September 6th, 2008, 01:06
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
To my surprise, this turns out to be false!
Words DO hurt people. Not just in their "inner self," but in reality.
This is one of the most brilliant points made by Marcel Proust in his great novel, In Search of Lost Time. And it is now being confirmed by social scientists and psychogists. (I suggest the recent book Sway for your edification.
As it turns out, one of the most amazing tests of "labelling" went as follows.
1. A number of woman were put in a room by themselves (alone) and told to await a call from a male.
2. The males, on their part, were given a brief bio of the woman, and a faked picture. Half of the pictures showed an attractive female, and the other half showed a normal female.
3. The phone calls (just chatting) proceeded.
4. Experiment not quite done yet. The psychologists took the recordings of the phone conversations, cut out all the male voices, and then presented the female voices to a completely different audience. The question was, "Does this voice belong to a beautiful woman?"
5. Then came the amazing part. The independent audience agreed with the phony photos!
That is to say (and it's hard to wrap your mind around this), the men in this experiment talked in an entirely different way to girls they thought were beautiful. And the girls (regardless of actual looks) responded in kind. But, if the girl was not pretty, the conversation took on an entirely different tone, and this effect was easily seen by other people listening only to the girl's side of the talk.
People fascinate me! :-)
To my surprise, this turns out to be false!
Words DO hurt people. Not just in their "inner self," but in reality.
This is one of the most brilliant points made by Marcel Proust in his great novel, In Search of Lost Time. And it is now being confirmed by social scientists and psychogists. (I suggest the recent book Sway for your edification.
As it turns out, one of the most amazing tests of "labelling" went as follows.
1. A number of woman were put in a room by themselves (alone) and told to await a call from a male.
2. The males, on their part, were given a brief bio of the woman, and a faked picture. Half of the pictures showed an attractive female, and the other half showed a normal female.
3. The phone calls (just chatting) proceeded.
4. Experiment not quite done yet. The psychologists took the recordings of the phone conversations, cut out all the male voices, and then presented the female voices to a completely different audience. The question was, "Does this voice belong to a beautiful woman?"
5. Then came the amazing part. The independent audience agreed with the phony photos!
That is to say (and it's hard to wrap your mind around this), the men in this experiment talked in an entirely different way to girls they thought were beautiful. And the girls (regardless of actual looks) responded in kind. But, if the girl was not pretty, the conversation took on an entirely different tone, and this effect was easily seen by other people listening only to the girl's side of the talk.
People fascinate me! :-)