Social Desirability: What is it and how does it affect us?

Social Desirability: This phenomenon is most closely aligned with the concept of being “politically correct” versus being simply “appropriate.” It also has to do with what people say in public versus what people say in private spaces – unless their public space is private. But, even then, social desirability holds. It may be shifted and narrowed, but there is still a gap between what is considered okay to say in public and what is said in private. Social desirability flavors our language and our rhetoric – where language is our public voice, and rhetoric is our private voice. When rhetoric becomes one’s public voice, and when one is powerful enough to become the Pied Piper, we have a mob effect. It is good, because it lays naked what was heretofore clothed. It is good to know what the soul says. It is scary, because we do not know if there is any countervailing force…sufficient to beat back the mob. Never ridicule a mob. It simply grows stronger. Ridicule is a swift wind that serves only to fan the flames and reassert the mob’s posture of “us versus them.” Crush it. Interestingly though, many in the mob are not mobsters. They are simply hurt and hurting. However, it serves you nothing to try to speak to their higher angels. You have to crush the mob. It jolts them back into consciousness – and they take their forks and hoes, knives and swords, and go back home. You have to crush the mob. Do not isolate its head. Anger and betrayal, it simply grows another stronger one. Draw it into the open, and crush the mob. When calm is restored, address their hurt and hurting. Because is you don’t, you have left enough embers to reignite that fire. There is a reason they were so easy to pick up arms and join the mob. Find out what that is and deal with it.

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