Have you ever felt welcome or unwelcome to speak up in a conversation?
Have you ever felt confident or awkward about disrupting a discussion?
Have you ever felt easy or struggled about walking away in the middle of an event? Have your ever felt relaxed or stressed in a sort of presentation and speech? Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, we’ve all been there.
What is going on there on earth? it is our fear toward (mental) groups.
The perception of mental groups can form immediately in our head when we are in a group of people. Sometimes only the fact that the two person share a inside joke can bond them as a temporary mental group instantly at the moment for the rest on site (that’s it, fast, done!) The physical traits like the number of people, layout, dress code and etc. can all help contribute to the formation of the mental groups:
The mental group (source: the author’s own work)
Once such group is formed (out of so many factors) in our head, we can not help give the power to the norm (specific to the groups). It could be like ‘the audience would expect a confident presenter’, ‘they are not emotionally open person and would like to keep things light’, ‘they are expecting the same opinions and happy ending’ an so on. Behave driven by the fear of interrupting and surprising such mental group makes us uncomfortable, which can be meaningful if we feel the need to stand up for ourselves and challenge any sort of norms. Also, we are all individual as indicated by our own bubbles, it means that we might be essentially just interacting with everyone at the same time in different way (as people perceive things differently). It can be a good way to perceive for people who express themselves better in one vs one conversation (since the pressure of mental groups is just physically absent):
Multiple One vs One conversations (source: the author’s own work)
RoofGazers 