Week Two: Is the Self-Serving Bias universal?

In my former life, I worked in an educational setting with kiddos who many times lived in less than ideal settings.  A number of them were homeless, migrants, or had some previous trauma that left their self-esteem in shambles.  While reading the excerpt of Self-Serving Bias, I found myself disagreeing with the researchers Hamachek and Sypher that universally humans are inclined to attribute success to some positive personal factor.  I base my opinion on the experience working with these kiddos.  Specifically, it was difficult for the older students to accept that had been responsible for something good they had done.  More often, they attributed their successes to an external situation (luck, the teacher,etc) because they lacked a positive self-image and it made them uncomfortable to consider themselves anything but negative.

Week One: Levels of Meaning

After reading the excerpts on levels of meaning in communication, I used the Skill Box questions to place the theories of content level versus relationship level into a personal context.  Soon after reading this article, a person in a position of authority warned me to "not let them walk all over me".  This person was referring to a group of women that I am to supervise over the course of a future project.  I interpret the content-level of this message as a request to be assertive.  However, the relationship level of meaning, guides me to infer much more from this statement because of past comments and interactions with this person.  Therefore, I conclude that this comment served as a reminder that he/she disapproves of my management style (I prefer empowerment and delegation) and expects me to interact with this group as he/she would (overt expressions of power).