It goes further than being outcast. Having the wrong opinion on things can put your career and sometimes physical safety in jeopardy. With costs like that you will always have people hiding their true thoughts. I think one of the most important things to learn in life (for the individual) is to know how to hide what is not popular in your current company.
I am absolutely fine with receiving those kinds of sensitive questions, as long as the person asking those is cool about it after hearing "no".
But it’s not that hard to get there a little less directly. If you just ask about people’s days and weekends, their parents will come up at some point. Then you can ask more gradually and organically.
I disagree. In a normal process of forming a relationship over a span of time yes, it will give you better insights into your friend.
But as an interview question for you to put your psychology 101 to use I think it's pretty invasive and disturbing
If it's a political topic, where someone can get lost in the herd so to speak, they can be partisan/intellectualize as a way to mask themselves as an individual. It's cheap and easy. Are we learning about them, or seeing their environment has them scared straight?
I guess with the parental question, there's a motivation to not be candid on that either though. What if the person feels they'd be selfish complaining about their parents or be ridiculed for expressing themselves? If it's a sensitive question, that involves vulnerability of not having feelings validated. If you're hurt by something, and someone scorns you for simply for stating discomfort, that's a pretty difficult situation!
Hm - what would be a valuable question to gather insight on someone, that's open ended, but not invasive? Would there be a way to phrase it so there wouldn't be pressure to give a "good" answer / portray an ideal self-image?
I got this question in a personality test as part of a job interview.
I lied.
- Describe your relationship with your mother
- Describe your relationship with your father
Completely open-ended, yet, is universal to everyone. Being candid in that area can provide a lot of foundational underpinning to understand someone.
But - would people find it awkward? Would they take offense? Feel pain thinking about the answer?
As for someone's political opinion in a specific area, I'm worried self-presentation pressures and social environment crafts us to more heated (or passive, to not make a stir) for us to conform. In fact, on that subject, Wikipedia's page on this area is amazing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
The thing is - isn't the interesting thing someone's true hardships, needs, dreams, interpretations of life events, and desires, rather than something stemming from an idealized image they want to portray others, to be "good"? When social pressures of trying to say things the "right way", it's not a good read. Sure, they may be lashing out at others in outrage. Perhaps its very righteous and personal (most of the time?)
But what if, paradoxically, they're doing it out of pressure to be apart of the herd so they themselves are not ostracized? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-monitoring
So I worry that even if we ask sensitive questions, there will be so much splitting, and so many people who are coy on their responses so as to avoid the people who really make a fuss of stuff. Maybe we'd find people are scared to validate their true feelings and needs. What if environment and fear of being an outcast/ridiculed for showing candor has them in a compliance state?
And that'd take us back to psychoanalysts in the 1940's and 50's :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Horney#Theory_of_neurosi..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_orientation. It's hard to come up with a new idea in this space.