angry – L. C. Fenton Author

The Dunning-Kruger effect – does it work for emotions too?

May 25, 2017May 25, 2017Posted in annoyed, Beliefs, marketing, relationships, working, writingTagged angry, annoying people, emotional intelligence, psychology, relationships, society, writingLeave a comment

As part of my research into the latest novel, I stumbled upon this absolute gem of a study. It has seriously made my week. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of already knowing this, the paper they did is titled, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” (1999). Basically, if you’re really dumb, you will never realise it. In fact, you’ll honestly believe that you’re actually very smart and are exceptionally good at lots of things. You won’t doubt your own abilities or understanding of anything, because you’ll know better than everyone else.

It explains so much of the world. I’m sure everyone can think of people they’ve met who baffle you with their confident assertions of ridiculousness until you start doubting yourself. I have a particular person I know, who without naming names or identifying them in any way, leaves me almost speechless on a regular basis. Things so obviously false are said with such utter certainty that you have to stop and do an internal check and a quick summation of proof for your own interpretation of reality before you can respond. But part of the problem is also that if you’re unaware of your own stupidity, you’re unlikely to change. In a follow-up study, “Why the Unskilled are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-insight Among the Incompetent “(2008) they found that people who performed badly in testing did not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve. People who performed well though, did learn from feedback they were given on how to improve.

Though I enjoyed reading about it, relishing, finally, an explanation for that person in my life, it does start one down a rabbit hole of introspection. Basically, any time I’m not doubting myself could be a time when I’m being stupid.

On the other hand, all those times where I do doubt my own abilities, like when I wonder whether I should keep pursuing a career in writing because maybe I’m really crap at it and it’s only my friends telling me they like my writing to be nice, maybe I’m actually doing okay. It’s somewhat reassuring, but endless self-doubt is time consuming, as well as boring for other people. It can also stop you from doing the things you need to do, like marketing.

Then I though about relationships and whether the Dunning-Kruger effect could apply to emotional intelligence too. To give some context as to why I might wonder this, up until my late thirties, I thought I was rock solid and had escaped a not ideal childhood almost totally unscathed. It’s only been lately that I’ve been recognising that I have issues I’ve been oblivious to for years. As an example, I have trouble identifying my emotions. I have a few go-to responses for almost every situation, and sometimes they aren’t the most sensible. For instance, if someone does something that I find hurtful, I shut down completely. I don’t talk and I don’t explain, I just disappear. If I don’t see the person, I don’t have to think about what happened. It’s like an emotional magic show where I make the thing that wounded me vanish like it never happened. Which is stupid, obviously. It isn’t a rational response, and doesn’t help the situation, at all. I know this, so now I have to try to change this response, which isn’t easy.

But, now that I know that I’m emotionally stupid, does that mean that I’m not?

The bullshit truck and other theories

October 15, 2016October 15, 2016Posted in friendships, relationshipsTagged angry, friends, friendship bus, friendships, poodle, relationships, society, wolfLeave a comment

I’ve been ridiculously thrilled with some of the latest theories on the way women interact with each other and society. The poodle/wolf one was a cracker, though it only took me a nanosecond to work out that I was nether a wolf nor a poodle. Frankly, I suck at camping but well-groomed is definitely not my default factory setting. In the way that people resemble their dogs, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that I’m actually a golden retriever. I really don’t mind getting dirty but I like to have a shower afterwards. I’m also occasionally easily startled and have an aversion to vacuum cleaners.

The next brilliant one was the friendship bus. The theory goes that all women have a mental bus and once all the seats are full, then you can’t add another one without booting someone off. Initially, I thought, “That’s just stupid!” but then I happened to break up with two friends and suddenly, there are two more women in my life. I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence and maybe I did have a bus? The idea is pretty odd, but it makes sense in a way. I only have so much free time and possibly I can’t tend to more friendships that I have without compromising the quality of the emotional investment. The ones who were removed from the bus (for different reasons) led to me thinking up my own social human interactive theory (SHIT).

My own SHIT goes like this: everyone has a bullshit truck. This is a truck, varying from a ute to one of those huge mining trucks, where everyone shovels all the crap they encounter everyday. Every time they swallow the truth and give a bland, socially acceptable response instead of the one they really want to, that bullshit goes in the back of the truck, weighing it down. It accumulates and grows until the truck is full. And when the truck is full, people start being honest, despite the fallout because they can’t add any more bullshit to the pile.

My bullshit truck reached capacity a few weeks ago, and it was scary but incredibly liberating. I told the truth, I let someone know that what they were doing was not okay and got a massive amount of stuff done. When you’re not trying to be nice and easy-going, it frees up a significant amount of time and mental energy. I wasn’t concerned with the fall-out, accepting that I would deal with whatever came later. I got on a real roll, and cleared away some jobs that I had been dreading, but it nearly got away from me. I had to phone a friend, my lovely cousin, who was the voice of absolute reason and stopped me from taking it too far and irreparably damaging a relationship that wasn’t one that I could remove from my life.

My bullshit truck emptied out and I again have the capacity for general social interaction where niceties are adhered to and feelings are spared. I don’t think I could live that way all the time, but I really enjoyed my brief veering off the tracks. It was almost like a mental holiday, with sandy beaches of frankness and the bright sun of outspokenness, topped off by the Pina Colada of candour.

Expectations – oh no!

October 15, 2015October 15, 2015Posted in annoyed, books, characters, writingTagged angry, annoyed, author, books, characters, contemporary romance1 Comment

I just finished reading a book that annoyed the hell out of me. Even a week after finishing it, I’m still bitter and twisted. The writing was great and the story was gripping right up until the last bit. By then the story was wrapping up in the usual way. I knew what was coming so starting skimming a bit, switching my brain off because I didn’t really need to concentrate. After all, once you know what’s coming, there’s no real need to focus. Except then the author threw in a curly one.

It was a romance so he was carrying around his grandmother’s ring to give to the love of his life, which of course was the other main character, because for 80,000 words we’ve been hearing that she was and it was just unfortunate circumstances that kept them apart. Except then… she wasn’t. Someone else was and he gave her the ring. Cue my WTF face:

Now I get that there is a trend at the moment where we’re trying to show women and young girls in particular that the love of a man isn’t everything. That you can be happy and fulfilled with the love and support of your friends and family. The problem for me is that I think that’s great and support it wholeheartedly. I watched “Frozen” and loved the ending where true love is about sisterly love, rather than romantic love. Similarly, “Maleficent” was about the love of a mother figure, rather than Prince Charming. So you can imagine my horror when I found myself feeling deeply annoyed that the main character in the end behaved horribly to the original “love of his life” and decided that it was in fact his daughter who deserved his wholehearted devotion.

I should like that, right? The stressing of the importance of other types of love in our lives. But I didn’t. I actually hated it. But why? Was it because it was a man making the decision, rather than a woman, that her child was the most important thing in their life that I didn’t like? If the sexes were reversed, would I have been okay with it? As much as I hate to say it, maybe.

Quick disclaimer: I feel the need to stress that what I’m talking about is fictional works, not reality. What I want to read is completely different from what I want to happen in my actual life. I love books about stuff that I would never want to happen to me personally.

A big part of the problem is expectation: I want to be surprised, but clearly not too much. For me, there wasn’t enough of a set up for the resolution. My reaction was not the one the author was looking for.

But then I put on my writer hat and I want to do all sorts of crazy things. There is a total disconnect between what I want to read and what I want to write. I want to write the twisty ending because that’s far more fun than just going with the obvious and I always think in my head that it’s great to surprise the reader and of course they’ll love it! This has been a great lesson for me. Readers don’t want to be surprised in the last chapter but something completely different. If you’ve stuck to a theme and known storyline, you can’t back out at the end. If you write a whole book about star-crossed lovers, then they have to be happily together at the end or there is no point to all the angst. And if you mess with that, you’ll just end up with cranky readers.