Skip to main content

Interactions with Others

"Just because we may not pay mundane interactions much attention, however, doesn't mean that researchers ignore them.  In fact, it is one of the operating principles of social psychology that even the most minute encounters can have large effects on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

"In that spirit, researchers have explored many of our everyday activities--and found empirical evidence that they can be performed better.  We can greatly reduce our stress and get more of what we see by applying a cornucopia of information from recent studies that bear directly on the small problems and challenges of our daily lives.

"If there is a unifying these to the findings, it is that the most successful encounters accommodate, even anticipate, the respondent's point of view.  That is, if we want something only another person can give--friendship, acceptance, forgiveness--we need to factor the other person's mindset into our requests and behavior." - Mary Loftus in March/April 2013 Psychology Today

Out smallest interactions with others can change our moods and other around us. 

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Accepting a compliment

"Nearly everyone who is asked, 'What is the proper response to a compliment?' replies, 'Say 'thank you.''  But when actually offered a compliment, only a third of people accept it so simply and smoothly, found linguist Robert Herbert of Binghamton University. "The difficulty lies in the fact that a compliment ('What a nice sweater!') has two levels: a gift component (accept or reject) and a content component (agree or disagree).  The addressee is confronted with a  dilemma--how to respond simultaneously to both: 'I must agree with the speaker and thank him for the gift of a compliment while avoiding self-praise.' "Contrary to conventional wisdom, women aren't worse than men at accepting compliments.  It is the gender of the compliment-giver that most influences the response.  Women and men are both more likely to accept a compliment coming from a man than from a woman.  When a man says, 'Nice scarf," a...

Drug use and crime in USA

"Gil Kerlikoske, the White House director of national drug control policy, said a study by his office showed a strong link between drug use and crime.  Eighty percent of the adult males arrested for crimes in Sacramento, California, last year tested positive for at least one illegal drug.  Marijuana was the most commonly detected drug, found in 54 percent of those arrested. "The study found similar results in four other cities: New York, Denver, Atlanta and Chicago.  Among the cities, it included examinations of 1,736 urine samples and 1,938 interviews with men who were arrested.  "Researches found that marijuana was the most popular drug used by men who'd been arrested in all the cities, ranging from a low of 37 percent in Atlanta to a high of 58 percent in Chicago.  Chicago also had the highest overall positive test results, with 86 percent of the men found to have at least one drug in their bloodstreams. "Cocaine ranked as the second most ...

Couple Therapy

"What I learned confirmed Bowlby's message that patterns of relating created by attachment, separation, and loss during the first few years of life become fixed and impact all future relationships.  It also confirmed that couples' narratives (i.e. their presenting problems) are the logical products of the cortex playing catch-up with the emotional part of the brain.  The limbic system reacts almost instantaneously.  This understanding supports the view that couple therapy should concentrate not on the espoused content of the partners' conflict but rather on their underlying core dynamics. "Dr Walter Bracelmanns, who was developing his own integration of couple therapy.  I thank him for the support that he gave to the new idea that the focus of the work is the relationship, not the growth of the individual self of each partner." - Marion Solomon in Love and War in Intimate Relationships Couple therapy theories vary greatly.  So many different t...