Critical thinking activity: What does your circle look like?

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I was thinking about my social interaction, and where I have troubles, so I decided to create a practical visual model that I present all of you with.



As you can see, by the model I have created, the simple act of social recipriocity from my POV is a six step process.

A simple walk through...

A person (the sender) comes up with an something to express (1) and does so (2). The other person hears this (the reciever), and his/her brain takes in what was said and decides what to make out of it (3). When a course of action has been chosen to be taken, the brain has an internal reaction (4) to that thought, and then this person reacts to it (5). The person originating the idea and has their own reaction (6) which involves steps 3 & 4. The whole process then repeats itself, and at anytime, the roles of sender and reciever can be reversed.

In order for the act of recipriocity to be successful, the sender, must be able to predict entities 3, 4, & 5, and the reciever must be able to at least determine entity #6. All these predictions must be able to made ahead of time, and must follow the rules of NT social interaction. The key to successful social interaction lays in presenting a good #2.

And so how does this figure into my situation? If I find myself in a familar situation, I can manage to navigate my way around the circle for the most part.

However, if I find myself wandering off into uncharted waters, I have to try and find my way around the circle blindfolded, and entities 3, 4 & 5 are entities of which I have no idea what they will be, and thus, I have no idea how to make #2 to conform with NT rules, and this has been the source of much embarrasment on my part in the past and more likely than not in the future.

I don't care about #1 though becasue no one expect myself will see this one.

In most situations however, I have no trouble with entity #6

How does your circle look?

This is very interesting, Scoots. I think that a lot of what you have said is correct, but there is also more to take into account.

There are many variables when it comes to NT conversation. Especially prominent are things such as sarcasm or the social lie. In the case of sarcasm, the reaction and the expression to do not necessary follow eachother in a straight line. The expression is that of the opposite of their interpretation. In the case of social lies, the reaction and expression do not match up at all. For example, if you ask me what I think of your new haircut, and I think it looks awful, the nice thing to do to spare your feelings would be to say I like it, even though my reaction was one of dislike.

Overall, though, I think your model is a very good one. It makes great sense. I wonder, is this what you think of when you are conversing with someone?

This is what my social circle looks like. It is not the "correct" way, in fact, it causes quite a few errors of interpretation on my part, but this is what tends to occur in my brain (when I am the sender):



1. Idea (or, if we are coming around the circle again, reaction)
2. Desire to express myself (which isn't always the case, if not, it ends there, no socialization occurs).
3. My thoughts are expressed, either as initiation of conversation (which is rare) or as a response to the other person)
4. The other person hears me.
5. The other person reacts (this can be quite unexpected, too).
6. I interpret the reaction (and attempt to repair whatever damage I've done, or figure out what the heck they are talking about, if I don't understand).

As you can see, there are a couple of steps missing in my intuitive social circle, the steps labeled 3. Interpretation of idea and 4. Reaction to interpretation in Scoots' circle. I know people have these thoughts, but I do not intuit them. I have been told before that my socializing reminded someone of surfing a web site. I press buttons to see where the links will go, but I have no idea where they will take me. I should add to that that I also sometimes have no idea what those pages may be saying to me.

When I'm the sender anything passed #2 is often difficult.

When I'm the receiver anything passed #4 can be difficult.

Basically, in general conversation (ie. where it is not limited to one topic I find interesting) I tend to bluff my way around the circle.

Trouble is when you do that the circle goes around once and then gets stuck.

How about adding another variable? Conversations that occur in a crowded room, like at a party, or in a bar with a lot of ambient noise? Then what would the circles look like? I do not possess enough computer skill to whip out a nifty drawing, but it would be interesting to see.

I am basing this on the premise that reading and interpreting of data is vastly effected by ambient noise, as it is for me.

I just use my husband as a guide, by looking at him for cues (he knows I probably can't hear a thing people are saying in those situations) or I look at someone else in the group for social cues like laughing, etc.....

Tallgirl.

This is my social model

This isn't a quote, I just like the white box

TheBladeRoden's model sums everything up best for me.