"You cannot not communicate" -- Paul Watzlawick[1]
Incidentally, most of his writing is pretty amazing. "How Real is Real?", for example.
One of my favorite example is the experiment where two people are (ostensibly, as in all psychology experiments) asked to figure out how to spot disease patterns in certainly images of blood cells.
The experimental setup is that subjects A and B each have a screen a button to indicate whether the picture shows a diseased or healthy cell and a light showing them whether they were right.
The nasty bit is that whereas A's light is hooked up to his answers, B's light is not. It is also hooked up to A's and they aren't shown the same pictures. So A gets proper feedback whereas B gets essentially random feedback.
Since the task is not that hard, the As quickly figure out the simple rule, whereas the Bs concoct ever more elaborate theories.
The really nasty bit is that they then bring A and B together to discuss and present their findings. And it turns out that the Bs almost without fail convince the As that they are wrong, because how could such a ridiculously simple answer be correct, whereas the As are convinced by the sophisticated answers the Bs have come up with.
Incidentally, most of his writing is pretty amazing. "How Real is Real?", for example.
One of my favorite example is the experiment where two people are (ostensibly, as in all psychology experiments) asked to figure out how to spot disease patterns in certainly images of blood cells.
The experimental setup is that subjects A and B each have a screen a button to indicate whether the picture shows a diseased or healthy cell and a light showing them whether they were right.
The nasty bit is that whereas A's light is hooked up to his answers, B's light is not. It is also hooked up to A's and they aren't shown the same pictures. So A gets proper feedback whereas B gets essentially random feedback.
Since the task is not that hard, the As quickly figure out the simple rule, whereas the Bs concoct ever more elaborate theories.
The really nasty bit is that they then bring A and B together to discuss and present their findings. And it turns out that the Bs almost without fail convince the As that they are wrong, because how could such a ridiculously simple answer be correct, whereas the As are convinced by the sophisticated answers the Bs have come up with.
Explains so much.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watzlawick