2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Back at the beginning of the last century, the outstanding American psychologist William James expressed the opinion that a close social circle to a large extent forms a person's personality. Recent psychological experiments have confirmed James's observation and even allowed him to go beyond it. It turned out that a person's personality always changes significantly in the presence of other people, even strangers. At least this is about our self-esteem. Here are just two of many highly revealing experiments.
54 pairs of young female students were asked to describe themselves. They were told that their pairing partner would be able to read this description. During the exchange of descriptions, a forgery was committed: the girls were handed not the manuscripts of their partners in a pair, but those descriptions that had been made in advance by the leaders of the experiment.
Half of the group received a self-portrait of an imaginary: fellow practitioners with an impeccable character, who considers herself cheerful, intelligent and beautiful. She eagerly went to school, she had a wonderful and joyful childhood, she was always extremely optimistic about the future. The second half of the group was given a self-portrait of a typical whining complainer - unhappy, ugly, with below average intelligence. Her childhood was terrible, she hated school and was afraid of the future.
After the participants in the experiment read the verbal self-portrait of their partner, they were asked to describe themselves again, but as honestly as possible. Result: The girls who read the imagined notes significantly improved their self-portrait. The meeting with the imaginary, even if it is not a personal meeting, causes a feeling of imbalance, which the person tries to compensate by raising his self-portrait. Complainants elicited negative reactions from colleagues. After reading their descriptions, the girls suddenly saw themselves in a more negative and pessimistic light. As if they wanted to say: "I understand what you are talking about, but I also have problems."
Another experiment. Michigan State University has announced a competition for a well-paid summer job. Each of the applicants was given a questionnaire, which is filled out when applying for a job. In addition, each was asked to describe himself. Self-portrait had no effect on the chance of getting a job, but students were asked to honestly answer questions about their personality in order to develop a really good test for future research.
The applicants were seated at the head of a long table in an empty room, and they began to fill out the questionnaire. After about 10 minutes, another person entered the room, who silently sat at the opposite edge of the table, posing as someone who also wanted to get a job.
These front men, trained by the experiment leader, were of two different types. One of them was "Mr. Clean" - in a tailored suit, polished boots and a briefcase "diplomat". The second "decoy duck" faced by the job applicant was "Mr. Dirty" - in a crumpled shirt, worn trousers and with a two-day stubble on his face. Result: "Mr. Clean" caused a characteristic decrease in self-esteem. In his presence, the applicants felt untidy and stupid. It was quite different in the case of "Mr. Dirty". His presence caused a significant increase in self-esteem. After his appearance in the room, the applicants began to feel stately, more optimistic, they suddenly had more self-confidence.
From the book of Stepanov S. S.
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