Excerpt #6: Making Sense of Other People

 

  In one sense everyone else is just like you. Structurally their personality, ignoring concepts of a 'spiritual self', is composed of a set of temperamental dispositions interacting with a pliable and mutating selfplex which 'sits' atop it - see Fig 33.
  In other senses everyone else is totally unlike you. Their temperamental make-up is likely to be different to yours, with different gradations along Hans Eysenck's Dimensions of Personality. The memes their selfplex will have been exposed to and the way vMEMES have ebbed and flowed to form and adjust schemas will all have been different.
  Their very potential for adaptation in all of this will be different to yours, due both to genetics (the genotype of raw genetic potential) and to everything that has happened to them since conception (resulting in the developed phenotype - the person they currently are). Even monozygotic twins - for all their 100% genetic likeness - frequently emerge from the womb with slight differences in height, weight and sometimes, as far as we can tell, even intelligence and temperament. This is usually due to one twin getting a larger share of nutrition and other support from the shared placenta.
  So, looking at ourselves as phenotypes receiving barrages of sensory data, including heaps of information from other phenotypes, how do we make sense of what William James, one of the great founding fathers of Psychology, called “…one great blooming, buzzing' confusion”?

Fig 53:

Conversation between Tony and Bob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fig 54:

Conversation between Phil and Matt

 

  The answer usually lies in our mapping incoming information to already-existing schemas.
  The problem is that we don't know if our schemas and the Meta-States we create from them are anything like accurate.

 

  Consider two hypothetical conversations: one between 'Tony' and 'Bob' - see Fig 53 - and one between 'Phil' and 'Matt' - Fig 54.

Tony is a headteacher and Bob is his head of History. At the moment we catch them, Bob is mumbling into his hand, making excuses for poor GCSE results. He is feeling intimidated by the way Tony is staring at him intently in what he takes as quite a disapproving way.
  Matt is interviewing Phil for a job. Phil is talking excitedly about what he can do for Matt's family-owned business. Matt looks pleased and engaged with what Phil is saying. Phil takes Matt's positive feedback as encouragement to talk even more about what he can do.
  In fact, Tony is totally internalised, feeling nauseous, sick with worry that his wife is going to leave him. At that point in time, he's not even really aware Bob is there.
  Matt has interpreted Phil's enthusiasm as an indication of his ambition. He thinks the idiot will put in long hours and take on lots of his work, allowing him to spend more time on the golf course!

 

  How do we know what others really think and feel? And what's driving them?
  As Michael Hall has been at great pains to point out, inside you have your thoughts and feelings - your 'inner world' - but all other people have to go on is your speech and your behaviour - what you put out into the 'outer world'. This is why body language is so important - and what makes Meta-Stating inevitable.
  Others have to make meaning from your speech and behaviour. Your speech and behaviour are part of the Life Conditions they experience in that Environment. Thus, the dominant vMEME at that moment in time evaluates the memes in your speech and behaviour - the Primary State - from existing schemas. And that evaluation is the first level Meta-State.   Thus, the Environment is determined to be favourable or unfavourable and vMEMES may or may not shift.