Needs and Goals

Now they are making you feel like you are in this together, so they can't be the cookie thief. Perhaps they are repeating the exact same response repeatedly. This can be an indicator, because it can be a rehearsed response as the liar would naturally anticipate the question. A rehearsed response leaves little room to wiggle. No matter how many times you ask the question, or no matter how you rephrase it, you can't get them to rephrase their answer, they will even introduce their answer to adjust for you giving a different form of question, so they can answer it in the identically same way. This is because it's their story and they are sticking to it. They are not going to waiver and it was the plan all along. Good chance it's a lie, a REALLY good chance. They may cash in old emotions and hurts at an opportune moment. The stockpiling approach is another form of revenge and certainly does not reflect a Christian's demonstration of forgiveness. If winning is your style, answer the following questions: Is winning necessary to build or maintain your self-esteem or to maintain a strong picture of yourself? People need a strong sense of self-esteem in order to find satisfaction in life and in their marriage. But what is the foundation upon which this self-esteem is built? If one is insecure or self-doubting, he often creates a false image to fool others and, in the process, confuses himself. To defer to another, to give in or to lose a debate or argument is a strong threat to the person's feelings about himself, and thus he fights to keep this from happening. The authoritarian person is not usually as secure as the image he portrays. Deferring to another is a sign of a weakening of his position. When a group is socially stigmatized due to factors out of its control, people feel sympathy and offer their support for policies that would benefit its members (Weiner et al. For example, we might expect people to be much more supportive of charities that help those with cancer or heart disease than those suffering from obesity or drug abuse, which are viewed as being much more within a person's control.

Indeed, some groups in society that might be most in need of help, such as the homeless and drug addicts, actually elicit disgust rather sympathy. When observing these groups, people show reduced activation in areas of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, where perceptions and impressions of human beings are formed (Harris & Fiske, 2006). That is, their brains react as though they were observing objects rather than people. People are less likely to offer help to a homeless person if they attribute the person's need to his or her own lack of effort. Other Prosocial Feelings We have focused on the role of empathy in helping, but other feelings also play a role in motivating a tendency to help. Among these are guilt, communal feelings, gratitude, and feeling socially secure. Sometimes people offer help because they feel a personal responsibility for another person's plight. Difficulty speaking at all is a sign of lying because there is a decrease in saliva when a person is under stress. They might be stressed because they are lying. They could also be stressed because they are nervous about being questioned. Changing the subject in the middle of a sentence is usually a sign that a person is engaged in trickery. No, you know, those cookies. They are hoping they can get you off the subject and get you into some other train of thought. Are they muddling their answers and never finishing the sentence at all? When they are talking their words trail off and they can't complete a thought. What about being confrontational? What do you mean `what happened to all the cookies'? Is winning necessary because you confuse wants with needs? The spouse who feels he needs something may be more demanding about getting it than if he just wants something.

Do you distinguish between needs and wants? You may see something as a need in your life but your partner may see it as a want. How do you know if something truly is a need? We often see yield signs on the highway; If we yield in a conflict, we also protect ourselves. We do not want to risk a confrontation, so we give in to get along with our partner. We all use this approach from time to time, but is yielding a regular pattern for you? Consistently yielding may create feelings of martyrdom or, eventually, guilt in your partner. The guilt that stems from the thought that we have not treated another person or group properly can elicit a strong need to repair that damaged social relationship (Baumeister et al. Rank, 1932/1989). Guilt is a bit like a Bat-Signal beamed into the sky, calling for the Caped Crusader, but instead it calls the person into action to right some wrong. Many studies have demonstrated that inducing people to feel guilty increases their tendency to help others (Cunningham et al. In one staged experiment, when shoppers at a mall were made to believe that they had broken a confederate's camera (rather than being told that the camera was malfunctioning), they later were more than three times as likely to help a passerby whose bag full of candy was spilling on the ground (Regan et al. In these situations, helping someone (even if it is not the person who was harmed) can help people alleviate guilt. Even when people do not feel personally responsible for harm done to another person or group, they can nevertheless feel guilt about that harm, a feeling labeled collective guilt. For example, when people identify with a group that is socially advantaged over others, they can feel collective guilt about a less fortunate outgroup, especially if they see that the outgroup's disadvantaged position in society is illegitimate (Miron et al. Collective guilt motivates a desire to make reparations to victims of past injustice or otherwise support policies that level the playing field (J. Regan, 1971). What makes you think I would know where the cookies are? Stop accusing me!

They want to guilt you into leaving them alone and making it so unpleasant for you to continue your inquiry that you just leave them alone. Sarcastic or attempting to use humor in their response is an indication of deflecting the importance of the situation. I just opened up the entire bag of cookies and poured them all into my mouth at the same time and shoved them down my throat with a toilet plunger and then washed them down with three gallons of milk. It's 84% likely, that when a person opens up a sentence with the word actually after being asked a question that they are lying. Other similar introductions are to tell you the truth, `to be perfectly honest, honestly, frankly, or I was raised to never lie, (therefore the next thing I am about the say is the truth). If they are being honest, then why do they have to clarify it with reinforcement before they even answer? Watch out for complimenting you to distract you from the question you just asked them. Wow, those are nice pants you're wearing. We even find some individuals who need to lose in a marital conflict. Yielding is a face-saving way of doing that. By yielding, you give the appearance that you are in control and are the one behaving in the most-Christian way. Another method of dealing with conflict is to compromise, or give a little to get a little. You have discovered that it's important to back off on some of your ideas or demands in order to help the other person give a little. You don't want to win all the time, nor do you want the other person to win all the time. This approach involves concessions on both sides and has been called the horse-trading technique. In the resolve style of dealing with conflict, open and direct communication is used to change a situation, attitude or behavior. The couple is willing to spend sufficient time working on the difference so that even though some of their original wants and ideas have changed, they are very satisfied with the solution at which they've arrived. Diagram 2 on the following article shows a way of diagramming the five styles of handling conflict. This relationship has been found in many circumstances: among U. Chileans reflecting on Chile's disadvantaged indigenous people (Brown et al.

South Africans reflecting on their country's history of apartheid (Klandermans et al. Although research shows that guilt is effective at motivating helping, this effect may be short-lived. Some researchers argue that when people help out of guilt--over either personal or collective actions--they are simply trying to make themselves feel better (Iyer et al. The problem with this kind of helping is that it sometimes leads only to token forms of help that actually reduce the likelihood of providing more significant help at a later time (Dutton & Lennox, 1974). This work leads back to the conclusion that the best forms of helping are motivated by true empathy and compassion rather than guilt. A Communal Feeling All this talk of guilt and empathy reminds us that one of the strongest motivators of our behavior is to form, strengthen, and maintain close relationships with others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Bowlby, 1973). I got my pants at the fire sale down at the mall. Maybe they know something about your personality and they will use that to get you focused on yourself and to take the focus off of them. They avoid using the word I or me. It's very strange, but liars often avoid using personal pronouns in an inquiry to distance themselves from the lie. They turn the whole thing into some nebulous concept that is foreign to them and that is so strange and mysterious that it can never be understood. They talk about themselves in the third person. This guy hates cookies, when they really love them. This is more distancing. Sometimes they eliminate the personal pronoun altogether. Totally hate cookies, never liked a cookie. Immediately below this chart is diagram 3. You will notice that some new descriptive words have been added to this diagram.