Mixed Messages

[Miss Isness]

I just wanted to share two recent experiences I had at work regarding mixed messages. I teach English as a second language. I'm currently working in a big company, and teaching business English. The first case regards a simple contradiction. I'm not normally surprised when my students contradict themselves out of error, but in this particular case it was an advanced student who had an excellent command of English. The thing that surprised me is that it was so hard for me to point out his contradiction, as I was tempted to think that I was somehow responsible for not understanding, or that he didn't actually realize that he had 'changed his mind' within the span of a 5 minute conversation. However, it was apparently just a slip - using the opposite adjective to the one intended. It's certainly easy for that to happen when speaking a foreign language, but this guy was so confident and well spoken that it took me completely off guard.

In the second case, I was teaching a group of advanced students. We were discussing the importance of communication, and the best means of communicating when one of the students decided to demonstrate a particular technique. He started saying something in the affirmative while waving his index finger back and forth, which is a gesture that indicates the negative. Before I could even identify what was happening, my mind went completely blank. He then went on to explain that he has met people that consciously use this technique to beat their opponents. He works in the legal department.

When I expressed that I was shocked by his demonstration and subsequent explanation of his personal experience, he said it was actually quite common, and went on to give another example which reminded me, to a T, of someone I'm very close to. I immediately found myself questioning whether this person has been doing this sort of thing intentionally. What a scary thought. I'm now acutely aware of how mind numbing it is. I was absolutely speechless.

 

[Telperion]

Yes, the realm of communication seems to be full of this kind of mental manipulation...the best defense against them is to be aware of them. This reiterates how much the 10 percent of our brain we normally use is so, so much like a machine...

 

[Annette1]

I don’t know if this will help you any, but I do have a particle of information/background on this technique.

I worked at NASA in the early 1990s as an assistant to a group of scientists with PhD’s in Psychology with engineering backgrounds. The main focus of the group was “cock-pit” ergonomics. However, their studies encompassed a lot. Most of them were an amicable group of people and were very patient with me and would stop and take time to explain theories to me and all sorts of interesting stuff in layman’s terms.

Your second example prompted a recall of a specific theory they were examining at one time. Although I do not remember the name of the theory, the study was attempting to determine how the human brain processed information when specifically getting “mixed signals”. One of the questions was to which the brain will give preference to “first” before having the opportunity to sort through the information of conflicting message; your hearing or your sight? Further, how precisely, your brain unscrambles the messages and sorts or decodes the information so that it can evaluate and what the appropriate action should be.

The best analogy here is if you recall the child’s game/amusement when you place your hands palm to palm and have a “volunteer” follow your hands with their eyes as you move your hands vertically up and down in front of the volunteer' line of sight and rather closely . (generally the volunteer is seated in front of you.) At some point, when the volunteer is settled into the eye-tracking of your hands, you quickly pull them apart horizontally. If you watch the volunteer’s eyes when you pull your hands apart, you will notice their eyes move rather jerkily and if you’ve ever been the volunteer in a session like this, you know it throws your sight for a second.

When a person verbally says something in an affirmative while physically shaking his head, or hands or sends a negative physical signal to you, your brain has to choose what to believe; the affirmative or the negative. Thus what you are hearing or what you are seeing. Obviously, your brain has to start to unscramble the messages it is receiving and it sort of “trips” you up.

There are those who will use the information for self-gain or malignant purposes. But, at least you are aware now and it will be a bit easier to decipher and catch onto it.

 

[Tigersoap]

When a person verbally says something in an affirmative while physically shaking his head, or hands or sends a negative physical signal to you, your brain has to choose what to believe; the affirmative or the negative. Thus what you are hearing or what you are seeing. Obviously, your brain has to start to unscramble the messages it is receiving and it sort of “trips” you up.

That's why you're gonna be very disturbed if you go in India without knowing that shaking their heads negatively means yes.

 

[kenlee]

When a person verbally says something in an affirmative while physically shaking his head, or hands or sends a negative physical signal to you, your brain has to choose what to believe; the affirmative or the negative.

This might be how a predatory intelligence, working thru people (consciously or unconsciously), seeks to dominate and gain the advantage thru "stun gun like" immobilization. In a way it might be compared to the way a Cheetah attack its prey. It first catches up to it and then 'trips" it. In a fight this immobilization of the opponent might be compared with the "psyche out," one example being the piercing 'karate yell' or the ‘Kaia’ that’s used as a form of tactile warfare to temporarily set up and immobilize the opponent and put them at a disadvantage. Joe Lewis, the well known Kickboxing champ, speaks of it this technique in number two of his setups in his fighting system.

_http://www.kenpousa.com/lewis.htm#SET

SETUPS
1. Set yourself up physically and mentally.
• Raise your energy level.
• Use sparring partner for timing and distance.
• Practice external focus.

2. Set up opponent verbally.
• Confuse him.
• Psyche him out.

3. Set up your opponent through body language.
• Mislead him.
• Frighten him.

It might relate to this (below) where it is stated, “all other levels of awareness are temporarily receded, thereby making it impossible to become aware of one's physical reality”:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/wave10c.htm

Q: (L) Yes. But what I am trying to do is identify these conflicting thought centers. If two thought centers, or more, conflict, then my idea would be that they are in opposition.
A: Correct. ...
Q: (L) Okay, in the experience I felt a paralysis of my body, what caused this paralysis.
A: Yes. Separation of awareness. Which is defined as any point along the pathway where one's awareness becomes so totally focused on one thought sector that all other levels of awareness are temporarily receded, thereby making it impossible to become aware of one's physical reality along with one's mental reality. This gives the impression of what is referred to as paralysis. Do you understand?
Q: (L) Yes. And what stimulates this total focus of awareness?
A: An event which sidetracks, temporarily, the mental processes.
Q: (L) And what event can sidetrack the mental processes to this extent?
A: Any number.
Q: (L) In this particular case, what was it?
A: It was an eclipsing of energies caused by conflicting thought centers. Whenever two opposing units of reality intersect, this causes what can be referred to as friction, which, for an immeasurable amount of what you would refer to as time, which is, of course, non-existent, creates a non-existence, or a stopping of the movements of all functions. This is what we would know as conflict. In between, or through any intersecting, opposite entities, we always find zero time, zero movement, zero transference, zero exchange. Now think about this. Think about this carefully.

It might be related to the third type of stress (although in this case the 'anomalies in the conditioning signal', that is, the 'yes' and 'no' of the 'mixed signals' come in linear sequence, one after the other, rather then as a simultaneous action .

http://www.cassiopedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Transmarginal_Inhibition

Four Main Types of Stress
Among Pavlov's most important findings was the what can happen to conditioned behavior when the brain of a dog is pushed to the "ultraboundary" limit by stresses and conflict beyond its habitual response capacity. He was able to bring about what he called a "rupture in higher nervous activity" by utilizing four main types of imposed stresses.

1. The first type of stress was simply an increase in the intensity of the signal to which the dog was initially conditioned. If this was gradually increased, at a certain point, when the signal was too strong for its system, the dog would begin to break down.

2. The second way of achieving the ultraboundary event was to increase the time between the giving of the signal and the arrival of food. If a dog was conditioned to receive food five seconds after the warning signal, and this period was then prolonged, signs of restlessness and abnormal behavior would become evident in the less stable dogs. Pavlov discovered that the dog's brains revolted against any abnormally long waiting period while under stress. Breakdown would occur when the dog had to either exert very strong, or very prolonged, inhibition. (Human beings also find protracted waiting while under stress to be debilitatin: worse than the event that produces the anxiety.)

3. The third way of inducing a breakdown was to confuse the dogs by anomalies in the conditioning signal. If positive and negative signals were given one after the other, (yes, no, yes, no, etc), the hungry dog would become uncertain as to what would happen next and this disrupted the normal nerve stability. This is also true with human beings.

4. The fourth way of inducing a breakdown in a dog was to destabilize the dog's physical condition in some way, either by subjecting it to long periods of work, inducing gastro-intestinal disorders, fever, disturbing the glandular balance, surgery, etc.

 

[Miss Isness]

Thanks for your insights, which are very much along the lines of what I was thinking. I'm sure there are numerous ways to stun someone and then take the opportunity to dominate them in some way. Perhaps there are others we could add to giving mixed messages?

 

[Ominous]

I always kind of scoffed at these type things...subliminal messages and such. But, after reading this thread and remembering certain instances in my past, I now realize that I've fallen prey to this sort of manipulation. Not only that, but perhaps I've been guilty of using these mixed signals without fully realizing what I was doing.