In a bizarre moment, an Indian TV
host berated the wrong guest during a live debate about the Russia-Ukraine war.
TV host Rahul Shivshankar scolded international policy expert Daniel McAdams,
asking him to shut up when he had not spoken a word. He had picked up his
script but had got the characters mixed up.
In psychology, behavioral
scripts are a sequence of expected
behaviors for a given situation. Scripts include default standards for
the actors, props, setting, and sequence of events that are expected to occur
in a particular situation.
People continually follow
scripts acquired through habit, practice and repeated routine. A script
can be useful as it helps save the time and mental effort of deciding on
appropriate behaviour each time a situation is met, but only if it is with the
right intent.
In Rahul Shivshankar’s
case, his script was to berate and blame, scold and shout at the other persons
on the debate. His script was of him as the valiant hero and the other as the
pathetic villain. But, he ended up looking the clueless comic.
So often, so many of us
have a tendency to habituate scripts to negatively affect
perceptions, judgments, cognition and behaviour. Such scripts
combined with social norms encourage us to use them to stereotype and
develop prejudice toward others.
Check the script that you have chosen
Ensure your mind
is open, not frozen!
- Pravin K Sabnis
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