Year: 2020

Last week I wrote about the work of psychologists John and Julie Gottman who have dedicated their careers to studying why some marriages are healthy and long-lasting while others are difficult and often end in divorce. Responding favorably to “bids” made by a spouse was a major factor. Here’s last week’s post.

Gottman has also identified four specific issues that can make or break a relationship. He dubbed these, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. If left unchecked, these four “relational viruses” will infect and damage a relationship. When they are addressed and controlled, relationships become healthy and flourish.

These four issues are toxic in all our relationships: with our spouse, children, relatives, friends, and coworkers.

Criticism

Criticism focuses on a person’s flaws and judges them. It attacks someone’s character rather than addressing specific behaviors. It is expressed through constant disapproving, critiquing, correcting, blaming, nitpicking, or trying to fix someone. It’s not meant to be constructive or encouraging—just shaming. Criticism focuses on the negative and doesn’t offer suggestions for solutions and improvement.

Here’s a good article by Jessica Higgins on why criticism is toxic to relationships. 

Defensiveness

Often, when someone criticizes us, instead of listening carefully and owning our offenses, we become defensive. We refuse to admit wrongdoing and deny any responsibility. We refute our partner’s perspective and even reverse the accusation and cast blame on him or her. As a result, problems are not resolved and conflicts escalate. The solution is to accept responsibility for your part in the problem, even if it is a small part. 

Contempt

Contempt is the most toxic issue. Its presence in a marriage is the greatest predictor of divorce. Contempt speaks from a position of moral superiority and includes sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye-rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor. It is arrogant disregard, dismissal, and denigration of another person’s concerns. Contempt is, in the words of the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” It is marked by disgust and disdain and is destructive and defeating.

Stonewalling

Stonewalling occurs when we remove ourselves from a conversation and refuse to discuss contentious issues. We can physically stonewall someone by walking out of the room during a difficult conversation or by totally avoiding our partner by being absent. We can emotionally stonewall someone by becoming passive and expressionless; we are physically present but simply tune out the conversation.  

Our challenge is how to apply Gottman’s insight to our relationships. First, analyze yourself. To what degree are you guilty of these four unhealthy behaviors? Second, acknowledge that they are manageable and commit to change. It would be beneficial for you and your partner to talk about this post and together analyze your relationship.

Here’s an article that discusses the antidote for each of the four hinderances.  

Individuals are complex. And when two people are in relationship with one another, complications become exponential. 

John and Julie Gottman offer us help.

The Gottmans are psychologists who run The Gottman Institute in New York City. Their work, based on scientific studies, is devoted to helping couples build and maintain loving, healthy relationships. What they have discovered is significant. Their work focuses on the marriage relationship but their insights are beneficial for all relationships.  

The following is taken from an article titled “Masters of Love,” by Emily Esfanhani Smith, published June 12, 2014 in The Atlantic. In her article, Smith writes about John Gottman’s theory of responding to relational “bids.”

“[In one of his studies] Gottman wanted to know more about how the masters [happily married people] created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the disasters [unhappily married people] squashed it. He designed a lab on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed and breakfast retreat. He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And Gottman made a critical discovery in this study—one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish.

“Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls ‘bids.’ For example, a husband who is a bird enthusiast notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, ‘Look at that beautiful bird outside!’ He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.

“The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either ‘turning toward’ or ‘turning away’ from her husband. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that.

“People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, ‘Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.’

“These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow up only had ‘turn-toward bids’ 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had ‘turn-toward bids’ 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.

“By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with up to 94 percent certainty whether couples—straight or gay, rich or poor, childless or not—will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together and happy several years later. Much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and generosity; or contempt, criticism, and hostility?”

Simple, isn’t it. Our spouse, children, friends, and coworkers make “bids” for our time and attention. When we properly respond to those bids (and it usually doesn’t take a lot of time), relationships are nourished. When we continually ignore the bids, relationships suffer.

Superlatives

Superlative adjectives are seldom used correctly and they’re often overused. When we use words like best, worst, greatest, most, never, and always, we typically use them for emphasis, not accuracy. It’s sloppy usage and if used too often, the terms lose their meaning. Furthermore, overusing superlatives will ultimately undermine your credibility and weaken your voice. Used infrequently, they gain strength. 

It’s easy to get into the habit of using superlatives casually or mindlessly: “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard” or “It’s the best show I’ve ever seen.” Be particularly careful when using superlatives to describe a person: “He’s always late.”; “She never thinks of anyone but herself.” 

The overuse of superlatives in advertising has rendered it useless. When a company says it is the best roofing company in town or the finest kolache shop, or offers the freshest pasta in town, we all know better. Superlatives are like paper currency: issue too many and the value falls. 

Potent words

Don’t flippantly use powerful words that should be reserved for special usage—phrases like “he’s brilliant” or “she’s a prodigy.” The frequent use of high-octane words (incredible, magnificent, one-of-a-kind) may project enthusiasm but when overused they become meaningless.  

Some words may need to be retired: awesome, unique, different, great, stunning, amazing, incredible, literally. Instead of using these words—The movie was awesome. The wine is different.—be more specific and definitive: Why do you think the movie is awesome? Why do you think the wine is different? Instead of relying on worn-out, nondescript adjectives, explain your reasons “I enjoyed the movie because it addressed a social issue plaguing our society. The wine was not what I expected; a pinot grigio should have higher acidity.”

Repeating words can also undermine credibility. Saying, “We had a really, really awesome time,” is redundant.  

Here’s an article about 12 words that have been so overused they really don’t mean anything anymore

Punctuation marks

My plea for moderation extends to the overuse of certain punctuation marks, particularly the exclamation point. It’s unnecessary to write, “I’m so excited about having lunch with you today!!!!!!!!” Using multiple exclamation marks consecutively dilutes the impact and is quasi-irritating. Years ago, I purposely began reducing my use of exclamation marks in my writing and correspondence. I started by limiting myself to five per year. In the past 24 months I can’t recall using even one.

The incentive super-response tendency was first espoused by businessman Charlie Munger. In short, he said that incentives are the most important element in work for hire and that often people respond to incentives by doing what is in their best interest.  Munger says, “One of the most important consequences of incentive superpower is what I call ‘incentive caused bias.’ A man has an acculturated nature making him a pretty decent fellow, and yet, driven both consciously and subconsciously by incentives, he drifts into immoral behavior in order to get what he wants, a result he facilitates by rationalizing his bad behavior [like a salesman who harms her customers by selling them the wrong product because she gets paid more for selling it, versus the right product]. The power that incentives and disincentives have on the actions of others cannot be overstated.”

For instance, in its early days FedEx struggled with a critical problem. Their reputation depended on delivering packages on time and a key requirement was getting packages loaded on planes during the night. The nightshift workers were paid by the hour for their eight-hour shift. In theory, eight hours was enough time to complete the work. But that wasn’t happening. The night workers did work eight hours but weren’t getting the job done. Then management changed the incentive. Since the goal was to load the planes rapidly, they began paying the night workers for work done; they could go home when the planes were loaded and still get paid for a full eight hours. The new system worked.

Obviously, the theory behind incentives is a large, multifaceted topic. In this post I’m going to focus on one subtlety suggested by the title of this post: never ask a barber if you need a haircut. The lesson is: don’t frame an option in such a way that it will incentivize someone toward a self-serving effect.  

For instance:

Be suspicious of situations in which a vendor’s personal interest may bias his position.

• • Investment advisors often endorse a particular financial product because they will profit most from selling them.
  • A roof contractor may try to sell you a particular type of shingle because he’s overstocked on that product.

In certain instances, avoid paying someone by the hour; if possible agree on a fixed price in advance. When being paid by the hour, lawyers, architects, consultants, accountants, and contractors are incentivized to slow down the tempo of their work.

When interviewing someone for a job, realize that his resume will be biased and even the interview will have vestiges of self-interest. For instance, when interviewing someone for a job, don’t ask “Do you think you can do this job well? or “Do you think you’ll be a good fit in our organizations’s culture?” The average person will respond “yes” to both questions because there’s little incentive to be honest and forthright.

I’ll end with this humorous anecdote.

Patient: Lately I’ve had the feeling that everyone wants to take advantage of me.

Doctor: That’s nonsense.

Patient: Really? Thank you very much, doctor. I feel so much better now. How much to I owe you?

Doctor: How much have you got?

Don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.