Can Customer Reviews Give Insights into the Causes of Violence in America?

What’s the problem in America today?

Look in the mirror.

Yes, if you want to understand what I am about to share about the problem we are facing in America, look in a mirror right now. You need this experience.

Don’t have a mirror?

Then put your phone in selfie mode and look at the streaming video of yourself.

If you want the full understanding of what I am about to share, then this exercise is essential, so do it, or simply stop reading now.

Now that you are in front of a mirror or looking into your selfie stream, look into your own eyes for one full minute and allow yourself to feel love for the person you are looking at.

Start now. 

Did you do it or did you just keep reading?

Don’t worry, this article will be here when you come back in one minute. 

Were you successful?

• Did you feel uncomfortable or some unpleasantness or uneasiness about looking into your own eyes and allowing yourself to feel love for the person you see?
• Did you look away from your own eyes?
• Did you squirm even while you held eye contact?
• Did you give up before the minute passed?
• Did you start to distract yourself from your feelings of love by thinking thoughts about anything else?

Your answers to these questions are important, and they may be uncomfortable to admit. I know because I still struggle with this exercise myself.

The Heart of the Matter

Why does it matter? 

Because it gets to, what I believe, is the literal and figurative heart of the problem in America today.

We can’t handle the discomfort that comes with certain emotions.

We can’t just be present to the feelings inside of ourselves for as little as one minute. Research conducted by Dr. Joan Rosenberg, a renowned psychotherapist, and others shows that each wave of emotions passes in less than 90 seconds. Yet, how many of us struggled to look deep into our own eyes and allow ourselves to feel the love for ourselves. 

Customer Stories Reveal the Problem

I have been studying the behaviors, decisions, stories, and emotions of customers, employees, and leaders for twenty years. 

During that time our technology has disrupted our culture. Social media platforms and social review sites (e.g. Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Google My Business) are now available anytime and everywhere. The release of the iPhone in 2007, followed by the explosion of data plans made it possible and virtually cost-free to for anyone to express their emotions to the world while they were feeling these emotions.

In the customer experience arena, those emotions are often on the extremes: feeling really good or feeling really bad.

Digging deeper into the stories customers tell, you will find that many of them reveal a disturbing trend: customers don’t feel like they have control of their own emotions. 

What Online Reviews Show

Customers who give 1-star reviews online and rant about their experiences are typically following one of three paths. They are:

1. Getting revenge for a perceived wrong done to them, and it is personal; or,
2. Being an avenger to get justice for all those who suffered a similar injustice; or,
3. Acting as a protector to help others stay out of harm’s way.

Customers who give 5-star reviews online and write glowing stories about their experiences are often following one of three paths. They engage in:

1. Hero worship of the company or the employees; or,
2. Narcissistic behaviors and tell stories that demonstrate their own choices; or,
3. Expressing genuine admiration, awe, and gratitude to the employees and brand. 

Why does this matter?

Because, when you look deeper into these paths, you can see that most of them are a result of customers feeling like they are not in control. They are in a victim mindset. In fact, the reason behind each of the paths above that lead to 1-star reviews is a feeling of a loss of emotional control. The customers actually write these reviews in an attempt to regain control, in their mind, through their emotional state. The loss of control is so uncomfortable to the customer that he or she is motivated to take action. 

Customers who give 5-star reviews and engage in “hero-worship” are, in a sense, coming from a victim mindset. They give full credit for the good experience they had to the conditions and people around them. They take no ownership or personal responsibility for making choices that co-created the experience. In other words, they believe and act as if their happiness depends on the conditions outside of themselves, instead of coming from within.

The narcissistic customers are on the other end of the spectrum. They believe they are the cause of all of the good they experience and they often brag about how they made the right choices in spite of anything the company or employees may have done. They are unable or uncomfortable recognizing that anyone else may have contributed to their good experience. 

The customers who express genuine admiration, awe, and gratitude typically have somewhat of a co-creative perspective about the experience. They know they made choices that they are responsible for; and, they are aware and acknowledge that the employees or brand made choices. Together these choices resulted in amazing experiences for the customers.

How Do Customer Stories Relate to Mass Shootings in America?

How does this understanding of the stories customers tell provide insight into the situation in America?

If we pay attention, it can show us how we behave and what drives our behaviors in common, everyday situations. Ask yourself these questions:

• How often do I witness, or even engage in one of the behaviors above when I am the customer?
• Do I ever raise my voice at employees?
• Do I call employees rude, or claim they are discriminating against me when I tell the story of the experience to myself or others?
• Do I tell others that the company or the employees stole from me?
• Do I feel so uncomfortable with my positive emotions when I have a good customer experience that I make someone or something else the cause of those good feelings?

What I am trying to guide you to is this:

In America, we tend to go to great lengths to avoid feeling uncomfortable when our emotions are involved. We find ways to fight back against the “negative” emotions and we often have an unbalanced perspective (victimization or narcissism) when we evaluate our “positive” emotions.

If we understand this, I believe it can point us in the direction of real change.

The Path to Change America

Remember the mirror or selfie camera exercise I had you do a few minutes ago?

Could you tolerate the discomfort of feeling love for the person you saw in the mirror or on your screen?

The first time most people do this exercise, they cannot make it the full minute simply allowing the love to be present. They need practice. It has been hard for me to do it.

As a whole, we Americans are a proud people. We do good in so many ways. We are generous. We are creative. We are loyal. We believe we have a destiny and a duty to help make the world be a better place.

At the same time, we experience tragic events like mass shootings. 

Somewhere deep inside of each one of us we feel the pain of those who are suffering injuries and the loss of loved ones as a result of these mass shootings. Then, we are faced with the uncomfortable emotions that arise when we try to make sense out of it.

We know that we would never do such an evil act. We could never hurt an innocent person. We imagine how we might have to cope without our own loved ones if they were shot. We struggle with the feelings that come up as we try to imagine how someone could possibly kill innocent Americans.

Then, when we can no longer handle the level of discomfort, we express it. We act out. We attack. We protest. We demand action from others. 

Why Do We Do This?

We do this because we feel like we don’t have control. Our emotions overtake us and we cannot stop them. And it scares the hell out of us that our emotions might actually have more control over us than our reason. We have been taught since we were young to control our emotions and not being in control is some sort of weakness, flaw, or worse. It might even be a sign that we are evil. So, we distract ourselves by turning away from the uncomfortable emotions we can’t control and lean in toward anger which we can control. 

Like the customers who have bad experiences, we want revenge, to avenge, or to protect. 

We want to do something to take back control of our mind and our emotions. 

But, in reality, we are doing little to change the situation. And, inevitably, a similar event will happen again.

The Power and Danger of Labels

In our anger, we use labels to create categories of people so we can identify who we are emotionally safe with because they think and feel like we think and feel. We label all others and sort them into categories so we know where the danger is. This helps us stay alert and know who we must fight with, flee from, or if we need freeze and be silent when they are nearby. 

Each group uses labels to define something different and we argue that the other groups are wrong in the use of their label. After all, to regain control of our emotions we need to have certainty. 

• One group says, “terrorist,” which defines the person from the perspective of the result of his actions.
• One group says, “mentally ill,” which defines the person from the perspective of his health.
• One group says, “white supremacist,” which defines the person from the perspective of his beliefs.
• One group says, “shooter,” which defines the person from the perspective of his actions.

These groups are defining themselves in their choice of the label they use. They are defining whom they believe themselves to not be as much as they are defining who the person is.

Then, the groups start arguing about who is right, who is wrong, and who is being inconsistent. And, the anger that we feel while in these arguments is powerful. Anger gives us a sense of renewed emotional control. We can direct our anger at a specific person or group of people. Anger can distract us from the uncomfortable feelings that arise from the dissonance between whom we believe we are as Americans and what we see a fellow American doing that is contrary to whom we believe we are.

What we fail to ask is this: 

“What made this person feel such a lack of control over their emotions that they believed the best way to regain control was to kill innocent people?”

Maybe, if we can tolerate the uncomfortable emotions that arise with the answers to that question we can be courageous enough to look in the mirror and ask ourselves a few more questions: 

1. “Do I feel like my emotions are controlling me and I am not controlling them?”
2. “Am I expressing myself in a way to just regain control of my emotions, or in a way that is actually helpful in resolving the situation?”
3. “What am I doing today to build my levels of emotional tolerance so I can stand in the face of uncomfortable feelings and make good choices?”

If we are honest and compassionate toward ourselves, I believe we will all find a way to focus on what we can do to change ourselves before we angrily attempt to tell some other group how they need to change.

Should we be angry that this violence happens?

I think we should be. 

But, instead of angrily pointing fingers we need to start by looking within at those places where we allow ourselves to turn away from feeling our own uncomfortable emotions.

What's the Solution?

We need to have the courage to allow ourselves to feel those emotions so they can dissipate rather than accumulate. This builds emotional tolerance. And, as the research shows, each wave of emotion passes in less than 90 seconds.

Once we have started this journey ourselves, we can start to help others. We can help our families, friends, and followers. We can stand there with them as they feel uncomfortable emotions rise up within them. We can let them know that there is nothing to fear because these emotions will pass in a few moments.

We can learn, teach, and demonstrate how to feel truly human. This includes being vulnerable and not suppressing what we feel or distracting ourselves from what we feel. It means allowing ourselves to be fully present to our emotions without acting out in harmful ways.

The problem I see in America is that we have taken our pride in being strong, creative, and dutiful to our destiny too far. We have demonized vulnerability as a weakness, and that has both made us weak and created our own demons.