Imagine that you enter a store in an unfamiliar part
of the city and a salesperson-say, a woman of a different ethnic background-smiles
as she approaches you. Your immediate reaction may be, "She seems to be a
friendly person," and you automatically return the smile. But suppose that
you have had unpleasant encounters with people of her ethnic background or you
have heard derogatory remarks about them. Then your positive reactions will be
muted. Perhaps the meaning of a derogatory parental warning will echo through
your mind: "Don't have anything to do with those people." Or you may
have created a picture from past experiences of salespersons as controlling and
self-serving. The memories and beliefs that you bring into the situation will
help to shape your interpretation of the salesperson's behavior. You then jump
to the conclusion that her smile is insincere, an attempt to manipulate you. Instead
of returning her smile, you feel tense and stiffen up.'
We
frequently have such interactions with other people. How do we interpret someone's
communications-their words, tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language
(whether stiff or relaxed)? We have a repertoire of beliefs that we apply to particular
situations and consequently make sense of them for the most part. We already have
these rules or formulas at our disposal when we enter a situation. Depending on
its nature, one or another pattern of beliefs is automatically activated.
The beliefs and formulas tend to be global:
"Foreigners are dangerous," or, "Salespeople are manipulative."
The global beliefs are applied to fit a particular situation in the form of conditional
or "if-then" rules. A global belief, for example, would be, "Tigers
are dangerous." However, you will obviously react to a saber-toothed tiger
quite differently if you encounter it in the zoo rather than in the wild. The
conditional rule activated in this case would be, "If the tiger is caged,
then I am safe." The general belief about the danger of fierce animals has
been refined to a conditional belief in order to take into account the particular
context or conditions.
Similarly, your encounter with a smiling
salesperson might be addressed by a conditional or contextual rule: "If a
salesperson is aggressive, then it means she is trying to control me," or,
"If the salesperson is passive and compliant, I am safe." To return
to the earlier example, the conditional belief would be, "If the salesperson
is foreign-looking, she is probably manipulative."
While
the categorical rules provide a general thesis about a class of individuals
or situations, the conditional rules tailor the interpretations to the features
of the present situation. The categorical rules are generally loose ("Strangers
are dangerous"), whereas the conditional rules are tight and specific ("If
a stranger approaches me, I should be on guard"). Both categorical and conditional
rules are similar to the legal rules that govern the arrest and conviction of
violators: robbery is unlawful (categorical rule); if a person breaks into a house
and steals property, he is guilty of a felony (conditional rule).
The
effect of the rules becomes obvious in psychopathology. A severely depressed
person may interpret all his interactions with other people according to the categorical
belief, "I am inferior to everybody," and the paranoid under the rubric
of, "People are spying on me." These generalized beliefs become so pervasive
that they are applied to almost all situations. A severely depressed person, obsessed
with a sense of inferiority or undesirability, will interpret another's smile
as a sign of pity, a neutral expression as aloofness, and a frown as absolute
rejection. A paranoid person may interpret a smile as a devious attempt to manipulate
him and a neutral expression as feigned indifference. Thus, the dominance of the
categorical rules can distort the specific features of a situation. The biased
beliefs of the depressive or paranoid person produce biased interpretations of
reality. Such biased beliefs and thinking occur both in psychopathology and in
interpersonal animosity and inter group conflict.
Overly broad
categorical beliefs about strangers or foreigners can lead to erroneous labeling
of friendly strangers as dangerous or unfriendly ("false positives").
To the degree that the categorical beliefs regarding strangers are a mixture of
our evolutionary and cultural heritage and our idiosyncratic learning history,
we are predisposed to react to unfamiliar or different people as being alien to
us. During an early developmental stage, for example, children generally respond
to the approach of unfamiliar individuals with obvious distress, presumably fear.
Even
though most children outgrow the fear of strangers, they may retain this categorical
belief in a latent form that is called into action when they are in contact with
foreign-looking people or when they hear unfavorable comments about them. At a
more conscious level, the reflex aversion to people different from us is apparent
in xenophobia-ethnic or racial prejudice. Further, the more general biased beliefs
regarding outsiders become activated in the presence of conflict with other groups
or nations.
How do we extract the meaning
of a particular combination of stimuli, as when we are approached by a smiling
salesperson? In interpreting what we see, we draw on an information-processing
system based on images and memories as well as on beliefs. The visual configuration
of the salesperson is matched against templates in our memory. When a match is
made between the external configuration-for example, the saleslady's smiling face
and the relevant template, "recognition" occurs and the associated beliefs
and rules yield an interpretation of her motives.
The conditional
beliefs flesh out and modify the meaning generated by this matching process. A
memory of a particular person who was deceptive or manipulative may override the
perception of this person's smiling image and our belief that "smiling people
are friendly." The associated rule, "Don't trust her," will modify
our reaction to her smile and evoke a question: "Is she trying to manipulate
me?" In fact, our visualization may even "change" her smile from
an innocent one to a crafty one.
- Beck, A.T., PhD. (1999). Prisoners of Hate. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Online Continuing Education
QUESTION
20
A severely depressed person may interpret all of his interactions
with other people according to what categorical belief? Record the letter of the
correct answer the .
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