8 posts tagged “communicate”
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
You’re standing there looking out over the ledge… The sun is really bright and all of your friends are there. It is a pretty long ways down; it has to be more than ten feet! The water looks deep and it sure is murky, actually it is mesmerizing in an undulating kind of way. You lost the bet with some new comer to your group and here you are... You almost decide not to do it and as you turn away from the water your betting “buddy” yells out “go ahead, people do it all of the time…” Ok… you jump!
As the pain rips through your leg like a chainsaw you instantly regret your decision. Why the hell would you decide to do this? Well there are a number of psychological mechanisms that brought you to the edge of the water… social recognition, loyalty, need for achievement, etc… But what tipped you over that edge of indecision? The final nail in the coffin is what is known as a Lack of Referential Index statement.
In referencing yesterday’s blog, another little flaw in our mental filing system will at times put us in a lurch unless we keep an eye on it. A Lack of Referential Index statement is one in which the actual subject of the statement has been removed altogether or has been replaced with a general label. In the instance above the statement “people do it all of the time” lacks an actual reference. People can be any number of “persons” with an infinitely varying degree of credibility and authority.
Some examples of Lack of Referential statements are:
“They said it was ok to do.”
“People are never going to go for that.”
“A person could really get into trouble doing that.”
“A husband really needs to take out the trash.”
“We have to get out of here…”
Our minds, in their constant search for cause/effect, predictability and pattern are automatically set up in a way where we instantly register such statements as fulfilling our own threshold for credibility and authority. Let’s reference the example above… Your friend said “people do it all of the time” and “people” is his head represents Larry the town drunk who jumped in last summer and broke his arm before being pulled out of the water and the local skateboard crew who have been at it for years. “People” in your head represents the group of friends behind you that you have known and trusted for years.
In following Grice’s 4 Maxims you non-consciously expected your “buddy” to adhere to your inherent threshold for credibility (Maxim of Relevance). Larry the town drunk and the skateboard crew are not credible enough for the jumper, but are quite credible for the viewer. Unfortunately his threshold for credibility didn’t match yours and had you recognized this up front you may have been able to avoid your broken leg…
So how do you handle this? How do you prevent yourself from becoming a victim of the Lack of Referential index statements? Please visit my website to learn more…
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Our minds, among other things, have an unparalleled filing system... We are
able to take massive amounts of information and store it away for a rainy day.
The mechanism that our mind uses primarily to do so is language. Language is an
amazing thing... With language we are able to take something completely
abstract, such as a picture or a view or a sensation and re-represent this
inside of someone else's mind. On top of all of that, we do it with amazing
efficiency... We are able to take something as abstract and dynamic as a sunset
and re-present this to someone else simply by saying "sunrise"... How
cool is that?
Now, for all of the incredible benefits of this, it still has it's short comings. The almost frightening reality of the matter is that whenever we hear the word "sunrise", inside of every one of use is a completely unique concept of what a sunrise means. For one person it may be a peachy orange glow cresting over the top of a treeless mountain capped with snow. For another it may simply be the light hearted feeling of anticipation that they felt while watching a sunrise with a fated lover... More often than not, it is sufficient to use the term "sunrise" during your communication. It is only when it's accurate representation is necessary to convey a message that we may run into problems.
The term "sunrise" is an illustration of our second categories of deletions and is called a Nominalization. When a process becomes Nominalize it is basically turned into a noun, or a thing. In other words, you are taking an action or a process and turning it into a "thing". Some examples of Nominalizations are relationship, love and emotion along with the term sunrise. The classic test in neuro-semantics is to ask yourself the question of whether or not it (your process term) can be put in a wheelbarrow. If it can, then chances are that it is simply a noun and as a result if considerably more concrete in it's own representation. If it cannot, then you likely have a Nominalization.
Nominalizations notoriously leave out a ton of information when they are use in communication and as a result can cause havoc. Let's reference an example... A familiar Nominalization that causes a ton of problems is "relationship". Couples and spouses alike are in a "relationship". Both participants realize this, but major issues can and usually do come into play when individual definitions of a "relationship" clash or miss each other all together. For person A being in a relationship might mean that they will simply no longer sleep with someone else. For person B it may mean that they will give up their entire life to make the other person happy. I think you can see where we might run into issues in the future… Unless the specific underlying beliefs and expectations about what “relationship” means to each person, they are headed for disaster…
To learn more about Nominalizations and other components of communication, please visit my website.
“I never worry about action, but only about inaction”
Winston Churchill
What did Winston mean exactly? Did he mean defending your self, or making money, or developing relationships maybe? When you hear the word action, what comes to your mind first? It may be any number of things and in staying true to human form it most likely is…
To reference yesterdays VLOG, during communication people will generally meet (just barely) their own threshold of acceptability for Paul Grice’s 4 Maxims. As you will remember, there is the Maxim of Quality, Quantity, Manner and Relation. In staying true to the least energy principle, in communication they will relay just enough information to satisfy these… The communication problems can arise when their subconscious threshold for meeting these 4 Maxims differs from the recipient’s threshold.
Although Winston’s quote is extremely moving… Its functionality may be suspect in every day language. This is due to the blatant usage of Unspecified Verbs. These are process words that are missing a complete description. In other words they are verbs that are, to a greater or lesser degree, unspecified. They may also omit the actual verb, or the object of the verb, or both.
Examples of unspecified verbs are running, touching, hurting, moving and communicating. These verbs can mean any one of a number of different things depending on the situation and what the communicator has in mind. Allow me to illustrate:
Imagine you’re at work and your boss calls you into their office… Word came down from corporate and they want your division to pick up sales and your boss wants you to take care of this… In the meeting the boss’s communication is to “work harder so that your division can make corporate happy…” In an effort to get out of your boss’s office as quickly as possible you agree to “work harder” and shuffle along.
Well three weeks go by and your called to the principles… or I mean boss’s office again to discuss you progress. Upon presenting your numbers you are quickly chided as you haven’t done even half of what you were “supposed to do”. You walk out of the office bewildered and unsure of what to do next…
If you haven’t picked it up yet, the outrageously unspecified verb is “work” in the authorities communication. The verb work is amazingly broad and can mean anything form organizing to time management to specific activity and so on. As a result, you did indeed “work” harder. You stayed later and focused more… What they boss was thinking was that he wanted you to organize some teams so that you could delegate work to them. This may be a bit extreme, but understanding that there is a spectrum from completely unspecified to completely specified will show you that anything can be miscommunicated if we don’t pay attention.
To learn more, please visit my website…
You may have heard the Easter Ham story as it has been passed around for many years. I am going to reference here as it is so indicative of today’s subject. To refresh your memory, it goes something like this… A mother and daughter were in the kitchen getting preparing things for Easter Dinner. The mother pulled the Ham out of the refrigerator and just as she always did, cut the ends off of the ham before she put it into the pot.
Perplexed as to why the mother always cut off the ends of the ham prior to cooking, the daughter asked the mother why. The mother’s response was “because you’re supposed to”… As far as the daughter was concerned, the answer was entirely insufficient. The ham looked like it fit in the pan just fine and the ends of it kind of dried out as a result. This just didn’t make sense… As she pressed the mother further, the mother let her know that her mother (the grandmother) had always done it and she learned from her…
Not to be denied, the daughter decided to call the grandmother to find out the culinary rule that was dictating this dissection of the ham prior to baking. After a few pleasantries the granddaughter asked her grandmother… “Grandma, why do you have to cut the ends of the ham off before you bake it?” The grandmother’s answer was “Well honey, back when we were younger and didn’t have a lot of money we couldn’t afford the proper size pan to bake the ham. Since the one we had was so small, I always had to cut it to make it fit in the pan…” So, in effect the mother was unnecessarily caring out a now useless act…
We will dispense with the moral of the story as that isn’t what we are going after. This little illustrates what is known as a Value Based Judgment. In a literal sense, a Value Based Judgment is a claim of “right” or “wrong” in the objective sense and is based on a value system. In the story above the judgment is that it is right to cut the ham.
Now, although right and wrong are usually matters of subjectivity, it can often be misleading to make these statements without citing the source of the judgment. I think we can all agree that one source may be more credible than another. For instance a professor versus a student in a respective field. When a statement like this is made, one it which the person making the judgment is removed from the judgment itself, it is called a “Lost Performative”.
The psychology of how these types of beliefs are formed is
subject matter for another day. What is important for our purposes hear is to
recognize these types of statements when we hear them. “Boys shouldn’t play
with dolls” or “good girls shouldn’t cry”… These statements represent a major
gap in the foundational information and beliefs that the person is holding
mentally and the actual information they are communicating. This gap is not only responsible for perpetuating misinformation, it can cause havoc on a conversation.
There are a number of ways to spot and rectify these types of statements. To learn more, please visit my website.
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Distortions showing up in our communication come in several different forms and can absolutely plaque our ability to effectively communicate. Once such distortion that rears it’s ugly head often enough is in falsely attributed cause and effect statements. The false attribution is based on erroneously formulated beliefs at the subconscious level and as such often go unchecked. Effective communication skills are necessary in order to neutralize the damaging effects these may have. Allow me to give you a quick example to illustrate my point:
Let's say that your at the office when all of a sudden your boss comes running in screaming that the project deadline has been moved up! You need to run over to this meeting right away in order to rearrange the schedules and make sure that you're going to meet the new deadline. Without a second to lose, you run from your office to the conference room and make sure that everything is okay. Unfortunately, you didn't have a second to stop and call your wife to let her know that you would be home late for dinner. When the meeting finished, rather than calling her you rushed to your car and drove home as quickly as you could. All the while hoping to salvage any semblance of a family meal. As soon as you come to the door you're greeted with a really unhappy wife… When you ask her what's wrong, she replies with "you came home late because you don't love me". This my friends is a falsely attributed cause and effect statement. In your wife's mind at least at this moment she believes that your tardiness is due to the fact that you don't love her. Now we both know that this is incorrect (well at least I think it’s incorrect :-). Before we go further, let's talk about the psychology of this.
Every day we go through life making
a massive amount of decisions especially while communicating with others. Whether big or small it doesn't really
matter, any decision can and generally will cause what's known as cognitive
dissonance. Exploring in depth the
actual definition and causes of cognitive dissonance is fodder for another
article. For our purposes here, all you
need is a surface understanding.
Cognitive dissonance is basically when an individual holds two opposing
beliefs and has what can be an extremely uncomfortable feeling inside.
This can be a major factor in anything from depression to anxiety to overall ineffectiveness during a daily routine. As a result of the anxiety and the discomfort that cognitive dissonance creates, people can become highly motivated to settle on a decision. Often times decisions are made with having incomplete or in certain circumstances almost no information. The outcome of such an instance can be one of two things. First they may simply use information from both their declarative and procedural memory to make a semi-informed decision. Second, they may actually make things up (subconsciously) in order to validate a decision. (Really!) Both processes can cause people to develop these falsely attributed cause and effect beliefs and statements.
In now knowing this, what do you do? Your wife has just told you that you're being late is because you don't love her. Of course there are many times when these cause and effect beliefs are very real and accurate. The reality of the matter is though that you were pressured by your boss and really had no other choice. In fact, you're putting up with the crap you get from your boss BECAUSE you love your wife. Unfortunately, simply telling her this would add best be a futile effort to pacify her fears and anxiety. So how do you handle this effectively?
Most important is that she most likely doesn’t know why she actually feels this way and as a result the “cause” is awarded to your tardiness. Feelings like this are usually based on past experiences such as watching a cheating father come home late time and again… or stories from a friend who’s perpetually late husband wound up leaving her. So what do you do? How can she communicate more effectively? How can you help her to communicate more effectively?
Running into a scenario where someone poses you with what is clearly an incorrect cause and effect statement can be frustrating. As such, handling this appropriately can take quite a bit of effort and tact. There are indeed ways that you can go about neutralizing these statements without ruffling someone else's feathers.
It is also very important to be aware of these types of statements in your own communication. Cause-and-effect statements many times can be metaphorical, but depending on the recipient of your communication they may very well be construed as literal. Choosing your words carefully is important.
How do you handle these types of statements? How can you work with your own thought process to be certain that you're not communicating ineffectively? We talk about this and a whole host of other communication techniques in my series "The Evolved Communicator", please visit my site to learn more.
In following yesterday post on The Culprits of Miscommunication, we will begin by addressing our linguistic or non-verbal “distortions”. The actual distortion per se is not necessarily in the original message or information that shows up in your speech as much as it is in the translation of your message. Keeping in mind that your brain is constantly, relentlessly trying to establish pattern and predictability in your surroundings, it is no wonder communication distortions occur.
“Mind Reading” is one such distortion and can occur in your communication partner’s translation of your message. For instance, let’s say you are out on a date and things seem to be going swimmingly… Your date seems to be really into you, but as usual your starting to run out of things to say. Searching your mind you remember a story that a friend told you earlier that day about a date gone wrong for them. All though it is a bit racy, you go for it anyway… What the heck, things seem comfortable enough.
Well as you get to the end of your story, your dates demeanor changes suddenly and once the check comes they split… What the heck happened? You only told a story about a friend of yours… More on this is a bit, let’s get to the science of it.
The mammalian population has been gifted with what are known as “mirror neurons” in our brains and their sole responsibility is to mimic or imitate the person/animal that we are engaged with. When I say mimic, this doesn’t necessarily mean actually performing the same action as them, but at a minimum internally/mentally mimicking them… the result is the ability to “feel” internally what they are feeling/experiencing at the time. The benefits to this are evident. If we choose to do so, we can learn and implement skills we see. This also facilitates powerful socializing and networking tools we have such as compassion, empathy and teamwork.
Along with this network of mirror neurons, we have a hormone running through us called oxytocin that, although much more prevalent in women, has shown in experiments to greatly increase our ability to “mind read”. Oxytocin is much more concentrated in women as one it’s main functions surrounds the facilitation of reproduction and birth bonding. We are not referring to ESP here, but oxytocin does aid in our ability to more accurately predict what someone is feeling based on our own sensory acuity. This is our reading of their facial expressions, body language, verbiage, etc…
From a psychological stand point, we can only view and understand messages through our own frame of reference. Our frame of reference is analogous to a mental filter through which we “see” the world. When we receive linguistic and nonverbal communication alike, our brain instantly compares that information to our stored knowledge and experience. In this way and only in this way are we able to “understand” the messages we are receiving. As a result, we have an inherently limited capacity to interpret our surroundings. All three of the above mechanisms combine facilitate our capacity to “mind read” during our interactions. Unfortunately, we are only correct a certain percentage of the time… and if it isn’t 100%, we can run into problems.
OK, back to the date… Now, you were only telling a story that you thought was funny in hopes to prevent the weird awkward silence that both of you have been dreading. You were hoping to simply get a laugh out of her… Let’s look at it from your date’s point of view.
Earlier that week she had been on another date with some creepy guy… right before he tried to grab her and make out with her he told her a story very similar to yours… In fact, his facial expressions kind of looked like yours while you were telling that story… So what does this mean? In short, she “felt” like you were going to try something more than simply telling a story. She performed a mind read... Although it was inaccurate, it inevitably happened and your left holding the check and nothing but a bruised sense of self… Less than ideal?
Worthy of note is that this does NOT happen consciously, these are all messages and interpretations happening at the nonconscious level. Without top-down executive control, this will simply “happen” and people (including you) will react automatically and turn the rest of your communication into history…
How do you fix this? Good question and this is something that I get into specifically in my series “The Evolved Communicator”. Please visit me to learn more...
David J. Parnell | Communication Expert
Following yesterdays post on your brain’s processing function, we will begin to delve further into the “reality” that these attentional processes create in your own world. Now, while the focus of your attention is being directed per se by the two major processes we discussed yesterday, it is not necessarily being dissected, evaluated acutely and then purged of unwanted “material” for efficient communication. In other words, a great deal of information is stored that is by no means necessary or even relevant for your survival or thriving success for that matter. So although there is a great deal of purging going on during the initial attentionally biased processing, there is still a massive information glut stored in your brain on a daily basis.
Now our brain has developed and implemented an AMAZINGLY efficient and effective storage, retrieval and re-presentation process in what is known as LANGUAGE. This may seem less than epiphanic, however most people do not know the extent to which language literally constructs their internalized mental world. When I tell you to think of a tree, you will hear the word “tree”, you will say the word “tree” internally, your brain will call upon all of the thousands or millions of concepts surrounding the word “tree” and create a mentally constructed image of a “tree” and then a mental check will occur verifying that “yes, this is indeed a tree”. There is much internal dialogue and communication occurring during this process and the entire movement per se is facilitated and directed by the word “tree”.
Now, let’s extrapolate that out… How about I ask you to guide me in making a decision as to whether or not my significant other and I should have a baby right now… Oh boy is there a lot going on inside your head… The amount of constructing going on internally is huge… You will internally represent a baby, child rearing, schooling, disciplinary challenges, feeding, driving them to soccer practice, etc… Along with all of the visual, auditory and kinesthetic representations will come all of your values, rules and belief systems that surround child rearing. These especially my friends are EXCLUSIVELY represented in language based terms. These rules, values and beliefs are the literal glue that hold your world together… allowing you to make sense of things. Well you get the point here, there is a ridiculously large amount of informational processing occurring that is language based and all of this will be done almost instantly to provide an answer to the question I posed.
Rules, regulations, values and beliefs for the most part are subject matter for another time. Here we will stay focused on the gaps if representing your mental world to the others you are interacting with. Let’s revisit the tree… Now if I ask you to tell me “what a tree looks like”, you will most likely say something along the lines of “well it is tall with green leaves and a brown trunk”…
In adhering to the least energy principle (which we will evaluate in another post) you will give me just enough information to answer the question… as it (the question) has been presented by me (which may very well have gaps of it’s own).
Now, does this accurately represent all of the knowledge you have of a tree? Hardly… There are differently shaped leaves, with different colors, or needles instead of leaves and some have hard chunky bark where as others have almost skin and some are white at the base whereas others may be gray and the leaves have a vein like structure to them and so on…
So what does all of this mean? In the large crevasse between the comprehensive battery of knowledge you have stored internally and the actual representation of that knowledge to another human being whether written or orally, stands three categorically problematic systems. They are generalizations, distortions and deletions… These three gremlins per se are almost exclusively the culprits of every unintentional miscommunication on face of the planet… Our only defense it the ability to recognize them and defeat them with inquisition.
Moving forward we will begin to look at the micro components of each system and how we can effectively recognize and sterilize these gaps for effective and clear communication.
