Chapter 5

There are two parts of this chapter I found interesting. The first was under attributions. It is the concept of distress-maintaining bias and relationship-enhancing bias. That part of the text was talking about romantic relationships but this concept goes across all relationships.  This is a concept where if one person likes someone, the will see the best in them. If they do not like them, they will only see the worst. 

I liked reading about this because I think about this concept all the time, I find it very interesting. I always notice how often people do this and I catch myself doing it as well. It is something I had to deal with in my sport a while back. (I work with two other girls in a gymnastics trio.) One of my partners did not get along with our coach for a long time, and she was always offended when the coach yelled at her or was rude to her. She always felt like she was the only one getting picked on. But watching it from being in the middle of it, I saw how she refused to notice all the times our coach was nice to her, or when she yelled at others the same way she yelled at my partner. So like the distress-maintaining bias says, she would only see the worst because it is what she expected and it was the bias she always had before she even walked into the gym each day. (You guys might have to know my sport to fully understand that, but I hope it made sense.)

The other concept that resinated with me was Social Cognition online. I think this goes for any mode of text communication like texting as well. Without being able to hear a voice or see a face when communicating with someone makes for misunderstandings a lot easier. The book talked about a study where people talked online and a confederate used misspellings and crazy punctuation on purpose to see how the other person will interpret it. Have you ever tried to be sarcastic in a text or online and have the other person completely miss the sarcasm? I know I've had that happen. And just the other day I was texting with a friend and he thought I was mad at him, and I had to say, "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I was upset about it." 

I'd like to finish off by saying that it could also be a good thing, not having other people see you, because it gives people the chance to create identities that they cannot create for themselves in their normal lives. It gives them a chance to get to know someone first, before being judged, instead of what happens in our face-to-face interactions where we are judged right away, and sometimes not even given a chance to show our good qualities.

That is all from planet Aleks for one day. 

Until Tomorrow.