I was not thrilled with the video I made for the week and so I plan to make another/better one later this week. As I watched it (over and over), I realized that what I did not like was that it seemed like I was merging two concepts: The quick and often unconscious thinking that happens between show/event and feelings…
I swiped that photo from the Internet but am unsure of original source and since people are not identifiable in my cropped version,I decided it was acceptable.
… and the process of communication.
They are related BUT the video lacked context to explain how they are related. Therefore, I ditched the video, will plant seeds of context in this post, and plan to re-do the video later in the week.
I think we all pretty much agree that the Black Box contains thoughts.
I also believe that we all likely understand when we think unfortunate and negative thoughts, we feel unfortunate and negative feelings.
AND I hope we also understand that negative and unfortunate feelings are transmitted to the dog, lickety-split.
Finally, because we cannot just explain to the dog that she should ignore our physiologic panic and danger signals, the dog’s performance will/is impacted. Well, unless our dog doesn’t really care if we are about to get trampled by a herd of elephants or eaten by a lion (since both things are likely at shows — hence our very reasonable fears and anxiety at dog shows).
Both my Ring Nerves Study (yes, I really did one) and our online group identified thinking about what other people are thinking as a significant source of dog event anxiety.
Oh boy.
So, we have our own negative thoughts AND because apparently those are insufficient to the task, we add in what we imagine are the negative thoughts of others.
AND (yes, there is more) just in case all those negative thoughts are not quite enough, we absorb every word, every laugh, every whispered comment, every funny look — and find more reasons to think bad thoughts (and feel rotten as a result).
Through a (very normal and human) process of Cognitive Biases, we stuff that Black Box so full that it is a wonder it doesn’t just explode.
And that, my dear friend, is where the whole communication thing came into play.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there are two related issues at play.
First, there are negative thoughts — our own plus what we imagine are the negative thoughts of others. Second, there is the process of filtering verbal and non-verbal communication around us through our favorite cognitive biases. Two that I suspect are especially relevant to our discussion are the Fundamental Attribution Error (click HERE for a brief video) and Confirmation Bias, which is “…a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions” (Science Daily, n.d.).
Hmmmm….
We think communication is pretty easy — but is it?
Ponder all that, if you would.