# 221: Re/Framing People
Story behind the Passage
The book above was one of the major resources I used for writing my PhD. I first learned about framing theory in Communication Studies. It is one of these “common-sense” theories which we all tacitly have in mind because most of us are aware of the fact that we are seeing the world in a certain way — through a certain frame. The image of the frame, of course, is very universal, even global. Practically in every country, we know borders of some (physical) kind and a frame visualizes just this: borders which limit our vision.
When I wrote about framing and re-framing stereotypes in my dissertation back then, I obviously went many layers underneath the common-sense idea of framing. Still, the theory has remained very prominent for my thinking. Obviously, framing as a concept is not just used in communication theory. First and foremost, much of communication theory comes from psychology research. Furthermore, we live in an interdisciplinary world in which almost every concept can be found in several fields at the same time while also carrying different meanings.
Today, I happened to come across the topic twice, actually. In one instance, it was in a reading circle. Someone mentioned that we need to “reframe our thinking.” Of course, this is exactly what learning does to your brain. You look at the world differently because the information that you now have in your head has rewired your previous knowledge and you can now see things that you simply did not notice before. In media theory, reframing is mostly used for events, i.e., how to present that same piece of news with a different kind of thematic frame. But you can also use it for people, of course, i.e., the way you look at people in the sense of not having stereotypes. This brings me to the second reason why I thought of the topic for my post today.
My Learnings
“The schema contains general knowledge about a domain, including a specification of the relations among its attributes, as well as specific examplares or instances….” This might at first appear like some hyper-intellectual bullshit definition (which it is) but it is also very easy to understand if you look beyond the mere words. If I say “bird” or “car” to you now, you immediately have some mental image pop up in your mind. The kind of bird or car will vary, but the thing that you are thinking of, in the prior case, probably has feathers, a beak, it can fly, it can sing. So, all this is what is considered “basic knowledge” and the relations between the different attributes are simply the details about the bird. In addition, there are different elements related to the network of attributes. Since a bird can also fly, there is a bird in the air and there might be a bird sitting on the ground, that means there are relations to other states and concepts.
So far, so good.
As mentioned above, you can do the same exercise with people, just that it gets a bit more political then. As soon as you put people in tiny boxes in your mind (and you even talk about it), simply because they might display one of these dominant attributes connected to your “frame,” this usually ends up being labeled as a “stereotype.” Even though a sterepotype is just another one of the cognitive psychological terms that is not necessarily good or bad in and of itself, the concept usually evokes negative associations in common parlance. So, if you want to change that, i.e., if you want to see a person (or a topic) in a different light that does not evoke some evaluative interpretation, you can reframe this person or thing; meaning you add information that allows you to develop a different frame in your mind. So, you cannot actually change the very thing inside the frame but the frame will impact the way you see the thing.
Just think of a painting , for example. If you just hang it up on the wall without any kind of frame, it might look very different from the version you would be looking at if you put a golden frame around it. Now, this example is actually not the best one because it just evokes judgements like “pretty” or “not pretty,” but maybe you are getting what I am saying.
In the case of people, this works in a similar way. You can see this whenever you travel to a foreign country, for example. So, you might have had an image in your mind about Italians as …. (fill the blank with whatever your image of Italians is). Then you spend a vacation in Italy for two weeks and I am pretty sure that your image of Italians will be a different one after your return. That is not necessarilty because your original image was good or bad or this or that. No, it is simply that you added a lot of information about Italians that you simply were not aware of before, mostly because you might have known many Italians in your home country. But now that you met them in their own home country, that is a different story, also because you were now in the position of a foreigner looking at “the other” from the perspective of the respective “other.”
Is this getting too complicated again?
Just bear with me. All I am saying is that additional information changes your frame and then it changes the thing/person/event you are looking at. Whenever you bring people together who learn from each other, this is usually a very important and valuable finding. But I also had this kind of finding myself today in a rather personal context. Even though, I cannot talk about it in detail, I just realized that I had kept looking at a person with a particular frame in mind that never ever changed, simply because I never allowed it to do so. In my case, it was not even about details. It was about the fact that I looked at this person just through the lens of business. I am not saying I never allow for any other traits or details to enter the scene. I mean, helo, I am the one always preaching holistic thinking and stuff, right? So, I do try to see the other person in all her/his nuances and complexity.
In this case, however, the frame was also an inverted one, I guess. What I mean is that I looked at this other person only as a business contact and I thought, I implicitly took for granted, that this other person also only looks at me through a professional lens. So, the overarching frame I used was business, nothing else. And, this is the thing, this really drove me nuts at points. I got really angry at times because I did not feel my thoughts and arguments were being heard. Today then, it struck me, that I was trying to see the person but really I did not because I simply imposed a certain frame that covered all the other aspects that I could have seen and that would have put everything we talked about into a different context. I did not see some of the needs within the person, i.e., the good old mechanism of resonance kicked in. I was complaining that my needs were not met and I actually did not recognize the ones of the other.
Consequently, I think, much of the stuff that I kept thinking about and sharing really led nowhere. Instead of really SEEING what is there, I stuck to my own agenda — my own frame. I never even considered reframing. And now that this thought struck me, I see the person in a completely different light. Much of the anger or the questions from before have disappeared. Not because we might not still have different approaches to or arguments about some topics. But all of a sudden, they are not that important anymore, they are not in the lime light because this other “box” (at least one) has become visible which I had simply overlooked. The sum of all this learning actually reminds me of a story a friend shared with me a while ago when we were talking about career paths. In this case, it is equally relevant for my personal reframing epiphany. The thing he said to me was simple:
“There was a man who worked hard to climb every step of a ladder. And when he finally made it to the top, after all the hard work, he realized that he had leaned the ladder against the wrong house.”
I seem to be an expert on this kind of thing…
Reflection Questions
1) When thinking of a person you really dislike — what does the world look like according to her/him?
2) Which so-called stereotype(s) do you fit in according to your own interpretation?
3) Has this ever happened to you that you were pursuing a goal with all your energy, you reached it, and then you found out it was the “wrong” goal?