Whether in the workplace or in life, we are often misunderstood, and such misunderstandings will especially affect our personal and professional careers. If you feel it wrong, it may cause others to not believe in you, dislike you, or even ignore you at all. If you have ever felt that you were being underestimated, been scolded by inadvertently angering others, and have been misunderstood and made you want to shout "Unfair!", I have to say, your feeling is completely correct. The way we look at others is never fair, and the whole process cannot be called rational, but is full of prejudice, not seeing the whole picture, and being stubborn and difficult to change. At the same time, most of the time (but not all) are automatic and uncontrollable.
However, no one is completely incomprehensible. Some people understand better than others. The way these people express themselves seems to allow others to accurately grasp their meaning. Psychologists would say that such people are more "decipherable", or, as personality expert David Funder said, is a "good target." Why are these people more pronounced? Fang De believes that in order to be able to accurately evaluate and interpret others, four requirements must be met. First of all, this goal must (1) disclose information and (2) ensure that the disclosed information is relevant. Next, the observer must (3) detect and pay attention to the information, and (4) use the information correctly.
Now we focus on the conditions that we can control (that is, other people's target objects). If you want others to interpret you correctly, you must first let others get information about yourself, and it should provide the traits you want to convey to others (for example, if you just know that you are a top student at Peking University, you cannot judge whether you are a popular student, whether you are trustworthy, whether you are creative, and whether you are adaptable). So, if you are a very introverted and shy person who never reveals any of your thoughts and feelings to the people around you, their understanding of you is very limited. (Not to mention that you are already very introverted and shy.) The danger here is that people fill in their own gaps in their minds and imagine what your complete personality is, but it is very likely (and usually) inaccurate.
Some people who are good at dancing can make good use of this. Like me, a classmate from my postgraduate school, his famous deed is that he is extremely introverted when talking about love, and it is simply a locked book. I asked him once, wouldn’t there be any problems with dating girls like this? Unexpectedly, he answered frankly: he did it on purpose, because he found that girls always have positive interpretations of his taciturnity. (He is so mysterious. He must be a person with deep thoughts. Maybe he was injured before. I think he must be very emotional...) He told me that the imaginations in their hearts are actually much better than his own personality. From the psychologist's point of view, this is very interesting; but from the single woman's point of view, it's really a bit scary.
Let us ignore the example of my above classmate. It is definitely a good thing to be a person who can read (that is, others can understand you easily and accurately). Research points out that people who are more pronounced have better psychological adjustments: they are happier, more satisfied with their personal and career, have been dating with others for a longer time and are more positive, and they feel that their lives are more purposeful. They feel that they are truly alive and have more confidence in their understanding. This makes sense. If you feel the same as you in others' eyes, you will not have to endure the uneasiness and self-doubt caused by continuous misunderstandings. If everyone can "understand you" and provide various opportunities and support that suits you, life will be simpler and more satisfied.
And you may also think that as long as you truly know and have first-hand contact, you can see the real you? In order to find this answer, I studied and asked nearly 400 college students who lived in housing, and asked them to describe their personalities and compare them with their roommate's statements to see if it will really affect their views and feelings about each other.To put it more clearly, what the research wants to see is whether you in the eyes of your roommates are closer to you in your own eyes after a period of time. The answer is revealed: That's right, I just have to live together for at least 9 months. It only takes so long to make each other's views begin to synchronize. And even at that time, the correlation between college students' own eyes and roommates' own eyes was still surprisingly low, probably between 0.2 and 0.5 (and the perfect correlation value is 1).
As for those who are really familiar with each other (such as couples), what is the situation? These people live together, experience the ups and downs of life, happiness and sorrow, and (usually) sleep in the same bed. Since all the most private things are known clearly, the couple's eyes must be the same as the image in their eyes, right?
is a pity. In fact, even if it is a couple, there are still huge differences in the images they see. But interestingly, these differences are very regular and nothing unexpected happens. There is a study that points out these differences clearly, which surveyed 44 couples, about half of whom were in marriage counseling. Couples who go to marriage counseling (researchers call the "pain" group) are more likely to have negative bias, that is, they see the other person worse than the other person themselves, and they are more likely to blame the other person for the bad behaviors they have in their marriage. For example, my husband felt that he was very responsible, and this time he just forgot to take out the trash occasionally (who isn't it?), but my wife felt that my husband was really irresponsible and unconcerned, and actually made her (again) have to clean up the mess.
As for couples who have not visited marriage consultation (called "peaceful" groups), they are more likely to have a positive impression of each other and are more likely to forgive each other. So when your husband forgets to take out the trash, your wife will think that he has just forgotten it for a while, but he is very considerate that he is hard work, and don’t those smart and serious people sometimes forget chores?
Maybe you will think that the wife of the previous group is right, but the wife of the next group is so aggrieved and stupid. But here I am not trying to emphasize who is right or wrong. In fact, as long as it is prejudice, both positive and negative may be wrong. (It’s just that negative biases in marriage are obviously more likely to make people need to seek marriage consultation, which is worth thinking about.) But overall, it’s not difficult to understand why there are often misunderstandings between friends and lovers, and interpersonal relationships (which is also the key to our ultimate success and happiness) become stressful.
But you might think, if even couples (or roommates, or even supervisors who lead a group of communication experts) can’t understand each other, how could I really let my boss see my potential or let my colleagues know that I’m really serious?
The first step here is to understand We actually don’t pay enough attention to others, and many times we just rely on assumptions.
In the 1980s, psychologists Susan Fiske and Shirley. Shelly Taylor wanted to point out a human trait found in research: people think only to the extent they think they are necessary, and no more. Therefore, each of us is like a stingy person who thinks about cognition: the stingy person in "Christmas Carol" has a lot of money, but he refuses to buy an extra piece of coal for heating, while we have a lot of cognitive and processing capabilities, but he is unwilling to use it unless it is really necessary. When doing things, we mostly want to use the simplest and most efficient thinking process. The reason is not due to laziness (although there is a little bit), but out of necessity. We always feel that there is something that will happen, what needs to be paid attention to, understood and deal with, and we should not concentrate all our attention and give our all without leaving any trace.
Human mind, like any other complex process, must compromise between speed and correctness. If you are soon, you may make mistakes; and if you are complete and careful, you will have to spend a lot of time. As Fisk later said, humans are "motivated tacticians" and will judge based on their motivations whether to be easy and fast or hard and accurate.Because many times we just rely on "feeling", we will choose a fast method.
As a miser in thinking and cognition, his favorite tools for tricks are heuristics and hypotheses. The Jiesi method refers to the rule of thumb like "the things that are easier to think of are things that happen more often." In other words, if I ask you, "Are your uncle often angry?" and you can think of many examples of him being angry at once, you may think that your uncle is really angry at all. But if you can't even think about it once, you may think he is obviously very gentle. The Gies method is like most rules of thumb, usually right, but there may be exceptions.
Please tell me with intuition, which of the following happens more often? Was it hit by lightning or attacked by sharks? Most people think that being attacked by sharks is more common, but in fact, in China, about 5,000 people are hit by lightning every year, but only 10 to 15 people are attacked by sharks. (There is also an interesting news on the National Geographic Shark Week website: In 1996, only 13 people were injured by shark attacks, but 43,000 were injured by toilets and 2,600 were injured by indoor air fragrances.)
So, why do we think sharks are more dangerous than lightning, toilets or air fragrances? The reason is that as long as someone is attacked by a shark, he will definitely be on the news. Everyone thought the shark attack was too terrifying (maybe due to Spielberg's "The Great White Jaws"), so the news report was very eye-catching. But in comparison, we rarely see people hit by lightning on the news, slipping on the toilet and knocking their heads, or... and as for how they get hurt by fragrance, you know.
Another tool for thinking about miser: hypothesis, there are also various variations. "Hypothesis" will affect what the observer sees, interprets and remembers, and form their impression of you. For example, there are some common and natural assumptions that others will probably see you this way (and they almost never realize they are doing this):
They will judge who you should be based on their past experience with you.
They will believe the first impression you give them and shape the subsequent impression accordingly.
They will feel that you are similar to other members based on the group you think you are.
If you have some very positive traits, such as cleverness, beauty, funny, and kindness, they will think you should have other positive traits.
You may have the same opinions, feelings and shortcomings as them, but the ethical standards and abilities are difficult to say.
So, even if you meet for the first time, you won’t really start from scratch when you meet someone. Long before both parties spoke, the other party had already started to fill in a lot of details about you. If you know this, you will be mentally prepared to know what you have to face. In addition, if you can know the other person’s likes and dislikes, advantages and disadvantages in advance, you can better predict the other person’s perception of you.
In the face of all this, in addition to passive acceptance, he can also take the initiative. For example, if you can emphasize the group you belong to or your own excellent traits, you can get a positive stereotype or halo effect. You can also try to create a good first impression from scratch and maximize the benefits of this matter. In addition, you can also try to express your opinions and values as clearly as possible. If you have left a bad impression in others’ minds, been misunderstood, or want others to notice what changes you have made, there are strategies to let them update their thoughts about you. But no matter what, you still have to know what you might look like in the eyes of others.
