- In a
study
earlier this year, Solomon and her colleagues presented married adults who had a disagreement with hypothetical messages from a confidant.
- Messages that minimized someone's feelings in some cases led people to report feeling angry and to display reactance, which can occur when someone feels their ownership or control of the situation is threatened.
How a conversation unfolds is important, too.
- The first part should involve a lot of questions, says Solomon, and not trying to interpret or share one’s own experience. One of the most beneficial things is to “give people the opportunity to tell their story in their own words,” says Solomon.
- "As we get further into the conversation — in some ways when the discloser stops saying new things — then we move from reflective to interpretive," says Solomon. Here, she says, the goal is to guide someone to a new appraisal of their stressful experience. For an exhausted health care worker, it may be saying, "I’m glad you can talk to the families because you can do so with compassion," Solomon offers.
- The last phase is where one can most effectively offer advice or talk about their own experience, she says.
But it's important to listen
because advice often isn't what people are looking for, says Amanda Holmstrom, who studies interpersonal communication at Michigan State University.
The flip side:
There's a lot of pressure on the listener, but the teller plays an important role. "Disclosers have to be willing to tell their story and be receptive to the help even recognizing their experience may be so specific and extreme that no one else has ever experienced it," says Solomon.
- The catch:
“We’re not very good at it. Part of it is that there isn’t a simple set of messages,” says Solomon.
One potential pitfall:
Conversations can devolve into rumination and co-rumination. We can get stuck in these "cul-de-sacs," as Solomon describes them, and "never get past this mutual telling of our distress to where it is reflective and ultimately put into a broader perspective."
Context:
Neuroscientists have long studied our social brains — through the lens of empathy, morality and other processes — often by looking at one brain's neural activity during different interactions.
- But one person's response will affect the other's, whether in nonverbal communication like seeing fear in someone's face or in conversations, says Chris Frith, a professor emeritus at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London who uses brain imaging to study social interaction.
What to watch:
Holmstrom and her colleagues
propose in a new paper
that interpersonal communication scientists could benefit from neuroscience tools to look at the simultaneous brain activity of two people engaged in conversation.
- "It may allow us to tap into important things people can’t articulate," says Holmstrom.
- And communication science could offer neuroscience some theories about brain interactions, they propose.
The bottom line:
"Collaboration is critical," says Frith. "We have vast amounts of data but not enough theory to understand it."
