Verbal Messages

Extentionalize

Intensional orientation: tendancy to view people, objects, and events in terms of how they are talked about or labeled

Acting as if the words or labels are more important then the things they represent

Recognize Complexity

Allness: particularly relevant when you are dealing with people

Thinking you may know all there is to know about someone but then they show you another side of them

For example, people I went to high school with are very fake and act like they like you, but then turn around and speak ill of you to others

Facts and inferences

Fact-inference confusion

Language enables you to form statements of facts and inferences without making any linguistic distinction between the two

Discriminate among individuals

Indiscrimination: focus on classes of individuals,, objects, or events and fail to see that each is unique

Index: spoken or mental subscript that identifies each individual in a group as an individual

Talk about the middle

Polarization: the fallacy of "either/or" is the tendency to look at the world and to describe it in terms of extremes

Examples: good and bad, healthy and. sick, brilliant and stupid, rich and poor

Update messages

Static evaluation: retain an evaluation of a person, despite the inevitable changes in the person

Your evaluations of yourself and others needs to keep pace with the rate at which you mature and grow