![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When we encounter conflict, within the field of forces that constitute it, the natural human tendency is to reduce that tension by seeking coherence through simplification. Conflict is essentially a contradiction, an incompatibility, oppositely directed forces, and a difference that triggers tension. When we experience conflict, this tendency intensifies. In the middle of this complex world are we humans, who have a natural tendency to seek coherence in what we see, feel, think, and do. “It is critical to recognize that we live in an increasingly complex world - biologically, socially, politically, technologically, you name it - that holds many inherent contradictions. The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts They later called this the 'Zeigarnik effect,' and it has influenced the study of many things, from advertising campaigns to coping with the suicide of loved ones to dysphoric rumination of past conflicts.” The completed problems are, well, complete, so we forget them and move on. This is because the unfinished task triggers a feeling of tension, which gets associated with the task and keeps it lingering in our minds. A lab study was run to examine this phenomenon, and it showed that people tend to remember uncompleted tasks, like half-finished math or word problems, better than completed tasks. Lewin had noticed that waiters in his local cafe seemed to have better recollections of unpaid orders than of those already settled. In the 1930s, Bluma Zeigarnik, a student of Lewin's in Berlin, designed a famous study to test the impact of this idea of tension and coherence. At its core it is the drive to reduce the tension, disorientation, and dissonance that come from complexity, incoherence, and contradiction. It is what we call the 'press for coherence.' It has been called many different things in psychology: consonance, need for closure, congruity, harmony, need for meaning, the consistency principle. What I am describing is a very basic human psychological process, captured by the second Gestalt principle. We REALLY like it when things come together. And when we do solve these puzzles, there's relief. So we feel compelled to reduce it, solve it, complete it, reconcile it, make it make sense. This sense of confusion triggers in a us a feeling of noxious anxiety. ![]() And we especially do not like it when things are contradictory, because then it is much harder to reconcile them (this is particularly true for Westerners). That is why most popular movies have Hollywood endings. We do not like it when things do not come together and fit nicely for us. “Most of us do not like not being able to see what others see or make sense of something new. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock should end in mutton - that a day could find a shepherd an arrant traitor to his gentle sheep.” Oak was an intensely human man: indee, his humanity tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied tha his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Oak´s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the hedge - a shephard´s hut - now presenting an outline to which an unintiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. “Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the starry sky. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |