User:Men's Rights EXTREMIST/Supplication vs. conscientiousness

Supplication can be a case of saying, "Please, please do x for me; I'll do anything just in hopes that you might think about perhaps giving me what I want!"

Whereas conscientiousness could be where you say, "I'll do anything, because it's my duty to!" You're not even necessarily asking or pleading for anything in return.

A truly conscientious person can get mistreated his whole life and still believe he's serving the greater good. He can say, "I'm doing my part, even if others aren't." For example, a devoted follower of Joseph Stalin, who gets sent to the gulag because of his leader's paranoia, may think, "Stalin erred, but I still did the right thing by following him. His error in this one particular case does not invalidate the goodness of my actions, because overall, communism is a good system and he is mostly a good leader."

Someone committed to a relationship might think, "They could still change, 20 years down the line, and all this effort I've invested into the relationship will FINALLY pay off!"

Then, if 20 years later, she's still treating him like shit, he might think, "Well, you win some, you lose some. I gambled and lost, but considering the odds, it was still a good bet at the time. Also, women will see how devoted I was, and realize that they can have faith in men because there are a lot of good guys like me out there. Therefore, in the long run, my self-sacrifice will make a difference toward improving women's opinions of, and therefore behavior toward, men, even if it doesn't seem to have had much effect on this one particular woman."

Most guys will eventually lose faith and say "fuck this" but there will always be a handful of true believers out there who stick it out to the end. There are usually other factors involved too, besides just principle, that keep them following this path, but principle isn't totally absent as a motivating force.

(This example is, of course, equally applicable with genders reversed.)