Hey Everybody,
Sorry for the inconvenience... I am in the middle of my move and as a result do not have my posts (this weeks body language tutorial) has been finished but resides on my server (which is packed away in a uhaul...). I will resume with things "normally" on Monday (I hope, my internet will theoretically be up). I will be without any internet at all tomorrow so will be out of contact. Again, I apologize in advance and thank every one for their patience.
The Communication
Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication
Expert Blog
Body language is a fairly broad and complex topic. It is a fascinating subject and the most alluring aspect seems to be the concept of detecting deception. The term deception has a very negative connotation from a linguistic standpoint. When we think of deception we think of lying, cheating and black alley dealings with no other intent but to injure the other party in one way shape or form.
Deception though is simply a misrepresentation. Although it can hurt someone, it can also prevent them from being hurt. Take the following example… Your wife asks you if you think it would be ok for her to order one more truffle for desert. You are thinking “NO!” but at the end of the day you love her and want her to be happy and in your values hierarchy, her happiness outweighs your desire for her to be thinner… so you deceive her and say “sure… that sounds like a good idea.”
Never the less, it is of great benefit to you as a communicator to have the OPTION of:
- Knowing whether you are being manipulated by deceit. And
- Possessing the ability to utilize body language to your own advantage through either misrepresentation or amplified representation of your own information.
Let’s talk about some background information regarding body language and deceit and then we can move through some of the specifics…
THE HISTORY OF DECEPTION
Take a walk in time with me back about 200,000 years to view “man” in his daily routine. He wakes up, hunts and forages, has sex whenever possible and does his best to protect himself from predators, the elements and other humans and then goes to sleep to start this all over again the next day.
The concept of the “future” to him is not (was not) the same concept we have today. He basically did not have the powerful prefrontal cortex that modern man does… so almost all behavior was stimulus response. Hungry? Search for food. Cold? Find shelter. See attractive mate? Well you get the idea… No planning, no farming, no preparing… His mind just dealt with the here and now.
In that time, aside from body language no one had the ability to effectively communicate outside of getting the attention of other humans by grunting. The body language that spontaneously “occurred” was very much stimulus response driven. This means that it was nonconsciously driven and as a result was a DIRECT indication of what has happening internally to the mind of the originator. Deception basically did not exist…
As the prefrontal cortex grew with the evolution of man, two things… MAJOR things happened as a result.
- Our ability to understand and prepare for the “future”, AND
- Our ability to communicate… specifically, with language.
Although the origins of deception are all but theories in text (as there is no real way to PROVE how it came about) evolutionary psychologists believe that it began with mating preferences…
There are two broad classifications that “preferences” can be lumped into:
- Physical/genetic attributes. These are height, fat content, symmetry, musculature, etc… These are very much stimulus response “interests”. They can be readily assessed and their purpose is served immediately upon conception of a child.
- Provisioning. These are attributes such as resources, interest in rearing a family, display of interest in sharing, etc… The entire concept of preparation for the future is a direct result of our massive prefrontal cortex. The provisioning concept is a side effect of this. This is not immediate or simply stimulus response…
Now do to the longevity of the gestation period and the female’s “hindered” ability to hunt and gather while rearing a child, she was generally the one doing the “selecting” when two humans would mate. Now, here was (and still is) her conundrum…
From an inter-sex viewpoint, the physically superior males (bigger, stronger, faster, etc…) have a much larger selection of females than do their physically inferior male counterparts. As a result, the probability of them sticking around to help rear the children (hunting, gathering, protecting, etc…) is MUCH less than the inferior males who have a far smaller pool in which to “fish”. Surprise, surprise… they would do the old hit and run routine and move onto the next woman. This is less than ideal for the females…
What this meant to the women was a trade off between good genetics (and a higher probability of safety and survival after birth. So what is a woman to do??? The answer… Lie. Deceive the “stay at home” male with the inferior physical genetics so that he will stay around while becoming pregnant by the genetically superior male… Guess what, this works… We see it even today and the rest is history…
Deceit later became a “tool” for the individual who was not
able to use force or physical ability to achieve their goals, what ever they
may be. A physically weaker man could use ingenuity or trickery to obtain
resources such as food or land from physically stronger men. This also fit’s
very nicely into the least energy principle that humans will follow by allowing
some to “get” without “giving”. When a verbal gesture could provide goods and
services INSTEAD of a physical action, the person had in effect been extremely
efficient for themselves. This meant/means maximum gain for minimal effort… Deceit,
the proverbial “equalizer” established its effectiveness and is here to stay.
Please visit me at The Communication Expert to learn more about body language and other forms of effective communication.
The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
To refresh from yesterday, we discussed the physical parent of a thought being in the form of a neural net. When working to persuade someone, what we are in effect doing is attempting to get someone to change a belief. Any decision that “dictates” action is a belief… whether it is as complex as moving forward with a divorce or as simple as waiting for a commercial to get up for a glass of soda.
The examples above and all beliefs/decisions for that matter need to have a perimeter around them for them to exist and function. This perimeter is where you want to focus efforts in order to introduce NEW information into the belief to change it. This perimeter is “constructed” from a number of different informational components. There are 5 major factors that come into play when you mind is constructing a belief/decision. It uses these factors to turn the thought into something that is processable, manageable and useable to you.
Each one of these categorical factors is a doorway through which you can introduce new information into the belief system or decision to transform it into something new… Hopefully into the direction of the decision or belief that you are attempting to persuade them to. The 5 categories are:
1. Abstraction level – All thoughts need to be held at some level of abstraction. The abstraction level is the level of complexity, or specificity that an object/subject is being evaluated at or compared to. In other words, how much detail and specificity are you taking into consideration when beholding an objects existence?
When I say “car”, are you thinking “fuel injection system” or are you thinking “transportation”? Fuel injection is specific, transportation is NOT. Any thought, inextricably, is held at a level of abstraction. By changing to focus of that level, you are going to change the perimeter around that thought.
Ex. Chunking Down
Joe: “I really don’t want to go to that party tonight…”
Cathy: “What specifically about the party is causing trouble for you?”
This is taking Joe’s “belief” boundary and sucking it down to a smaller component. This breaks the perimeter down into another animal all together.
2. Logic – I call this category “logic” but what this comprises is really any “rationalizations” that are used to support the belief. I know, I know… all of the social psychologists are screaming at me right now because of the subconscious aspects of decision making. But we are looking at ways to permeate and change the perimeter, not necessarily exorcize this belief all together. Working with this category can and will do that.
When holding the decision in place, your mind will always focus on the information that supports this decision and filter out the information that does not. By working in this realm, we are reintroducing the information that has already been filtered out.
Ex. Counter Example
Joe: “I think going to that party is a really bad idea…”
Cathy: “What circumstances will make it a good idea?”
This can and will draw Joe’s Attentional processes out of their laser focus and into another set of information that will penetrate the perimeter of his current belief/decision.
3. Meaning/Identity – What this is referring to is the actual “result” that your mind has in place as the consequence of this belief. Again, in order to create a perimeter and establish the belief/neural net there has to be a consequence in place. Usually, the consequence that the subconscious has in place is not actively extended into the cognitive mind. Never the less, there is indeed a cause – effect link underlying this. Refocusing OUTSIDE to other meanings will penetrate this perimeter.
Ex. Ecology Check
Joe: “This party is really going to be a buzzkill…”
Cathy: “How do you see this party helping your social network?”
This draws Joe’s mind outside of current negative cause-effect link to evaluate other positive cause-effect consequences. This will expand the perimeter and change it’s size and shape.
4. Perceptual Position – Any belief or decision is held from a particular perceptual position. A perceptual position is the “viewpoint” that a scenario is being viewed from. First person is that you are looking at things through your own eyes. Second person means that you are viewing things through the eyes of your communication partner. Third person means that you are viewing things from a perspective that is “above” both yourself and any communication partner. Conceptually, any decision or belief “exists” from one of the above view points. Almost always, it is initially held in the first person position.
Ex. Specific Third Party
Joe: “I get nervous for some reason when I think about going to this party…”
Cathy: “How do you think Max Power (their sophisticated, worldly powerful friend) gets himself prepared to go to one of these?”
This draws Joe’s mind outside of the current perimeter to do two things. 1. Look at it from the viewpoint of someone who is confident, 2. Evaluate empowering preparation strategies. This will indeed break open the perimeter of this current belief.
5. Time – When a decision or belief has been made, it will have a particular and specific temporal position in place. Preferences that are based on evolved characteristics will almost definitely place this temporal position in the “here and now” category. This means that the outcome that is being held will only factor in the present time frame. The “causes” will only be from the current time frame. This temporal position is a major component in developing the perimeter around your beliefs / decisions.
Ex. Eternity Frame
Joe: “I am not going to go to the party…”
Cathy: “Imagine you are sitting in your rocking chair… 50 years from now looking back on your life. How do you think never going to another party again will have hurt your life?”
This will blow out the perimeter on Joe’s belief by drawing him out into the future to evaluate from that temporal position rather than just the here and now.
This is not a comprehensive list… There are several other examples of specific patterns that can blow out these perimeters. That being said, this is a great start for you in your own work on sleight of mouth patterns.
As always, please visit me at The Communication Expert to learn more about sleight of mouth patterns and other forms of effective communication.
The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
Communication is the physiological and verbal manifestation of the string of thoughts being constructed in the mind of the originator. In other words, what you say and do while speaking to someone is the RESULT of a thought or string of thoughts. Just like communication, all of our other actions are the manifestation of the thoughts we have. The underlying theme of importance is that thoughts CONTROL AND DICTATE our actions.
When we are attempting to persuade someone, what are in effect trying to do is dictate and control their thoughts…
The result of which will hopefully be the action that we want. So let’s discuss thoughts a bit more to help you understand what is going on with someone’s thoughts while you communicate with them. Then we can get into some specific patterns that can help you to literally change their thoughts.
Although a thought is represented as a cloudy, intangible, atmospheric “something” in our mind, it does indeed have a shape or a home per se. The physical form of a thought is what is known as a neural net. Well, more specifically a thought is what can arise when an electrochemical signal is fired through/into that neural net.
A neural net is the grouping of a number of neurons in the brain that have “fired” together (in sequence) one or more times and as a result have formed a chemical bonding of sorts. What happens is that each time an electrochemical signal is sent through the network there is an exchange of different chemical components at the synapse (the gap between the dendrite (receive signals) and the axon (send signals).
The exchange of these chemicals along “strengthens” the connection between each of these neurons and as a result makes the exchange of the electrical signal across the synapse “easier” to occur. Imagine you have a bucket with 2 holes in the bottom of it, one hole is larger than the other one. Each time you pour water into the bucket, more water runs through the larger hole. This causes more erosion around the hole, making it larger and as a result more water runs through it. Pretty soon, almost all of the water is running out of that hole because it is some much larger than the other one.
This hole that has become so large and gobbles up all of the water is the neural equivalent of a habit or compulsion.
Now in order for that hole in the bucket to BE a hole, it has to have a perimeter… Without a perimeter, you have either a completely unbroken bucket bottom or no bottom at all. There is no in between. Thoughts and neural nets are EXACTLY the same way. In order for a thought to be “that exact thought”, it needs to have a perimeter within which this neural net exists. This means that specifically, exactly, certain neurons fire together in order to create each thought. The specific number, kind and sequence IS THE PERIMETER.
Without this perimeter, the exact thought disappears… literally, physically. We are not talking about magically vanishing like a cloud of mist into the rising sun. We are talking about being under an FMRI machine that used to see a circular shaped neural net and now sees what looks like a longer jagged shape. PHYSICALLY CHANGED THOUGHTS.
This perimeter is the exact point at which persuasion and influence takes place. Period.
In knowing and understanding this piece of information, we can now see where our efforts need to be focused while persuading.
- Understanding what exactly that perimeter consists of in their mind.
- What types of communication can we use in order to permeate and remold that perimeter.
In effect, we are looking to introduce new information that can and will remold and remodel that shape, size and quantity value of that neural nets perimeter. We have already spoken about this to a degree in my other posts on quantum linguistics. Tomorrow what I am going to do is introduce to you Sleight of Mouth Patterns and discuss a few to see how they work specifically to help change this perimeter.
As always, please visit The Communication Expert to learn more about Sleight of Mouth Patterns and other forms of effective communication.
If you are going to effectively communicate with someone it is imperative that you ensure that they are both hearing and understanding what it is that you are say. This is difficult to know for two reasons:
- We have developed incredibly powerful subconscious and automatic social mechanisms that help us to facilitate the flow of conversation. Head nods, “uh-huhs” and “mmm’s” are a few of the automatic and more often than not, meaningless recognition gestures that we use. These types of gestures are generally for the purpose of buying time and keeping rapport while communication is constructed mentally.
- Do to the buffering capacity of the phonological loop, even if someone is not mentally processing the content of what you are saying they can still repeat back the last sentence or two that you fed them. A subcomponent of the phonological loop, the subvocal rehearsal loop, repeats content as it is evaluated and this allows someone to regurgitate your last piece of communication regardless of their actual “attachment” to it.
This means that without some active participation on your part, you can’t know for certain that they are processing your information. One of the best ways to know is by using your own sensory acuity to monitor their responses to see if they are congruent with the information you are attempting to communicate.
Sensory acuity is the ability to observe minute changes in a person’s physiology, tonality and/or verbal content in response to your communication or other outside forces. Responding appropriately is an entirely different ball of wax. For the time being, let’s just stick with detecting the changes first.
VOICE
- Tempo – This is the rate at which someone is speaking to you. Is this speeding up, slowing down or staying the same? Speeding up will indicate excitement, anxiousness or anger. Slowing down is an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
- Volume – This is how loudly someone is speaking. An increase in volume can and usually does indicate an increase in excitement, anxiousness or anger. A decrease in volume is usually an indication of relaxation, comfort and development of rapport.
- Pitch – This is the “height” with which someone is speaking. A higher pitch can mean a movement toward femininity and therefore toward a subordinate role in the conversation. A lower pitch is a drift toward masculinity and can indicate an attempt toward a dominant role in the conversation.
- Verbiage/content– What are they talking about? Is the content of their responses in line with what you are talking about? Do their questions reflect your subject area? Do their responses indicate that they have actually processed your information? Did they actually answer your question, or did they through out a fallacy or other piece of information that diverts attention?
PHYSIOLOGY
- Posture – This is the positional attributes of the persons body during your communication. A slumped posture can indicate any number of things, but suffice it to say that it is “without energy”. An erect or tenser body position indicates “energy”.
- Movement – Are they like a dead fish or a spastic monkey or any where in between? Again lack of movement will indicate “without energy” and movement will indicate “energy”.
- Stance – This is the position of their feet, hips, torso and arms/hands in relation to your body. There are a number of different stances that can indicate a number of different things. The intricacies are fodder for another post. For our purposes here, we are simply looking for engagement. Are they at least facing you within the 45 degree mark?
- Muscular contraction – Is there comfort or tension in their muscles? Is there a relaxed limpness or does it appear that they are ready for action?
FACE
- Lips – Their lips can range anywhere from parsed and thin from contraction to full and pouty. The meaning of each can range from anger to anxiety to sadness to flirting to comfort. What is important for your purpose is whether it is congruent with the content of your communication.
- Eye contraction – Much like the lips, eyes can be slight and squinting with little dilation all the way to fully open and fully dilated. This can represent anger and distaste to extreme interest and enjoyment.
- Jaw – The jaw is a great barometer for tension in a person. Is it loose and a bit open or tense, closed and possibly grinding? A loose jaw represents general comfort and engagement. A tense, closed jaw represents anxiety and tension in one way shape or form.
- Forehead – Your forehead is a good indicator of emotion and there are numerous positions that indicate numerous things. The point of our post is to establish engagement though so it is important that their forehead movement be congruent with the content of your speech. Exciting verbiage and body language should be followed by an uprising brow and pulling back of the forehead.
- Skin – What is the general tone of the skin. If you are moving from a mundane and boring topic to an exciting topic there should be a slight change in skin tone from the flush of blood moving to the face and vice versa. If you are moving from exciting to relaxing, there should be a slight change in tone toward a more colorless state.
- Accessing cues – Are they spending time in the appropriate areas? If you are describing visual components, are they looking upwards during your communication or left and right or downward? There should be at least some congruence with the content of your speech otherwise it is safe to say that they are constructing something else.
- Eye contact – This is bit of a debated topic and really is circumstantial. If you are scolding someone, they SHOULDN’T be making full eye contact as they would be in a submissive position. If they are, then they have other things going on inside of their head. Normally though, good eye contact that is ENGAGED (this means not glossed over) should be maintained.
This is not a comprehensive listing, but is pretty close and more than enough to get you going in the right direction. If you are cognizant of these attributes and become proficient at monitoring them you will become EXPONENTIALLY more effective in your communication than you are right now, I promise.
To learn more about effective communication, please visit my website The Communication Expert.
Due to the harsh realities of the world and the undeniable necessity to have a mentally stable “human” pass genes on from generation to generation, the evolution of a mind that can ward off negative emotion is one of the end results...
There are four major factors that are working constantly to assure that our concept of self and our sense of reality stays in check and there is a fifth mechanism that helps to facilitate their usage during communication. Let’s discuss these first and then we can get into the practical mechanisms we can use to work within the confines of this system.
1. The Psychological Immune System. Due to the unpredictable nature of our own response to negative emotions, we have developed what has been termed in the psychological community as a “Psychological Immune System”. Our psychological immune system is in place to help us cope with potential or actual negative life events and these could be anything from death to rejection to loss in competition, etc… Simply put, people’s psychological immune systems help them to cope with horrible life events (Fiske, Susan T. 2004)
Our psychological immune system includes among other things defense mechanisms, affective forecasting, durability biases, ego defense, rationalization, dissonance reduction, motivated reasoning, self-serving attribution, etc… This is the culprit of our powerful drive to be “right” in our discourses rather than to be “effective”.
This immune system is “running” in the background of our mind constantly… monitoring for possible offenders of its predetermined rules and ready to enact any one of the necessary mechanisms to defend your concept of self.
2. Cognitive biases. These are deviations from what would be considered statistically correct or rational judgments. If we were able to erase all emotion from our own decision process, these types of biases would not exist. However, since erasing emotion can’t be done these are inherent in most decision making processes. The biases have a powerful filtering and directionalizing effect on our information processing both from an input and output standpoint.
3. Attentional processing. This is the governing of what type of information our mind will sort for at any given time. Depending on what core drives our mind “sees” any conversation potentially fulfilling, it will drive the conversation toward that end. This causes us to sort for, filter and re-present information that will help bring the conversation toward achieving the goal of helping to ultimately fulfill that drive. Evolved interests such as propagation, safety, socialization, status, etc… are underlying determinants in our Attentional processing.
4. Limited brain capacity. Our brain, as powerful as it is, can only handle and process a limited amount of information at any given time. Only 5, plus or minus 2 “subjects” can be dealt with dynamically at any given moment. This places our brain in a situation where it needs to make instant and definite decisions as to what information it will hold and process and these filters are mostly based on, among other things, the three factors above.
5. Working memory. Working memory is a temporary store for recently activated items of information that are currently considered important to the task at hand. This information can be taken in, processed and moved out of short term memory via this system. The main components are the central executive, the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop.
Both the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop act as “buffer stores” where newly acquired information (such as verbiage, speech tonality, body language etc…) is taken in, processed and either dealt with or discarded depending on its “usefulness” in the task at hand. These processes happen automatically while your mind is “thinking” in the background as to what you are going to say next in the conversation.
We talk at a rate of between 200 – 400 words per minute. The actual rate of linguistic thought is debatable, but suffice it to say that it is exponentially faster than verbalized speech. Due to this our mind is free to do a whole lot of processing in the back ground while it is being communicated to.
So what does all of this mean? Almost conclusively, while you are talking to someone their mind is:
- Determining how this conversation fits into the overall framework of satisfying evolved drive/s.
- Constructing “communication” that will help it achieve the goal of being “right”(rather than effective) which will bring it closer to its goal/s of fulfilling core drives.
- Watch out for any information that may “harm it” by either showing that its concept of reality is incorrect or that as a human you are not as fast, strong, good looking, smart or powerful as it “knows” you are.
- If it hears negative information, it discards it. If it hears positive information, it processes it and uses it to further its own goals.
- If it is forced to deal with negative information, it will selectively find/and/or create information to debunk it.
All of this is happening in their mind, while your speech and body language is bouncing around in their working memory being filtered as their mind is constructing their “answer” to your communication.
Now this doesn’t mean that we are basically screwed when it
comes to completely conveying our own side of the story in our communication.
It does take skill and it takes patience, but it can be done.Now that you understand what governs, or should I say steals
away someone’s attention while you are communicating with them, we can get into
some specific methods for monitoring someone during conversation.
This can help you to understand where someone is, mentally, during your communication so that you may enact other strategies, methods and content to more effectively further your efforts. One of the most important things that we can do to ensure this is employ the usage of sensory acuity. Tomorrow, we will get into the specifics of sensory acuity so that you can begin enacting this right…
As always, please visit my site The Communication Expert to learn more about sensory acuity and other methods of effective communication
Literally, the most difficult challenge in communication is in ACCURATELY representing the concept or feeling that you are. Without extensive analysis and research, the average person is completely unaware of how INACCURATELY they are communicating their thoughts.
Thanks to evolved processes such as heuristics, metaphoric and analogical, stereotypes and predictive categorization that occur during experiential and language processing, we are still able to make functional sense of each other’s communication.
Suffice it to say though, that when you are describing a night out with the girls… The visual, auditory and somatic/kinesthetic representations that your mother is having are NOT the same as yours.
Much of the information we have been learning in my posts has been moving toward helping us to more ACCURATELY convey the content of our thoughts. An incredibly important part of communication though is in working within the attentional process of your recipient to ensure that they are receiving the information.
It is INCREDIBLY important that you understand what is going on mentally in your communication partner’s head WHILE you are talking to them.
Dynamically and interactively, there are a million different things happening from one second to the next. Foundationally and fundamentally there are some things going on that you can be certain of, and as a result should be worked within to effectively communicate.
It is safe to assume 3 things are going on while you are talking to someone:
- They are going to do what is in their best interest; this will be their goal in any communication.
- To achieve this, people will filter and process only certain types of information during your discourse.
- Most of their brain power will be used to construct their OWN attempts to persuade you.
Let’s talk a little bit about why this happens…
Imagine your having a difficult day… You lost a deal at work, your boss yelled at you, maybe your spouse picked a fight... What ever it is, when these things happen a few times you might get angry, depressed or even sad. Their affect on your mood, your actions and your overall efficacy is substantial.
Now imagine you wake up under some logs placed against a tree for shelter. You slept in the dirt, have no food and no stores to go get it. You need to hunt and forage today if you are going to eat. You have to carry a stick or a sharp rock with you for protection from predators. There are no laws and no other people to protect you.
You may starve or be killed or freeze to death at any moment… Do you think you might be depressed from this?
Well this is how life was for our ancestors… Because of this reality that they faced, we have been evolutionarily blessed with processes that go a long way toward keeping us mentally stable. Unfortunately, these very processes can have adverse affects on our ability to fully comprehend someone’s communication.
Tomorrow we will talk about some of the specific processes that we battle to gain brain share with someone we are communicating to and then we will follow that up with specific examples of what we can do to monitor someone’s attentional processing to further our own effective communication.
As always, please visit my website The Communication Expert to learn more about sensory acuity and other forms of effective communication.
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Yesterday we broke into presuppositions by defining the phrase and talking a bit about what they are. Today we are going to get into a bit more of a sharper focus and talk about some specific examples. First, let's talk about what they "DO" to someone when you use them...
Imagine that you wake up one morning and you find yourself in a room... no doors, no windows... nothing but a light at the top. You are hungry, thirsty, scared... What the hell happened? How did I get here? As you begin to gather your senses, you look around and there on the floor is a big sheet of paper labels with "DIRECTIONS FOR GETTING OUT OF HERE"...
You run and grab it and sure enough... this paper explains exactly what this room is, how you got here and how to get out... You follow them to a tee and BLAM... You are spit out as a sentence...
In this analogy, you are a "thought" and the paper is the battery of "presuppositions" that support you. Without this list of presuppositions, you are trapped for ever... As a result, the only way that anyone's thoughts will ever be processed and/or reach the surface is by "reading" this list of information.
In other words, thoughts and speech DO NOT WORK without presuppositions and this is actually of great benefit to us... If you know what you want to "happen" inside someone's mind, you do have control over achieving this... You can help to dictate what "list" of information they are reviewing at the subconscious level… This list is a huge part of the construction of the visual, auditory and somatic “experience” that our language creates inside someone’s head.
Although the exact amount of presuppositions is a debatable figure, there are 8 categories in particular that are of major importance in the realm of persuasion and effective communication. They are:
1. Existence - Certain characteristics or objects must "exist" in order for this type of phrase to be plausible.
2. Awareness - Certain pieces of information must be necessarily "known" and as such in your communication partner’s awareness for these phrases to be understood.
3. Possibility - The concept of choice OR necessity (lack of choice) is automatically present in order for these phrases to mentally "work".
4. Temporal - Certain expanses of time are "present" in these phrases (past, present and/or future) which indicate that something already happened, is happening, ongoing and/or will happen in the future.
5. Ordinal - Sequential occurrences are inherent in these phrases and indicate a predetermined order of events.
6. Exclusive/inclusive or - Strict categorization occurs in these phrases and inclusion or exclusion of certain information is necessary in order for your mind to understand these.
7. Cause-effect - These phrases will necessitate that your mind place things in either the action-origination category or the action-receiving category of a phrase.
8. Complex Equivalence - In order for a certain categorization or phrase to exist, certain qualities will be "understood" as existing for these to make sense mentally.
So when you are using presuppositions in your communication, you are basically forcing your recipient into a door-less, windowless room with a list of instructions... and they aren't getting out until they read that list of instructions, understand them and then follow them…
The list of presuppositions is very long so we will gloss over just a couple with some examples for you to see how they work.
Change of State Verbs - CHANGE, TRANSFORM, TURN INTO, BECOME. These are for the purpose of indirectly stating that a person, place or thing is and/or was "something". These are a great buffer if you are attempting to suggest something, gently. Two great areas are if you want to compliment someone indirectly or if you want to tell someone that they are in some negative "class" or “state”.
Ex. Let’s say I am looking to inadvertently compliment a woman:
- Without presupposition – You are hot. (Caveman style…)
- With presupposition – It would take some serious effort for you to BECOME an undesirable woman…
She needs to be desirable in the first place for her to turn into undesirable.
Ex. Let’s say I want to let my girlfriend know that maybe the dress doesn’t fit quite as well as she would like…
- Without presupposition – That dress fits like the OJ glove…
- With presupposition – I think with just a few changes we can TRANSFORM that into an amazing fit…
The dress needs to NOT fit for it to TRANSFORM into an actual fit.
Change of Place Verbs - COME, GO, LEAVE, ARRIVE, DEPART, ENTER. These presuppose that some place exists (otherwise how could someone be leaving it? Or how could someone arrive somewhere if it isn't there?) They can also presuppose that someone or something was AT a certain place at one time or another.
These are really great if you don't want to look like you are trying to hammer something home or really show that you are attached to the something. These can also make you look innocent in your knowledge of something. If you are negotiating or persuading, it can be helpful to you if you don’t show all of your cards per se.
Ex. Let’s say I am asked by a colleague to meet them for drinks this Friday evening.
- Without presupposition – “No, I really am to busy…”
- With presupposition – “I’ll be LEAVING JFK right around that time… sorry.”
If I am just LEAVING JFK at that time, I have to NOT be here in order for that to happen.
Ex. Let’s say that I want to tell my friend that his guitar playing is terrible.
- Without presupposition – “Your guitar playing is terrible”.
- With presupposition – “With more practice I think you will finally ARRIVE at the level of playing you want…”
For him to ARRIVE at that level, he must not be there in the first place.
Presuppositions can be extremely cover and powerful forms of communication. To learn more about presuppositions and other forms of effective communication please visit my website The Communication Expert.
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate other information than what they are explicitly stating. In other words, this is the study of other facets of communication that help us to reach our own communication goals.
One of the most powerful and influential tools for conversational directionalization that has arisen out of pragmatics is the usage of presuppositions. A presupposition is basically the information that is assumed to be TRUE and/or is assumed to EXIST in order for a sentence to be plausible.
When we communicate with someone, there are a vast number of processes and procedures constantly being executed in our minds. In particular, there is constant referencing of past experiences and stored data in order to make sense of the other person’s communication.
Linguistically, when you “hear” words, they are processed by a number of different areas in our brain (Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, basal ganglia, etc…). Although each area has it’s own specific function, the most important part is the referencing of the recognized word with existing information in the brain. With out this, any word is just another sound…
Take this for example, say we are having a conversation about the picnic that I was at last week. I elaborate a story to you about how my drunk uncle was dancing around when he slipped and fell head first into a used “dweezlesnap”…
You would be clicking right along with me until I threw out the word “dweezlesnap”… this would throw you through a loop because you don’t know what the hell it is. WHY don’t you know what it is? Because you have nothing in your mind to reference this with… No data attached to it visually, phonetically or linguistically(data).
What if I told you that a “dweezlesnap” was white and had elastic on it? You would now have a larger battery of references to work with to make sense of this word… What if I told you it is something that babies wear? We have added more referencing information…Still don’t get it yet? How about I tell you that babies defecate and urinate in it? I think you now have enough information to know that “dweezlesnap” is just another name for a diaper.
The difference between the term “dweezlesnap” and “diaper” is that the term “diaper” has a vast number of underlying assumptions and attributes attached to it that help to make it meaningful.
- It is plastic
- It has elastic
- It is generally white
- Babies wear it
- It can contain human waste, etc…
Now take this concept and apply it to phrases… Presuppositions are the underlying information that must exist and be held true in order for a phrase to “work” in our mind. When you talk to someone you naturally use presuppositions all of the time. Their strength and the power comes into play when you are able to use them on cue to help facilitate your own communication goals.
Almost conclusively, when you are attempting to persuade someone, you can’t simply come right out and say exactly what you want the other person to do… I can hear all of the idealists out there shouting “you should be able to just be open and let people know exactly what you want…” Yah, well I say “coulda, shoulda, woulda…” That isn’t how the real world works.
You can come outright with your request, but in most instances it will not result in the outcome you want… Either they just won’t do it, or they will do it begrudgingly and although this may win the “battle” for you, you will lose the proverbial war as it will do damage to your relationship (personal or professional).
So the question comes to bear, how can you convey your information in a manner that is below the “critical thinking radar” AND still effective? Aside from hypnotic language, presuppositions are another powerful tool to accomplish this…
Tomorrow we will talk about some specific examples of presuppositions and what they do for us… As always, please visit my website The Communication Expert to learn more about effective communication skills.
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Decision making has been an inherently interesting subject for the field of psychology. In understanding the process by which people make decisions, it is significantly easier to predict and direct their behavior…
The term “decision” is important to define and understand… When I say “decision”, many people are envisioning a buying decision which is fair enough. But decisions are involved at just about every single turn in our life. When you heard the noise to your right while reading this, you made a “decision” to look that way, or not. When you were walking toward a man on the street last week you made a “decision” to move left or right. When you were in Macy’s, you made a decision to NOT buy certain items...
The actual definition is “the passing of judgment on an issue under consideration” per the freedictionary.com. The question that comes to bear is, where is the judgment made. Traditionally (a long time ago…) it was thought that when a decision was made, you did this cognitively. In other words:
- You want a red sports car BECAUSE it is red and you know it goes fast.
- You purchase the sports car and THEN you feel good.
Well, this is a myth… Actually things do not occur like this at all.
Decisions are made at the subconscious level, well before they reach our awake/conscious mind.
Let’s take a look at what is really going on internally with the cliché scenario of the mid life crisis.
- You are sitting in your house at 45 years old and feeling lonely because you are now divorced and have no girlfriend…
- Deep down in side your have “lonely” labeled as “bad” due to social norms established in your subconscious.
- Your subconscious goes to work figuring out how to get rid of “lonely”…
- It knows that “lonely” is due to NOT having a woman around, so how do you get a woman?
- It knows that Don Johnson in “Miami Vice” always had women. He lived on a boat and drove a sports car.
- You know NOTHING about boats, but cars… yes. Sports car = getting women.
- Your subconscious MAKES THE DECISION to get a sports car and sends back up to you (your cognition) a visual of a sports car with you driving it and picking up women.
- This visual causes the other parts of your brain to release a mixture of hormones that cause certain sensations that feel “GOOD”… These break the lonely feeling.
- NOW, your cognitive mind begins to place overt and logical reasons AROUND this pre-made decision to pacify “you” (your conscious, awake mind is “you”, your personality…) regarding purchasing it.
- You begin to say things internally like “I really deserve to get a sports car, I worked hard…” or “I just need some fun and then I will be back to normal”…
- WE NOW CALL THESE RATIONALIZATIONS OUR DECISION.
Like it or not, this is what is going on… Do we have conscious control over the actual decision? Yes, of course, should you decide to control it. Most people have very limited control over this though and exercise it in only the direst of circumstances…
Back to our post… which has to do with cognitive decisions. Although they are not necessarily the most important part of general decision making, they are an important part. Understanding someone’s rationalization strategy is an extremely important part of the persuasion process.
If someone is not able to place rational reasons or logic around a particular decision, it can become extremely difficult to make that very decision. So it is really important to understand what belief systems someone uses to dictate their behavior around a certain subject.
There are a number of different cognitive belief systems, too many to get into in just one post. Let’s take a look at a couple surrounding “relationships”… You are sitting down to breakfast with your newly acquired girlfriend (a direct result of the red sports car J ) and you want to understand her better to make this relationship work. After some rapport building you launch into the following two questions:
BROAD ELICITATION
“What do you think a guy SHOULD do in order to make a relationship work?”
This word “should” is a very powerful and illuminating word. When people use the word “should” in their terminology, you are getting a look at the tip of a very influential iceberg in their mind.
By asking this question, she will communicate a list of “rules” that she has set in her subconscious and are showing up in her cognitive thinking process. You NEED to know this if you are going to satisfy her needs…
One of her answers what that “a man should always let the woman do what ever she wants without recourse…” (Sounds like you picked a winner here…) To hone in on this, you will elicit another one of her “rules” in the following focused elicitation:
FOCUSED ELICITATION
“So… EITHER the man let’s the woman do what ever she wants, OR what happens…?”
Her response may be “OR the woman leaves him never to return”, or it may be “OR the woman will whine about it for 3 days…” Regardless of the response, you have elicited two extremely telling RULES that govern her action on a relationship setting.
Either OR phrases again are extremely telling statements. These are the result of dichotomization occurring due to our minds drive to categorize information for instant recall.
In knowing what a person’s “shoulds” and “either-or’s” are, you have a powerful tool in persuading them. You can now tailor your communication to match up with their cognitive rules. This will help them to better accept the decisions you are persuading them to make.
There are a vast number of rules and sets of elicitation strategies that are necessary to know if you want to have a successful relationship, whether business or personal.
Please visit my website The Communication Expert to learn more about eliciting other cognitive rules and other forms of effective communication.
