Kaeli Petersen

“Two Views” Paper

The two views paper is an assignment that was meant to help understand where another person is coming from in an argument. To begin this paper I had to choose someone in my life that I had a recent conflict with. I decided to choose one of my dear friends. This friend has had an on and off relationship with a man who doesn’t treat her right. She often comes to me with their issues. I have, in return, given her advice to leave this man. Assuring her there’s someone out there that will make her much happier. However, she stays with him despite of how he treats her. It has become extremely hard for me to listen to her complain to me about her boyfriend. As a result, I told her cannot watch her get hurt when she refuses to do anything about it. This assignment required that I write two letters. The first letter is written from me to the other person (in this case by friend). It should be a letter about me expressing how I feel about the conflict. The second letter is written by me, but from the perspective of the other person. After writing the letters, I showed the second one to my friend. The idea was to see if I understood how she felt about the situation. After our conversation, there were many conclusions I was able to come to. Our meeting began with her reading the letter. During our conversation I was careful to look for perceptual tendencies. While the outcome was quite positive, there were still points in our conversation where these tendencies came into play. The first tendency is one known as the horn effect (the opposite of the halo effect). The horn effect is when you make assumptions based upon limited information. In the horn effect, the assumptions are negative. My friend had asked me what gave me the impression that she had a low self-esteem. My response was because of a few things she had said to me on different occasion. For example, she was often in need of approval for her looks. Also, when it came to leaving her boyfriend, comments about no one will want to be with her gave me the idea she didn’t think so highly of herself. Although this may have been a bad assumption, my friend agreed that she indeed felt that way. As we continued our conversation She explained to be her fear of never finding someone due to her low self-esteem. This is known as attribution error. Attribution error is an attempt to blame causes of events on the situation or a person’s personality. I assumed that my friend had a low self-esteem and that is why she would not leave her boyfriend. In most cases, attribution error can be negative. However, I feel this is positive. Because my assumption of my friend’s low self-esteem was correct, I was able to connect with her in this situation. As a friend, I always worked to help improve my friends self esteem, in hopes she will leave her boyfriend with confidence. Her selective attention, however, got in the way. With a low self-esteem, my friend would always look for approval from others. As she spoke to me of her issues in her relationship she would give subtle hints that she was looking for reassurance from me. For example, she would say things like “I’m just not pretty enough and I know it”. In return I would say things like “Yes you are, and there is someone out there who will see that in you”. Once I reassured my friend, our conversation ended. Selective attention is when someone hears only what he or she wants to. Once my friend heard what she wanted to hear, she no longer wanted to hear what I had to say. My friend’s self-esteem is also part of a self-fulfilling prophecy. She has a low self-esteem because she sees herself negatively. Because of