Definition of Defensive Behavior - Essay Example

Defensive listening Introduction Defensive behavior is the actions directed at softening something difficult that causes pain. Defensive behavior can be different, both healthy and neurotic. The forms of it also differ: it can be the fight, the real escape from the situation. laughter, disappointment, cry, objections and accusations. “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” (Gibb) . Defensive listening is one of defensive mechanisms, it is an interpreting the most innocent words as offensive in attempt to defend yourself. . Lack of self confidence First of all, a person who applies defensive listening, is not self-confident. Many people are not self-confident, even if they are famous and popular, but the degree of this state can be different. Sometimes, the parents of the person are guilty in the lack of his/her self-confidence. They may tell his child that he is not beautiful and gifted enough and the child start thinking that he is not perfect, thus other people are better. Such attitude generates inferiority complex that will definitely cause defensive listening in future. For example, if the girl is told by her parents that she is not beautiful enough, she will be afraid to hear this again from any person, thus will hear a threat in every phrase and apply defensive listening (Gibb, 1960). Always looking at the negative side Those people, who apply defensive mechanism, tend to hear only negative and have only negative experience. They do not believe that they would hear something good, thus try to be ready for everything. Such people also treat everything connected with them to be negative and see negative in every situation, even if this situation may turn into positive for them. For, example, a girl hears “Oh, how small you are!”. She considers it to be an offence, though it is not bad for a girl to be small. After hearing this phrase, she starts to treat negatively any conversation about small people and every person, who reminds her that she is small, though this person does not have anything bad in his mind. According to Gibb, “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 writers analysis of tape recorded discussions revealed that increases in defensive behavior were correlated positively with losses in efficiency in communication” (Gibb). Criticized It goes without saying that people, who apply defensive listening, went through a very hard critics. Here it is necessary to return to parents and their attitude towards their child. If a child often hears critics from parents, he starts doubting his significance and value. Moreover, critics may not be necessarily hard, it is enough to say several innocent phrases to make a child doubt. For instance, a mother may say to her young daughter: you are not the most beautiful, but you are pretty. These words are not bad at all, but such a mother is not wise or she is not kind enough to her child (Gibb, 1961). Before having children parents should read a lot of material about the nature of children. Children usually perceive the world as “black” and “white”. A child can’t understand that all the people have their drawbacks and advantages, he thinks that if he is not perfect, he is ugly as he does not understand the neutral word “pretty”. It is perceived by the child as critics. Consequently, if this girl hears, for example, from her boyfriend that she is pretty, she would react unnaturally by crying that he does not consider her to be the best. Certainly, their relations will be spoiled after that, because, he would not understand what he had done wrong. Thus, such critics is sometimes more dangerous, than hard and direct critics, when a mother directly tells her daughter that she is ugly, but she understands that it is not true just by looking in a mirror. Conclusion In a difficult life situation many people became cold, closed, hostile in their attitude to others. After that even if the difficult situation passed, this defensive reaction remains and the openness, softness and kindness became dangerous. A person thinks if he/she becomes open and kind, people will treat it as a sign of weakness. In this situation defensive listening is an effective defensive mechanism, but it simultaneously destroys all the perspectives. Death also defends from pain but it is not a way out. If you understand that this man is rude and maybe even slightly mentally ill, you would stop communicating with him/her. This is a psychological defense and reasonable behavior. Defensive mechanisms are very interesting. These are methods, which are used by both adults and children, when they try to make their life better at the expense of people around them. They works only for some time with the subsequent rising of the amount of own failures. Defensive listening may be good tools to defend oneself, but it prevents people from healthy communication. The only way out is to acquire reasonable and not neurotic defensive mechanisms and to learn to be open and kind. Reasonable defensive mechanisms are used by healthy people in reasonable goals, they can be recommended and they should be learned. They are so natural and understandable that are not usually considered as defensive mechanisms. References Gibb, J. (n.d.) Defensive Communication. University of Toledo, 4/88 Gibb,J. (1961). "Defense Level and Influence Potential in Small Groups," in L. Petrullo and B. M. Bass (eds.), Leadership and Interpersonal Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), pp. 66-81 Gibb J. (1960). "Sociopsychological Processes of Group Instruction," in N. B. Henry (ed.), The Dynamics of Instructional Groups (Fifty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society of the Study of Education, Part II, 1960), pp. 115-135. Read More