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Social interaction is almost an important part of the life of every individual living in society, and how to deal with social life is also a problem that many people are very concerned about.
In traditional Chinese culture, people pay attention to a kind of "degree" in communication, and the interaction between people is generally "moderate and stopped", such as "the friendship of gentlemen is as light as water, and the friendship of villains is as sweet as wine." In Western society, especially after the Renaissance, people also produced some "learning" in their interactions: for example, Europeans paid more attention to etiquette, while Americans were relatively direct.
With the impact of globalization and modernization on the rest of the world, people's forms of social interaction have actually produced some convergence phenomena, such as an important impact of modernization on people - social media, so that people's interactions are carried out in virtual space in many cases.
So in today's society, how to better obtain good social relations? First, perhaps there is a concept that we should be clear about: how do individuals exist in society? Or the meaning of "self".
How to know the "self"?
As early as ancient Greece, philosophers represented by Socrates were thinking about questions that they considered very important: "Who am I?"? Where did it come from? Where to go? These three basic questions are very important.
Socrates believed that to acquire a wealth of knowledge, one should first know yourself, rather than drawing all knowledge from the outside world.
In modern times, the Scottish agnostic philosopher David Hume believes that the so-called "self" is just a kind of consciousness, and if the existence of the "self" is denied from the depths of one's own heart, but more about other people, then to some extent it is actually a state of "no self".
In the field of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud believed that the "self", "self" and "superego" are three different levels of individual self-consciousness, both spiritually deep, controllable, and artificially created.
In the field of sociology, the so-called "self" refers more to the existence of an individual as a "center" when a social interaction is issued. For example, the famous sociologist and ethnologist Mr. Fei Xiaotong proposed the concept of differential order pattern in his classic work "Native China".
He summarized Chinese society as a pattern of difference order, Western society is a group pattern, and the social interaction of Chinese society is like a ripple centered on the "ego", like a ripple that spreads out in a circle; Westerners are bundles of neat bundles of firewood, without the concept of "relatives and distances".
So in social interaction, this "self" refers to the "center of interaction" level of the individual.
Relationships and self-awareness
Then we may wish to follow the above analysis of the concept of "self" to understand social relations, it is not difficult to understand one thing: when individuals tend to integrate very smoothly into the various groups of the outside world, then their individual consciousness is bound to be more affected.
For a simple example, those "easy-going people" and "easy-going people" in social life often have this ability: no matter what kind of people they get along with, they will always consider each other's feelings well, and will not make both parties cold and make each other feel uncomfortable in the process of getting along.
So is such a relationship comfortable for itself? Maybe it will be. But theoretically, the unintentional pressure exerted by the outside world on it is bound to lead to a kind of "squeeze" of individual consciousness.
Respect is mutual. If the individual takes "being kind to others" as the premise and regards others as "worthy of respect", then it will reflect a slightly "inferior" state in the spirit, so from this point of view, not being humble is the best state in the process of interacting with people.
Therefore, in the process of communication, a very important consciousness is "boundary awareness".
Social boundaries and social exchange
Just as every sovereign country sets up borders, in fact, in people's social interactions, individuals will subtly set a social boundary psychologically: for two people with a colleague relationship, if they meet in their spare time, then the way of communication is naturally different from the workplace.
For people who are in a classmate relationship, they will also follow a different mode of getting along outside of school; when a young man and woman change from "ambiguous" to couples, then the way they get along will also change. It's a hidden sense of boundaries.
Social boundaries exist in part because the social realm gives individuals different roles, and the theory of social exchange theory helps to recognize this phenomenon.
The difference between the American sociologist George C. Homans, who compared the inputs and returns of economic activity to economic activities on the basis of economics, is that the theory of social exchange is based on the basic principle of economic exchange: people provide goods and services and expect to obtain goods and services that meet their ideals.
While social exchange includes "tangible exchange" and "intangible exchange", he proposed the theory of social exchange and made six exchange propositions from different motivations.
Peter Michael Blau developed and revised Homans' theory, arguing that two conditions must be met for social behavior to become social exchange:
One is that the ultimate goal of behavior can only be achieved by interacting with other individuals;
Second, this social behavior must be in a way that contributes to the achievement of these action goals, thereby extending "exchange" to more areas.
Taken together, this school of thought believes that the motivation for social interaction is the exchange of resources.
For individuals, in social life, if we look at social behavior from the perspective of social exchange theory, then the ultimate purpose is to obtain our own intended goals: whether it is to obtain the resources we want, or to establish a certain social relationship, it is "exchanged" after making a certain effort, so in addition to this, we do not have to specifically express "gratitude" to others, let alone please.
Because when the individual has a more obvious sense of gratitude, or even a flattering personality, the individual's self-consciousness will be violated, all because he wants to become "gregarious".
If you want to gain the respect of others and be accepted by other social groups, the most important thing is to rely on your own outstanding ability or make achievements in a certain field, otherwise even if it seems to be "gregarious", there will be a lot of loss behind it.
- The End -
Author | Tommida
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Reference: Jean Piaget Biographie. (2020, January 29).