I prefer blunt people – the type who uncontrollably blurt out the truth that everyone else is avoiding – for several reasons. Yes, blunt people will occasionally hurt your feelings by stating a criticism in unvarnished form, but their virtues far outweigh their vices.
Why We Prefer Blunt People
Here are my 5 top reasons for preferring blunt people to the non-blunt:
1. Honest. The bottom line regarding blunt people is that you can have a high degree of confidence that they are telling the truth. Consequently, you can trust blunt people, and that trust is valuable. You can confidently act on information they provide, you can turn to them for meaningful opinions (about yourself or anything else), and you can easily understand them.
2. Unambiguous. At a more fundamental level, you can understand what a blunt person is saying. Non-blunt speakers often hide their opinions in doublespeak and shaded meanings, but a blunt person just says it straight out. Blunt people are preferred conversation partners because you do not have to read their minds to understand what they are trying to communicate.
3. Sincere. As noted above, blunt people will sometimes hurt your feelings. For example: “Wow, I really don’t like that shirt.” You might prefer not to receive such a direct criticism, but look at the flipside of this phenomenon. When a blunt person says, “Hey, I really like that shirt,” you can be confident that his/her praise is sincere. A compliment from a non-blunt person means nothing; he/she might be telling a white lie to protect your feelings. At least the blunt person is sincere.
4. Refreshing. Even at their worst, blunt people are refreshing. I love it when I am in a group discussion in which everyone is posturing and beating around the bush, and then a blunt person steps in and concisely states the very fact people are avoiding. A good blunt statement can cut right through the politically correct mumbo-jumbo that fills our discourse. At a visceral level, I prefer a good, refreshing dose of reality to a smarmy, qualified, people-pleasing statement any day of the week.
5. Brief. One great feature about the truth is that it can usually be stated in one sentence or less. Lies and distortions, on the other hand, require a lot of fancy verbiage and tend to take a long time. With a blunt friend, you can have a meaningful 1-minute conversation. With a pandering, white-lie-telling, non-blunt friend, the same conversation will take half an hour. Perhaps you prefer long conversations; if so, you might want to hang around non-blunt types. I like snappy, meaningful conversations, though, so I prefer the blunt.
There are, I admit, times when a non-blunt approach to oral communication might be preferred. For example, there is rarely a good reason to state negative truths about the deceased at a funeral. Generally, though, the blunt approach is more useful, reliable, and concise. Blunt people, therefore, are generally preferred.
