DEFENSIVE COMMUNICATION by Jack R. Gibb - Bluegrass ...

http://www.geocities.com/toritrust/defensive_communication.htm DEFENSIVE COMMUNICATION by Jack R. Gibb (Transcribed from a mimeographed paper discovered at the University of
Toledo, 4/88. Edited only to reduce gender-specific references. des - Note:
The original text, with references, appears in Appendix C of the Trust
book. Jack has said that this article, which came out of research performed
for the Office of Naval Research, "has been more widely distributed than
any of my other publications.")
One way to understand communication is to view it as a people process
rather than a language process. If one is to make fundamental improvement
in communication, one must make changes in interpersonal relationships. One
possible type of alteration-and the one with which this paper is concerned-
is that of reducing the degree of defensiveness.
Definition and Significance
Defensive behavior is defined as that behavior which occurs when an
individual perceives threat or anticipates threat in the group. The person
who behaves defensively, even though he or she also gives some attention to
the common task, devotes an appreciable portion of energy to defending
himself or herself. Besides talking about the topic, he thinks about how he
appears to others, how he may be seen more favorably, how he may win,
dominate, impress or escape punishment, and/or how he may avoid or mitigate
a perceived attack.
Such inner feelings and outward acts tend to create similarly defensive
postures in others; and, if unchecked, the ensuing circular response
becomes increasingly destructive. Defensive behavior, in short, engenders
defensive listening, and this in turn produces postural, facial and verbal
cues which raise the defense level of the original communicator.
Defense arousal prevents the listener from concentrating upon the message.
Not only do defensive communicators send off multiple value, motive and
affect cues, but also defensive recipients distort what they receive. As a
person becomes more and more defensive, he or she becomes less and less
able to perceive accurately the motives, the values and the emotions of the
sender. The writer's analysis of tape recorded discussions revealed that
increases in defensive behavior were correlated positively with losses in
efficiency in communication.(2)
The converse, moreover, also is true. The more "supportive" or defense-
reductive the climate, the less the receiver reads into the communication
distorted loadings which arise from projections of his own anxieties,
motives and concerns. As defenses are reduced, the receivers become better
able to concentrate upon the structure, the content and the cognitive
meanings of the message.
Categories of Defensive and Supportive Communications
In working over an eight-year period with recordings of discussions
occurring in varied settings, the writer developed the six pairs of
defensive and supportive categories presented in Table 1. Behavior which a
listener perceives as possessing any of the characteristics listed in the
left-hand column arouses defensiveness, whereas that which he interprets as
having any of the qualities designated as supportive reduces defensive
feelings. The degree to which these reactions occur depends upon the
person's level of defensiveness and upon the general climate in the group
at the time.(3)
Evaluation and Description
Speech or other behavior which appears evaluative increases defensiveness.
If by expression, manner of speech, tone of voice or verbal content the
sender seems to be evaluating or judging the listener, the receiver goes on
guard. Of course, other factors may inhibit the reaction. If the listener
thought that the speaker regarded him as an equal and was being open and
spontaneous, for example, the evaluativeness in a message would be
neutralized and perhaps not even perceived. This same principle applies
equally to the other five categories of potentially defense-producing
climates. These six sets are interactive.
Because our attitudes toward other persons are frequently, and often
necessarily, evaluative, expressions which the defensive person will regard
as nonjudgmental are hard to frame. Even the simplest question usually
conveys the answer that the sender wishes or implies the response that
would fit into his or her value system. A mother, for example, immediately
following an earth tremor that shook the house, sought for her small son
with the question, "Bobby, where are you?" The timid and plaintive "Mommy,
I didn't do it" indicated how Bobby's chronic mild defensiveness
predisposed him to react with a projection of his own guilt and in the
context of his chronic assumption that questions are full of accusation.
TABLE 1
Categories of Behavior Characteristic of Supportive and Defensive Climates
in Small Groups
|Defensive Climates|Supportive |
| |Climates |
|1. Evaluation |1. Description |
|2. Control |2. Problem |
| |Orientation |
|3. Strategy |3. Spontaneity |
|4. Neutrality |4. Empathy |
|5. Superiority |5. Equality |
|6. Certainty |6. Provisionalism|
Anyone who has attempted to train professionals to use information-seeking
speech with neutral affect appreciates how difficult it is to teach a
person to say even the simple "who did that?" without being seen as
accusing. Speech is so frequently judgmental that there is a reality base
for the defensive interpretations which are so common.
When insecure, group members are particularly likely to place blame, to see
others as fitting into categories of good or bad, to make moral judgments
of their colleagues and to question the value, motive and affect loadings
of the speech which they hear. Since value loadings imply a judgment of
others, a belief that the standards of the speaker differ from his or her
own causes the listener to become defensive.
Descriptive speech, in contrast to that which is evaluative, tends to
arouse a minimum of uneasiness. Speech acts which the listener perceives as
genuine requests for information or as material with neutral loadings is
descriptive. Specifically, presentation of feelings, events, perceptions or
processes which do not ask or imply that the receiver change behavior or
attitude are minimally defense producing. The difficulty in avoiding
overtone is illustrated by the problems of news reporters in writing
stories about unions, Communists, Blacks and religious activities without
tipping off the "party" line of the newspaper. One can often tell from the
opening words in a news article which side the newspaper's editorial policy
favors.
Control and Problem Orientation
Speech which is used to control the listener evokes resistance. In most of
our social intercourse, someone is trying to do something to someone else-
to change an attitude, to influence behavior, or to restrict the field of
activity. The degree to which attempts to control produce defensiveness
depends upon the openness of the effort, for a suspicion that hidden
motives exist heightens resistance. For this reason, attempts of
nondirective therapists and progressive educators to refrain from imposing
a set of values, a point of view or a problem solution upon the receivers
meet with many barriers. Since the norm is control, noncontrollers must
earn the perceptions that their efforts have no hidden motives. A
bombardment of persuasive "messages" in the fields of politics, education,
special causes, advertising, religion, medicine, industrial relations and
guidance has bred cynical and paranoid responses in listeners.
Implicit in all attempts to alter another person is the assumption by the
change agent that the person to be altered is inadequate. That the speaker
secretly views the listener as ignorant, unable to make his or her own
decisions, uninformed, immature, unwise, or possessed of wrong or
inadequate attitudes is a subconscious perception which gives the latter a
valid base for defensive reactions.
Strategy and Spontaneity
When the sender is perceived as engaged in a stratagem involving ambiguous
and multiple motivations, the receiver becomes defensive. No one wishes to
be a guinea pig, a role player, or an impressed actor, and no one likes to
be the victim of some hidden motivation. That which is concealed, also, may
appear larger than it really is with the degree of defensiveness of the
listener determining the perceived size of the element. The intense
reaction of the reading audience to the material in The Hidden Persuaders
indicates the prevalence of defensive reactions to multiple motivations
behind strategy. Group members who are seen as "taking a role" as feigning
emotion, as toying with their colleagues, as withholding information or as
having special sources of data are especially resented. One participant
once complained that another was "using a listening technique" on him!
A large part of the adverse reaction to much of the so-called human
relations training is a feeling against what are perceived as gimmicks and
tricks to fool or to "involve" people, to make a person think he or she is
making their own decision, or to make the listener feel that the sender is
genuinely interested in him or her as a person. Particularly violent
reactions occur when it appears that someone is trying to make a stratagem
appear spontaneous. One person reported a boss who incurred resentment by
habitually using the gimmick of "spontaneously" looking at his watch and
saying "my gosh, look at the time-I must run to an appointment." The belief
was that the boss would create less irritation by honestly asking to be
excused.
The aversion to deceit may account for one's resistance to politicians who
are suspected of behind-the-scenes planning to get one's vote, to
psychologists whose listening apparently is motivated by more than the
manifest or content-level interest in one's behavior, or the sophisticated,
smooth, or clever person who