Behavior
Human behavior is pretty fascinating, isn’t it? My favorite subject in school growing up was the neuroscience part of biology, and, per a recent journal I found while strumming around my parents house this past week, I guess intended to be a cognitive science major in college. Instead, I pursued business. But lately I’ve been pretty interested in learning more about personality - trying to understand the behavior of those around me, as well as my own. So the next few posts are going to be about some of the interesting books I’ve been reading lately and what I’ve learned.
The first is The Psychology of Personal Constructs. This is a textbook written in 1963 by George Kelly, who, upon researching the dude, appears to be the founder of psychotherapy. Now I normally would reject a book that espouses psychotherapy, but with an open mind, I read it (really only the paperback edition, the first 3 chapters of the two-volume work). And I have been telling everyone about it since.
It’s a pretty didactical book, but I do encourage a read if that’s what you’re into. Here’s what I got from it.
Kelly developed personal construct theory, which assumes a person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the ways in which he anticipates events.
Basically, we react to things based on our expectations, and we construct those expectations based on our past experiences and information we gather from the world. So okay, that seems fairly obvious. But sometimes you need the obvious to be brought to light. And that’s kind of what this book does.
It says we’re constantly anticipating events, because it is in our nature to try to predict and control our world. We expect and interpret events with what Kelly calls a “construct,” or a framework that has been constructed based on our past experiences and also a lens through which we continue to try to make sense of the world as we experience it. It’s both a lens for prediction of events and a system for reaction to events.
Our constructs are always changing, and Kelly encourages that. He proposes that we “construe and reconstrue” experiences, trying various constructs “on for size.” He assumes that “all of our present interpretations of the universe are subject to revision or replacement.” This is what he calls constructive alternativism. He says “man can enslave himself with his own ideas and then win his freedom again by reconstruing his life.” If we enter life with “inflexible convictions” then we set ourselves up to be a “victim of circumstance.” Since we have constructive alternatives, we don’t need to be the victim of our past history or of our present circumstances. Instead, we can alter our viewpoints.
In order to construe and reconstrue, we must reflect. Kelly says experience doesn’t occur just because we were in an event. We must take ourselves away from the event, we must back off to get perspective on the event, in order to truly experience it. He says, “a person can be witness to a tremendous parade of episodes and yet, if he fails to keep making something out of them, or if he waits until they have all occurred before he attempts to reconstrue them, he gains little in the way of experience from having been around when they happened.” I’m a huge proponent of reflection, and often find myself too caught up or consumed to do enough of it.
Constructs are personal, so they are not easily shared. For example, one construct is happy versus sad. No two people’s versions of happiness are the same. And so because this discrepancy exists, there are very different approaches to the anticipation of the same event. Each person views himself as the central figure, and the other as the external figure - and Kelly says “the chances are that, in the course of events, each will get caught up in a different stream and hence be confronted with navigational problems.” To complicate this further, “a person is not necessarily articulate about the constructions he places upon the world.” Thus it is easy to see how conflict in relationships can arise – no two people view things in the same way, and also it is difficult to express to someone else how we view things. Yet here we are in this world creating relationships all the time with people with very different constructs. It seems destined for failure.
When I first read this I thought, well it makes sense to then limit my relations, namely romantical ones, to those with a similar construct system to my own. But Kelly argues that if we can empathize and predict what others will do, we can adjust ourselves to their behavior. And we can predict what others will do by observing their patterns and repetition of actions. A relationship between a man and a woman is the greatest example of this ability to “find common ground through construing the experiences of their neighbors along with their own” – as men and women have very different constructions. You don’t have to have the same construct system as another person in order to understand them, but you do have to be able to infer the other’s construct system.
So I dig. I like this theory because it encourages growth through reflection and taking on different points of view. We would be nothing if we held onto the same constructs we had in our youth. But what I find risky about this is the lack in accountability. This book was described to me as “liberating,” and understandably so, as it seems to argue that we if we look hard enough, we can justify any of our actions. But if we constantly are trying on new constructs for size until one fits to understand a situation or our own actions - where’s the accountability for our actions? An example of this from the book is Kelly asks “do people mean what they say?” Kelly says that because it is difficult for man to articulate how he feels, it is difficult to “predict what he will do in a future situation which, as yet, exists only in terms of verbal descriptions.” For example, if a man says he will not take a drink if offered one tomorrow, the situation he envisions is one in which he would not take the drink. But the situation may be quite different than anticipated and he may go against his word. It seems rather easy, therefore, to never stay true to our word under this theory and argue that our verbal system did not coincide with our psychological side.
Anyway, a bit longwinded but that’s my book report. There’s a lot more to it and while some it is seems pretty obvious, the book was interesting. Though, with everything in this realm, I take it lightly.
