The Power of a Compliment | Zariah Swanigan | TEDxYouth@Jacksonville
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9pZ-vAnkw Video ID: OU9pZ-vAnkw ============================================================ so a couple of months ago I was just sitting on my bed scrolling Instagram like any other day when I saw something that piqued my interest just a plainly colored square simply bearing the words don't assume just asked and these four words although brief or powerful to me as someone from a diverse background and it really just made me think about how we as a society and especially as teenagers are so quick to judge each other and just jump to conclusions before we even have the chance to speak to one another and despite that we realized this we often fail to acknowledge it writer John Koenig describes this feeling as saunder the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own but if you're questioning this idea that we quickly form judgments about others and then fail to acknowledge their feelings I'd very quickly like to test this idea on myself so the person standing before you is indeed me but this person is also me so based on my appearance now and the image before you the images before you by a show of hands and you can be honest I want you to raise your hand if you think any of these things that I'm going to say apply to me so how many of you think that I'm confident okay brave vain okay self-absorbed and attractive okay thank you all right now I would like to try something else I'm going to say a few things about myself and I want you to raise your hands once again if any of the things that I say surprise you and I want you to keep them raised so what if I told you that I was once a victim of bullying or that I'm a survivor of assault the fact that I can't swim or that I play four instruments or even the fact that I have embarrassingly burned myself with Laffy Taffy very true story or you know even the fact that I am an identical twin cute I know thank you and you can put your hands down needless to say knowing very little about me each of you were already able to make an assumption about me and label me as such but I questioned you did you even think to consider how I would feel before you raised your hand probably not but had you had the chance to ask me about myself maybe you might have not been surprised by some of these things so how exactly do we make assumptions if this is something we're all doing unconsciously what's the point of trying to reduce it well this is something I've pondered myself for the last few months and based on my understanding of and research on psychology I've learned that our brain understands different communicative signals based on a couple of different stimuli body language speech and facial expression however it is facial expression itself that is considered to be the universal form of communication and in fact it was Charles Darwin himself who was the first to suggest the in hortence a facial expression in judgment making in the early development of his very well-known theory of evolution and this was an idea further corroborated by psychologist sylvan tompkins in his own studies on facial expression in the early 1960s he determined that we associate certain facial expressions with specific emotional states and feelings and his findings strongly support the idea that regardless of who we are or where we're from we all universally understand seven main facial expressions joy surprise contempt sadness anger disgust and fear furthermore any more recent 2015 study psychological researchers catherine rogers and jeremy baizen's placed strangers in a platonic speed-date setting and it was determined that after encountering a stranger for merely three minutes we associate someone when we meet them for the first time as being simply average socially desirable or sometimes a mixture of both and based on the British Psychological society's interpretation of this it seems that we make associations based on what we have experience of and prefer to orient toward therefore without knowing someone for very long we can already make judgments about them so how does this apply to us as teenagers why does this matter how does this affect us directly well I decided to bring this idea within our community but specifically within my own high school so with the help of my guidance counselor a few teachers and ten student participants I truly learned how labels and assumptions affect our youth so I took photos of and interviewed my participants in their most natural state you know come-as-you-are and then I ask them five basic questions what are some negative labels people have given you how do you feel about yourself because of this how attractive do you find yourself what do you believe others first impression of you to be and finally how does it feel when you receive a compliment and the results of these short interviews were shocking actually even bringing me to tears or shaking and having to stop the video footage because I just could not understand what these individuals were saying to me and how we as teenagers could be so evil I found that of my ten diverse students almost all of them mentioned at some point being called or labeled something derogatory having low self-esteem finding themselves unattractively and most shockingly valuing the opinions of others much more highly than they valued their own and even more shocking some of these labels included words like ugly whitewashed ghetto weird and so on but perhaps the most unsettling fact what was really really unsettling to me personally was of my ten students six of them mentioned that they had been bullied at some point and they still feel lesser of themselves because of this and yes we all unconsciously label and yes we all unconsciously make assumptions but this becomes a much more big and much more dire issue when the labeling and the assumption making and the stereotypes turns into physical verbal or cyberbullying and if that's not enough for you cyberbullying has skyrocketed in the last decade and by skyrocketed I mean over doubled in the last decade this is evidence consistent with my findings despite my initial negative findings they was light at the end of this deep dark tunnel remember the last question I mentioned how does it feel when you receive a compliment this was surprisingly my piece of Solace as I interviewed the participants and they began to open up to me I saw their expressions change and nothing and I mean nothing compares to the responses I received to that last question many smiled as they shared their experiences and how compliments made them feel good about themselves and so I went about complimenting a few of the participants myself as we discuss the positives and that impact of a compliment it was like I was talking to all new people their faces lit up they smiled significantly more and they discussed in a more sociable and open manner so I would like to show you a few of these participants to your left is an image of the participant at the very beginning of the interview before I gave them the compliment and to your right is an image of the participant after receiving the compliment the difference was everything and so with this I propose to you a new idea using that power of a compliment don't assume just ask as someone about their day and what they're struggling with their goals and then give them a genuine compliment but not just because I said so because you mean it and not just today tomorrow next week ten years from now forever actually the power of a compliment is the power to change the world and I urge you to do this in your everyday life to use that power of a compliment and I want you to take this message with you for the rest of your life to openly communicate respect understand and value the feelings of others don't assume just ask because what you say matters thank you [Applause]