Donnecia Stapleton

Reflection Paper

Professor Temple

The essay written by (Sedaris) titled ‘Naked’ was about a boy with

obsessive and compulsive behaviour which is called OCD meaning ‘an

anxiety disorder in which people have unwanted and repeated thoughts,

feelings, ideas, sensations or behaviours that make them feel driven to do

something. Often the person carries out the behaviours to get rid of the

obsessive thoughts, but this only provides temporary relief. Not performing

the obsessive rituals can cause great anxiety’ as defined by google. In

chapter two of class we learned a few new concepts about perception of how

we incorrectly and incompletely perceive others as well as the transactional

theory of communication. Here are a few concepts to breakdown the

understanding of perception: the negativity bias, the fundamental

attribution error and thin slicing. These concepts occur in the essay

frequently.

The transactional model states that we become simultaneously

senders and receivers as we process verbal and non-verbal cues. In the

essay, Sedaris is sender of non-verbal information while Ms. Chestnut

being the receiver who then decodes the non-verbal messages received.

Sedaris licks the switch because he figured it needed attention Ms. Chestnut

interprets it as normal practiced behaviour in his home. She then tells him

that in the classroom you don’t leave your seat to lick light switches this is

considered feedback in the transactional model. The second concept is

negativity bias this is a strong tendency to be influenced more heavily by

negative than by positive information. For example, his is teacher Ms.

Chestnut is impacted negativity bias she because she is more focused on

how many times he licked the switch, left his sit, or knocked the heel of his

shoe against his forehead instead of trying to figure out what was wrong

with him, she focused on his negative and bad habits. The second concept is

the fundamental attribution error this is over emphasizing personal traits

and under emphasizing situation as causes of other people’s behaviour. For

example, when he was in college he took some bad habits with like rocking

in his chair but he had no rocking chair in college so he used is bed and his

roommate assumed that he was masturbating instead of asking why he was

rocking. The last concept is thin slicing this is making quick decisions with

little information. A great example is Sedaris everyday life i.e. walking all

the way back to school either because he forgot what number step he is on

or he forgot to give a leaf attention along the path. He doesn’t think much
about his decisions he just does them as they come to mind. This shows

that these concepts directly relate to the incomplete perception of Sedaris

by others around him. He never harmed anyone with his usual behaviour

yet everyone about has a perception of him based on his habits. His

condition was misconstrued so everyone just made their own assumptions

as to why he was behaving that way. For example, Ms. Chestnut thought he

was being blatantly disobedient when he repeatedly got out of his to lick the

light switch even after she asked him not too, little did she know that it was

because of his condition. By thinking that she makes quick unconscious

decisions for Sedaris distracting behaviour in class.

 An excerpt “plague of the tics” was taken from the book “Naked” by

David Sedaris that explains the difficulties of living with OCD or tics. The

excerpt is humorous and contains a lot of descriptive language highlighting

the way people in Sedaris life perceive him because of his usual habits. This

ties in with a few concepts we learned in class from chapter 2. This includes

negativity bias, fundamental error, and thin slicing.

 Work Cited

 Rothwell, J. Dan. In the Company of Others: An Introduction to

Communication. 5th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

 Sedaris, David. Naked. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997. 7-22. Print.g