#interpersonal circumplex

[ttrraasshh]

[drrodebaugh]

Can Scientific Communication be Neutral?

The theory behind the interpersonal circumplex tells us that how people act around and toward other people is interpreted on two major dimensions. These dimensions are dominance and warmth. So, how you act toward someone else can involve asserting your dominance or submitting to someone else’s. It can also involve opening up to someone else and giving them the sense that you’re on the same team--or holding back, being aloof, making it clear that you’re not on the same team. These two dimensions combine, of course: “We’re on the same team, but I’m in charge.” 

I do believe that most scientists primarily want to determine and communicate the truth. In theory, interpersonal behavior can be entirely neutral on dominance and warmth. Entirely neutral interpersonal behavior might be appropriate for scientific communications, but, in my experience, even when scientists attempt to be neutral, their communications still come across as involving dominance and warmth. 

How is who ends up an author on a study, as well as the order, determined? Hopefully largely by who contributed and how much--but those authors affiliated somehow, and at least some of the time the order might be partially a result of dominance behavior rather than pure contribution. Standing up and speaking at a conference generally comes across as dominance behavior: So much the more so does asking a challenging question from the audience. When scientists get together at a conference and share a meal, they invariably spend some of their time puzzling through other people’s behavior, including dominance and warmth behavior. 

One could be indignant that warmth and dominance (also known as “politics”) gets in the way of science and scientific communication. It seems to me, though, that thinking “if only we could get rid of politics in science” is close to saying “if only we didn’t have to have humans doing science.” If you’re a scientist, particularly a young scientist, trying to figure out what in the world is going on when scientists communicate with each other, you might want to spend some time reading up on the interpersonal circumplex.

[drrodebaugh]

Gloria's different behavior with Rogers versus Perls

I mentioned today in class an analysis of how Rogers, Perls, and Gloria behave in the Gloria films, and particularly that Gloria ranges all over the place in dominance/control when dealing with Perls, compared to Rogers. That can be seen in the figures at the other end of this link.