The Chaotic Life

Patterns and randomness in how we live

Dr. David Pincus is a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University in Orange, CA. See full bio

August 11, 2008, Evolutionary Psychology

Comments on "One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch"

One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch

By Dr. David Pincus on August 11, 2008 in The Chaotic Life

Let's turn to the universal experience of "BAD APPLES" - as in "One bad apple spoils the bunch." Bad apples are those acquaintances, family members and co-workers whose mere presence can suck the life right out of you. They also kill the ‘good energy' of the larger group. Read More

Wow. I wonder if "latent"

Submitted by Kayle on August 11, 2008 - 1:30pm.

Wow. I wonder if "latent" sociological dynamics e.g., race, gender, etc. were considered and/or controlled?

race, gender, etc

Submitted by Dr. David Pincus on August 22, 2008 - 8:05am.

Hi Kayle, Sex was controlled, yes. Not gender technically speaking - as gender can vary greatly among men and women. Race was not controlled on purpose - but we only had one African American participant and a few Asian participants. The rest were caucasian. I agree this would be important to consider in the future - especially if we were looking at families - big cultural differences in power, conflict and intimacy. We did get info on each group members personality style, but to be honest I forgot to analyze it. I've only presented the multiple group results at conferences - the write up is next on my things to do list. I'll probably need to do this - bummer - but thanks for reminding me :) -Dave

Dave, You got me confused

Submitted by Shweta on August 12, 2008 - 3:56am.

Dave,

You got me confused here.If conflict is good(which I totally agree)then why 'RUN FOR YOUR LIFE' when you run into a bad apple?Isn't that an oppurtunity resolving which might make you stronger? and can we expect to grow if we keep on hiding from these bad apples?For how long?

Bad Applesauce

Submitted by Matthew on August 22, 2008 - 6:03am.

Although this question was aimed at Dave, and I’m not Dave (as far as I know), to me there is a risk of confronting the Bad Apple, depending on your ability to withstand them. Eating Bad Apples might make you sick. Or, it may make your immune system stronger. (I love how the universe has so many analogous elements…I don’t think I could ever make a decent point without them.)

To further the analogy of trees to parallel a branching fractal pattern, if a tree hopes to weather a strong windstorm, it must have a strong trunk to withstand the forces against it. If it does, even if it loses branches in the process (effectively “pruning” it) it will probably flourish in subsequent seasons. If it doesn’t have the strength required, it will break. That’s the risk of confronting the Bad Apple – you may come out stronger on the other side, or they may break you, depending on your own personal strength. In Dr. Pincus’ experimental study, they found that the Bad Apple didn’t permanently affect the participants in a negative way – in fact, their conflict resolution techniques probably built the group up, and the individuals as well. But, as he acknowledges, “the ‘bad apple effect’ on group dynamics in the real world situations is probably far more powerful" than what they observed experimentally.

You have a good point, though, about hiding from conflict. Either extreme (seeking conflict <--> avoiding conflict) seems to have undesirable results. Blindly seeking conflict with the hopes of building yourself up seems dangerous (like drinking poison to build an immunity), but avoiding conflict (of which I am consistently guilty) has the potential of leaving you fragile and uncertain (like living in a sterile, germ-free environment). I suppose a person has to engage in self-reflection in times of calm to determine their strengths and constitution in times of chaos, and hope for the best, not seeking conflict as you move forward, but not completely avoiding it if you believe you can withstand it.

This complexity theory ties in nicely with another blog here, by Steven Stosny, Ph.D. (“Anger in the Age of Entitlement”), regarding Emotional Pollution. This complexity among networked connections is the basis behind the concept of Emotional Pollution, how one negative expression of emotion affects another and then another, not necessarily in a linear fashion like a single line of dominoes, but like hundreds of dominoes spread across an entire room, intersecting and spreading out in all different directions.

Thanks for sharing your research and ideas, Dr. Pincus, even if I can’t wrap my brain around half of it. And don’t worry about long posts – I don’t even know what I’m talking about and look how much crap I’ve written!

Sorry I have been absent

Submitted by Dr. David Pincus on August 22, 2008 - 8:20am.

I was feeling nagging guilt all week for being tardy in responding to these good replies and putting up the new post. For everyone - the semester starts next week and administration had us in long meetings all week + I have a book on pain management due next week to Routledge (the publisher). So I've been a bit stressed. But then Mathew gives me the reward of giving a better reply than I had planned. Big thanks Mathew! The main thing I was going to reply with was that I was mostly kidding when I said you should run for the hills from these folks. But Mathew has got me thinking more about it - I learned last year in my gardening book that it depends also on how you cut a branch and where (below or above the node, flat or diagonal). If you do it right, the new branches will grow back fuller. If you do it wrong you get a permanent prune (I think?). Same thing with conflict - as Mathew pointed out. I especially appreciated his bit about self-reflection during times of chaos. All I can add is that there are exactly 3 ways to manage a bad apple (a la Karen Horney, Jean Piaget, Leon Festinger and many many other social psychologists): 1) confront them back to change their mind; 2) listen to them to change your mind; 3) run for the hills! On an individual level the same thing happens internally to us when we confront novel information - we warp the information to fit our internal structure (assimilation), we change our internal structure to better fit the new information (accommodation), or we avoid the new information (denial). In a positive psyc manner we would all prefer 2 - to grow internally in response to the conflict - or a combination of 1 & 2, where we and the bad apples each have a chance to grow. I promise to post a new entry next week - likely on some of the crazy encounters I've had lately with our new physics team at Chapman U - their wacky, yet mainstream physics research seems to have a lot of implications for chaos and complexity theories in psychology... -Dave

Bogus! We're all bad apples!

Submitted by Elli on August 12, 2008 - 10:04pm.

Bogus! We're all bad apples!

You're absolutely right

Submitted by Dr. David Pincus on August 22, 2008 - 8:23am.

Great point Elli! And if all of us are, none of us are too, right? I couldn't have asked for a better illustration of "bad applesauce!" Gotta a RUN now :) -Dave

that was funny ...

Submitted by Neel on August 26, 2008 - 6:10am.

ha hahaahaaaha

Thx Mathew and Dave

Submitted by Shweta Modgil on August 26, 2008 - 1:48am.

Both of you wonderfully answered my query. So I guess it's all on us..how much can we take and where do we break:)

Source article

Submitted by Jon Fox on February 21, 2009 - 10:45am.

I am interested in reading the source article you co-wrote on this subject. Is it possible for you to email me a pdf of the article? It is for my personal use only. I'd have contacted you privately (off-blog) about this but I couldn't find your direct email address anywhere.

Thanks very much for your insights and stimulating thoughts on this matter.