What happens often, is when people ask direct questions, the danger of being perceived as negative is high.
So how does one maintain a positive perception, while still being able to ask and receive questions?
Quick answer: Context and perception.
Why would asking questions could be perceived as negative?
Timing inconvenience.
Imagine you are an expert in satellites, and you are speaking in a conference about a technology that satellites use. Then an attendee raises a hand and asks for a satellite definition.
It is possible that this attendee is unaware of the definition, and it is also possible that the attendee does know that and has other intentions by asking that question.
Would that be therefore a bad time to ask such a question? Are there ulterior motives? At this point the person receiving the question is forced to infer to context to figure that.
The speaker is building context to understand the periphery of the question, and the attendee as well. And this happens in milliseconds. “System A” Associative memory* is used a lot in this step.
The way the question is asked.
A major difference that I have observed, is that directness is not appreciated equally everywhere. Culture and personal experiences might be a big factor on this one of both the person posing the question, as well as the person receiving the question. People have built their associative memory based on their experience, therefore when asking a direct question on a culture that direct questions are common, one could assume that the possibility of the question being perceived as negative is lower than if the same question would be asked in a culture that direct questions are not that common.
Prior personal relations.
Does the person receiving the question know the person asking the question? What could their prior interaction be, what would the result? Again, associative memory plays an important role.
So, what if those 2 know each other?
Mistakes in the past
If they know each other, either could have done many, or few mistakes in the past. They could both have had mostly positive interactions. I believe that there is very little knowledge of what could the other perceive as a mistake or a negative experience in the past, and even if there were very few of them, people tend to remember them more than the positive ones. The negative event remembrance is more likely to overwhelm the positive one in almost all cases.
Stress
People tend to have more stress when talking to a crowd. Also, people sitting up asking a question in front of many others can have similar stress levels too.
So, what does one do? These are my suggestions.
I would suggest approaching the situation in “good faith” on the intentions of the person asking the question and answering the question, maybe you haven’t understood the full context of the person asking the question. And how could you, or anyone? Acknowledge non expertise on the complexity to understand other people. You can barely understand yourself. The science of Psychology wouldn’t need exist if there was full understanding of each other.
Focus on proof, not evidence.
This one is self-explanatory, but many people don’t know the difference, the lines between these 2 might even be skewed. Isn’t life itself a constant effort to distinguish those lines?
Acknowledge and be constantly aware of all of the above.
Empathy
Imagine being in the shoes of the other person. Don’t overdo it though, remember that you do not know fully the other person. Overdoing it can be destructive too.
Trust?
A security expert would say trust no one (zero trust principle). Is this appropriate for conducting living, exploring, and evolving?
Be open, but cautious.
To me, it looks like there are more reasons and paths that lead to negative perception. How does one build context towards another, to strengthen the chances of a positive perception? Partly how is knowing each other. That requires trust. Trust needs to be built towards one another, to be able to gather more context to improve at assuming intentions next time.
A case where someone asks trust but gives none back, always results in that person getting very small amounts of it in the end.
Constantly check your own facts and be open to change. The way you would do it is also important.
- Questions for you, what important things did I miss? Which ones of the above are facts? How do you perceive them? What are your facts? Whatever the answer is, whatever your facts are, try to remember them.
“System A” Associative memory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0
