding whether I am worthy?

Obviously, there is more to it than this. But this enters into it on some level. And obviously, it goes the other way too. I am evaluating her, often superficially.

And, as S points out, we are also each misrepresenting ourselves to one another, trying to appear in a way that we think will win us a favorable assessment.

Perhaps we should cut through the shit and just fill out applications, exchange background reports and genetic analyses, measure each other for ideal proportions and symmetry, test each other for agility, for intelligence, for respectability, for ethics, and so on, assign scores, and see if the scores cross a minimum that we have decided upon. ;)

Soon though, prospective employees and romantic partners will likely be evaluated by AI, not by humans. So, no need to worry....

The human resource personage essentially holds the power to deny or affirm a livelihood for the candidate. As such, the interviewer likely often takes a sadistic manipulative posture toward the potential hire..power drunk, as it were. The interviewee, even more so, feels (social) anxiety toward the suspense not knowing whether they'll be hired...which tends to be pendent to a pathological masochism, as they grovel around and stutter trying to behave as though they had no weaknesses. — Anthony

This describes not only an unhealthy attitude of both the interviewee and interviewer, it describes a poor decision making process. I've been interviewed and have been the interviewer, and in neither instance did I experience what you've described. What an employer wants is a good employee and the interview should therefore be based upon figuring that out. A solid potential employee often has other opportunities, and the interview is often an opportunity for that person to see if it is where she wants to work.

If a company is sending in power drunk interviewers to conduct the interviews, they're probably not getting very good employees. By the same token, if you're stuttering and groveling, I can't imagine that is a successful way to land a job.

I realize it's not always fair and just, but I also don't think the dysfunctional situation you've described is typical, especially not in places worth working.

I think it's way more complicated than that. Petrichor took the words out of my mouth. As the originator of this thread, I nominate his post for a good example of the problems I see.

There are those who are okay with being merchantable and there are those who aren't. Those who aren't see almost unlimited problems with the example of a job interview standing for a healthy human relationship. It has nothing to do with being a good employee. The format of it is like slave trade.

There's a precept from Hinduism, ahimsa, which states the most subtle form of violence is to make another feel inferior. You must admit the average interviewee feels inferior in an interview (since he has no power to be hired). Some of us try our best to create relationships where this sick superior-inferior pathology is dismantled.

You've thought of this very, very close to the way I have. No lie, I've always felt dating resembled a job interview.

There are those who are okay with being merchantable and there are those who aren't — Anthony

Sure, there are those who live in reality and accept it for what it is and those who don't. You have utilitarian value as an employee, and it has to be measured. If I can till a field in an hour and you a day, I get the job and the town gets fed. You get the job and not.

This has nothing to do with your value as a person. You can't conflate employee worth with human worth.

Could this be one of the main contributions of psychopathology in human relationships, seeing as a potentially sick format delimiting how we must bond to another, is the door through which all relations of the market society must pass? — Anthony

If only it were that simple.

Sure, there are those who live in reality and accept it for what it is and those who don't. You have utilitarian value as an employee, and it has to be measured. If I can till a field in an hour and you a day, I get the job and the town gets fed. You get the job and not.

This has nothing to do with your value as a person. You can't conflate employee worth with human worth. — Hanover

Reality would include its critique. Negative utilitarianism is downplayed vis a vis positive utilitarianism. Merit is rewarded, while suffering is ignored. Survival of the fittest, I would have thought, could be diminished or eliminated by the most advanced species on Earth...but it has only been displaced into zero -sum games of social Darwinism (and social engineering). And if you aren't a conqueror, beating out others, you have to allow yourself to be conquered. As you have said, it isn't fair or just, which translates into a significant social problem. If you don't want to be a part of a system that centers on gain and loss, winning and losing, and these recognized realities aren't without verity, they are reality. That such a social system is unfair and unjust is reality. Albeit, one rooted in idealism, not behaviorism.

If my value as a human is separate from my value in some other way, it's associated with departmentalization of the psyche; if you have a Venn diagram...the circle with "human" in it doesn't really cross over with any other one, save maybe "sacred or inviolate." That said, there may be one other circle to add to these two: self-sufficiency, self-reliance, autonomy. The eusocial system man has created for himself steals away self-sufficiency through specialization...which segues into a diffusion of responsibility. Never should you be forced to ignore your infrangible value as a sentient being for some notion of gain. In what way, I wonder, do you think it sensible to multiply and divide one's value as a human and maintain non-eusocial self-sufficiency, and sacrality of the work of living? So many jobs are extraneous to cultivation of autonomy and shouldn't exist. It's amusing to hear someone say the system of capital gives one the choice. What actually happens is that if you are perfectly self-sufficient, can take care of yourself and do the work that supports life, you then have to figure out how to put yourself on the market to be dependent (other-organized).

Social dissimulation as far as it is ungenuine, is essential in a job interview more than in any other relationship. Obviously whoever behaves the way they do in an interview everywhere they go, would be insufferable to be around as the pretense becomes a repulsive effluvium. Its easy to tell when people have cogntiive dissonance stemming from this dryrot of market repression. Antagonizing how you feel, going against the grain, too often is a major cornerstone of mental illness. Then you get people coming home from work and displacing onto their wife and kids, the dog, etc. Living two separate lives as in employee vs. human can be disastrous; it's consequences are seen in the common torpor of people who suddenly cease doing what they've been doing their whole lives, known as retirement. Surely we have only one worth: being. So if you try to divide the immiscible, and merge it with employee value data, it is no longer sacrosanct, no longer the worth it's claimed to be.

In what way, I wonder, do you think it sensible to multiply and divide one's value as a human and maintain non-eusocial self-sufficiency, and sacrality of the work of living? — Anthony

Your value as a human being is unquestioned and infinite. I'm not challenging that. Your role as a worker bee has a specific amount of value. That is reality. Social constructs and morality can't change the fact that if you don't plant any seeds, nothing will grow and if you don't pull the potatoes out of the ground, they won't end up in the pot.

You may be uncomfortable with the fact that the fastest man can outrun the threat or the hardest working man can grow the most food and you may wish that being a caring, nice guy will protect you from the forces of nature and feed you, but that's not how it works.

I understand your lament. You're just not a super competitive guy and you wish the Darwinian forces of nature weren't at work, but they are.

I very much sympathize with what you have to say.

Perhaps we should cut through the shit and just fill out applications, exchange background reports and genetic analyses, measure each other for ideal proportions and symmetry, test each other for agility, for intelligence, for respectability, for ethics, and so on, assign scores, and see if the scores cross a minimum that we have decided upon. — petrichor

Such has always been the case, just done with intuition and guesswork, using what limited information we have to make decisions about who to date and who to hire. If today there is more information available and a better ability to assess that information, we would rely upon it. I might have years ago chosen a date just upon her looks and what little I knew about her, whereas today Google, Instagram, and Facebook can provide me a complete history as I peruse her Spring Break pics. It is a worse scenario if I'm misusing the information, discarding people based upon irrelevant details and unnecessary biases, but if that information could be properly assessed, why not? Are you devaluing someone as a human being to simply ask if they fit into your life or into your business?

Dating, like job hunting, is not for the faint of heart, especially for those with limited experience and insecurities. Each rejection is taken far too personally, as if there is some correlation between who they are as a person and whether there is compatibility. Those who find pain in such "competitions" really need to just not worry about the outcome, to have confidence in who they are, to not care about the opinions of others, and to battle forward. Success will actually come through perseverance. This isn't meant as an inspirational speech as much as just asking that you abandon the rationalization that there is some integrity that you're preserving by not entering the fray. The fray is part of life, and the struggle, as @Anthony realizes, is in maintaining one's sense of human dignity while cleaning out toilets, or whatever one need do to survive in the sometimes harsh reality.

If you're looking for an actual inspirational speech, I offer this: https://youtu.be/fFalmesXWMY

That is reality. — Hanover

If it is reality, it isn't the truth. Similar to how there are unconditioned stimuli/response in the fabric of our being as truth, which are then, through social Machiavellianism- behavioral conditioning- replaced with conditioned stimuli/response systems. Truth=unconditioned stimulus/response or primary process; reality=conditioned stimulus/response; secondary process.

Unconditioned behavior is independent of experience. It's of note how crowd psychology has taken control of the masses' primal intelligence. Social systems, through the unvirtuous tit-for-tat market societal values, are homologous to the reality of conditional stimuli of Pavlov, one monumental ringing of the bell. What makes it conditional? Agreement writ large, nothing more. And the agreement is to accommodate the dominionism of behaviorism. This is the thrust of what drives some of us mad. How is it that a system developed on experiments with animals can go on to apply on such a large scale to a supposed intelligent, thinking animal, like us? I'm not not at all convinced our species is as advanced as most have come to believe.

Classically conditioned behaviorism works best when the interval of time between the conditioned stimulus and the appearance of the unconditioned response is shortest. In other words, when there's no awareness of what's happening to you, of what you're experiencing, you can be manipulated as a circus animal. Thoughtlessness and intemperance replaces reflection (what makes us human, metacognitive hesitation).

Astonishingly, it appears many people have agreed to call conditioned response learning. Also of note: only a single trial , or pairing of conditional stimulus and unconditional response , is necessary to produce fear conditioning. What a system of learning, I must say. There are those of us who have a difficult time with this. This is not learning, it's the absence of metacognition, the monkey side of us with no self-recollection. Metacognizance is our unconditioned state before domestication, before the water is made turbid by feces of behaviorism.

Wouldn't it be revealing to reverse the cyclopean bell of conditional stimuli (domestication/crowd psychology) back into the truth of what it really is, just a bell. This would be nothing less than the extinction of behavioral conditioning. Let it be so, amen.