The Psychology of Microexpressions: Psychological Strategies in Relationships

Chapter 30 The Law of Turning Enemy into Friend in Social Communication—Psychological Strategies for Building a Good Relationship with "Enemy" (1)
Since it is competition, there will be elimination.Some people were eliminated one step away from success; some people kicked the last kick beautifully.The reason, you will find that what they lack is not ability or courage, but psychological strategies in interpersonal relationships.Therefore, in the fierce competition, you must master some necessary psychological strategies to make yourself the final winner!
The Embarrassment Effect: Deliberately exposing one's shortcomings
"The ugly effect", some people call it the "lame effect". Entering some small shortcomings can eliminate the jealousy of others and win the welcome of others.

What is the reason for the embarrassing effect?First of all, people are willing to accept people who are closer to them.Because everyone has shortcomings, if you perform too perfectly, it will make others feel unattainable and even jealous, thus alienating the distance from you.Secondly, the exposure of your shortcomings can make people trust you more, because perfect people do not exist, and the shortcomings that are exposed will make people feel that your performance is real and not deliberately pretended.

A well-known psychology professor once conducted such an experiment. He played four interview videos with similar plots to the test subjects:

In the first video, the person being interviewed is a very good and successful person. He has achieved outstanding achievements, has a gentle attitude, speaks well, and is very confident.His witty remarks won bursts of applause from the audience.

In the second video, he is also a very good and successful person, but because he was a little nervous during the interview, when the host introduced his achievements to the audience, he accidentally dropped the coffee cup on the table. Knocked down, and the coffee spilled on the host's clothes.

In the third video, the interviewee is an ordinary person. He has no outstanding achievements, so the whole interview process is very ordinary. brilliant.

In the fourth video, the interviewee was also a very ordinary person. During the interview, he was very nervous. Just like in the second video, he also knocked down the coffee cup beside him.

After the professor of psychology played the four videos, the testers were asked to choose one of the four people they liked the most and one they disliked the most.The results showed that the gentleman in the fourth video was the least popular, but the strange thing was that the testers didn't like the successful person in the first video who showed no regrets, but 95% of the testers chose the successful person who knocked over the coffee cup in the second video.

Not only will some small mistakes not affect people's impression of an outstanding person, but on the contrary, it will make people feel that he is sincere and trustworthy, thus winning more goodwill.If a person behaves flawlessly and makes people unable to see any of his shortcomings, it will make people feel that he is not real enough, which will just reduce his trust in the eyes of others.

Appropriately making yourself ugly and telling others about your shortcomings can make people feel that you are a reliable and approachable person, which will allow you to win more trust.

Meng Fan and Li Lin are both the deputy sales managers of the company. On the surface, they have a harmonious relationship, but secretly compete with each other because they both want to get promotion opportunities and better development in the company.Later, because the company's sales general manager suffered from physical problems and was unable to be the general manager, the company decided to choose one of Meng Fan and Li Lin as the general manager.But the embarrassing thing for the leaders is that they don't know who to leave this position to.Because the performance of the two of them is comparable, their work ability is very strong, and they usually behave perfectly, and they hardly have any bad habits in life.

Both Meng Fan and Li Lin knew that they were candidates for promotion. From then on, Li Lin began to work harder and did not allow himself to make any mistakes. Besides Meng Fan's good performance as always, he also made some small preparations. .

The campaign speech began, and Li Lin's speech was very exciting, with accurate words, passion, and some pretty good ideas.However, Meng Fan, who has always been known for his loud voice, suddenly became hoarse during the opening speech, and the people present looked at each other in blank dismay.After Meng Fan drank a sip of water to moisten his throat, he regained his usual loud voice. He took the opportunity to tease himself, and then began to give a humorous speech.

In the end, Meng Fan won unanimous praise from everyone and was successfully promoted to general manager.

Appropriately embarrassing yourself will not only win more favors from others, but also secretly win the competition.Everyone has flaws, and there is no such thing as a perfect person.It can be seen that the embarrassment effect is not only a common law of interpersonal communication, but also a wise way of competition.

Therefore, don't always appear in front of others with a "perfect image", properly expose your shortcomings, imply that you also have shortcomings, and take the initiative to make some ugly things, which can better win the trust of others, so that you can win the trust of others in the complex competition. stand out from the environment.

The Hawthorne Effect: Use silence to resolve the hostility of the other party

When the other party is hostile to us, how should we resolve the other party's hostility?How should we respond when the other party deliberately provokes us? The "Hawthorne Effect" tells us that silence is the most effective way to deal with provocation and defuse hostility.When we can truly face the other party's hostility and provocation with a silent attitude, the other party's hostility and provocation will slowly resolve in our silence.

The "Hawthorne effect" originated from a series of experimental studies from 1924 to 1933. The word "Hawthorne" comes from the factory used for experiments, which is the name of a factory of Western Electric Company in Chicago.The experiment initially studied the relationship between working conditions and production efficiency, including the relationship between external environmental conditions (such as lighting intensity, humidity) and production efficiency, as well as psychological factors (such as rest intervals, team pressure, working hours, managers' leadership) and productivity.

The specific test conditions are as follows:
Located on the outskirts of Chicago in the United States, the Hawthorne factory manufactures telephone exchanges. It has relatively complete entertainment facilities, medical systems, and pension systems, but the workers are still aggrieved and the production situation is not ideal.

In order to explore the reasons, in November 1924, the National Research Council of the United States organized a research team composed of psychologists and other experts to carry out a series of experimental studies in the factory.The central topic of this series of experimental studies is the interrelationship between productivity and working material conditions.In this series of experimental studies, there is a "conversation experiment", that is, in more than two years, experts have interviewed more than 11 individual workers with workers.

The experiment also stipulated that during the conversation, the experts should patiently listen to the workers’ various opinions and dissatisfaction with the factory, and make detailed records; at the same time, they were not allowed to refute or reprimand the workers for their dissatisfaction.

This "talk experiment" received unexpected results: two years later, the output of the Hawthorne factory has been greatly improved.

Why is there such a result?Psychologists believe that this is because workers have been dissatisfied with various management systems and methods of the factory for a long time, and have nowhere to vent, and the "talking experiment" just provides a channel for workers to vent their inner dissatisfaction. After venting their dissatisfaction, the workers feel better, their motivation doubles, and the output will naturally increase significantly.Later, social psychologists called this wonderful phenomenon the "Hawthorne effect".

This experiment also tells us that in many cases, people's hostile and aggressive emotions are not very dangerous in nature. They are not really dissatisfied with the real situation, but just the external manifestations of some psychological emotions, etc. After these emotions are really vented, the hostility of the other party will disappear automatically.

In the process of interpersonal communication, we can make good use of the "Hawthorne effect", using silence and listening to resolve the hostility and provocation of our communication opponents.

Xiaomei recently encountered some troubles at work. One of her customers asked to return the product. Logically speaking, the customer asked to return the product, which is a very normal thing at work.However, the company has a rule that if the product is returned, the customer must bear the shipping cost by himself.But the customer insisted that the size of the goods was not suitable, and the company was responsible for the freight. For this reason, Xiaomei had explained to the other party many times.However, in the end, the other party still had no intention of giving in.

Things went on like this for several days in a stalemate, and Xiaomei was even more devastated by this, not knowing what to do, so that her attitude towards other customers was not very friendly.The boss saw this scene, and he called Xiaomei to the office.The other colleagues were all in a cold sweat for Xiaomei. You must know that "the customer is God!" The boss will definitely scold Xiaomei.

Xiaomei was already pissed off, but now that her boss called her to "teach her", she became even more furious.So, as soon as she entered the office, the boss was not allowed to speak, so she started chattering there.But during this period, the boss not only didn't get angry, but also didn't say a word, just kept silent.After Xiaomei finished venting, the boss said calmly: "Now, do you feel better? Now that you are in a better mood, let's go back to work!"

Xiaomei vented in the boss's office, and she really felt that her mood had improved, and the problem was quickly resolved.

In real life, we have communication troubles almost every day; the more often we communicate, the more communication troubles we have.Among them, the consequence of most communication troubles is that the communication partner will have one kind of hostility to us, or even serious provocative behavior.What should we do at this time?If we can really deeply understand the enlightenment brought to us by the "Hawthorne Effect", we should learn to respond to any hostility and provocation from the other party with silence, and learn to listen to the other party's talk with sincerity.If we can do this, we will be surprised to find that if we can face the hostility of the other party with a silent attitude from the beginning to the end, listen to the other party's confession with a sincere heart, and wait for the other party's psychological entanglement to vent through these channels After coming out, their hostility towards us will disappear without a trace, and they can still communicate well after friction, and they can still maintain a good relationship.

Of course, tactful silence is not a systematic and methodical refusal to speak, but a recognition that there are times when it is more important not to express your opinion, opinion, suggestion or any comment whatsoever.Pushing silence to a high-level understanding is a kind of "silence of giving", which leaves space for the other party to know themselves, and is a kind of silence that really cares about the other party.This silence isn't just characterized by a verbal void, rather, it's a patient waiting—it's there, while maintaining an atmosphere of expectation, openness, and trust.

Therefore, please believe that "silence is golden"!A person who understands the value of silence must have a pair of ears that are good at listening, just as Gibran said: "I heard the silent choir singing the songs of the century, chanting the poems of space, and explaining the eternal secret." Know how to use silence Those who deal with everything can be alone at any time, and can win people's respect even more.

Grumbling Effect: Let the other party express their dissatisfaction and opinions
Everyone will have some bad emotions in their hearts, and these bad emotions must find a channel to vent out.Whining is a way of expressing emotions.

When the bad emotions are vented in the form of complaints, the bad emotions in people's hearts will disappear without a trace, and the hostile and provocative behaviors shown because of full complaints will also disappear.This is the so-called "whining effect".

There are many similarities between the "complaint effect" and the "Hawthorne effect" in psychology, but the "complaint effect" is closer to us, closer to our lives, and more profound enlightenment to us. The "complaint effect" has many applications in real life. For example, in Japan, many companies pay great attention to providing channels for employees to vent their emotions.This is the case with Panasonic.

In Panasonic, all branch factories have a smoking room, in which there is a mannequin that looks very much like Konosuke Matsushita himself, where workers can beat "him" with a bamboo pole at will to vent their dissatisfaction.When he had had enough and stopped, Konosuke Matsushita’s voice would automatically sound from the speaker. This is a poem he himself wrote to the workers: “This is not an illusion, we live and work together, we are connected with each other, and we can hold hands together. Go for happiness. There may be differences in doing things, but remember, there is only one goal: prosperity and harmony. From today, this will no longer be an illusion!"

Of course, this is not enough. Matsushita said: "The factory owner himself has to work hard to make every worker feel: our factory owner works really hard, and we should help him!"

It is in this way that Panasonic employees can maintain a high degree of work enthusiasm from beginning to end.

Another example: Some companies in the United States have a system called "vent day".It is to set aside a day every month to vent dissatisfaction with employees.On this day, employees can express their feelings to colleagues and superiors in the company. Joking and contradicting are all allowed, and leaders are not allowed to vent their anger on others.This form allows subordinates to vent their pent-up dissatisfaction, which greatly relieves their work pressure and improves work efficiency.

(End of this chapter)