Complaining is a form of communication that expresses dissatisfaction regardless of having actually experienced the subjective feeling of dissatisfaction or not. It may serve a range of intrapsychic and interpersonal purposes, including connecting with others who feel similarly displeased, reinforcing a sense of self, or a cathartic expression of personal emotion.
22-409: Complaining may be a method of notification, especially in the context of a consumer of goods or services, that one party has failed to satisfy normal standards, and is expected to rectify a perceived grievance, such as replacing a defective item. Complaining may be formalized into an organizational system of filing a written grievance as part of a dispute resolution process. Alternatively, it may be
44-454: A Bachelor of Science degree in 1970. Echterling studied clinical psychology at Purdue University , graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy in 1976. Echterling is a practicing Roman Catholic . For over four decades, Echterling has been a member of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Harrisonburg . Echterling developed Pathways to Resilience, a resilience building program sponsored by
66-420: A complaint, a negative event, they will start to experience a negative affect as result of automatic association and mood contagion. Psychologist Lennis Echterling notes that "[m]erely venting negative emotions by screaming or yelling does not have any health benefits." Research on the subject has noted that venting could make anger worse, not better. This communication studies -related article
88-408: A defence against complaints addressed to themselves by constructing a joined front, redirecting the blame to the client. Finally, the acceptance of complaints towards competitors serves the function of building rapport with clients to promote further preference for their own institution. These studies were done in real-life settings with real caretakers, patients, families, workers etc. This shows that
110-550: A negative affect within co-participants and the complainer, named the “saying is experiencing effect”. This effect is explained by the underlying mechanism of mood contagion and the dual process theory for social cognition. Our impulsive system relies on automatic links of similar cues and representations as suggested by Elliot R. Smith and Jamie DeCoster, and due to this it functions under a compatibility principle, where perception, affect and behaviour must be compatible to facilitate each other. Therefore, when one listens and perceives
132-402: A problem is an effective means of spurring its resolution, although it has also been noted that there is no necessary correlation between stridency and merit, so that the problem that gets resolved due to complaints may not actually be the most pressing problem requiring resolution. Traverso (2009) suggested a structure for complaining behaviour consisting of four stages: This model was fit for
154-412: A purely informal process among friends or acquaintances that allows for the expression and validation of some personal perspective, often referred to as venting. There is some evidence to suggest that complaining may be harmful for physical or mental health by increasing stress levels. The American proverb , the squeaky wheel gets the grease , is sometimes used to convey the idea that complaining about
176-625: A relationship problem or increase fair treatment in the office for example. Although this model illustrates a holistic view of complaining, not narrowing complaining to a behaviour that is always accompanied by dissatisfaction, the model is still too general and explains too little about why complaining happens, the thresholds utilised in the model are not studied enough yet to fully explain complaining behaviour. These thresholds are affected by numerous individual and situational variables such as neuroticism, extraversion, control, etc. The paper does acknowledge and discuss these variables’ potential effects on
198-423: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This psychology -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This sociology -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Grievance A grievance (from Latin gravis 'heavy') is a wrong or hardship suffered, real or supposed, which forms legitimate grounds of complaint . In
220-412: Is about a work client or an institutional competitor, there will be more acceptance of the complaint. However, there will be rejection when the complaint is about one’s peers. This rejection indicates that institutional roles may influence one’s reaction towards complaints through the need for maintaining loyalty, and their relationships colleagues. The acceptance of complaints against clients may help build
242-500: Is just noted with no further engagement, terminating the complaint development stage or affiliation does not happen at all where an argument may ensue. A theoretical model created by Robin Kowalski (1996) suggested that complaining behaviour does not only originate from dissatisfaction, rather it is reliant on two subjective thresholds: the dissatisfaction threshold and complaining threshold. The dissatisfaction and complaining thresholds are
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#1733094137814264-874: The Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the State Department . In 1986, Echterling founded the Critical Incident Stress Management Team in the Shenadoah Valley. Through this work, he provided crisis intervention services to hundreds of first responders following traumatic events. In 1990, Echterling began serving as a professor at James Madison University. Echterling teaches graduate level courses in brief counseling, crisis intervention, group counseling, and emergency supervisors. Echterling also serves as
286-403: The blame away from themselves. This serves the function of alleviating responsibility to avoid any potential legal repercussions. Indirect complaints: Complaints in conversations between friends and family are usually accepted. However, similar to direct complaints, the institutional role one possesses and context may impact their reaction towards certain complaints. For instance, if the complaint
308-415: The complaint recipient is. In the special issue by Heinemann & Traverso (2009), two categories of complaints were investigated in multiple contexts: direct and indirect. Direct complaints: Context and social roles play a big part in the dynamic of complaints. When a third party is present in a parent-child argument, the complainant will gain support from the witness to promote the complainants’ views as
330-407: The complaints serve the purpose of behaviour regulation, but the witness will also actively attempt to prevent the formation of an overly aggressive argument. In the context of emergency phone services however, the reaction to a complaint is not as simple. The emergency phone service worker who in this case, is the subject and receiver of the complaint, will accept the complaint as true but will deflect
352-1188: The director of the Ph.D. in Counseling and Supervision program, and supervises counseling psychology interns. In 2008, Echterling was awarded the All Together One Award by James Madison University. In 2010, Echterling was awarded the Outstanding Faculty Award by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia . In 2020, Echterling was awarded the Magis Medal by Alpha Sigma Nu , the honor society of Jesuit colleges and universities. Echterling's research interests include crisis intervention , disaster response alcoholism, constructing meaning , building resilience , play therapy , hypnosis, chaplaincy , and counseling supervision. In Crisis Intervention: Building Resilience in Troubled Times , Echterling posits that there are six facets of
374-630: The effects of context and social/institutional roles exist in real-life setting. However, it is important to note that the sample in the studies were too small due to the time-costly nature as interview studies, meaning that these results cannot be generalised to the whole population until further replication is done. Bogdan Wojciszke, Wiesław Baryła, Aleksandra Szymków-Sudziarska, Michał Parzuchowski, and Katarzyna Kowalczyk found that when participants listened to or uttered affirmations or complaints, their moods would increase and decrease in equal strength, respectively. The results show that complaining can induce
396-432: The model still provides a fair general outlook on how individuals may decide to complain. When receiving a complaint from another party, one chooses to either accept or reject the complaint. As mentioned before, complaining serves many functions, but accepting or rejecting a complaint also have several functions depending on the context. These contexts refer to who is complaining, what or who is being complained about and who
418-487: The past, the word meant the infliction or cause of hardship. This law -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Lennis Echterling Lennis Echterling is a clinical psychologist , research scientist , professor of counseling and psychology at James Madison University . He has developed models for crisis intervention, resilience building, and counseling supervision. Echterling studied at Rockhurst College , graduating with
440-400: The purpose of the study it was used in, however, its utility as a general model is limited to only indirect complaints (complaints addressed to a non-present third party) and is not compatible with one-to-one direct complaints (complaints addressed to the complaint recipient). Furthermore, assuming that complaints always go through these stages is unrealistic, there may be cases where a complaint
462-409: The subjective sensitivity and level of tolerances one has for events, where one will feel dissatisfied and/or complain when these experienced events have reached the respective thresholds. Complaining behaviour, regardless of dissatisfaction (dissatisfaction threshold is high or low), occurs only when one perceives complaining able to achieve a desired outcome (complaining threshold is low) such as fixing
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#1733094137814484-445: The thresholds and complaining behaviour, but too few empirical studies have been done to directly investigate those effects. This indicates further research on the relationship between the thresholds, complaining behaviour, and these variables is needed. Perhaps, future studies could create a psychometric measure to gauge people's thresholds to quantitatively test the effect of variables on thresholds and complaining behaviour. Nonetheless,
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