I recently read an article from a book on Psychology called Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. The article is called, “Self-Anchoring in Conversation: Why Language Users Do Not Do What They ‘Should.’” Being a language teacher, I thought the title was interesting... And being annoyed and dismayed by the degradation of public discourse and debate in the US, I thought it was a must read.
First, what does the title mean by 'should'? It means that in order to eliminate or at least avoid ambiguity and miscommunication, speakers and listeners should follow the 'principle of optimal design.' This means that speakers should design a message from the beginning with the audience in mind: their perspective, knowledge and background. At the same time, the listener should interpret from that position too: that knowledge, background and perspective needed to understand it are common, shared. Research shows that that is not actually the case most of the time. Instead they rely on a sort of shortcut system that can be called a heuristic.
The article summarizes studies that explore that heuristic. First speakers think of what they want to say. Second they formulate the sentence(s). Then they review them to see if they fit the audience, and only then will they make changes to fit the audience. When they first decide on what they are saying and formulate how to say it they are basing it (anchoring it) on their (an egocentric) perspective and knowledge. It is only later that they review and change (adjust) the message to see if it is comprehensible to the audience from their perspective and knowledge. The studies also show that the less time or fewer mental resources the speaker has at that moment, the more the last step is cut short or left out. The research also says the same about how people interpret messages: they start (anchor) from their own (egocentric) perspective and only later review to see if there may be a disparity due to the different perspective of the speaker that calls for modification (adjustment) in their understanding.
What struck me most about this is that reaching out to the other person's knowledge, background and perspective is left to the last, and when in a pinch, it is the first thing to be cut back on or cut out. It doesn't surprise me that this is what happens, but what does is that it has been formulated like this and backed up by what seems to be a fair amount of research. Why that surprises me is because it seems to fit exactly what is going on with public debate now in the age of the internet. We have so much information thrown at us constantly from so many different perspectives; we are so busy wading through all of that information; we are so busy contributing our own information to the flood; we are so busy multi-tasking, which really just means jumping back and forth from one task to another constantly being interrupted or interrupting ourselves.
The article itself says that, "When people are overly busy and cognitively occupied, they might not be able to adjust sufficiently from the egocentric anchor. This has clear consequences in our overly busy world."
I see this as part of the way that technology-- though it is hailed as a great uniter-- is actually dividing us. It makes us more "overly busy and cognitively occupied" so that we are less effective communicators. It also strips away context, which is related to background, knowledge and perspective, and makes it seem as if we don't have to adjust our messages or interpretations for different people to communicate effectively. It makes us to busy and so over-taxed that we don't effectively adjust or don't have the time or feel the need to adjust at all. Things are routinely taken out of context, misunderstood, misspoken. Instead of finding the root of these issue and putting them to rest, finding meaning and communicating, we rush off to spread the error and add to it by adding our instinctive response to it. Our response often doesn't itself go through a process of reflection and adjustment because there is no time or mental resources to do so, at least not if we want to get out two cents in before everyone's attention moves on to something else.
I am not saying that we need to rewire our brains to process and create messages differently. That would be taxing and inefficient in many ways, at least in everyday circumstances. The article says that by using this heuristic, "the language user is taking a shortcut that is cheap in mental resources and relatively fast." Also that it is, "typically successful" when the speaker and listener share much in terms of background, knowledge and perspective-- which is quite often. Doing what we 'should' –building the message from the beginning with the audience in mind— is far more time consuming and taxing. While that approach may be a way to reflect on and modify our heuristic approach sometimes or useful when working on a single very important message, for daily use it would be more trouble than it is worth.
My point is that we should slow down and make sure that we don't constantly short change the adjustment step in the process, and try to never outright skip it. This does not mean to stop using technology and its benefits, but to slow down and use it more effectively to communicate accurately, not simply communicate more in terms of volume: in terms of number of messages and size of audience.
Here are extended quotes from the text that my paraphrasing in the second and third paragraph are based on:
"What we consistently find it that language users do not do what they 'should' do according to common sense and current theory. For example, they do not routinely use readily available information about the perspective of the other. The reason is twofold. First, information about perspective is not only knowledge, it is metaknowledge: It is knowledge about who knows what. Such higher-level information typically takes more cognitive resources and more time to use. By relying on an egocentric interpretation in the case of understanding, and an egocentric plan in the case of speaking, the language user is taking a shortcut that is cheap in mental resources and relatively fast.
"The second reason we rely on an egocentric process is that it is typically successful. In many cases, the overlap between the foci of the speaker and the addressee is such that an egocentric process would be sufficient for successful communication.”
“Nickerson (1999) demonstrates how miscommunication can result from people's mistaken assessment of what others know and their tendency to overimpute their own knowledge to others. We have shown that even when language users are well informed about what others know, they still anchor egocentrically when taking the other's perspective. Although people might be quite good at taking into account differences in perspective when they use language, they only do so through this effortful and time-consuming process of adjustment. When people are overly busy and cognitively occupied, they might not be able to adjust sufficiently from the egocentric anchor. This has clear consequences in our overly busy world.”
Bibliography
Keysar, Boaz, and Dale J Barr. 2002. "Self-Anchoring in Conversation: Why Language Users Do Not Do What The "Should"." In Heuristics And Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment , edited by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin and Daniel Kahneman, 150-166. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press.
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