The Tyranny of Niceness: Unmasking the Need for Approval

Lori A. Dunn is an ESL teacher and an event coordinator, with a
background in linguistics and education in Okanagan, B.C.

How often has someone stepped on your toe and you found yourself
apologizing? How often have you said yes to a friend or colleague, only
to wish you’d said no? How often have you taken the burnt piece of
toast or the egg with the broken yolk? Is this just nice behaviour, or
is it something deeper and uglier? Evelyn Sommers, a psychologist in
private practice and the author of Voices from Within: Women in Conflict
with the Law, addresses this question in The Tyranny of Niceness.

The book begins with an analysis of the social uses of niceness and how
we are trained to engage in this behaviour. Sommers then deconstructs
its effect on our lives, and the continuing price both women and men pay
in their relationships, careers, and health. She rejects the idea that
niceness is a disease, because it “ignores the fact that humans are
social creatures who need interactions with others … and are thus
affected by environment.” Niceness is not something that happens to
you; rather, it is a behavioural issue and thus something that every
individual can control.

What is wrong with being nice? As Sommers points out: “The word nice
was derived from the Latin nescius, meaning ‘ignorant,’ and the
French nescire, meaning ‘not to know.’” Silence is essential to
appearing nice; we silence our true voices in order to appear
“civilized and benevolent while we continue to hold and protect our
possessions, hurt and deprive other people, and take, or try to take
what we think we want.” We are trained as children—and, in turn,
train our children—to be nice, and thus to minimize our needs and
desires, making ourselves smaller. Sommers dreams of an ideal world in
which “people say what they think and feel in an open and direct
manner,” and in which there is a distinction between kindness and
niceness.

The Tyranny of Niceness is more than an approachable academic text by a
psychologist, and more than a how-to book by a counsellor advising
readers to be more assertive in their day-to-day lives—it is a book
that changes how we see the world and our rightful place in it.