Minimisation is a type of deception[1] involving denial coupled with rationalisation in situations where complete denial is implausible. It is the opposite of exaggeration.
'Minimization is one of the most common ways we reduce our feelings of guilt..."It's not that big of a deal"'.[2] Words associated with minimisation include:
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'Reduction words...are words that we often use to minimize unethical behavior: sort of/barely/no big deal/not more than/only a little/all I did was/kind of/once/just/merely'.[3]
Similarly ' renaming is the use of benign or benevolent words to replace words that have negative connotations...using the word "collateral damage" removes us from the horror of its meaning'.[4]
Minimisation may take a number of forms and appear in several different contexts.
Minimisation may take the form of a denial of intentionality. '"I just opened my umbrella", said the man who hit the woman in the eye with it. "Just" is the great give-away word. Listen to how often you hear it. The word "just" is supposed to mean that the action had no source..."Concreteness" is the psychiatric term used to refer to such action divorced within from the source'.[5]
Minimization may take the form of a manipulative technique:
'Typical psychological defenses exhibited by stalkers include denial, minimization and projection of blame onto the victim'.[9]
A variation on minimisation as a manipulative technique is "claiming altruistic motives" such as saying "I don't do this because I am selfish, and for gain, but because I am a socially aware person interested in the common good".[10]
Minimization may also take the form of cognitive distortion:
Understatement is a form of speech which contains an expression of less strength than what would be expected. This is not to be confused with euphemism, where a polite phrase is used in place of a harsher or more offensive expression. Understatement is a staple of humour in English-speaking cultures, especially in British humour.
A euphemism is the substitution of a frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience, for a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase.[12]
It is a normal reaction that 'when threatened by external events or negative feedback, people must defend their sense of who and what they are', and one strategy is 'redefinition of an event's importance...[to] downplay importance'[13] of the event.
One of the problems of depression is that a reverse tendency appears: 'when we are depressed, we often discount the small positive things we do...discounting or dismissing praise'.[14] In extreme cases of manic-depression, 'these individuals discount external reality at a high level, which facilitates the discounting of accomplishments'.[15]
Post-Bernian transactional analysis explored the role played by discounting in maintaining dependency relationships: 'the discounting of the child by the parent figure, initially by the real parent and later by the child's internalized parent. When one person discounts another, he acts as if what he feels is more important than what the other person feels, says or does'.[16] What came to be called 'the "hierarchy of discounts"...existence, significance, change possibilities and personal activities '[17] was evolved, the highest automatically including those below: 'a discount of the existence of problems is equivalent to discounting the significance'.[18]
In a rather different usage, Alfred Adler spoke of his therapeutic technique of 'minimizing the significance of the symptoms...you must strive to debase the great significance which the neurotic attributes to his symptoms'.[19]
His target was what Freudians termed the neurotic's 'secondary gains...narcissistic gains through pride in illness'.[20]
'The social consensus about which feelings can be properly shown when' has been called 'display rules. One is minimizing the display of emotion...mask[ing] their upset with a poker face. Another is exaggerating what one feels by magnifying the emotional expression'.[21]
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