Where you are from. American, Polish, Chinese, Texan, HawaiianJUST BECAUSE YOU CAN TALK ABOUT SOMETHING DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD
I stopped talking about politics 15 years ago, on the day I read my first research study about identity.
Identity is how people answer the question Who am I?, and their answers reveal their cherished, core beliefs. I’m an American. I’m a feminist. I’m a Cherokee. I’m a teacher. I’m a veteran. I’m a writer. I’m a hard worker. I’m a Democrat. I’m a Republican. I’m a family man. I’m a company man. I’m a lawyer. I’m a mother. The way we define ourselves—capturing our core and most cherished beliefs—is vitally important. It’s part of how we establish our sense of self, and it shapes the way that we communicate about the topics that matter most to us.
That identity study helped me understand that politics, a topic I didn’t get too excited about and wasn’t defined by, was enormously important to many people in my life. I’d been breezing through conversations about the elections that year, making jokes and lighthearted observations about something that I suddenly realized was extremely meaningful to others. I was just talking. They were talking about who they were. The mismatch was treacherous.
From a communication perspective, understanding identity matters because it’s how we come to know a person deeply and meaningfully. Some of our most important conversations, with some of the most important people in our lives, will be identity-related discussions. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the most damaging conversations of our lives are also usually about identity topics. Just because we can talk about something doesn’t mean that we always should.
If I speak negatively about something that another person holds dear, escalation happens faster and with more intensity because the stakes are higher. The damage will be more severe and more difficult to repair, if it can be repaired.
We’ve heard for decades that it’s bad form to talk about sex, religion, and politics—the classic identity triad. The passage of time hasn’t altered this advice. Some topics, with some people, should be approached with caution.
Over a hundred years ago, Mark Twain noted that “it is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.”1
Unfortunately, the anything-goes ethos of the digital age prevents this elementary communication lesson from sticking. Our gadgets and a proliferation of instant communication opportunities didn’t erase our identity beliefs, but they did encourage a more relaxed approach to the topics we discuss. Unless we start exercising greater caution and restraint around identity-related topics, our relationships may suffer explosive consequences.
Identity is, in some ways, like a deck of cards representing an assortment of formative experiences and deeply held feelings. I’m a hard worker (queen of diamonds), I’m a great salesperson (ace of clubs), I’m a mom (and so on), I’m a pilot, I’m a triathlete, I’m a cancer survivor. We make our identity “hand” from the cards we hold.
Our identities are shaped by many factors, including family, upbringing, life experience, religion, worldview, and work. A person’s identity reflects her core beliefs and how she sees herself in the world.
Common identities include:
Where you are from. American, Polish, Chinese, Texan, Hawaiian
Core beliefs. Republican/Democrat; conservative liberal/libertarian; pro-life/pro-choice; Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist/atheist; environmentalist; vegetarian/vegan; peace/human rights/community activist
What you believe about yourself. Hard worker; honest; good at my job; caring; a good listener; dependable; animal lover
Identity-related topics are combustible because they touch on our self-image and self-esteem.2 Identity violations are not just conversational gaffes; they are often seen as rejections of the other person’s core beliefs. Discussions about identity issues can be very personal.
This doesn’t mean that identity-related conversations are always forbidden. When your identity beliefs are in general alignment with another person’s, you can talk about them all day long without special precautions (although you’ll still want to contain conversational escalations, as always). And if neither conversational partner’s identity beliefs are wrapped up in a particular topic, discussing it is probably safe. That’s why two people who aren’t that interested in politics can usually discuss different political viewpoints without incident.
But there are three cases where you need to be very careful around identity-related topics: when you hold divergent or opposing identity views to those of your conversational partner; when one person’s identity is wrapped up in the topic but the other person’s isn’t; and when you discuss identity-related topics through mass communication channels, because reaching more people means there are more identity beliefs to consider.
Don’t assume that you know what your conversational partner’s identity views are, and don’t assume that she knows all of yours either. We expect that people we identify with in one way are like us in most other ways (for example, we expect people who share our religious beliefs to also share our political beliefs and our views on parenting), but the truth is more complicated.
Studies do show that your network will include more people who are like you across demographic variables and core beliefs when compared with the population at large.3 African-American women have more African-American women in their network, Catholics have more Catholics, vegans have more vegans, etc. But it’s also true that almost no one ever sees us across all the contexts of our identity. Most people only see a few of our identity cards. My relatives rarely, if ever, see my work identity. Most of my clients don’t see my family identity. My mom knows things about me that my old platoon sergeant on Facebook doesn’t and vice versa.
The more we like certain people and the more we interact with them, the more we come to believe they know us accurately.4 This causes a gap between how well we think people know us and how well they actually do, which is exacerbated by the fact that humans are complicated, contradictory, and dynamic. We change our minds. We follow our hearts. We might not like something tomorrow that we like today. But we still expect that people we like will have a good understanding of who we are. You can see how this is a setup for problems.
My friend Sarah is a vegan, is pro-life, and is a lifelong yoga practitioner. Her husband, Bill, is a military officer from the Deep South. Politics is an identity belief for both of them, but if you had to guess their political affiliations, you’d probably go astray. Bill votes straight-ticket Democrat (reflecting his birth family’s core beliefs), while Sarah tends to vote Republican (she’s a libertarian). There are many cards in people’s identity deck, but we usually only see a handful of them.
And people also add and remove cards in their hand over time. At this very moment, people throughout my network are reversing course on ideas that I didn’t even know they had, accumulating experiences that are fundamentally changing their views of themselves and the world around them, and falling in and out of love with people, places, and beliefs. I still think that Matt from high school is the same scamp that he was back in the 1980s, even though he just became a grandfather. I assume that Jill in accounting is the same as the day I met her, even though she’s changed churches, changed husbands, and seen her kids off to college in the last two years.
For many years, the fact that most people in our network only knew about a few of our identity cards wasn’t a big deal. We saw coworkers in the office, immediate family at home, friends on weekends, and more distant family on vacation.
And then—along came the Internet.
Digital communication devices generally, and social media platforms in particular, have allowed us to see more of people’s identity cards. This sounds like a good idea—we’ll get to know people better—but more knowledge doesn’t always bring people closer together.
Seeing more of a person’s identity has disrupted, to varying degrees, our networks. Facebook reveals the fringe beliefs of a family member. A forwarded e-mail reveals way too much about a coworker’s innermost thoughts. The Twitter feed of a client betrays a fondness for late nights in rowdy places.
Where identity is concerned, people are more attentive when your identity beliefs are incongruent with theirs. Mass disclosures often work against us, as every incongruent identity-related post gives people on the other side of an issue evidence that you are different from them, while congruent posts are just another piece of redundant information for the people in alignment with you. If you, too, like late nights in rowdy places, your client’s midnight tweets probably don’t make much of impact. But if his late-night tweets offend your sensibilities, they’re more likely to garner your attention and make an impression.
Too much impulsive disclosure can upset the people who are most important to your work and personal life. The people closest to you want to believe that, in the big ways (meaning, in terms of their identity beliefs), they are similar to you. What you share with them isn’t necessarily harmless self-expression; it may be disturbing evidence of your differences. They may even see it as a rejection of who they are.5
Does this mean that we should abandon the Internet, stop posting anything on social media, and never talk about identity issues? No, no, and no.
Go ahead and post about the great BBQ ribs you ate for lunch. Just don’t write that eating the ribs made you realize how clueless vegetarians are. The first case is harmless self-expression and sharing something you enjoyed, but the second encroaches on the identity beliefs of others in your network. And this is true even if you don’t think there are vegetarians in your network. Your high school chum who used to love hamburgers only eats tofu burgers now. Down the hall from your cubicle, Jim is weeping at this very moment while watching a YouTube video about factory farming, and Uncle Billy is about to get the word from his doctor that his heart’s going to explode unless he locates the vegetable aisle.
All I’m recommending is some good, old-fashioned caution. Be thoughtful whenever you discuss identity issues because of the sensitive nature of core beliefs. And be especially careful on mass communication platforms because there are many more deeply held beliefs to consider. Failure to exercise caution around identity-related topics can lead to a relational explosion.
As a graduate student, I once gave a lecture to over 500 undergraduates. After class, a female student handed me a note and hurried away before I could see who she was. I wondered if I had finally received one of the undergraduate love notes that are a staple of grad school folklore.
It turned out to be anything but. I had offended the student during part of my presentation when I poked fun at myself for a social error by saying that I was “socially retarded.” The student’s note explained that her younger sister was actually—not socially—retarded. I felt terrible that my use of the word retarded encroached on the student’s core beliefs (about her family and about people with disabilities), hurt her feelings, and detracted from the lesson’s message.
I was lucky because I received discreet and immediate negative feedback about my identity violation. The student’s response was face-saving (imagine the student confronting me during the question and answer session instead) and self-containing (the incident ended automatically when the student handed me the note and walked away). It was also very effective. The timeliness of that feedback allowed me to make immediate changes to avoid future violations. I haven’t used the word retarded since.
In spite of the seriousness of identity violations, people often don’t report them because they are so sensitive. I conservatively assumed that at least 10 other students were offended by my words that day.
People may not confront you after an identity violation for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you are the boss and they don’t think they can tell you. It could be that you have hurt them so deeply that they turn inward and dismiss you. Or maybe they are skilled at controlling their emotional reactions. When someone abruptly starts treating you differently or if a trusted third party tells you that you have offended someone, it’s likely that you committed an identity violation.
If you commit an identity violation, regardless of how you learn about it, repair the damage by apologizing sincerely and immediately, because violations often get worse over time as the other person ruminates on the offense. After repairing the damage, be sure to avoid the core belief you violated in the future to prevent another detonation.
Let’s say a conversation with Jim about a missed deadline explodes because he perceives it as an affront to his dependability, a core identity issue with him. Your job is to stop talking and start apologizing. Don’t worry about your original conversational message (you probably made your point, albeit in a problematic way), and don’t concern yourself with whether or not you are “right” (this is a tangential triviality when the underlying relationship is taking on damage). Repair the relational damage with an apology, and exit the conversation.
As we discussed earlier, sex, religion, and politics are the perennial triad of conversational flashpoints; they are private, intimate subjects that can alienate people like few other topics can.
Even when you think you are on the same side of the discussion as your conversational partners, there is no guarantee of safety. Like-minded groups have a tendency to migrate toward more extreme opinions over time while punishing variance from group norms.6 This means that the political discussion group (or environmental group, concerned taxpayers’ group, or whatever) you joined is likely to move toward one end of the spectrum over time and that your more moderate views, if they manage to stay constant, will eventually be considered out of step with the group’s beliefs.
A discussion about faith or sexuality might seem benign to you, like politics did for me, but for someone whose core identity is wrapped up in her beliefs, talking about these issues is usually intimate and personal. This mismatch can cause problems if your conversational partner believes you’re trivializing a vital issue.
Of course, there are instances when these three topics are less volatile (but still sensitive)—talking about sex with your spouse or partner isn’t something to avoid, even if the conversation might be tricky, and you might talk at length and without incident about your religious beliefs or your politics with a few close friends or colleagues. But the general rule holds: just because you can talk about a topic with someone doesn’t mean that you always should.
Just ask former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who agreed to a Playboy interview as he was entering the homestretch of the 1976 race for the White House. Carter was trying to allay concerns about his strict, straitlaced Southern Baptist image in order to bolster his appeal to young voters.
He must have known the interview was likely to raise a number of sensitive topics, and he managed to steer clear of controversy for most of the time. But the gulf between most and all almost torpedoed his chances for the White House.
The final question—when the reporters were literally on their way out the door—was a softball: did he think that he had been able to reassure voters through this interview that his religious beliefs would not make him a rigid president?7
Carter’s response was long, detailed, and uncontroversial until he said this:
I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I’m going to do it anyhow, because I’m human and I’m tempted. And Christ set almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, “I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.” I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.8
Unbelievably, Carter had pulled off a bad-topic trifecta: A political candidate answers a religious question by talking about sex.
It’s easy to see that Carter was attempting to show that he was human and fallible like everyone else. But he bungled the execution. Writing about the incident years later, Carter said the Playboy interview almost cost him the election, and he was right.9 In opinion polls conducted immediately following publication of the Playboy interview, Carter lost a staggering 15 percentage points, placing him in a statistical dead heat with the incumbent Gerald Ford, the man who had controversially pardoned Richard Nixon.10 Suddenly, Carter didn’t seem so presidential.
The phrase your momma has triggered many a schoolyard scuffle, and for good reason—unwanted comments about someone’s family from an “outsider” often create identity explosions.
Tread lightly when your conversational partner criticizes his family, even when he seems to be encouraging you to pile on the abuse. Don’t add any substantive comments. As an outsider, you just don’t have that prerogative.
This includes your in-laws. In a marriage or a romantic relationship, family discussions are very tricky. You aren’t exactly an outsider to your spouse’s family, but you didn’t grow up in it, either. Caution is your safest course of action during cross-family discussions. Think twice before criticizing anyone’s family.
It’s usually safe to talk about positive events in someone’s family life, like new babies, upcoming anniversaries, kids’ soccer leagues, and birthdays. Similarly, sincere expressions of sympathy for the loss of a loved one or following an accident are usually appreciated.
No list of obviously sensitive conversational topics would be complete without a discussion of your heart and your wallet.
Let your exes live safely in your memory, not in your conversations. Talking about old flames with anyone, including your current romantic interest, is usually a terrible idea.
When people experience a trigger (learning about an old flame), they can’t help but feel the emotion associated with it (usually jealousy and sadness). Your current partner might be sophisticated enough to exert self-control over an emotional response, but you are almost certainly making someone you love today feel sad when you talk about someone you loved yesterday.
Be discreet about how much money you have (or don’t have) to anyone except your spouse or your financial advisor. People often have widely divergent views of money. It’s all-important to some people, a necessary evil to others, and the root of all evil to others. And money talk triggers comparisons, creating an unnecessary distance and, worse, potentially triggering envy.
Some identity-related topics are just as volatile as the topics discussed earlier, but they may be harder to detect and therefore harder to avoid.
A project manager might have a core belief that she should never miss a deadline because punctuality is part of her identity. A teacher may never give up on a student who is still trying to succeed because of her core belief that every student deserves help. An auto mechanic may never leave the shop until it’s clean and ready for the next day because tidiness is a core belief that he learned from his family. These identity concerns may not be obvious until you try telling the teacher to stop bothering with the failing student or suggest to the project manager that missing a deadline is no big deal, at which time you may inadvertently stumble into an identity violation.
When you’re getting to know someone, ask yourself five questions to help identify less obvious identity issues:
1. What is his background? Look to both personal and work history. Where was he born? What schools did he attend? What’s his field of expertise? Draw reasonable inferences: veterans probably support the troops, graduates probably like their alma mater, and teachers probably think education is important. Not everything will be an identity clue, of course, but the more you know, the more likely you are to spot core beliefs.
2. What is she displaying? What’s on the wall? What do her bumper stickers say? Who are in the pictures displayed on her desk or online?11 Identity isn’t only about family—some people are so connected to a job, a sports team, a university, a locale, or a company, that those things are a part of their identity.
3. What is he wearing? Clothes and jewelry sometimes contain words or symbols hinting at core issues. Someone wearing a pink breast cancer ribbon might be signaling a close encounter with the disease, people with POW/MIA car magnets may have a military connection, and phrases or logos on t-shirts can sometimes reveal identity. Tattoos may suggest identity beliefs (like I love momma or Death before dishonor), but don’t overreach. A dragon leaping over a unicorn is probably not telling you much about the essence of a person.
4. What groups does she affiliate with? How and where does she spend her free time? What voluntary associations does she make (civic groups, places of worship, nonprofit programs, or political organizations)? Someone who volunteers with a particular group (political, environmental, community, women’s issues, or children’s issues) is probably offering a strong clue about her core beliefs.
5. What issues elicit strong emotions? What things make him express love, joy, or anger? What does he get upset about? Strong emotional expressions can sometimes be indicators of underlying identity issues, and forceful, passionate statements often represent core beliefs.
It’s best to exercise caution in identity-related conversations when you and another person have opposing identity views or when you’re communicating with a number of people (which increases the likelihood of divergent identity views). Let the other person talk freely (this will help prevent him from thinking that you are trivializing an important issue), and then choose your own words carefully. Whatever you do, don’t challenge a core belief, and balance the need to let him express himself with the need to bring identity-related conversations to a close.
Although exercising caution where core beliefs enter a conversation is a smart policy, there are times when we need to originate an identity-related conversation at work. For example, we might need to talk about a direct report’s performance, which touches on competence (an identity-related issue for most people). Or we might have to talk to coworkers about missing deadlines, counsel subordinates about their poor client interactions, or let someone go for poor performance. At home, we may have to talk to our spouse about her wayward cousin who’s living in our basement, talk to our siblings about an aging parent, or talk to a good friend who has started bad-mouthing our in-laws. When these and other sensitive situations come up, prepare for the conversation and use the acronym SLOW (slow down, lose the length, orient to the context, and welcome a response) to keep the discussion civilized and to minimize the likelihood that an identity explosion makes the underlying situation worse.12
Talking slowly gives your mind time to catch up with your emotions and is a simple but powerful way to prevent damage from hasty words. As we’ve discussed, feeling breathless (breathing heavily after talking) or feeling like a conversation is racing ahead of you is usually a warning sign that the Neanderthal is in the driver’s seat and the conversation is in danger of escalating (or has already escalated). Slowing down allows restraint to elbow its way back into an interaction and to safeguard the underlying relationship from impulsive and harmful words.
There really is such a thing as “too much information,” especially in emotionally charged conversations. Our interpersonal bandwidth fills up quickly when discussing sensitive issues, so instead of making three points during a two-minute monologue, make one point slowly and clearly in a minute or less. You can offer other points, if necessary, during your subsequent conversational turns. It’s easy to mentally overload your conversational partner if you subject her to a barrage of emotionally laden words or points. She may also get hung up on a single issue (out of three that you raised) and not process anything else. Short responses make it easier for people to follow a discussion and increase the likelihood that productive dialogue can emerge.
As I tell clients (and remind myself) all the time, your conversations aren’t simulations: this is your actual life, and your words are actively shaping your present and your future. So look around the room before you talk and consider the implications of your words. That’s not your fake boss, your hologram kids, or your imaginary colleague you’re about to unload on. All your conversations are real. Communicate with this in mind.
We-based interpersonal communication takes two people. It’s just I-based talk until you include the other person. And there is almost always another side to a sensitive issue, so listen to what your partner is saying and update your thinking to include his perspective.
Go slowly when you are in an identity-related conversation or when you need to have a sensitive discussion of any kind. Slow conversations are almost always civilized and civilized conversations—characterized by mutual restraint and containment—are always safe because they don’t cause relational damage. As long as your conversation remains civilized, you can talk about anything.
Whether you should talk about something, however, is a question that often deserves thoughtful consideration. Sometimes, no conversation is a great conversational choice.
And at other times, a boring, but civilized, conversation is exactly what you need.