Did you ever get the feeling that everyone around you is showing a version of themselves, but not their whole self? Did you start to believe that you could see this performance game in your friends and family, and that you actually knew the real self they were trying to obscure? You might even believe that you know better than they do — because you can see through their facade — what they want or need or think or believe. You’re onto them. They’re not fooling you.
If you answered yes to the questions above, do you also believe that your friends and family feel exactly the same way about you and your masks? Or do you tend to feel that your personas are subtle and elegant and impenetrable?
In individual and group interaction with others, this disconnect is called the ‘illusion of asymmetric insight,’ described rather well and disturbingly in this post online (via Lifehacker):
The illusion of asymmetric insight makes it seem as though you know everyone else far better than they know you, and not only that, but you know them better than they know themselves. You believe the same thing about groups of which you are a member. As a whole, your group understands outsiders better than outsiders understand your group, and you understand the group better than its members know the group to which they belong.
The bias goes a long way to explain the polar and vitriolic opposition between political parties these days (the other side is full of idiots, who don’t understand the real world…or are intentionally lying about it). But it’s also a trap that captures many a cultural manager when they think about their audience, their community, their donors, their supporters, their detractors, and those ambivalent to their existence. ‘City council members are idiots for not understanding the true value of what we do.’ ‘Audiences who came once and never returned didn’t get it, or weren’t committed enough to the work.’ ‘Donors who give us money do so because they love what we love.’ ‘Those who stop giving must have felt offended or ignored.’
In truth, we don’t know what motivates or inspires others as much as we think we do. And others don’t know what motivates or inspires us. We can talk about it as openly as possible. We can short-circuit our natural leap to conclusions about motives and needs of those around us (leading with a question rather than an assumption often helps). But we’re never going to know.
So much of artistic expression and experience offers new ways to see and understand the other…either the unfamiliar culture or character, or the stranger in ourselves. It might be wise to carry that spirit into the ways we manage our organizations, and the ways we engage those we encounter along the road.
I find it fascinating to notice that the first article in your newsletter is by a man who believes that the arts originally arose out of community, around the campfires of early human companionship and should exist still today to benefit community, and then this later article about the bias of community perceptions of the world, which offers a different angle on the “truth” telling abilities of those who identify completely with their group. Since Jung’s name was mentioned, may I add that I think he also thought that making art, doing art, is originally a deeply individual act. It is one of the very few ways a person has to express and later see or hear, what their individual natures or way of seeing the world is like. To do art or be at all creative is to step outside one’s community stories or ways of seeing the world. Outside the group’s persona. I think Jung might say that creative work and discovery in any field including the arts, comes out of the same place as the private and absolutely solitary place each individual goes to every night-our dreaming. Our dreams can include collective imagery, but there will always be something odd or unique in a dream which comes from and belongs to the individual. It is one of the first ways in which we encounter our differences from our groups. This often feels frightening because it breaks us away from the collective group consciousness we are so wedded to during the day. I think that, yes, the arts are wonderful for the community. But not because they come from the community, but because they don’t.