A man is worried that his wife is losing her hearing but that she won’t acknowledge it, so he asks the family doctor for advice. The doctor suggests an experiment. The man should stand in a different room and ask his wife the same question at different distances, moving closer each time.

That evening, he enters their home, smells garlic, and asks, “What’s for dinner?” No response. He walks halfway to the kitchen and in the same voice asks again: “What’s for dinner?” No response. Finally, he stands right behind his wife and in the same voice asks one more time: “What’s for dinner?” His wife looks back at him in exasperation. “For the third time,” she says, “chicken.”

The man in the joke isn’t just a victim of his poor hearing, he’s a victim of his misguided perceptions. And while biology plays a role in what we see and hear, what we perceive — what we pay attention to and focus on — is a function of our psychology.

Like the husband in the joke, we pay attention to what we believe matters and make decisions and judgments based on that filtered information. And like the husband in the joke, our filters don’t always work to our advantage.

Many misunderstandings in relationships have their basis in the fact that our personalities predispose us to filter information in different ways, each person potentially believing their perceptions are correct and that others are wrong.

By becoming aware of our filters, we can take steps to improve the accuracy of our perceptions. Knowing that our perceptual filters are working constantly should make us curious about what we could have missed — or misconstrued. When we catch ourselves thinking or saying, “I didn’t see that” or “I didn’t hear that,” what we should consider saying is “I didn’t notice that” or “I must have filtered that out” or “That’s not how I perceived it.”

Personality can act as filter because we focus on things that support our desire to feel good about ourselves — those things that fulfill our motives.

To understand why motives (as described by the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI)) are such a powerful filter, we need to understand how memory works. Our memory selectively retains information we believe will be useful in the future. And motives can be fulfilled in the future. What this means is that if you have a lot of Blue motive directed at helping other people, you are more likely to notice when people are in need and will remember exactly what they need. That prepares you to help them in the future.

Similarly, if there is a lot of Red motive in your personality, you will probably notice opportunities that others miss because you are driven to accomplish things in the future. If there is a lot of Green motive in your personality, you may pay attention to underlying patterns or principles because they help you build effective processes that you can use predictably in the future. And if all three motives blend about equally in your Hub personality, you are likely to pay attention to the various options, alternatives, and perspectives in any given situation, because that will help you maintain your future flexibility.

If you want to know how people remember a shared experience differently, such as a planning meeting, then pay attention to filters. Everyone hears the same words but filters them differently. Everyone takes mental notes about the things they think are important. And when you compare notes, you could all have totally different ideas about what’s been decided and what action is required, because each of you filters based on different motives related to people, process, and performance. Motives act as filters that influence our decisions about what to pursue and what actions to take.

Motives also act as a filter by which we judge things as good or bad. If something fulfills your motives, you are likely to judge it as good, because fulfilling your motives makes you feel good about yourself. So if you have a lot of Blue helping motive, you are more likely to favorably judge people who are trying to help others. In general, we tend to judge people with similar personalities to our own as “good” people, and we may experience conflict when we assume that people with different personalities are actively working against our primary motives.

When you observe other people’s behavior, your filters influence how you interpret it. If someone is being supportive of others and you agree that others need support, you will probably see that support as a great thing and it will be easy to have positive regard for the support-giver. But if you think the others don’t need support, then you might see that helpfulness as overdone or misplaced, which may make the person look self-sacrificing or intrusive in your eyes.

One of the main causes of interpersonal conflict is our perception of strengths overdone. These conflicts are largely preventable. They are triggered when one person judges that another has used a strength in an unproductive or harmful manner. But these judgements can reveal as much about the observer as they do about the other person. This is because people tend to overreact to behaviors in others that they deem inappropriate for themselves. And the overdone strengths we tend to overreact to are those found at the bottom of our Overdone Strengths Portrait in the SDI results.

For example, a person who has Indecisive (overdone counterpart of Option-Oriented) at the bottom of their Overdone Strengths Portrait will probably be keenly sensitive to that behavior in others. Having indecisive at the bottom suggests that the person would never want to be so option-oriented that they come across as indecisive.

Therefore, when this person perceives indecisiveness in others, they think “I would never do that.” The filter, then, is that indecisiveness is bad. If the judgment is acted on or expressed, it can trigger conflict in the relationship. Statements such as “You can never make up your mind” or sarcastic questions such as “Can you just pick something? Anything?” generate defensiveness in others, especially if they believe they are effectively keeping their options open.

Filters in conflict can be a particularly powerful (and potentially misleading) force.

In one experiment, managers were monitored using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. When the managers told stories about productive interactions with their leaders, the machine “lit up” regions in the brain associated with a high degree of social, cognitive, and perceptual openness. When they told stories about conflict with their leaders, however, a different part of the brain was active, one that is associated with less overall attention, a more inward focus of attention, less compassion, and less liking of others.^[1] In other words, the experience of conflict, as well as recalling our episodic memories of it, fires up parts of our brains that cause us to perceive things differently than when things are going well.

As we enter conflict, our motives also change, and there is a change of personality-based filters that comes along for the ride. For example, if you are the type of person who wants to accommodate and keep the peace when conflict starts, you will probably view other’s peace-keeping efforts as positive. But you may view other’s assertive responses as aggressive, since they don’t align with your motives. And you may view other’s analytical responses to conflict as somewhat distant, non-communicative, or unsupportive.

Similarly, people who assert themselves (Red) in conflict may have a filter that causes them to judge other Reds positively, but to see Blue’s accommodation as weakness and the Green’s analysis as a lack of interest. The Green’s (analytical) conflict filter may make other Greens appear reasonable, while making Blue responses to conflict appear emotional and Red (assertive) responses seem impetuous.

When these filtered judgements run unchecked, conflict can escalate to a second or even third stage, where the accusations can run wild. But taking a moment to check your filters, clean your lenses, or look at things through a different lens can pay big dividends, even in relationships where you might think progress is unlikely.

^[1] Boyatzis, R. E., Passarelli, A. M., Koenig, K., Lowe, M., Mathew, B., Stoller, J. K., & Phillips, M. (2012). Examination of the neural substrates activated in memories of experiences with resonant and dissonant leaders. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(12), 259-272.

*This article was adapted from a chapter in Relationship Intelligence, an unpublished manuscript authored by Tim Scudder, Gil Brady, and Steve Wood.