a friend is pissed that i apply the concept of ROI to social contacts. in her view (and i’m not completely sure what her view is, since she is too pissed to tell me) social contacts are outside the realm of input-output calculus. to her, it is preposterous to even consider the idea. i strongly disagree. here is why.
social contacts are conversations at their core. and conversations are fundamentally reciprocal. each participant in a conversation has certain goals, or would like to bring topics dear to him on the agenda. to that end, each participant invests time and energy to keep the conversation afloat.
conversations vary in their degree as to how much they succeed in capturing the goals of the participants. sometimes, for various reasons, a conversation participant may feel that his topics either fall on deaf ears, or are pondered inadequately. clearly, in such a situation, the investment of that participant has not paid off, his questions remain unanswered.
what to do? before frustration sets in, it may be beneficial to reconsider whether it makes sense to keep a conversation going with the same intensity, or whether it may be more appropriate to shift the conversation to other topics. maybe a particular conversation is not well suited for a topic, and the topic would be better discussed in another context (and possibly different participants)
and by doing so, this particular participant has already optimized his return. this outcome seems more desirable than a drawn-out conversation where all participants are increasingly frustrated. but then again, i’m a man of the persona, not the anima.

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