This is Faith in Play #88: Approval, for March 2025.
The inspiration for this article comes from a reality television competition. There are many of these presently, from singing to glassblowing; this one happened to be a cooking competition, specifically baking, and features one particular judge feared for his stern manner and exacting standards. In one of the asides a contestant commented that his approval means so much more than you would expect, and that got me thinking about approval and disapproval.
Approval and disapproval impact us from many directions–parental pride, peer pressure, employer satisfaction, respect. Most of us respond to these by trying to impress the respective persons, although sometimes the reaction is rather to dismiss their attitudes with a touch of disdain, telling ourselves it doesn’t matter what they think of us.
Meanwhile, our responses to various influencers varies, and shifts over time. Adolescents increasingly respond to peer influence and decreasingly to parental, yet at the same time some people are still trying to meet parental expectations after their parents have died. Some people who crave favor or respect from a particular group feign disdain to hide their concern. Sometimes, as with the aforementioned contestant, we don’t realize how much someone’s approval matters to us until it is either expressed or withheld.
This desire for approval impacts our choices, our actions, our words. Sometimes we don’t recognize that our conduct has been molded to meet the expectations of someone else; sometimes the realization that we have or have not met those expectations results in a significant emotional reaction.
It must also be true for our fictional characters: there are people somewhere whose opinion of them, of their deeds and words, matters to them, even if they would not have thought so.
Understanding who those people are and recognizing how the character responds to them can add another dimension to the outworking of the individual’s personality. Whether he wants to please his boss or the local governor, or the masses, or his family or friends, and how he does this, and even whether he is conscious that he is doing it, are all significant points in who he is, impacting what he does, what he says, even his demeanor in their presence. It is worth exploring.
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