Identity Attachment
People make excuses and rationalize their mess-ups while being harder on others for making similar mistakes. An easy example to think about is how disturbed we get when driving.
We are highly critical of other drivers. People criticize as if they never make the slightest misjudgment. They never drive too slow or too fast. They never misjudge the speed of an oncoming car when they change lanes, turn without signaling, or take an extra second to notice the light has turned green. They judge others for doing so harshly while their brain lies to them about their driving perfection.
Minding Your Self
We don’t stop at driving. The more attached our identity is to something, the more our mind is willing to perceive the world to protect the connection.
Here’s another example of how your mind works on your behalf. In high school, you were a straight-A student. You valued academic success as a measure of character as well as intelligence. You felt superior to students who earned Cs.
You graduated from high school and attended a good college. Given your perceived intelligence, you find the academics more challenging than you expected.
For the first time in your life, you are earning Cs. Your grade point average will barely keep you off academic probation. You are asked to write a position paper on intelligence in psychology class.
You write about intelligence being multi-faceted. You assert that intelligence cannot be measured, especially by school performance. You offer explanations as to why different people vary in success according to circumstances that are beyond intelligence.
Your position paper as a C student may reflect a different attitude than when you were an A student. Your perceptions of the world are based on your experience in the world.
Seeing Eye to Eye with Yourself
People’s minds shift according to the experiences they are having. When their experience changes, their minds shift to maintain positive feelings about themselves.
Psychologist Sigmund Freud identified a series of “ego defenses” that help people protect themselves from negative feelings about themselves. Freud identified ten psychological strategies for maintaining positive feelings about the self amid the experience.
Freud’s ego strategies are adopted unconsciously by the mind to defend against perceived attacks on one’s identity. The mind is always ready to protect itself.
Over time, the mind adopts patterns of defense. One or two of the ego defenses become primary reactions. When that happens, reactions to the world manifest as personality to make them unrecognizable as defenses.
Personality and ego defenses complement one another. A person with a quiet personality may have adopted introjection as an ego defense. The proclaimed extrovert may be full of projection.
Positive Psychology
Decades after the field of psychology adopted Freud’s theory of ego defenses, positive psychology infiltrated the wellness community with optimism and gratitude.
“Positive psychology teaches how to harness the power of shifting one’s perspective to maximize the potential for happiness in many of our everyday behaviors” (Ackerman, 2020).
Power is something people long for. Positive psychology offers it at a basic attainable level. At the basic level, positive psychology doesn’t promise healing or truth, only power. There is power in the ability to shift one’s perspective.
Any theory in the hands of novices can become misconstrued. One would have to be a genuine student of positive psychology to understand that its intent includes healing and living in truth. It is not intended to give people a false sense of happiness. Instead, it is a pointer for people to find their authentic joy.
Nevertheless, between the mind’s natural tendency to reject negative information and the public’s focus on positivity, self-awareness is not at the top of the list of self-interests.
Many people walk around with one eye closed to see only the good. That makes them half-blind and unprepared for critical feedback.
Emotional Self-defense
When we have expectations of an experience, we cannot be neutral. Someone or some life experience has set us up to feel a certain way. Increasingly, through the ubiquity of social media and television, people are primed for happy emotions.
We are saturated with images of happy celebrations on social media and the lifestyles of the rich and famous on television. Affirmations are plastered on walls at work, school, and public transportation. Advertisements assure us that we should be pleased with everything we do.
The mind has a tremendous task of reckoning who we are with what we see. It naturally uses comparison to build its identity. When viewing thousands of images within a short time, the mind’s sorting system can become easily distorted.
Your mind unconsciously evaluates your experience and, if necessary, shifts your self-perception to accommodate incoming information. The shift does not occur based on truth — your perception shifts based on comfort and familiarity.
Measuring Feedback
When input from the environment shifts our focus, we are primed to expect an outcome. Priming results in one of two responses. It augments or discounts the experience.
When experiences meet the expectation of the priming, the experience is augmented or enhanced. We become more attached to our perception. Our brains like to be correct, so augmenting is easy.
We’ve made a lifestyle out of capturing our best moments to reveal them to the public. We’ve invited people to watch us. So, we must control what they see.
When experiences do not meet the expectation of priming, the experience is discounted or deeply rejected. We resort to ego defenses to fill the gap between reality and expectation.
Increasingly, we are primed for positive experiences. Being primed means that we don’t experience neutrality. In a society where people are primed for positivity, negative feedback feels insensitive and cruel.
Judging Others
Not everyone is equally susceptible to priming the same way everyone is not equally sensitive to hypnosis. Not everyone has bought into the positive psychology drive. Pessimism is alive and well. But even pessimists are subjected to the actor-observer effect.
The actor-observer effect means we judge others differently than we judge ourselves. Actor-observer effect research shows that people interpret behavior differently when they act out character than when they observe the same behavior in others.
People tend to discount their negative actions but augment other people’s negative actions. When our behavior is out of character, we explain the circumstances that created the outcome. We discount the behavior and focus on circumstance.
On the other hand, when someone else’s behavior is out of character, we focus on their character. We may find other instances that match the current behavior. We augment the behavior by focusing on their character.
The Role of Evolution
The actor-observer effect and ego defenses are not acts of hypocrisy. They are outdated evolution scripts. At one time, humans had to be alert enough to be safe. Without locks on doors and brick structures, anything unknown needed to be met with high suspicion.
On the other hand, any negative personal experience had to be quickly resolved so that you could go back to watching out for danger. The quickest way to resolve interpersonal conflict is to give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
From this perspective, the actor-observer effect is easy to understand. A healthy dose of suspicion keeps us safe. However, it also keeps us psychologically inauthentic and resistant to feedback.
Self Scripts for Feedback
Self-awareness has become buried under a pile of positive self-perceptions. The focus on self-love, self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy may have distracted us from self-awareness. Our egos seem to be more fragile than ever.
“Say something nice or say nothing at all” has been taken to a toxic level. We expect the outside world to match the distortions in our minds and help us maintain homeostasis.
We’re trained to rescue people from negative thoughts without evaluating the merit of those thoughts. Saying anything unfavorable about yourself will result in someone trying to save you.
I’ve been in meetings where the slightest unfavorable remark or question is met with resistance to explore any further. All energy moves toward restoring egos.
I’ve been to performances where even the worst performer is given the same accolades as the seasoned one. The crowd makes no distinctions. No feedback is offered.
I’ve seen online thousands of rescue posts. There is little room to allow a negative feeling to expand into honest self-reflection. For example, I observed a post where someone admitted they were unprepared for a job interview and knew they messed up.
Friends and strangers filled the thread with affirmations from “You’ll do better next time” to “You’re great at what you do. They should hire you.”
Some students insist that I give them equal positive and negative feedback. Of course, that’s designed to neutralize the negative feedback.
These students want me to confirm what their mind is doing, restoring their homeostasis. They want positive feedback that they can augment while discounting negative feedback.
Accepting Feedback
Some people should lose weight for their health, speak more softly for effective communication, gain weight, enhance their business skills, or start at the bottom and work up. But this type of feedback is often received as cruel.
Feedback must be given and received for development. The hypersensitive response to feedback is an obstacle to growth. When people are afraid of your response to feedback, change rarely occurs because you remain distant from the truth.
Many people’s resistance to feedback is related to childhood experiences. Adults who have had hurtful childhood experiences may have never felt emotionally safe.
In the absence of safety, people avoid risks and may continue to perceive threats in adulthood, whether they exist or not. They may have unhealed wounds that are easily triggered.
Your mind will do its evolutionary job and protect you from criticism. Your mind will distort your perception of self, others, or the world.
To open yourself up to feedback, you must not use feedback as judgment. If your mind interprets feedback as a verdict of your worth, you will resort to defensiveness.
Relax the mind to receive feedback. Growth centers around self-acceptance, not avoiding uncomfortable feedback. It would help if you were open to growing instead of prioritizing safety. If you need to be validated as perfect to feel safe, that’s something to work through.
Relax the Mind
Instead of resisting feedback, observe your reaction to feedback. Notice your fear taking over when you feel judged. Then remind yourself that emotions, as vital as they are, should not direct your response.
Acknowledge your emotions as an observer. You are not the feedback. The feedback shifts how you show up in the environment according to how it is received.
Emotions do not necessarily tell us what is right or wrong. Hurtful emotions indicate unresolved pain, so embrace the uncomfortable feelings associated with feedback.
Imagine having a leaky roof on a beautiful house. It only matters when it rains. Most people come to your home when the weather is clear and observe how nicely decorated it is.
Occasionally, you have people at your house, and it rains. You get upset because your guests give you feedback about your leaky roof. You are upset because you want them to enjoy the beautiful home.
One guest may offer to help you fix the roof. Another guest may give you a recommendation for a roofer. Still, another guest may offer to have the next celebration at their house to relieve your embarrassment.
These responses may annoy you, especially since you weren’t expecting rain. Still, expecting guests to ignore a situation that affects them isn’t a reasonable response, no matter how uncomfortable you are with the feedback.
Consider all feedback as rain in your otherwise beautiful residence. It shows you where the leak is. Don’t get upset at the rain. Fix your roof.
You live your best life when you stop defending and protecting yourself. You can grow into your most authentic self with feedback. Expressing vulnerability becomes your strength. When you start with self-acceptance, no feedback is a threat.
References
Ackerman, C. (2020). What is Positive Psychology and Why is It Important? Positive Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-positive-psychology-definition/.
Bakari, R. (2020). Let Down Your Defenses. You Are Safe to Love and Live. Medium. https://medium.com/the-ascent/let-down-your-defenses-you-are-safe-to-love-and-live-6f493c3ab617.
Preuss, G. S., & Alicke, M. D. (2017). My worst faults and misdeeds: Self-criticism and self-enhancement can co-exist. Self and Identity, 16(6), 645–663. doi:10.1080/15298868.2017.1296019.
Thompson, A. E., & O’Sullivan, L. F. (2016). I can but you can’t: Inconsistencies in judgments of and experiences with infidelity. Journal of Relationships Research, 7 doi:10.1017/jrr.2016.1.
