Taking the judge role with one word
Yes this is a past event. That’s the best example I could think of to explain this idea.
What I meant is the following: even if someone does not mean to say something with a power dynamics intentions behind it, if the words inside could be interpreted as such, then there is a risk it will be.
For instance: an advice could be interpreted as an order. A compliment could be interpreted as a one-up. In this instance, when we use an adjective/qualificative, we automatically take the judge role. Whether we intend or not.
Even if we do not intend to do so. Now I am careful to not use these adjectives in situations where I do not want to take the judge role.
For instance at the restaurant: “thank you for the service” feels more friendly than “thank you for the excellent service”.
Mmmmh. Now that I’m writing this, I might be overthinking or exaggerating this. Not 100% sure yet.
The adjective adds some component of the judge role, true.
However, more than the judge role, it gives authority/power to the complimenter.
In this case, the judge role effect is rather small.
The power effect is a bit stronger, since you are positioning yourself at least at his same level.
However, overall, neither is too strong.
Plus, in many situations, it's fair of you to judge someone's work.
In John's example of complimenting a waiter or the restaurant owner, it's fair of you to compliment the "excellent" service by adding an adjective.
I'd personally use a different sentence structure, such as:
Thank you so much, the service here was excellent, really remarkable and I loved it
But overall, I'd say that adding an adjective here or there is usually -usually- not something one should actively try to avoid, and not something that one should necessarily take as a power move when someone else does it to him.
We also discussed something similar very similar here.
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Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on March 29, 2021, 5:38 pmThe adjective adds some component of the judge role, true.
However, more than the judge role, it gives authority/power to the complimenter.
How do you differentiate between the two?
Plus, in many situations, it's fair of you to judge someone's work.
In John's example of complimenting a waiter or the restaurant owner, it's fair of you to compliment the "excellent" service by adding an adjective.
I'd personally use a different sentence structure, such as:Thank you so much, the service here was excellent, really remarkable and I loved it
Good stuff.
But overall, I'd say that adding an adjective here or there is usually -usually- not something one should actively try to avoid, and not something that one should necessarily take as a power move when someone else does it to him.
About the avoidance: thanks, it was an embedded question I had. Regarding not seeing it as a power move, that is also the purpose of the post. That you can use a sentence structure that can be interpreted as a domination attempt whereas the intention was not. Of course the context matters. What do you think on this topic?
We also discussed something similar very similar here.
Yes, that's true. The difference in this post is the analysis is more on the syntax.
John: How do you differentiate between the two?
Not easy, since the judge role is also about power.
Power is larger though, including all different sub-groups such as dominance, authority, status, and position in dominance hierarchies.
The judge is mostly about emotional rewards/punishments and craving/being hurt by those rewards/punishment, and those don't always and necessarily exist in all power relations -or, at least, they're not the main ingredient-.
For example:
The customer just asked for some modifications. please review the email I just forwarded you and amend accordingly, otherwise, great job.
This is more about (hierarchical) power, and "great job" is used to soften the blow and make sure the tasking doesn't come across as a reprimand for his skills and general performance.
There is no judge attempt here, and unless the employee really craves the manager's approval, there is little judge at all.
Trump saying "great job" is also mostly about power:
Trump says great job to frame the interaction as him as the big boss, and Comey working for him.
Trump needs to be happy with Comey's job, but it's more about pure (hierarchical) power, than the emotional component.
The judge is also a lot about the receiver.
If you don't feel like you need the person's approval, then you don't have full judge dynamics, you have a judge attempt, but not a judge effect.
I might need to reflect more on this, use better examples, and amend the article/lesson accordingly, since I realize it can be quite confusing.
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Thanks for the clarification. As you said, I think this part could fit in PU to explain further the judge role.
Ok, thanks to the recent conversation in "feedbacks and clarifications", I have my answer:
It all depends on the other person's perception and interpretation (given the context).
If someone believes you played a power move on them: you can argue whatever you want, proof whatever you want, they're not going to believe you. They will rationalise: "of course he's going to say this".
We can see this in board games where bluffing is involved. Board games are like social laboratories where you can see social dynamics in a condensed manner. There are games where there are lying involved. And when you believe that lying had occurred your brain will start to rationalize why this person is lying. It is quite amazing to observe oneself. It happened to me: two friends were lying and one was telling the truth. I believed the two liars that the one telling the truth was actually a liar (read this sentence again if necessary). After the game, I went: "I cannot believe you were telling the truth." And at that moment in our reality, we could not believe it. It was not possible. We have coloured the other person as a "liar" and now we go forward with this perception. That is the power of manipulators: they know how to manipulate our perceptions: favourably towards them and unfavourably towards their enemies.
On the opposite, if you are playing power moves left and right, using words that puts you in the judge position and the other person interprets it as "not playing a power move", then you're good to go. Because the person labelled you as "safe".
This goes back to what one of my professor told me about a study. Democrat people were faced with a given text: in one case they were told it was written by a democrat and in another one that it was written by a republican. They liked it in one case and hated it in another case. The same text. The interpretation is that there is a biological device in the brain that filters our perceptions. And this part labels things good or bad based on our previous experiences. So if you had a lot of positive experiences with someone, your brain labels this person "good". Whatever this person does will be coloured emotionally "good". That is how you can see where you stand with someone. If you say something and the other person goes "yeah, definitely". Well, you know where you stand. If the other person goes "I don't agree", you know where you stand as well. I already hear the counter-arguments about the last example: so it is not a blanket statement, I let your intelligence and discernment see the fine differentiations.
That is why you do a shitty joke with your friends and they laugh. You do a shitty joke with strangers, they look at you like crazy. Same with women: when they like you, whatever you say is funny or smart.
This is something I have been neglecting in social dynamics: the emotional part. I mean, I'm a pretty genuine guy. I love people, children, animals and nature. I'm a peace-loving, fun-loving friendy warm extroverted guy. That is who I am. So people like to be around me in general.
But before today, I did not want to use positive associations to have more influence. I thought this was too manipulative. I am listening to "Charisma Myth" and with the current experience on the forum and other ones in real life, I think this is what the next level looks like for me in terms of social skills.
That is why serving people is not that important. Cook for your 10 friends and you're a slave. Let them eat a good meal and you're a saviour. What is important is that they have a positive association with you. Of course, if they see you suffer for them it's cool IF it brings them something of value/pleasure.
It's about neuronal networks. It's about punishment and rewards. We don't like people who punish us and we like those who rewards us. BY DEFAULT. Now the whole "I am the learner" attitude is to rewire ourselves in a more effective manner. That is, to re-wire what constitutes a reward and what constitutes punishment FOR US. Because everything that threatens our ego is painful. Therefore if we avoid pain then personal growth is unattainable. That is why this rewiring is necessary: to be able to go towards painful stuff if it is useful.
Cheers!
I think this question came up in some other threads before.
My opinion on the subjectivity of power moves and power dynamics is that there is definitely an element of subjectivity, but the subjectivity is in no way endless.
I don't remember which psychopath it was who in prison said something along the tune of "there are no good people".
Obviously, it was convenient for him to make all one big shade of grey.
What's a value-taking/disempowering power move can also be measured with a scientific approach:
- Take any social exchange (debate, list of texts, back and forth, etc.)
- Take 1.000 people
- Ask them all the same power-relevant question, such as:
- Was anyone too aggressive? If so, who?
- Was anyone one-upping/manipulating/disempowering someone else?
- From 1 to 10, how much were they being aggressive/manipulative/disempowering?
If, say, 900 people all agree, then it means that the power moves were quite obvious (it's possible that 100 might be either clueless / autistic, or maybe they themselves act like that, so they don't wanna label it as value-taking).
If the average of the degree is around 8, then it means that the exchange was very value-taking.
And if you want to make it a higher quality test, instruct those people a bit so that they are all a bit more power-aware.
If not, just let them roll in with whatever their level of PI is, and it will also be a great test to see how non-trained people see it.
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Quote from John Freeman on April 1, 2021, 7:55 amOk, thanks to the recent conversation in "feedbacks and clarifications", I have my answer:
It all depends on the other person's perception and interpretation (given the context).
If someone believes you played a power move on them: you can argue whatever you want, proof whatever you want, they're not going to believe you. They will rationalise: "of course he's going to say this".
We can see this in board games where bluffing is involved. Board games are like social laboratories where you can see social dynamics in a condensed manner. There are games where there are lying involved. And when you believe that lying had occurred your brain will start to rationalize why this person is lying. It is quite amazing to observe oneself. It happened to me: two friends were lying and one was telling the truth. I believed the two liars that the one telling the truth was actually a liar (read this sentence again if necessary). After the game, I went: "I cannot believe you were telling the truth." And at that moment in our reality, we could not believe it. It was not possible. We have coloured the other person as a "liar" and now we go forward with this perception. That is the power of manipulators: they know how to manipulate our perceptions: favourably towards them and unfavourably towards their enemies.
On the opposite, if you are playing power moves left and right, using words that puts you in the judge position and the other person interprets it as "not playing a power move", then you're good to go. Because the person labelled you as "safe".
This goes back to what one of my professor told me about a study. Democrat people were faced with a given text: in one case they were told it was written by a democrat and in another one that it was written by a republican. They liked it in one case and hated it in another case. The same text. The interpretation is that there is a biological device in the brain that filters our perceptions. And this part labels things good or bad based on our previous experiences. So if you had a lot of positive experiences with someone, your brain labels this person "good". Whatever this person does will be coloured emotionally "good". That is how you can see where you stand with someone. If you say something and the other person goes "yeah, definitely". Well, you know where you stand. If the other person goes "I don't agree", you know where you stand as well. I already hear the counter-arguments about the last example: so it is not a blanket statement, I let your intelligence and discernment see the fine differentiations.
That is why you do a shitty joke with your friends and they laugh. You do a shitty joke with strangers, they look at you like crazy. Same with women: when they like you, whatever you say is funny or smart.
This is something I have been neglecting in social dynamics: the emotional part. I mean, I'm a pretty genuine guy. I love people, children, animals and nature. I'm a peace-loving, fun-loving friendy warm extroverted guy. That is who I am. So people like to be around me in general.
But before today, I did not want to use positive associations to have more influence. I thought this was too manipulative. I am listening to "Charisma Myth" and with the current experience on the forum and other ones in real life, I think this is what the next level looks like for me in terms of social skills.
That is why serving people is not that important. Cook for your 10 friends and you're a slave. Let them eat a good meal and you're a saviour. What is important is that they have a positive association with you. Of course, if they see you suffer for them it's cool IF it brings them something of value/pleasure.
It's about neuronal networks. It's about punishment and rewards. We don't like people who punish us and we like those who rewards us. BY DEFAULT. Now the whole "I am the learner" attitude is to rewire ourselves in a more effective manner. That is, to re-wire what constitutes a reward and what constitutes punishment FOR US. Because everything that threatens our ego is painful. Therefore if we avoid pain then personal growth is unattainable. That is why this rewiring is necessary: to be able to go towards painful stuff if it is useful.
Cheers!
This is just my subjective interpretation.
Regarding your last paragraph: yes of John, if I avoid my pain then growth is unattainable. However, it does not mean that anyone is free to impose this "personal-growth frame" to anyone. If you really want to impose this frame to others, for example your son or other loved ones, I think you'd better impose it in a "power-through" manner rather a "power-over" manner.
In short, I could ask myself to feel the pain, but I cannot ask others to do the same.
Regarding the experiment on democrats:
Yes of course most people are like this. But rational people such as Lucio are less affected by this biological instinct, I think. Even if he likes someone, he will still give his critical, tough feedback.
Thanks for your feed-back, guys! 🙂
Back on original topic. I ve had two female colleagues who if you are explaining something will say: "correct"
Or
"That's fine"
And yes they were both sly and manipulative generally
Is this one of those small annoyances you have to let go by?
BTW thank you PU. Until I learnt about the judge role I had no idea why this annoyed me and thought I was imagining things.