Figure 12. A person partially shielded
Carapace attendees, and possibly people in other communication situations as well, block certain stimuli while allowing others, and simultaneously block some personal
performances while allowing others. They regulate both the information coming to them and the information flowing from them.
Stimulus Management
The ways in which Carapace attendees retreat into their shells to avoid certain stimuli seem to have a relationship with information avoidance or blunting. Research on blunting suggests that when individuals face a crisis (Pang, 2014) or are “threatened with an aversive event” (Miller, 1987, p. 345) they tend to respond in one of two ways. Some people are
“monitors” or “information seekers,” others are “blunters” or “distractors” (Miller, 1987, p. 345). Blunters avoid information about the unpleasant event or crisis, sometimes actively seeking out distracting information instead (Miller, 1987).
Sweeny et al. (2010) define “information avoidance” as “any behavior intended to prevent or delay the acquisition of available but potentially unwanted information” (p. 341). They argue that people avoid information for three main reasons: “information may demand a change in beliefs” (p. 343), “information may demand undesired action” (p. 343), or
“information may cause unpleasant emotions or diminish pleasant emotions” (p. 344). In almost all of these situations, the information could be described as uncomfortable. The one exception to this falls within the third category and involves “enhancing or prolonging positive emotions” by avoiding information that might, for example, give away a surprise (p. 344).
Research on avoidance and blunting often involves individuals seeking or avoiding information on a specific topic, like a health problem. An individual might get a diagnosis and then avoid learning more about their health condition. It is possible for Carapace attendees to avoid entire uncomfortable topics. For example, if an attendee doesn’t want to hear about sexual assault, as soon as they realize a story is going that way they can leave the room.
However, other retreats at Carapace are more nuanced. Most people stay and listen to the story. If it makes them uncomfortable they perhaps, don’t look at the storyteller. By doing this they haven’t avoided the topic of sexual assault, but they have changed their experience of
the story. They break the intensity of their connection with the storyteller, and feel the weight of the story a bit less. It could be argued that the information the listener gleans from the story is different because they averted their eyes. So, the listener could be said to have avoided the information as it would have come across with both audio and visual stimuli. They haven’t avoided the topic, though.
This is a different way of thinking about information avoidance. Rather than avoiding a topic altogether, individuals soften a topic for themselves by avoiding some of the stimuli that are otherwise part of the experience. In order to get at this idea that individuals are accepting some stimuli and blunting others, I suggest a new term: stimulus management.
Stimulus management is about allowing or disallowing certain physical and mental stimuli that are part of an environment and a communication experience.
Stimulus management has definite overlap with the concept of selective attention as well. Research on selective attention within the field of cognitive psychology asks how and why we attend to the things we do. We may pay attention to stimuli because they are novel, which is likely linked to survival instinct (Bradley, 2009). We actively try to pay attention to important tasks while in a distracting situation (Lavie, 2005). Our environments are full of potential stimuli and we can not attend to all of them.
Stimulus management is useful as an information concept because it better includes situations in which an individual is paying attention, but is selective about which types of stimuli they are willing to receive from whatever they are attending to. An audience member who chooses to look away during a difficult story may still be paying very close attention to the
storyteller. What is happening is not that the
attention
is directed elsewhere, only theeyes
. Theindividual may not even notice whatever they are now looking at. They have changed their experience, but they haven’t changed their attention.
Impression Management
The ways in which Carapace attendees retreat into their shells to avoid giving away too much information relates to Goffman’s (1959) “impression management.” He says “when one’s activity occurs in the presence of other persons, some aspects of the activity are expressively accentuated and other aspects, which might discredit the fostered impression, are suppressed” (Goffman, 1959, p. 111). People perform so as to give a certain impression of themselves. They perform in a way appropriate to the situation they are in. They also portray themselves in a favorable way, hiding information about themselves they don’t want others to know.
Storytellers at Carapace “perform” as if they are not performing, since many aspects of the event suggest that it is “not a performance.” However, they also retreat into their shells to avoid giving too much away. Some actively diminish the power of the stage and the microphone so that the audience can’t see and hear them quite so clearly. This is less about performing correctly, and more about hiding any minor glitches in their performance. It is still about managing the impression they are giving.
Not only storytellers at Carapace, but also audience members engage in impression management. They want to appear to be good audience members, playing their role correctly. Roy Green said that when Carapace was being filmed, he was conscious that the camera panned the audience:
I was more aware of
where the roving camera was because I wanted to make sure that
if it pointed at me that I wasn’t
sticking my finger up my nose or something like that.
Audience members give some thought to what their performance is giving away about them, even though they aren’t the center of attention (like the storyteller is). How much they perform
may vary depending on how watched they feel themselves to be. Carapace is no longer filmed, but audience members can see each other, as the house lights are not dimmed. Shannon Turner said that she and some friends engage in “eye talk.” They at least have some
expectation that those around them can see them and might allocate some attention to what they are doing.
At Carapace, attendees avoid giving away too much information. “Too much” is relative. An attendee might feel they have given away too much if they have revealed something about themselves they didn’t really want others to know and/or have made themselves
uncomfortable.
In what they say and in how they perform attendees hide some of themselves. Goffman (1959) talks about a back stage, as an area near the performance space, where the
performance is contradicted (p. 112). When attendees are vulnerable, they reveal parts of themselves that are in the backstage relative to most of their other social performance spaces (work, grocery store, etc.). Cris Gray alluded to this when he talked about revealing parts of himself the Carapace audience might not like:
So I’m just kind of like yeah let’s
get a peek at what’s behind each other’s curtain just a sliver!
‘Cause I always feel like yeah it may
drive some people away but I also think
there will be bonds that grow even stronger because we did let each other look behind the curtain and see a little bit of our dark side.
However, Carapace attendees still hide parts of themselves. The shell is similar here to the curtain that hides the area behind the stage. Who they are when they are backstage, relative to the Carapace stage, is obscured by their performance of themselves at Carapace. Doing Both at the Same Time
The shells, then, are a combination of a sort of information avoidance I am calling stimulus management, and impression management. Although these theories have been discussed at some length on their own, to my knowledge, they have not been presented in conjunction with one another before. Discussing them together, allows us to look at how the shell blocks information in both directions.
Part of Ong’s (2008) criticism of the conduit metaphor of communication is that the message is moved from sender-position to receiver-position. In real human communication, the sender has to be not only in the sender position but also in the receiver position before he or she can send anything. (p. 173)
In fact, in oral communication, and perhaps all types of communication, all parties are constantly “senders” and “receivers.” They are actually all, co-creators.
During the storytelling that occurs at Carapace, it would be easy to view the storyteller as the “sender” and each audience member as a “receiver.” It is true that the storyteller does the majority of the talking, but audience members sometimes call out and also communicate in numerous non-verbal ways. The storyteller “receives” this feedback. All parties are sending and receiving, and in fact, shape the story that is ultimately told, together.
Because every person involved is both a sender and receiver, it is useful to consider the impact of simultaneously managing both what their bodies are doing and what is being done to their bodies (and minds). A storyteller at Carapace chooses to be vulnerable to some stimuli (hearing audience feedback) but blunts the impact of other stimuli (creates maximum physical distance between self and audience). At the same time, that storyteller is open and honest with
their telling of the events of the story but avoids eye contact to keep from giving away the depth of their emotions. This is a lot, to think about protecting oneself from information, while thinking about protecting oneself from giving away too much information at the same time.
Unsurprisingly, cutting off communication in one direction can also have the effect of cutting it off in the other. Eye contact is an excellent example. It is common for people to avoid eye contact to avoid revealing too much. However, without eye contact they are also
diminishing visual stimuli from the others with whom they are interacting. This is a value in considering these theories together. There is one shell, but it can work in both directions, even if only one direction is intended.
This doesn’t work so exactly with every sense. Choosing to be silent doesn’t result in the attendee being unable hear (although they are limiting the opportunity to hear feedback that might result from what is said). Choosing not to hear doesn’t actively prevent the attendee from talking, either. However, it is difficult not to hear unless the attendee leaves the room. Then they can talk to themselves, but those at Carapace won’t be able to hear them.
Randy Osborne noted this, about hearing, in a comment on the blog:
There's that big difference between seeing someone, whether onstage or seated at the tables, and hearing them. We see so many things and people at Carapace and in our everyday lives, always at an evaluative distance. Hearing a person closes that distance. It's like loud music from a passing car. You can't decline to hear (plug your ears? Awkward) as easily as you can decline to see, by averting your eyes.
Sound penetrates. Avoiding it is usually going to mean cutting off options for
communicating and eliminating other stimuli as well. If an attendee leaves the room, she can no longer talk to those in the room, and she can no longer see them either. Covering ears (with hands or headphones) is, as Randy suggests, awkward. It also ruins the social performance of being a good audience member. An attendee might need to leave the room to take a call or use
CHAPTER 7: CONNECTING