8 posts tagged “communication”

Today we are going to talk about Shalom Schwartz ‘s The Theory of Basic Human Values. Shalom Schwartz is a Social Psychologist and cross-cultural researcher in the fields of intergroup conflict and basic human values.

What the theory states is that there are 10 basic human values that are displayed in all societies and that these values interact with each other to form a circular structure based on the inherent conflict or compatibility of the underlying motivations that we discussed in our earlier post. The picture below illustrates the structure we are talking about…

The reason that they are circularly arranged is because the further away each value is placed from each other the more incongruent they are with each other and vice versa. The closer each value is to another on the continuum the more congruent they will be. So in looking at the chart let’s take the values of Stimulation and Security. These two values are in direct opposition of each other and as such, the actions and environments necessary to provided each will be in conflict with each other.

There are two parallel “dimensions” if you will of the Basic Human Values structure that exist and run in conflict or incongruous with each other.

1.       The first is Openness to Change existing in conflict with Conservation. Self direction and Stimulation emphasize and feed upon independent actions, thoughts and feelings which present a readiness for new experience. Security and Conformity/Tradition rely upon order, self restraint and resistance to change.

2.       The second is Self-enhancement existing in conflict with Self-transcendence. Achievement and Power represents strong self interests whereas Universalism and Benevolence represent interest in the welfare and interests of others.

So the sum up the above, as a value gets further away from another on the continuum they become more and more antagonistic and conflicting with each other. The closer they become the more congruent and complementary they become with each other. Along with this, depending on which quadrant they are in they can become either complementary or conflicting in one of 4 categories which are Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Enhancement and Self-Transcendence.

 

What is great about this structure, which by the way is grounded in empirical evidence from 35,000 respondents in 67 nations, is the predictability of associations with specific traits, attitudes and behaviors. What happens is that any associations of one value are extremely similar to associations of the adjacent (right next to) values. Along with this, the further away from the value you get, the associations will change and decrease consistently and incrementally in direct proportion to the distance on the continuum. With regards to HOW and WHAT to talk about or communicate with someone, this offers powerful information… The million dollar question then becomes “how do you find this information out?” We will get to that shortly, but let’s first talk about how these values develop and grow…

 

There are 6 main stages or arenas where the values are instilled and develop and they are Cohorts, Education, Gender and Life Circumstance. Let’s go through each one briefly to examine them…

Cohorts –Here the term “cohort” refers to a particular generational group. Growing up during the depression, times of war, famine, national security threats, etc… will affect the development of values from generation to generation. As you can imagine, someone who was growing up during the depression is going to have different values regarding conservatism than someone growing up in the mid to late 90’s when the economy was exploding. Major historical events like this have a strong impact on values development.

Life Stage – This refers to the three stages of adulthood someone passes through as they mature:

1.       In early adulthood, normally people are driving toward establishing themselves in one way shape or form in the verticals of career and family. Genetic and cultural pressure is constant and strong on people in this stage of their life to compete for mates and become settled…. This usually results in the pursuit of achievement and stimulation values rather than security, conformity and tradition values.

2.       In middle adulthood people are invested in established family, career and social networks that they want to preserve and grow. Having begun to reach their peak in accomplishment most will begin to constrain risk-taking and other opportunities and begin to stop any real changes from happening.

3.       In later adulthood opportunities to display achievement, power, stimulation and hedonism types of values decrease and as such the importance of security and tradition become more important.

Physical Ageing – Peoples strength, energy, cognitive speed, memory and senses decline as they age and mature. As a result security values generally become much more important as safe, predictable environments and circumstances are necessary for survival. Coping mechanisms and abilities are hindered in a way that dealing with stimulation and potential risk is just too dangerous. Hedonism values also begin to decline with age as the senses necessary to fully enjoy them are systematically decreasing and depreciating the experience. Also, someone’s ability to perform the tasks necessary to obtain achievement, social approval and power decrease with age as well resulting in a decrease in the accompanying values.

Education – Intellectual openness, strength, flexibility and perspective presumably increase with education and as such so will self-direction values due to increase competence. This openness also contributes to the engagement and therefore importance of stimulation activity. These types of experiences can cause people to challenge unquestioned and accepted norms, expectations and traditions which results in an undermining of conformity and tradition. The increase in competency and coping abilities also decreases the need for security values in more educated people.

 

Gender – There are a vast number of theories from the fields of psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology and social psychology that explain typical gender roles and where they came from. We are not going to get into all of them here though. Let it be sufficient to say that women are generally much more related and more affiliated with other people whereas men are more individuated. Genetics, evolution and culture have all fostered an environment that promotes this.

 

Life Circumstance – The combination of all of the above contribute to the circumstances with which people are presented. These circumstances provide opportunities to pursue and/or express certain values and not others. Life can and does make the pursuit of certain values to certain people more OR less rewarding OR costly to them. The result is that people will typically adapt their values to their life circumstances, not the other way around… For example, a woman growing up in a patriarchal home and culture may be rewarded for Benevolence type values and reprimanded for Achievement type values.

 

 

Wow… This is powerful stuff… I think you can probably see the potential for not only predictability in a person’s action, but also how to use content and structural presentation when you are communicating with them.

 

Tomorrow we will talk about how to elicit someone’s values and how you can use them as an effective communication tool.

 

As always, to learn more about values and how they can help provide effective communication, please visit my site The Communication Expert.

 

The Communication Expert | David J. Parnell
The Communication Expert Blog

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

David J. Parnell | Communication Expert

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

In an effort to communicate more effectively with my fellow bloggers I participated in a teleconference with this afternoon with a very successful blogging coach by the name of Michael Martine. Not that Michael discounts the SEO side of his blog, but a strong component of his traffic comes from what are knows as “referrals”, or bloggers finding him through other sites.

 

If I am being honest, I was hoping for the proverbial silver bullet from him. A better way to automate my communications… quicker ways to persuade via my posts… An easier way to be more effective with my blogs…

 

In a bitter sweet realization, my hopes of the quick paths were not met… Let’s talk about the bitter pill first. Now don’t get me wrong, I learned some amazing stuff… Michael was generous with the information he communicated. It was formatted in a simple fashion, linear, easy to understand and comprehensive. The total sum of his teleconference though was completely void of the words “automatic” or “easy”. Without going into specifics (you’ll have to pay for it if you want to pick his brain), his blogging communication success has come from hard work, personal attention and giving value to his subscribers.

 

The reality of the matter is that there are a number of short cuts you can take… You may even get some traffic spikes and some subscribers from using them. That being said, the only true way to build a long list of subscribers is through the combination of working smart AND hard. Subscribers are people and need to be treated like, well… people. They aren’t numbers and viewing them as such will all but guarantee your blog some lonely night ahead. But, if your plan is based on the notions of how best to help each person and add value, then you are indeed on the right track.

 

Regarding the sweet side of the equation… EFFECTIVE BLOGGING IS HARD WORK! As much as the lazy little boy in me just wants to show up at my computer and log into my thousands of adoring fans, I am so blessed that it isn’t that easy. You know what they say; if it were easy everyone would be doing it. Well, although pretty much everyone is blogging (or at least leaving drive by comments) not everybody is successful at it. The challenge and the work is what have left those who want success a great venue in which to achieve it.

 

Building a strong and loyal subscriber list is hard work… It takes effort, communication skills, commitment, intelligence and strategy… all wrapped up in a nice thick blanket of compassion, and true hard earned value. This is evident in Michael’s work and his results speak for themselves.

 

I left the call convicted of three things in particular:

 

1. If you can’t add value… true value, you won’t have long term success.

2. If you don’t add the personal component, sincerely… you won’t have long term success.

3. Working smart, giving more than you expect in return and placing the needs of your subscribers first will earn you their loyalty.

 

For more quality information than you can get your arms around, feel free to check Michael’s site out to learn more. See you in the blogosphere…

David J. Parnell

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.

 

David J. Parnell

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.

Effective communication is a lot more than simply choosing the right words.  Being persuasive, forming the right communication strategies and speaking effectively are just a few of the components necessary for people to communicate effectively.

One important component that is often overlooked is mental energy reserves.  Now, I understand very well that the concept of mental energy has at least until recently been considered a metaphor.  When your "mental energy" was down, traditionally you just “give a little bit more effort”, “man up” or just focus and you’d be fine.  How you "felt" inside was just your perception... It wasn’t real… an actual thing… Well, is turns out that it is indeed a measurable "thing" and knowing this spins the old paradigm on it's head... Now stick with me because we're not getting metaphysical here, we’re going to get to the rock solid science soon enough.

Effectively communicating can require intense cognitive effort which is known as “top-down executive control” in the brain.  Basically your prefrontal cortex is working overtime to manage the unrelenting force of the unconscious drives of the brain. To do this takes quite a bit of volitional control and can be extremely taxing on the brain.  In other words, if you're in trouble while trying to “sell the lie”, “get girl” or “close the sale” there is usually a lot of executive control going on in your head.  If your mental “energy source” is down, how do you think you're going to perform? I know, I know… you're too mentally strong to fall under the pressure… well I'm going to show you why you're not.

(By the way, I don't condone lying, it is metaphorical)

Aside from the “juicy” (look for the pun later in the blog) behavior above, many other common behaviors have been found to rely on and deplete this elusive “energy source” as well, including managing your impression, suppressing stereotypes and prejudice, coping with negative thoughts and fears, controlling your spending, restraining aggression, etc…

The notion had been toyed around with quite a bit in the academic world for some time that self-control and this type of top-down processing rely on a particular and limited energy reserve or strength.  Now, if this was true and there was indeed a limited energy reserve it would hold that once someone engaged in a rigorous cognitive process that requires top-down processing or strong self-control, that those energy reserves would become depleted as a result, correct? This would make subsequent performance much less effective and much more difficult volitionally.

With this being a pretty interesting topic, you know that academia couldn't keep their hands off of it.  So in an effort to find this elusive "energy reserve" once and for all, Florida State and Texas A&M engaged in a number of studies to prove this theory.

A number of experiments were executed placing subjects in routines that tested their volitional power and self-control.  From a biological standpoint, based on all the research to date, glucose seemed to be the likely candidate for this energy reserve. There are a number of reasons but we won’t get into that here…

So what do you think the results were? The studies empirically determined that effort-ful suppression of urges through execution of volition directly and significantly depleted glucose levels in the brain. This in return had a significant and direct impact on the individual’s subsequent ability to perform and effectively communicate.

In one study in particular, subjects were paired into groups with subjects of another race to interact in discussions on areas such as affirmative action and criminal profiling to create a mentally taxing situation for individuals who scored low on the IMS (The Internal motivation to respond without prejudice scale) which measures someone's drive to stay away from any racial stereotyping in speech or action. This might require some mental control.. no?

Well, the results were undeniable… same race pairs experience almost no glucose depletion where as mixed race pairs experienced massive glucose depletion… Now even though nearly all of the brain’s activities consume some glucose, most cognitive processes are relatively unaffected by subtle or minor fluctuations in glucose levels within the normal range. Controlled, effort-ful processes that rely on higher executive function however turned out to be HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE to normal fluctuations in glucose.

So what does this mean for the average person who's interacting with, communicating to and attempting to gain the cooperation of someone on a daily basis?  Well you may not find yourself in a racially mixed group discussing affirmative action frequently, but think outside the box a little bit… When your boss is grilling you because you asked for a raise, effectively communicating to him while suppressing the desire to tell him to shut up may tax you. What about trying to get a date with the new girl, fro the last 20 minutes of her cat story you have to suppress your compulsion to tell her you don't care... How about closing the sale... Man do you just want to tell them "just sign the darn contract so we can get on with our lives". Well you see where I am going with this...

A professional communicator needs to be aware of this fact so that they can best prepare themselves for any potentially “taxing” interactions that they see coming their way.  But have no fear, if you find that your sugar levels are low or your not feeling “on”, there are a number of quick fixes.  Ideally you will eat some fruit if it's available, but lemonade or any other juices (theres the pun...) including a good cold Red Bull will do the trick. In fact, Red Bull or other glucose laden drinks will have a quicker effect. Fructose (fruit sugar) breaks down into glucose more slowly, but is healthier. Processed sugar is already there so it will affect you quicker.

Once you have glucose in your system, it is absorbed into the bloodstream at a rate of 30 calories per minute and after about 10 minutes can be metabolized to the brain.  Now, everybody knows that you fell "better" after eating, especially sugar. What is important here is that mental energy isn't just a fluffy perception, it is real, it is measurable and can be depleted.  Can you drive your car without gas by "focusing"???

So if you have a “make it or break it” sales appointment or you're coming home late and you know that your spouse will be waiting up for a sneak attack, take a quick mental check and make sure that everything feels in line.  If not grab some Red Bull and start working on your communication strategy before your pending communication... You’ll be glad you did…

*Disclaimer. This article is not advocating the usage of Red Bull or any other products. The author of this article is not a medical doctor and the information should not be held as prescribed medical advice as dictated by the AMA. Usage of any products containing sugar are done at your own risk.

 

David J. Parnell