Constructivism

The Constructivism Theory was one that I found myself talking about to my family at dinner. Constructivism's goal is to look at differences in how people communicate, especially how well they do it, in social situations. The theory says that some people are better at communicating in different ways than others, which seems like a pretty common sense statement. However, the theory takes a deeper look at how this works. The center of the theory focuses on what theorists call "constructs" which are, as the book described, stencils that people use to make sense of our thoughts; they allow us to classify characteristics of people and make sense of their personalities. The theory also says that people who are more "cognitively complex", as in those people who have more constructs at their disposal to sort through their perceptions, will have a communication advantage over those who don't.

After I studied this theory, I told my parents a little bit about it at dinner, and they told me that it reminded them of me. When I asked them how, they said that I have always described people by their personality traits and characteristics and most of the time leave out any physical description at all. They also said that because I seem to have such a good understanding of so many different characteristics, I can always tailor how I talk to people, and usually convince them to do what I'm asking, or agree with what I am saying. The book gives a specific example of how a girl would respond to a boss in a sexual harassment situation, and it reminded me of something I encountered once at work. There is a guy I work with who wanted to take one of the other girls at work out on a date. He is one of the supervisors in the kitchen. She didn't want to offend him, so she followed much of the same plan layed out in the book: she figured out what she wanted out of the situation, how she would go about doing it, and keeping the message focused on the people involved, she successfully turned him down. I think situations like this occur everyday and this theory is probably more applicable and common than some might think.