Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Psychology student and the Shady partner- (Anonymous)
What happens in a relationship when one persons studies psychology and can pick up on lies,non-verbal cues etc that the other is cheating/acting shady but decides to tell dumb nonsensical shit anyway? psychology can make u more tuned into other people's bullshit but it doesnt solve anything now does it?
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2 comments:
I can identify with you on this area. However i'm of the opinion that if you pick up on the behaviour then you are empowered to act and not be walked all over by this guy. So problem solved. Just a choice to be made then.
Your question is an interesting one. But first we should address your study of psychology. The mere fact that you are studying psychology may have an effect on your cognition through what is known as heuristics or automatic processing. Heuristics are simple rules for making complex decisions or drawing inferences in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner.
One Heuristic is known as the availability heuristic whereby one makes judgment on the basis of how easily specific kinds of information can be brought to mind. Hence the fact that we can bring some information to mind easily, suggests that the easier it is to bring some information into mind, the more important that information must be.
Availability heuristics can play a role in the way you view behaviour in the following way: Through priming, which is defined as an increased availability of information resulting from exposure to specific stimuli or events, behaviors which normally you would not pay attention to may be magnified to the extent that they may seem out of the ordinary. Hence normal things your boyfriend may do, because of your heuristics, may cause you to misread the situation. Allow me to give you a classical example from another field of study, that of medicine. Research has shown that many students, during their first year of medical school, experience what is know as “the medical student syndrome” whereby they begin to suspect that they or others have many serious illnesses. Hence an ordinary headache might now be thought of as a tumor; a sore throat could lead them to think that they have of some form of cancer etc. This is thought to be caused by the students exposure to the descriptions of diseases day after day in class. As a result the information becomes more readily available leading them to believe the worst.
However, the fact that your boyfriend may be “cheating/acting shadily” should not be discounted. If this is indeed the case, psychology has provided you with a tool for detecting deception and with knowledge comes empowerment. You would are no longer at the mercy of naïve understandings of behaviour, but rather you interpret behaviour on the basis of sound psychological principles and research. Hence you now have the power of choice…
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