SITUATIONS THAT LEAD TO DISQUALIFICATION

Disqualification is nonstraighforward communication—messages that are ambiguous, indirect, or evasive to some degree. A previous paper defined and measured disqualification as deviations from the direct “I am saying this to you in this situation”—that is, as relative ambiguity in sender, content, receiver, or context. The present article addresses the question of what causes such messages. An interpersonal, situational theory is proposed and tested in a series of five experiments, using a forced-choice among written messages in systematically varied, hypothetical situations. Subjects chose the most disqualified messages overwhelmingly when placed in a “bind.” They did so significantly more than when in a non-bind or a merely unpleasant situation. The last two experiments defined a “bind” as an avoidance-avoidance conflict and showed that disqualified messages were chosen only in these, and not in approach-approach conflicts. The conclusion is that disqualification is not a failure of the communicator, nor even a changeworthy behavior, but a reasonable response to an impossible situation, one that permits the sender to leave the field communicationally.