In weighing any decision to self-disclosure, consider the potential dangers:
Personal Risks
The more you reveal about yourself to others, the more areas of your life you expose to possible attack. Especially in the competitive context of work (or even romance), the more that others know about you, the more they’ll be able to use against you
Relationship Risks
Even in close and long-lasting relationships, self-disclosure can cause problems. Parents, normally the most supportive people in most individuals’ lives, frequently reject children who disclose their homosexuality, their plans to marry someone of a different race, or their belief in another faith. Your best friends—your closest intimates—may reject you for similar self-disclosures.
Professional Risks
Sometimes self-disclosure may result in professional or material losses. Politicians who disclose that they have been in therapy may lose the support of their own political party and find that voters are unwilling to vote for them. Teachers who disclose disagreement with school administrators may find themselves being denied tenure, teaching undesirable schedules, and becoming victims of “budget cuts.” In the business world self-disclosures of alcoholism or drug addiction often result in dismissal, demotion, or social exclusion.
Remember too that self-disclosure, like any other communication, is irreversible. You cannot self-disclose and then take it back. Nor can you erase the conclusions and inferences listeners make on the basis of your disclosures. Remember, too, to examine the rewards and dangers of self-disclosure in terms of particular cultural rules. As with all cultural rules, following the rules about self-disclosure brings approval, and violating them brings disapproval.
2.25.2011
Attack on academic freedom
Assemblyman Dov Hikind from Brooklyn has apparently (according to the Clarion, February 2011, Newspaper of the Professional Staff Congress/City University of New York) “demanded” that the department of Political Science at Brooklyn College prevent someone from teaching a course on Middle Eastern politics because the proposed instructor was doing research on Palestinian suicide bombers. A politician with no academic credentials demanding that a college follow his way of doing things rather than following the will of the Political Science Department is pretty incredible. Even more incredible is that Brooklyn College’s Provost rescinded the instructor’s appointment because of this “demand” letter. Fortunately, the Professional Staff Congress, the Brooklyn College faculty, the Department of Political Science, and people throughout the academic community came to the defense of academic freedom and the instructor and course were reinstated.
Now two questions remain: First, why do the people of Brooklyn continue to elect Hikind who seems to think that colleges exist to further his personal political agenda? They don’t; they exist to further exploration on all issues—not just the issues you want them to and the issues that further your own closed-minded political agenda. Second, why does Brooklyn College have a provost who cares so little for academic freedom? They shouldn’t.
Now two questions remain: First, why do the people of Brooklyn continue to elect Hikind who seems to think that colleges exist to further his personal political agenda? They don’t; they exist to further exploration on all issues—not just the issues you want them to and the issues that further your own closed-minded political agenda. Second, why does Brooklyn College have a provost who cares so little for academic freedom? They shouldn’t.
2.20.2011
2.19.2011
College Rankings
If you’re concerned with college rankings (or Car and Driver's comparisons), take a look at Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Order of Things” (New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011, pp. 68-75). I think he successfully demonstrates, as he concludes: “Who comes out on top, in any ranking system, is really about who is doing the ranking.”
Communication Strategies: Increasing Accuracy in Impression Formation
Successful communication depends largely on the accuracy of the impressions you form of others. Here are a few ways to increase your accuracy in impression formation.
Analyze Impressions. Subject your perceptions to logical analysis, to critical thinking. Here are two suggestions.
• Recognize your own role in perception. Your emotional and physiological state will influence the meaning you give to your perceptions. A movie may seem hysterically funny when you’re in a good mood, but just plain stupid when you’re in a bad mood.
• Avoid early conclusions. Formulate hypotheses to test against additional information and evidence (rather than conclusions). Look for a variety of cues pointing in the same direction. The more cues that point to the same conclusion, the more likely your conclusion will be correct. Be especially alert to contradictory cues that seem to refute your initial hypotheses. At the same time, seek validation from others. Do others see things in the same way you do? If not, ask yourself if your perceptions may be distorted in some way.
Check Perceptions. Perception checking will help you lessen your chances of misinterpreting another’s feelings and will also give the other person an opportunity to elaborate on his or her thoughts and feelings. In its most basic form, perception checking consists of two steps.
• Describe what you see or hear. Try to do this as descriptively (not evaluatively) as you can. Sometimes you may wish to offer several possibilities, for example, “You’ve called me from work a lot this week. You seem concerned that everything is all right at home” or “You’ve not wanted to talk with me all week. You say that my work is fine but you don’t seem to want to give me the same responsibilities that other editorial assistants have.”
• Seek confirmation. Ask the other person if your description is accurate. Avoid mind reading. Don’t try to read the thoughts and feelings of another person just from observing their behaviors. Avoid phrasing your questions defensively, as in “You really don’t want to go out, do you? I knew you didn’t when you turned on the television.” Instead, ask supportively, for example, “Would you rather watch TV”? or “Are you worried about the kids?” or “Are you displeased with my work? Is there anything I can do to improve my job performance?”
Reduce Uncertainty. In every communication situation, there is some degree of ambiguity. There are a variety of uncertainty reduction strategies.
• Observe. Observing another person while he or she is engaged in an active task, preferably interacting with others in an informal social situation, will often reveal a great deal about the person, as people are less apt to monitor their behaviors and more likely to reveal their true selves in informal situations.
• Ask others. Learn about a person through asking others. You might inquire of a colleague if a third person finds you interesting and might like to have dinner with you.
• Interact with the individual. For example, you can ask questions: “Do you enjoy sports?” “What did you think of that computer science course?” “What would you do if you got fired?” You also gain knowledge of another by disclosing information about yourself. These disclosures help to create an environment that encourages disclosures from the person about whom you wish to learn more.
Increase Cultural Sensitivity. Recognizing and being sensitive to cultural differences will help increase your accuracy in perception. For example, Russian or Chinese artists such as ballet dancers will often applaud their audience by clapping. Americans seeing this may easily interpret this as egotistical. Similarly, a German man will enter a restaurant before the woman in order to see if the place is respectable enough for the woman to enter. This simple custom can easily be interpreted as rude when viewed by people from cultures in which it’s considered courteous for the woman to enter first.
Cultural sensitivity will help counteract the difficulty most people have in understanding the nonverbal messages of people from other cultures. For example, it’s easier to interpret the facial expressions of members of your own culture than those of members of other cultures. This “in-group advantage” will assist your perceptual accuracy for members of your own culture but may hinder your accuracy for members of other cultures.
Within every cultural group there are wide and important differences. As all Americans are not alike, neither are all Indonesians, Greeks, or Mexicans. When you make assumptions that all people of a certain culture are alike, you’re thinking in stereotypes. Recognizing differences between another culture and your own, and among members of the same culture, will help you perceive people and situations more accurately.
Analyze Impressions. Subject your perceptions to logical analysis, to critical thinking. Here are two suggestions.
• Recognize your own role in perception. Your emotional and physiological state will influence the meaning you give to your perceptions. A movie may seem hysterically funny when you’re in a good mood, but just plain stupid when you’re in a bad mood.
• Avoid early conclusions. Formulate hypotheses to test against additional information and evidence (rather than conclusions). Look for a variety of cues pointing in the same direction. The more cues that point to the same conclusion, the more likely your conclusion will be correct. Be especially alert to contradictory cues that seem to refute your initial hypotheses. At the same time, seek validation from others. Do others see things in the same way you do? If not, ask yourself if your perceptions may be distorted in some way.
Check Perceptions. Perception checking will help you lessen your chances of misinterpreting another’s feelings and will also give the other person an opportunity to elaborate on his or her thoughts and feelings. In its most basic form, perception checking consists of two steps.
• Describe what you see or hear. Try to do this as descriptively (not evaluatively) as you can. Sometimes you may wish to offer several possibilities, for example, “You’ve called me from work a lot this week. You seem concerned that everything is all right at home” or “You’ve not wanted to talk with me all week. You say that my work is fine but you don’t seem to want to give me the same responsibilities that other editorial assistants have.”
• Seek confirmation. Ask the other person if your description is accurate. Avoid mind reading. Don’t try to read the thoughts and feelings of another person just from observing their behaviors. Avoid phrasing your questions defensively, as in “You really don’t want to go out, do you? I knew you didn’t when you turned on the television.” Instead, ask supportively, for example, “Would you rather watch TV”? or “Are you worried about the kids?” or “Are you displeased with my work? Is there anything I can do to improve my job performance?”
Reduce Uncertainty. In every communication situation, there is some degree of ambiguity. There are a variety of uncertainty reduction strategies.
• Observe. Observing another person while he or she is engaged in an active task, preferably interacting with others in an informal social situation, will often reveal a great deal about the person, as people are less apt to monitor their behaviors and more likely to reveal their true selves in informal situations.
• Ask others. Learn about a person through asking others. You might inquire of a colleague if a third person finds you interesting and might like to have dinner with you.
• Interact with the individual. For example, you can ask questions: “Do you enjoy sports?” “What did you think of that computer science course?” “What would you do if you got fired?” You also gain knowledge of another by disclosing information about yourself. These disclosures help to create an environment that encourages disclosures from the person about whom you wish to learn more.
Increase Cultural Sensitivity. Recognizing and being sensitive to cultural differences will help increase your accuracy in perception. For example, Russian or Chinese artists such as ballet dancers will often applaud their audience by clapping. Americans seeing this may easily interpret this as egotistical. Similarly, a German man will enter a restaurant before the woman in order to see if the place is respectable enough for the woman to enter. This simple custom can easily be interpreted as rude when viewed by people from cultures in which it’s considered courteous for the woman to enter first.
Cultural sensitivity will help counteract the difficulty most people have in understanding the nonverbal messages of people from other cultures. For example, it’s easier to interpret the facial expressions of members of your own culture than those of members of other cultures. This “in-group advantage” will assist your perceptual accuracy for members of your own culture but may hinder your accuracy for members of other cultures.
Within every cultural group there are wide and important differences. As all Americans are not alike, neither are all Indonesians, Greeks, or Mexicans. When you make assumptions that all people of a certain culture are alike, you’re thinking in stereotypes. Recognizing differences between another culture and your own, and among members of the same culture, will help you perceive people and situations more accurately.
2.15.2011
Impolite Questions, What Are They?
We all know an impolite question when we meet one. They’re easy to recognize when you’re the person asked the questions; not so easy to recognize when you’re the one asking the questions.
One way of looking at impolite questions is in terms of positive and negative face. So, an impolite question would be one that attacks a person’s positive and/or negative face needs. Questions attacking positive face needs—that is, the need for approval, for confirmation, for compliments—would include those that imply the person is not deserving of positive expressions (“Did you really try hard enough?” or to use Deborah Tannen’s book title, “Are you going to wear that?”). Questions attacking negative face needs—that is, the need to feel autonomous and in control of one’s own behaviors and not to be imposed upon—would include those that make demands on others, the questions implying “you should” and “you have to” (“Don’t you think you should call your mother more often?” “You ought to save more money, don’t you think?”).
Another way of looking at impolite questions and perhaps a much more intuitively satisfying approach is that they ask for disclosures that you normally don’t want to make. In terms of the Johari Window model—repeated in most if not all communication textbooks—impolite questions ask you to take information from your hidden self and move it to the open self, a move you may not be willing to make at this time or to this person. Often the information asked for is inappropriate for the relationship you have with the questioner; it may be too personal or too unpleasant to discuss serious health problems, for example, with a casual but nosey acquaintance.
Impolite questions are a major part of ineffective communication but have been little studied by communication researchers, at least as far as I can tell. So, I thought I’d start collecting impolite questions. Here are just a few:
1. How come you never had children? Or “How come you didn’t have another child?” [often accompanied by a well-intentioned but grossly impolite “I’m sure Janie would have loved a little brother.”]
2. You look like you lost weight. Were you ill? A question such as “How are you doing?” enables you to express your interest and also enables the other person to respond generally or specifically as he or she wishes. On the other hand, a question such as, “Have you lost more vision since we last met?” requires specific information about a specific ailment.
3. Where are you from? This is a tricky one and I read this in a letter to the editor column. At first, it seems a fair and not impolite question—when you expect an answer like “I’m from the Bronx.” But, this writer was Asian in appearance and a fifth generation American and resented the implication that the question implies that he somehow didn’t belong here, was from someplace else, was somewhat alien, an outsider (to the insider asking the question).
4. Financial questions are well-known to be impolite and yet they’re extremely common: “How much did you pay for your apartment?” “What do you pay for rent/maintenance/taxes?” “Was that expensive?” [A backhanded way of asking the price?”] “You earn a good salary, I assume” [with a rising inflection, waiting for the salary figures].
5. “How come you never married?” Or it’s variant: “How come you’re not married yet?” beautifully portrayed in the classic film Marty where the Bronx butcher is asked this by a customer with the added note that even his younger brother got married.
One way of looking at impolite questions is in terms of positive and negative face. So, an impolite question would be one that attacks a person’s positive and/or negative face needs. Questions attacking positive face needs—that is, the need for approval, for confirmation, for compliments—would include those that imply the person is not deserving of positive expressions (“Did you really try hard enough?” or to use Deborah Tannen’s book title, “Are you going to wear that?”). Questions attacking negative face needs—that is, the need to feel autonomous and in control of one’s own behaviors and not to be imposed upon—would include those that make demands on others, the questions implying “you should” and “you have to” (“Don’t you think you should call your mother more often?” “You ought to save more money, don’t you think?”).
Another way of looking at impolite questions and perhaps a much more intuitively satisfying approach is that they ask for disclosures that you normally don’t want to make. In terms of the Johari Window model—repeated in most if not all communication textbooks—impolite questions ask you to take information from your hidden self and move it to the open self, a move you may not be willing to make at this time or to this person. Often the information asked for is inappropriate for the relationship you have with the questioner; it may be too personal or too unpleasant to discuss serious health problems, for example, with a casual but nosey acquaintance.
Impolite questions are a major part of ineffective communication but have been little studied by communication researchers, at least as far as I can tell. So, I thought I’d start collecting impolite questions. Here are just a few:
1. How come you never had children? Or “How come you didn’t have another child?” [often accompanied by a well-intentioned but grossly impolite “I’m sure Janie would have loved a little brother.”]
2. You look like you lost weight. Were you ill? A question such as “How are you doing?” enables you to express your interest and also enables the other person to respond generally or specifically as he or she wishes. On the other hand, a question such as, “Have you lost more vision since we last met?” requires specific information about a specific ailment.
3. Where are you from? This is a tricky one and I read this in a letter to the editor column. At first, it seems a fair and not impolite question—when you expect an answer like “I’m from the Bronx.” But, this writer was Asian in appearance and a fifth generation American and resented the implication that the question implies that he somehow didn’t belong here, was from someplace else, was somewhat alien, an outsider (to the insider asking the question).
4. Financial questions are well-known to be impolite and yet they’re extremely common: “How much did you pay for your apartment?” “What do you pay for rent/maintenance/taxes?” “Was that expensive?” [A backhanded way of asking the price?”] “You earn a good salary, I assume” [with a rising inflection, waiting for the salary figures].
5. “How come you never married?” Or it’s variant: “How come you’re not married yet?” beautifully portrayed in the classic film Marty where the Bronx butcher is asked this by a customer with the added note that even his younger brother got married.
2.12.2011
Communication Strategies: Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is a measure of how valuable you think you are; people with high self-esteem think very highly of themselves, whereas people with low self-esteem view themselves negatively. The basic idea behind building self-esteem is that when you feel good about yourself—about who you are and what you’re capable of doing—you will perform better. When you think like a success, you’re more likely to act like a success. Conversely, when you think you’re a failure, you’re more likely to act like a failure. When you get up to give a speech and you visualize yourself being successful and effective, you’re more likely to give a good speech. Increasing self-esteem will, therefore, help you to function more effectively in school, in interpersonal relationships, and in careers. Before reading about ways to increase self-esteem, consider your own self-esteem by asking yourself how true (or false) each of the following are about you:
_____ 1. Generally, I feel I have to be successful in all things.
_____ 2. Several of my acquaintances are often critical or negative of what I do and how I think.
_____ 3. I often tackle projects that I know are impossible to complete to my satisfaction.
_____ 4. When I focus on the past, I focus more often on my failures than on my successes and on my negative rather than my positive qualities.
_____ 5. I make little effort to improve my personal and social skills.
”True” responses to the questions would generally suggest ways of thinking that can get in the way of building positive self-esteem. “False” responses would indicate that you are thinking much like a self-esteem coach would want you to think.
Attack Self-Destructive Beliefs. Challenge beliefs you have about yourself that are unproductive or that make it more difficult for you to achieve your goals. Here, for example, are some beliefs that are likely to prove self-destructive from Pamela Butler.
1. The belief that you have to be perfect; this causes you to try to perform at unrealistically high levels at work, school, and home; anything short of perfection is unacceptable.
2. The belief that you have to please others and that your worthiness depends on what others think of you.
3. The belief that you have to take on more responsibilities than any one person can be expected to handle.
Self-destructive beliefs set unrealistically high standards and therefore almost always lead to failure. As a result, you may develop a negative self-image, seeing yourself as someone who constantly fails. So replace these self-destructive beliefs with more productive ones, such as “I succeed in many things, but I don’t have to succeed in everything” and “It would be nice to be loved by everyone, but it isn’t necessary to my happiness.”
Seek Out Nourishing People. Psychologist Carl Rogers drew a distinction between noxious and nourishing people. Noxious people criticize and find fault with just about everything. Nourishing people, on the other hand, are positive and optimistic. Most important, nourishing people reward us, they stroke us, they make us feel good about ourselves. To enhance your self-esteem, seek out these people—and avoid noxious people, those who make you feel negatively about yourself. At the same time, seek to become more nourishing yourself so that you each build up the other’s self-esteem.
Identification with people similar to yourself also seems to increase self-esteem. For example, in one study deaf people who identified with the larger deaf community had greater self-esteem than those who didn’t so identify. Similarly, identification with your cultural group also seems helpful in developing positive self-esteem.
Work on Projects That Will Result in Success. Some people want to fail (or so it seems). Often, they select projects that will result in failure simply because these projects are impossible to complete. Avoid this trap; select projects that will result in success. Each success will help build self-esteem, and each success will make the next success a little easier. If a project does fail, recognize that this does not mean that you’re a failure. Everyone fails somewhere along the line. Failure is something that happens; it’s not necessarily something you’ve created. It’s not something inside you. Further, your failing once does not mean that you will fail the next time. So learn to put failure in perspective.
Remind Yourself of Your Successes. Some people have a tendency to focus, sometimes too much, on their failures, their missed opportunities, their social mistakes. If your objective is to correct what you did wrong or to identify the skills that you need to correct these failures, then focusing on failures can have some positive value. But if you focus on failure without thinking about plans for correction, then you’re probably just making life more difficult for yourself and limiting your self-esteem. To counteract the tendency to recall failures, remind yourself of your successes. Recall these successes both intellectually and emotionally. Realize why they were successes, and relive the emotional experience—the feelings you had when you sank that winning basketball or aced that test or helped that friend overcome a personal problem.
Secure Affirmation. An affirmation is simply a statement asserting that something is true. In discussions of self-concept and self-awareness, as noted in this chapter, the word affirmation is used to refer to positive statements about you, statements asserting that something good or positive is true of you. It’s frequently recommended that you remind yourself of your successes with self-affirmations—that you focus on your good deeds; on your positive qualities, strengths, and virtues; on your productive and meaningful relationships with friends, loved ones, and relatives.
Self-affirmations include statements such as “I’m a worthy person,” “I’m responsible and can be depended upon,” and “I’m capable of loving and being loved.” The idea behind this advice is that the way you talk to yourself will influence what you think of yourself. If you affirm yourself—if you tell yourself that you’re a success, that others like you, that you will succeed on the next test, and that you will be welcomed when asking for a date—you will soon come to feel more positive about yourself.
Some researchers, however, argue that self-affirmations—although extremely popular in self-help books—may not be very helpful. These critics contend that if you have low self-esteem, you’re not going to believe your self-affirmations, because you don’t have a high opinion of yourself to begin with. They propose that the alternative to self-affirmation is to secure affirmation from others. You’d do this by, for example, becoming more competent in communication and interacting with more positive people. In this way, you’d get more positive feedback from others—which, these researchers argue, is more helpful than self-talk in raising self-esteem.
_____ 1. Generally, I feel I have to be successful in all things.
_____ 2. Several of my acquaintances are often critical or negative of what I do and how I think.
_____ 3. I often tackle projects that I know are impossible to complete to my satisfaction.
_____ 4. When I focus on the past, I focus more often on my failures than on my successes and on my negative rather than my positive qualities.
_____ 5. I make little effort to improve my personal and social skills.
”True” responses to the questions would generally suggest ways of thinking that can get in the way of building positive self-esteem. “False” responses would indicate that you are thinking much like a self-esteem coach would want you to think.
Attack Self-Destructive Beliefs. Challenge beliefs you have about yourself that are unproductive or that make it more difficult for you to achieve your goals. Here, for example, are some beliefs that are likely to prove self-destructive from Pamela Butler.
1. The belief that you have to be perfect; this causes you to try to perform at unrealistically high levels at work, school, and home; anything short of perfection is unacceptable.
2. The belief that you have to please others and that your worthiness depends on what others think of you.
3. The belief that you have to take on more responsibilities than any one person can be expected to handle.
Self-destructive beliefs set unrealistically high standards and therefore almost always lead to failure. As a result, you may develop a negative self-image, seeing yourself as someone who constantly fails. So replace these self-destructive beliefs with more productive ones, such as “I succeed in many things, but I don’t have to succeed in everything” and “It would be nice to be loved by everyone, but it isn’t necessary to my happiness.”
Seek Out Nourishing People. Psychologist Carl Rogers drew a distinction between noxious and nourishing people. Noxious people criticize and find fault with just about everything. Nourishing people, on the other hand, are positive and optimistic. Most important, nourishing people reward us, they stroke us, they make us feel good about ourselves. To enhance your self-esteem, seek out these people—and avoid noxious people, those who make you feel negatively about yourself. At the same time, seek to become more nourishing yourself so that you each build up the other’s self-esteem.
Identification with people similar to yourself also seems to increase self-esteem. For example, in one study deaf people who identified with the larger deaf community had greater self-esteem than those who didn’t so identify. Similarly, identification with your cultural group also seems helpful in developing positive self-esteem.
Work on Projects That Will Result in Success. Some people want to fail (or so it seems). Often, they select projects that will result in failure simply because these projects are impossible to complete. Avoid this trap; select projects that will result in success. Each success will help build self-esteem, and each success will make the next success a little easier. If a project does fail, recognize that this does not mean that you’re a failure. Everyone fails somewhere along the line. Failure is something that happens; it’s not necessarily something you’ve created. It’s not something inside you. Further, your failing once does not mean that you will fail the next time. So learn to put failure in perspective.
Remind Yourself of Your Successes. Some people have a tendency to focus, sometimes too much, on their failures, their missed opportunities, their social mistakes. If your objective is to correct what you did wrong or to identify the skills that you need to correct these failures, then focusing on failures can have some positive value. But if you focus on failure without thinking about plans for correction, then you’re probably just making life more difficult for yourself and limiting your self-esteem. To counteract the tendency to recall failures, remind yourself of your successes. Recall these successes both intellectually and emotionally. Realize why they were successes, and relive the emotional experience—the feelings you had when you sank that winning basketball or aced that test or helped that friend overcome a personal problem.
Secure Affirmation. An affirmation is simply a statement asserting that something is true. In discussions of self-concept and self-awareness, as noted in this chapter, the word affirmation is used to refer to positive statements about you, statements asserting that something good or positive is true of you. It’s frequently recommended that you remind yourself of your successes with self-affirmations—that you focus on your good deeds; on your positive qualities, strengths, and virtues; on your productive and meaningful relationships with friends, loved ones, and relatives.
Self-affirmations include statements such as “I’m a worthy person,” “I’m responsible and can be depended upon,” and “I’m capable of loving and being loved.” The idea behind this advice is that the way you talk to yourself will influence what you think of yourself. If you affirm yourself—if you tell yourself that you’re a success, that others like you, that you will succeed on the next test, and that you will be welcomed when asking for a date—you will soon come to feel more positive about yourself.
Some researchers, however, argue that self-affirmations—although extremely popular in self-help books—may not be very helpful. These critics contend that if you have low self-esteem, you’re not going to believe your self-affirmations, because you don’t have a high opinion of yourself to begin with. They propose that the alternative to self-affirmation is to secure affirmation from others. You’d do this by, for example, becoming more competent in communication and interacting with more positive people. In this way, you’d get more positive feedback from others—which, these researchers argue, is more helpful than self-talk in raising self-esteem.
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