Quote of the Day

There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the social behavior of an individual is characterized by consistent and stable tendencies to respond in particular ways to other persons. This phenomenon has been referred to as a variety of terms (e.g., life style, life theme, interpersonal response traits), but the basic notion is actually relatively easy to understand:

Each one of us . . . develops a distinctive set of enduring dispositions to respond to other people in characteristic ways. Thus one man will eye all of his neighbors as potential enemies and will be wary and suspicious in his dealings with them; another will see himself surrounded only by well-wishing friends and will he free and open in his social intercourse. These dispositions — here called interpersonal response traits — . . . help us to describe social man, to understand his behavior and to predict his actions (Krech, Crutchfield and Ballachey, 1962, p. 103).

While these interpersonal response “traits” or “styles” may result from constitutional as well as environmental factors, it appears that much of such behavior can be explained by a knowledge of how the individual perceives or interprets the social stimuli in his world. These perceptions have resulted from a lifetime of experience with many different people, the most significant of whom are usually the child’s parents. Through all of his experience, the child has developed a set of expectations about people, and these expectations influence behavior. While there are numerous interpersonal response styles, we have selected out one as being particularly relevant to the child-care worker; this style is not descriptive of all children in residential treatment, but is extremely common and presents sometimes baffling behavior to the worker. We have chosen to label this the interpersonal response style of distrust.

When the child leaves his former environment and is placed in a new situation, he brings along patterns of interpersonal response that appear to be inappropriate or maladaptive. One of the most common of such patterns of interpersonal behavior characteristic of children in residential treatment can be described in Erikson’s (1963) terms of “basic mistrust.” Unlike normal children, these children have not learned to associate adults with pleasant experiences; they have not found that adults meet their needs in predictable ways, nor can adults be counted on in time of trouble. More likely, they have learned that adults are connected with unpleasant circumstances, adults fail to provide what the child needs, and adults may even be dangerous to the child. The behavior of such children suggests that they view others with distrust, uncertainty, and suspicion.

When the child-care worker encounters such a child, the youngster does not suddenly discover that this adult is far different from other adults he has known. Rather, the child’s interpersonal response style of distrust (learned over thousands of encounters with previous adults) stubbornly persists, even though (from the adults’ viewpoint) it is no longer appropriate. Why does the child continue to misperceive the benign adult as if he were dangerous and not to he trusted? Since his perceptions are based on a lifetime of experience, he is unable to ignore suddenly all that he has previously learned just because the new adult acts somewhat differently from others he has known. This trait of distrust has served him well on numerous occasions when faced with a threatening or unpredictable adult; it is understandable why he will now tend to act toward the new adult in the same manner. From his point of view, it is likely that he is being deceived, and that beneath the friendly “front” of the adult is a person who, like others he has known, is not to he trusted. When the childcare worker tries to convince the child that he should trust the adult, the child is apt to become even more suspicious or frightened, and may develop strategies to “prove” that the adult cannot be trusted.

LARRY BRENDTRO
Brendtro, L. (1969) Establishing relationship beachheads in Trieschman, A; Whittaker, J. K. & Brendtro, L. K. The other 23 hours. New York: Aldine De Gruyter . pp. 65-67