Positive Psychology and Self-Determination and Behavioral
Economics
The January 2000 issue of American Psychologist introduced
Positive Psychology to a wider audience. The broad umbrella of the Positive
Psychology movement covered a number of streams of social science research that
had been accumulating for decades. This
range of subjects included, but was not limited to evolutionary psychology,
happiness and optimism, behavioral economics, and goal setting and
motivation. Interestingly, (if this is
your thing) there were two articles that addressed self-determination:
Self-Determination Theory: The Tyranny of Freedom by Barry
Schwartz
https://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bschwar1/self-determination.pdf
Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic
Motivation, Social Development, and Well-being.
Richard Ryan and Edward Deci
Schwartz largely approaches the topic from a Behavioral
Economics perspective, and it is worth reading for several reasons. Especially,
if you wish to better understand why much of what prevails as our present
economic thinking is simply flat-out wrong.
It is also worth reading for it’s deeper psychological and philosophical
insight about decision-making—particularly optimal decision-making, which
should concern as all. Human beings have
a remarkable capacity for convincing oneself of the soundness of bad
decisions. We have a gift for believing
that we have rationally arrived at the proper decision by our supposed faculties
of pure reason.
Except we don’t, and this has never been the case. Evolution simply did not produce a brain
wired for this (see Why Buddhism is True for a better understanding). Cognitive psychology has been methodically
poking holes in the Rational Choice Theory for decades, prior to the coining of
the term Behavioral Economics. For good
reason, human decision-making is extraordinarily complicated. Goals can be motivated and activated without
our knowledge. Some goals are
emotionally driven. Some goals are
value-driven. Goals and motivations can
overlap and compete, which is why we sometimes arrive at a position of
paralysis. To complicate matters further
our multiple goals, that may or may not be competing with each other, may be
intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.
They also may be misaligned to the task—performance versus learning.
If you have read anything by Khaneman and Taversky, and
appreciate the points above, it will begin to make sense why we are prone to
making poor decisions. The brain builds
heuristics to simplify and categorize information, but simplification and
categorization are doomed to incompleteness because the information that comes
to us at any given moment is always novel.
This is the same underlying cognitive mechanism at work in
stereotyping. Buddhism recognizes that categorization
is the root of much of our problems in life, because it leads inevitably to
judgment. Categorization is itself an
act of judgment. It might be nice to
reach a state of enlightenment in which we are free of judgment and
categorization, but I’m not sure.
Categorization serves its purposes because it helps us to make meaning of
the information before us. I think that
the Buddhist preoccupation with this notion is more aspirational, and if
nothing more, at least Buddhism has provided us with a method of radical
skepticism that suggests that we should be suspect of a lot of our
perceptions—especially those colored by emotion. Again, see Khaneman and Taversky and similar
research on priming effects—people literally describe individuals as warm and
friendly, depending on whether they were handed a cold or hot beverage. That should make us all a bit terrified.
My suspicion is that the ideal is to be a better Taoist, and
perhaps that means being a stronger Buddhist. The western world has undergone
an intensive conditioning to compartmentalize and parse the world around us in
reductive ways, that can indeed reach absurdity. The United States healthcare system is a
prime example. (I would challenge anyone to develop a system so far removed
from the mission of providing actual care).
But, why did I use the term Taoist?
Probably, because I have strong pragmatist leanings, but also the strong
belief that this is how we arrive at optimal decisions. I think this is what Schwartz was getting at:
“Unconstrained freedom
leads to paralysis and becomes a kind of self-defeating tyranny. It is self-determination within significant
constraints—within rules of some sort—that leads to well-being, to optimal
functioning. The task for a future
psychology of optimal functioning is to identify which constraints on
self-determination are the crucial ones.”
So, why am I harping on self-determination and optimal
decision making? Because, the world is
complicated and our minds are complicated, and our minds often reflect the
world around us and vice versa. Whether
you subscribe to the Buddhist idea and social constructivist idea that the
world around us is an extension of the mind, or the more positivist belief that
the world is material and goes right on living regardless of what our mind is
and does—I think both positions could agree that the world before is presently
ill. I fear its careening toward
something much worse.
“the fullest
representation of humanity show people to be curious, vital, and
self-motivated. At their best, they are
agentic and inspired, striving to learn; extend themselves; master new skills;
and apply their talents responsibly.
That most people show considerable effort, agency, and commitment in
their lives, appears in fact, to be more normative than exceptional, suggesting
some very positive and persistent features of human nature. Yet, it is also clear that the human spirit
can be diminished or crushed and that individuals sometimes reject growth and
responsibility.”
In a world such as this we are increasingly at risk for
losing sight of goals, being lost in the overlap of competing goals and
demands, misaligned incentives, impulses, emotional distress—each of these
factors increase cognitive bias. We experience each to no small degree daily,
unfortunately many of us experience one are all of them to an enormous degree. It is a precarious position that almost
ensures that our moment to moment decisions are less than optimal. So, when someone with a neoliberal bent on
economics tells you that people just need to get a job—I did it, why can’t
they? Tell them that they are a lovely
human being that was fortunate enough to be in a position where the fundamental
human needs that drive self-determination were properly aligned. Then walk away, they will likely continue to
have no idea what you are talking about.
To avoid the cynicism that this essay might be
unintentionally generating, I would like you to know that I firmly believe that
there is a path forward. Positive
psychology has returned attention to human flourishing and development. Maslow is en vogue again, but a psychology of
being is still far from complete.
Furthermore, there are huge misunderstandings about what Positive
Psychology is and does. It is not the
“power of positive thinking” bromide, that some might assume. There is debate within the field presently
about whether this constant obsession with “self-actualization” has done more
harm to our culture than good. People
are inherently at risk for misunderstanding the ingredients that go into self
determination and desire self-actualization now. Again, I suspect this is why we so often make
non-optimal decisions and then double down, repeatedly. (Kahneman and Taversky
address this in their theory on loss aversion). Continue that path and you
arrive closer and closer to narcissism and/or diminished self-esteem—“regret avoidance may be particularly pronounced
in people with low self-esteem. For such people, every choice opportunity
presents the possibility that they will gather more evidence than they already
have that they do not know how to make good decisions.” Happiness will remain ever more elusive. The components of self-determination are
likely misaligned.
Richard Ryan and Edward Deci formulated Self-Determination
Theory around three basic needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Could it be that simple? Well, my latest thinking is that for some of
us it might be. But, I will return
momentarily to Maslow’s hierarchy. I
have the feeling that Self-Determination Theory starts to get at the middle of
the pyramid. Many of us having our basic
needs filed—housing, clothing, food, shelter, etc. Sadly, in this country an unacceptable number
of people do not, and increasingly the pressures that are facing the middle
class push more and more of us into that lower base of the pyramid. And for those of us who have worked with individuals
in that bottom base, please don’t tell us that there are resources available
and people just need to get jobs. Manage
all of what I have shared in the proceeding paragraphs while battling
Schizophrenia or Bipolar or Drug Addiction or PTSD and then get back to me, or
go to the local crisis center which likely will not have a bed for you. Bridges are nice, they at least keep you dry,
you can fill out your
job applications under there.
For those of us tenuously in the middle class, I believe
that it is vital that we get this right: autonomy, relatedness,
competence. These are fundamental
components for self-determination. And
because these are fundamental human needs, we have instincts that drive us
toward them. Who does not what to be
autonomous? Who does not want to feel
competent, and feel that they relate deeply to the world around them? The problem is that many of us are living
under an increasing amount of stress that means we are at risk of non-optimal
decisions.
“together these
results suggest that even highly efficacious people may experience less than
optimal wellbeing if they pursue and successfully attain goals that do not fulfill
basic psychological needs.”
An instinctual drive for autonomy may not be the optimal
pursuit, if it is competence or relatedness that is driving your goal. Decision-making is challenged by demands (and
these are myriad, and in some cases probably exponentially magnified with each
accumulating stressor). The world around is becoming increasingly specialized,
which makes us all feel less competent as there becomes an expert for
everything. For Christ’s sake we have
Life Coaches now—not knocking the profession, I do a form of it in a way, but
what does that title say about us? And
relatedness, many of us grew increasingly isolative for the past decade under
societal pressures and demographic trends.
This can sound bleak, however if you want to see this trend in reverse
pay attention to the enormous amount of activity going on at the community
level. David Brooks pisses me off at
times, but he has been writing about this a lot, and I’m beginning to conclude
that he is correct. I suppose a
legitimate conservative must find hope somewhere; the Republican party is
rotting corpse.
Rational Choice Theory is one the staple arguments for a
certain type of economics. It in a
nutshell it rests on the assumption that human beings are rational choosers
based on preferences, which rests on yet another assumption that people have
complete information. The problem is not
a matter of information, but rather the processing of information. Why should we care about this? Because a certain type of economic theory is
so pervasively wired into the collective psyche that it effects multiple areas
of our being (See Erich Fromm the Art of Loving to understand how ideas of
marriage evolved from the Victorian Era thought the Industrial Revolution).
“not all social
activity, or even all economic activity, is organized around markets and exchange.”
“the dominance of
rational choice theory in the context of markets as a model for human autonomy has
had a significant effect on American’s aspirations with regard to
self-determination.”
Second reason, applying market ideology to everything has
had pronounced effect on wellbeing. We
have massive amounts of affluence, albeit unshared. This is unlike the prosperity that followed
WWII which was widely shared. And this
should scare us, we have a social safety net that is not generous, an aging
population, a garbage healthcare system, and increasingly unhealthy population
with progressively more mental illness. Under Rational Choice Theory:
“Wellbeing is understood
to involve maximizing the possibilities for choice, maximizing the number of
available options. A self is just the
bundle of preferences that happen to coexist inside a single skin, and self
determination is just the unfettered pursuit of those preferences.”
Well, we can thank cognitive psychology for arriving at a
roughly similar position that Buddhism has been teaching for 2000 years. This idea of the executive-rational self that
makes decisions based upon pure reason is nowhere in sight. Be wary of those who appear passionately
certain, especially in matters of opinion. Preferences are contextual, not rational (see
Thaler on mental accounting and Khaneman on Prospect Theory). I didn’t even discuss the whole issue of the
value content of money as it is expressed through preference. If you run into someone who continues to
insist that a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, ask what they believe the value
preferences are in this condition: You find
100 dollars, you are A) Bill Gates B)
You C) A motel housekeeper. I have
a hunch that preferences might vary.
“the rational chooser,
as described by rational-choice theorists, [is] a person who exists under only
a rather restricted set of conditions that have been true only in the recent
history of our species and then only in certain parts of the world.”
And this is why I find it so incredibly offensive when people
level sweeping generalizations about the poor and their economic behavior. There is a saying that people want
self-determination for themselves, but have very little problem telling others
how to live their lives. And because this
thinking is so pervasive, people have very little problem telling you how to live
your life. This is why most of us go
into slow-motion shutdown when people preach at us. It’s why developing teens become better at
tuning us out. And if you think that I am
suggesting that I have some refined ability to be conscientious of this at all
times, I can assure you I do not. I am a
single parent, often managing 3 at a time.
I say and do things when I am stressed, that steals autonomy from one of
them at any given moment. I am a
counselor and even though I have nearly 20 years of practice, I find myself slipping
into advice giving. I have made
exceptionally poor decisions for emotional reasons, believing that I was being
fully autonomous the whole while. This is human.
I will be addressing more of these subjects in coming posts.
For now, to recap. The nutriments for
Self-Determination are: Autonomy, Relatedness,
and Competence. They are in you because they are basic psychology needs that evolved
over time. You can find them daily:
Autonomy: find some small act that you can do independently,
and to the best of your ability free of emotional constraint (this may cause anxiety and stress if emotions
are the obstacle)
Relatedness: find something to do in your community, we need
roots, we need to water them deeply (there is no autonomy without interdependence)
Competence: small
goals, succeed, cross them off, give yourself credit, you’re getting good at
this.
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