MM Ep 45: The Unseen Scares

We share a Dartmouth “scar study” that reveals how easily our expectations can distort the way we think others treat us. We use it to challenge the stories we bring into conversations and to build more self awareness about our internal scars.\n\n• The Dartmouth experiment and how the “scar” is secretly removed\n• Why participants still perceive rudeness and hostility without any visible scar\n• How emotional and mental scars shape social perception\n• The idea that we project our past into present conversations\n• A simple reflection question to test reality versus interpretation\n\nI challenge you to reflect on that and be self aware of that and say, is this the reality or is this my reality based on the scars that I carry with me?

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome To A Mindful Moment\n

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to a mindful moment. Thank you for taking a moment to join me. There's a study out of Dartmouth College back in the 80s. A couple scientists did a psychological experiment. It's called the SCAR Study. They got participants to they asked them to come in. They wanted to put a scar on them, had a makeup artist construct a scar on them. And then they were to go out and interact with interviewers, asking them questions and different things, and see what their response was based on their scar. So they the makeup artist put their scar, you know, did the scar. It was a pretty gruesome-looking scar, had healed, but but made it look pretty gruesome. And then the makeup artist would give the participant a mirror to look at the scar to see that was there. And so then they'd get the participant ready. About when they were about to go um sit down with the interviewer, the makeup artist said, Hey, just hang on a second. I need to touch up that scar just a little bit before you go out. And so what the participants didn't know was that when the makeup artist said, Hey, I need to touch that up, they actually removed the scar. So when they went out, they didn't have a scar on. They didn't show them a mirror after they removed the scar. They just, the participant assumed that the makeup artist was just touching up the scar. So the participant goes out, has interview, is asked questions, answer questions, and so they come back and they're asked, you know, how did, how is your interaction interpreted interpreted? And the the participant, all the participants commented how the interviewer was aggressive, rude, mean, didn't pay attention, was hostile with them, all the different things. And so then they were then they felt the conversation didn't go well, they weren't being listened to, um, all those things because of the scar. And so when the researchers showed that they had no scar, they were kind of shocked. But what is what this study showed was that how we perceive people are treating us, how people are acting towards us, is due in a big part because of our internal scars. What we have on the inside, we go into a conversation thinking about our past, what we've done, who we are, and then we put that off on the person that we're communicating with, feeling that they're acting a certain way, talking a certain way, putting off certain emotions, certain things because of what how we're perceiving it based on our scars. We don't have a visible scar just as those went out, and they put a visible scar on them just so they could see it, but they went out, they didn't have any. Because so the person talking to them could not see any scar at all because there wasn't one. And that is really the way we go into conversations when we talk to people. They can't see any scars we've had in our past because a lot of those are emotional, mental scars that we hold on to. And we go into those conversations, into those relationships, holding on to those scars, and we believe that for some reason other people are seeing those, and so they're acting and treating us in a different way. When the fact is that that is from an internal perception, it's it's not what is actually happening. So when we go out into the world, based on our experiences of scars we have is how we perceive the world to be, but that is not always the accurate uh portrayal of the world, of other people, because we are convoluting it with the scars that we have and we believe others are seeing. So I just want to share that with you for a moment because I thought it was a very interesting study, and I want to challenge you to realize that when you go, when you go into the world, when you get into conversations, when you are in environments that sometimes the perceived what you're receiving back, what's going on, is altered based on the scars that you may have currently from the past that come along with you. So I challenge you to reflect on that and be self aware of that and say, is this the reality or is this my reality based on the scars that I carry with me? So I just want to challenge you to do that. I thought it was a very interesting study, and I wanted to share that with you. And I and thank you so much for joining me on this week's Mindful Moment. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on a Mindful Moment.