Irrational behavior is one of the most difficult behaviors to deal with. When someone is being irrational, they don’t listen to reason, logic, or even common sense.
They are laser focused to fulfill a need.
And until that need is fulfilled, or they snap out of it, the irrational person can be unpredictable and sometimes even dangerous.
Everyone knows or has met at least one irrational person in their lives. Whether it’s a relative, a co-worker, or even a friend in this forum. Even people who are completely rational most of the time can suddenly “lose it” because something triggers inside them. But unless they have some sort of psychosis, there are ways to bring an irrational person back to rational thought. For all intents and purposes we’ll call rational thought “reality”.
When we confront an irrational person, the biggest challenge we run into is that the meaning they give to a situation is different from ours. Their meaning may not even be accurate, which offers them a much different perspective than ours.
For example, a restaurant patron could be yelling at the waiter about how cold his soup is, and most people would consider this type of behavior in this context to be a bit irrational (I know I would, as I would think about hungry people who’d love a cold bowl of soup).
But the patron could be thinking that the staff is incompetent or that maybe they have something against him, or who knows what? The bottom line is that his belief – the meaning he attached to the situation – transformed into his behavior.
If I saw someone yelling at the top of their lungs in a restaurant, I would certainly think it was irrational behavior. Perhaps the patron felt like he was being disrespected and cheated. After all, if he paid eight dollars for a bowl of soup, I’m sure he expected it to be hot. However, what we see from our perspective is someone yelling inappropriately and seemingly out of context.
In other words if he was at a rodeo, his yelling would seem appropriate for the situation. But since he’s at a restaurant, where it is not that common to witness patrons yelling angrily about their food, his behavior would definitely be perceived as irrational.
What are some thoughts that you may like to share on this?
24h from first post to suspended… it’s going to be tough to beat without cheating.
