I bet you think that holding a door opening for anyone is a nice, polite gesture don’t you? Well you’re wrong, because apparently when you hold the door open for a guy you’re actually crushing his masculinity and making him sad. Yes, that’s right – that simple courtesy is actually slowly breaking men’s spirits. The poor lambs.
According to a study by researchers at Purdue University Indiana, holding a door open for a guy lowers their self-esteem and self-confidence compared to guys who opened the door for themselves. For the experiment, researchers walked with a subject into a building with a double door and opened the door for half of the subjects. The men who had a door opened for them reported having lower self-confidence and lower self-esteem than the men who were allowed to open the doors for themselves. Women, who must be less sensitive to this sort of thing, didn’t show any kind of significant response to the (evidently traumatizing) experience.
Maybe the reason behind the drop in confidence is because ‘chivalry’ is seen as a traditionally masculine trait, and helping men in a way that is culturally thought to be just for women is emasulating and bruises their egos. This is clearly more than a little bit silly, so we suggest that everyone continues to be polite and open the door for men until everyone gets a bit more used to the idea. That, or they could all just grow a pair.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.