Psychology
Quote from Stef on October 4, 2020, 8:52 pmi suggest: good-guy punisher
makes me think about the punisher super-heroe going evil
Damn, that's a good name!
Will add it soon.
P.S.: moved it to "books / researches / wisdom" as it seems more befitting than the "power dynamics" section.
A 2013 study attempted to find the mechanism, linking the effect to a type of brain cell that releases a protein important for sleep.
Now a meta-analysis of 66 independent studies conducted between 1974 and 2016 has found that sleep deprivation rapidly reduces the symptoms of depression in roughly half of patients, at least when conducted in controlled inpatient settings.
The brain is weird!
How to Validate
Alright, enough storytelling. Let’s talk about how to validate effectively.
Effective validation has two main components:
- It identifies a specific emotion
- It offers justification for feeling that emotion
For example, let’s say you’re talking with your significant other at the end of a long day. You can tell something is bothering them, so you ask what’s up.
“Ugh, I can’t stand Kate!” they say. “You know this work event we’ve been planning? She keeps changing the plans and doesn’t seem to listen to—or care at all about—what the rest of us want to do. It’s driving me crazy!”
What would you say? While it may be tempting to jump in with advice or assurance, research has shown that choosing to validate first, before offering any advice or assurance, is often the best way to help. So, you might say something like:
“Serious? Ugh, that would drive me crazy!”
Notice how that response 1) identifies a specific emotion (feeling crazy), and 2) offers justification for feeling that emotion (you would feel the same way). By holding off on the advice for a moment, and instead showing that you hear and understand where your significant other is coming from, you demonstrate respect and appreciation in a way that will instantly strengthen your connection.
Sound easy? It is. But can it really make that much of a difference? You’d be surprised.
Validating Responses
There are, of course, countless ways to validate. As long as you show the other person that you recognize and accept their emotions, you’re validating:
- “Wow, that would be confusing.”
- “He really said that? I’d be angry too!”
- “Ah, that is so sad.”
- “You have every right to be proud; that was a major accomplishment!”
- “I’m so happy for you! You’ve worked incredibly hard on this. It must feel amazing.”
Notice again how each of these responses refers to a specific emotion and shows some justification for or acceptance of it. Including both elements of validation shows the other person that you not only hear them, you understand them.
Invalidating Responses
Invalidating responses are often born out of good intentions, but they do anything but help. An invalidating response is anything that minimizes or dismisses another person’s feelings:
- “You’ll be fine.”
- “It could be worse!”
- “At least it’s not [fill in the blank].”
- “Just put a smile on your face and tough it out.”
- “Don’t worry; things will work out.”
- “It’s not that big of a deal.”
More often than not, these types of responses actually make the situation worse. They suggest that the other person is being irrational and/or “shouldn’t” feel the way they are—the very opposite of how they’re hoping to feel by talking with you. Learn to catch these responses and change them into validating ones, and you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes.
Got it? Try it.
The next time someone shares something with you (an experience, fear, concern, hope, dream, etc.), try validating them. Get into the experience with them, identify the emotion they’re feeling, and show that you understand why they’re feeling it. It’s surprisingly connecting.
This is a broad, high-level look at validation. For a deeper dive, including dozens of real-life examples and actionable approaches to deepening your connection with others, check out my book, I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships.
All kind of simple yet powerful stuff...
Quote from Stef on October 4, 2020, 8:52 pmi suggest: good-guy punisher
makes me think about the punisher super-heroe going evil
Added, with a note:
Good-guy punishing can be a fair strategy.
When "high collaborators" go too far, they can sometimes "leave value on the table" (think of "naive collaborators") for their exchange partners to take (potentially, scalpers or too powerful owners who can hog 99% of the pie), and that can harm everyone who's in the same camp of the (too) good-guys.
Think for example of strikebreakers (scabs).
Yeah, they are being "super cooperative" with the owners, but we could argue they are not demanding enough for themselves and leaving too much value for the owners to take.
And with their overly-collaborative stance, they damage all other employees.
An "enlightened collaborator" in that case could also seek to punish the "too good guy" -or restrain him from being a "naive collaborator"-.
it makes perfect sense! depends on his intentions and motivations for what he is doing.
Sometines the "good guy" needs to be punished or he may not even be that good for everyone involved and affected by the transaction after all.
Even the guys who poisoned Socrates may have believe they where doing something good for the greek youth.
The "Legacy Drive"
In short:
People make fewer children in developed economies because they can fulfil their drive for legacy with different goals and pursuits that were less available in the course of most of our evolution.
I had already talked about this drive in "corporate manipulation".
There I said that a common, often unconscious corporate manipulation, was to hire people with death-defying goals that emboldened people to work harder for the company's goals -see for example "made a dent in the universe", "making an impact", "changing the world", "being the first ever to..." etc. etc.).
Today, I discovered there is a paper on "legacy drive".
It does make a lot of sense to me.
it is like someone who can write a famous book and then become "inmortal" like Cervantes or Shakespeare.
Then in a way you may feel less need to have many children or children at all, as we, as symbolic creatures may end valuing symbolic celebrity and inmortality closer or even more than biological perpetuation.
"developed economies" :I would argue that also the oportunity cost for raising children is higher in developed economies, people want a higher standard of living even if it is not a biological necesity, as there are more things in which you can spend your money, and other hobbys that compete from just having sex with your wife/lover.
in my country people always joke that poor people have many children cause they dont have acces to television so they have sex all day.
Well for that and other reasons there may be some grain of truth in that popular dictum...
Exactly, Stef.
The paper says it applies to men more than women, which is most likely true.
But as the cultural diktat shifts to "genders being the same", and women being more like men -or "having" to be more like men-, that also has a (small, probably) influence on women's priority.
And the ones who were already predisposed to follow immortality via cultural legacy rather than biology, feel more emboldened to take a stand for it.
An example here with Tom Bylieu's wife: