Quote from: winkio on June 20, 2011, 01:33:42 pm
Wait, this is interesting. How many of you read books or articles in order to study practical social behaviors that apply to real life? I've never heard of that before, but it is very cool. Is there a standard that all these sorts of books use, or is each author presenting their own theories and content?
Well, I've sure as hell read quite an amount on that kind of literature, even though most of it was mostly connected to the seduction aspect of social interactions. xD To my knowledge there are a few philosophies of which each works in its own way. Some of the concepts are common for all of them, though. Three of the intersecting concepts are body language, perceived value and congruency. Body language basically covers everything that you communicate on a non-verbal level (often including also the para-verbal aspect, the way words are spoken, but that varies from author to author) while perceived value and congruency often work together.
The idea is that with perceived value you establish an interaction where you try to either increase, decrease or equalize your value or somebody else's value and the rest of the group. A very good example in this area (which has nothing to do with seduction) is that you can get on your knees when you talk to a child because being so much taller and bigger gives you a lot of perceived value in the child's eyes. With this action you lower your own value in its eyes and match it to the child's value so the child is less afraid to talk to you or open up. Having a little bit more perceived value than the rest makes them "like you" while having a lot more value than them makes them usually feel inadequate. Imagine somebody starts chatting you up on the bus station. You don't want to talk to them so you try to avoid answering, break eye contact, etc. Your value is much higher than the value of the other person, because the other person wants to have a conversation with you and as the other person continues to insist on a conversation while you are backing off more and more, the value of the other person in your eyes drops further and further.
Often when you have a higher perceived value, you have the option to give people chances to increase their value in your eyes. e.g. You can ask a person a question and depending on your answer, you control the perceived value of the other person. If you ask what they do for a living and you answer disinterested, their value drops or stays the same while if you answer with something like "Really? Wow, that's great!", you give them validation and their value increases.
The funniest thing about perceived value is that it's literally just perceived value. If a homeless guy would take a shower, put on a suit and show up at a wedding, people will say that he looks good, because that is how he is perceived. That's actually what people are always worried about what others think of them. They are more concerned about perceived value than actual value. It's more important that they look good in front of others than becoming or being a good person. This is why it is so easy to lead an interaction by understanding and applying the concept of perceived value.
The concept of congruency is the level of match between your actions or your words (so to speak). If you say you are a very confident person while you break eye contact often and look down, you are incongruent. If you say you want a relationship and the first time you make out, you feel her up really a lot, you are being incongruent. This is different from dishonesty, because you can be honest and incongruent at the same time. You can be honest and still keep things to yourself while if you say something, you should stand behind your words.
Those are just a few concepts and I'm just scratching the surface. Most of the concepts applied can't work alone (except for maybe body language). They usually work together and have to be applied together.
EDIT: One of the concepts most interesting to me is how our brains are hardwired to respond to certain things in certain ways. But beyond that, it's out conscious choice to allow that response. e.g. If you see a dangerous animal and your brain perceives the danger, it will activate an adrenaline rush. Now what you actually do with the adrenaline affecting your judgment is a different story. This is the main difference between animals and us. Animals will always do what their emotions force them to do while a human has a choice. Even when somebody says that they had no choice, this is plain ignorance. For a conscious being there is always a choice. The only thing that is not an option are the consequences of the choice (which aren't not necessarily negative, they can be positive consequences).
This example is mainly outside of the context of social interaction, but it's a general concept that can be applied to social interaction as well.
Just to add something else to the soup: If determinism was true, the concept of choice would be impossible. That's why I believe there cannot be determinism on a local scale, though, I do believe in Chaos Theory which shows that determinism on a global scale might just be working out as a whole.