This is how Copts live on the wild side.

From the Daily Mail:

Eight out of ten women involved in a car crash denied it was their fault and looked for something – or someone – else to blame. This latest research is bound to bring a smile to lips of many a man who has found himself at loggerheads with females drivers. Women will rarely take responsibility in the event of a car crash, while men are more prepared to hold their hands up to mistakes and settle disputes without arguing, according to a report.

It found that 78 per cent of women involved in a car crash said they weren’t to blame, and when asked about the cause of the accident came up with more excuses for what went wrong.

Let’s put aside the fact that this study was conducted by an insurance company in England, where they drive on the wrong side of the road. And let’s skip past the debate about male vs. female drivers, which you can read about here and laugh about here. And for the record, I have no opinion about male vs. female drivers, except that I’ve gotten more traffic tickets than my wife has.

I’m more interested in the illusion that we think are better at things than other people are. We talk about this in my Team-based Communication classes at UT Austin, during our unit about team relationships. I ask my students to keep their eyes closed and raise their hands for the following questions:

• Are you a better driver than 50% of the adult population in this country?*
• Are you better at finding information on the Internet than 50% of the adult population in this country?
• Are you smarter than 50% of the adult population in this country?
• Are you better at being in relationships than 50% of the adult population in this country?

*This is great question to ask in your classes. Ask: those who didn’t raise their hands, why do you think you are bad drivers? I’ve heard the craziest stories of poor road skills. Some of my 20-year-old students have caused–not been in but, caused–4 or 5 accidents in their 4 years on the road. Ask this question and you’ll avoid driving or walking in West Campus for days afterwards.

Inevitably, about 70% of my students raise their hands for the first two questions. That number raises to 85 or 90% for the next two.

Let’s take the third question: is it possible that 85% of my students are smarter than 50% of the adult population in the United States? Sure, they’re college students at a strong public institution, soon to be college graduates, and it’s certainly not statistically impossible that I have a bright bunch in the classroom with me. It’s not probable but it’s possible.

But it’s the fourth question that we care about in class. It’s quite unlikely that 85% of my students are better-than-median relators, and we can point to the obvious reasons for this bias: students have high self-esteem, the comparison is too vague (who knows anything about the adult population in this country, especially in college?), and the question is worded in a way to make the answerer focus on his or herself.

I have another theory, one that I have discovered inadvertently through early data analysis for my dissertation: people are judging themselves with the same standards they have used to form their personality. If I am a submissive communicator, it’s likely because I think being submissive is the best way to communicate with others. So now I, the submissive communicator, am judging whether or not communicating submissively is preferable. It’s like letting one of the contestants from Project Runway be a judge on their own challenge, or letting a coach football coach vote for who should play for the National Championship (oops). Or, as a character from Austin Powers says, everyone likes their own brand.  We are biased towards ourselves and our preferences, and we’ll make decisions (and feed back into our preferences) accordingly.

Which brings me back to my dissertation. As you may know, I am conducting my research on emergency response teams, and one of the project’s main factors is team decision making. In short, people have to place values on their training, experience, knowledge, and intuition when making decisions, and while I’m applying that to emergency response, it also applies to how people act in relationships.

But one key difference is that I am interviewing people who work in highly-structured teams and who have gone through formalized organizational training. In addition, their workplace cultures and procedural structure sare such that overcommunication is not an issue; that is, your superiors want you to share as much information as you know at all times. This is not the case in most personal relationships.

Emergency response team members generally feel less superiority to their teammates and superiors because they are constantly reminded of frameworks and reasoning systems that are different than their own–they get this through training, debriefings, and  constant communication. When they share their opinions, they usually do so in a way that is considered neutral and/or provisional, meaning they would be willing to change their mind if necessary. Debriefings are key here. Sometimes, team leaders will ask: what could we have done differently? Who would have done this differently? Debriefings often become a space for education, much like feedback loops. Many interviewees have pointed out the criticality of debriefings.

On the other hand, in personal relationships, we are generally not taught how to communicate differently, and we are rarely told we have to communicate differently. So we might get why we personally would do things a certain way, but have a hard time understanding the ways of others. And we often don’t debrief out loud with other people; instead, we mostly do it in our heads, which can simply reinforce our own systems.

We need to educate ourselves about the ways of others by talking about them. We can learn something from emergency response teams in that way.

I know this video is supposed to be funny, but then I watched it and didn’t laugh. And I could just forget about it, but I teach public speaking, and it’s an instructional video about public speaking with high production value: I think I’m contractually bound to show this in class so my students say “he’s such a good teacher he shows videos in class one time we watched this one about freedom of speech and it had a panda in it Jim and Pam Reese Witherspoon Ke$ha” (I am old).

The real problem here is that I already do enough things in class that are meant to be funny but aren’t*. And by “class” I mean “life.” So, am I missing something? Is this funny? Would you show this in class?

Addendum for potential future employers: I am downplaying my ability to engage my classes. My students think I am incredible and I once showed a video that inspired everyone in the room to donate $10,000 to whatever cause you support.