2015-08-21
298
Engaging in interpersonal communication is always a risk. Whenever we interact with a relational partner, we open ourselves up to rejection. Evelyn Sieburg believes that during communication we offer up a version of our self for approval. Our partner can either confirm us (by accepting us for what we are) or can disconfirm us. Disconfirmations are rejecting responses, responses that leave us with a diminished sense of self-respect.
Sieburg has described seven ways in which we can (sometimes unknowingly) disconfirm one another. These ways are shown below:
| Response | Example | |
| Impervious | A: “Hi!” | |
| B fails to acknowledge, even minimally A’s message. | (B continues talking on the phone, ignoring A.) | |
| Interrupting | A: “So I said –” | |
| B cuts A’s message short. | B: “Cot to go. Bye!” | |
| Irrelevant | A: “He really hurt me.” | |
| B’s response is unrelated to what A said. | B: “Do you like my coat?” | |
| Tangential | A: “He really hurt me.” | |
| B briefly acknowledges A, then changes topic. | B: “Too bad. I got dumped once. It was last year...” | |
| Impersonal | A: “I don’t understand.” | |
| B conducts a monologue or uses stilted, formal, or jargon-laden language. | B: “The dependent variable is conceptually isomorphic...” | |
| Incoherent | A: “Do you love me?” | |
| B’s response is rambling and hard to follow. | B: “Well, gosh, I mean, sure, that is, I...” | |
| Incongruous | A: “Do you love me?” | |
| B’s verbal and nonverbal messages are contradictory. | B: “Of course” (said in a bored, offhand way). | |
The first of the disconfirming responses occurs when one partner ignores the other. A parent who is too busy reading the paper to listen to a child’s story is giving an impervious response. The child is left with the message “You are not worth noticing.” A second way people disconfirm one another is by giving an interrupting response. An interruption is a one-up move that sends the message “You are not worth listening to.” Occasionally, we encounter people who burst into conversations and immediately change the subject to something that has absolutely no bearing on what was said before. This is an example of an irrelevant response. A variation on this pattern is the tangential response, wherein an individual briefly acknowledges the topic but then goes on to discuss his or her own interests. Both responses send the message “My concerns are more important than yours are.”
Impersonal responses are also disconfirming. The person who uses stilted, formal, distant language is signaling “I feel uncomfortable being close to you.” Another response that indicates a desire to escape from interaction is the incoherent response. When someone seems embarrassed and tongue-tied, he or she says, in effect, “I feel uncomfortable with you.” A final way to disconfirm a partner is by sending incongruous responses, messages wherein the verbal and nonverbal cues don’t match. These double messages imply “I don’t want to deal with you directly and openly.”
Most people are disconfirming from time to time. Out of carelessness or irritation, we may use one of the responses just described. An occasional lapse is not necessarily problematic. However, if disconfirmations become habitual, they can destroy others’ self-esteem and can severely damage relationships.
