A New Unified Theory of Psychology
Gregg Henriques
A New Unified Theory of Psychology
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Gregg Henriques Department of Psychology James Madison University Harrisonburg VA, USA
[email protected] ISBN 978-1-4614-0057-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0058-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931083 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Andee
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Preface Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
We persevere in looking at small questions instead of large ones and our view of the forest is forever obscured by the trees. Yet specialized knowledge derives its meaning from the context of larger perspectives and questions. When it loses touch with that larger context, it loses its coherence. William Bevan (1991, p. 475)
Ask a biologist, “What is biology?” and you are likely to get a relatively unambiguous response. Biology is the science of life. In contrast ask a psychologist, “What is psychology?” and if the individual has considered the question in depth, you are likely to get something along the lines of the following: “It is basically the science of the mind, except for the fact that there still are a number of psychologists who think of it as the science of behavior, and argue that ‘the mind’ is not a helpful scientific construct. So you can call it the science of behavior and mental processes, but that glosses over the basic philosophical problems that initially pitted behaviorism against mentalism. It currently deals primarily with human behavior, although historically many psychologists studied animals, perhaps most notoriously the lab rat. And yet, the line between humans and other animals—if there is one at all—is not generally agreed upon. Some scholars believe that psychology is really a loose federation of subdisciplines and that as our scientific knowledge becomes more advanced it will break up into fields like neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and other areas. And now there are quite a few psychologists, especially those studying culture and continental philosophy, who question whether natural or even social science epistemologies are appropriate. They argue that psychology is best thought of as a collection of studies and belongs as much with the humanities as the sciences. Finally, there is the issue of whether the discipline is mainly a science like biology or is mainly a healing profession like medicine, or is simultaneously both. Given all of this controversy, it is probably best just to think of psychology as an institution, a human construction that doesn’t necessarily map directly onto nature. Rather than worry about definitions, we should spend our energy conducting studies on phenomena of interest.” Such is the current state of our knowledge on the question of “What is psychology?” It does not have to be this way. The unified theory articulated here paves a way to logically and coherently define the field of psychology, resolve the long-standing vii
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philosophical problems, and weave together key insights from various paradigms into a coherent whole. The unified theory offered here consists of four separable but interlocking ideas that fit together to allow one to see the forest of psychology and how it can be clearly and crisply defined in relationship to biology from below and the social sciences from above. The unified theory also integrates and assimilates key ideas from the major paradigms, clarifies the relationship between the science and the profession, and ultimately helps to show how and why psychology connects to each of the three great branches of learning—the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities—more than any other discipline. This book is written for anyone with a broad interest in psychology. I am especially writing for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who yearn for a more coherent way to view the field. Students, for example, who have been in classes with professors who subscribed to behavioral or cognitive or psychodynamic or humanistic or evolutionary or cultural or neuroscience perspectives and have found themselves wondering, “This seems to make sense, but what my other professors say also seems to makes sense. Do they have to be defined against one another? Is there any way to integrate these perspectives into a coherent whole?” I am also writing for professional psychologists who see themselves as eclectic or integrative in their approach to psychotherapy because they have come to see that each of the major schools has good insights to offer, and it seems that there should be a way to blend them together in a manner that makes sense. I am also writing for scholars of the field, those who have probed deeply into the theoretical and philosophical problems associated with the discipline and its subject matter. To them, I offer a solution to a previously unsolvable problem. Finally, this book is written for those individuals outside the discipline who have a keen interest in obtaining a larger sense of the field and want a comprehensive set of ideas that help make sense of the human condition. So I am introducing a new unified theory of psychology that is geared toward students, professional psychologists, academic scholars, and others interested in the human condition more generally. Needless to say, this creates problems of both breadth and depth. Any way you slice it, psychology is a broad field, so I am going to be covering a lot of ground and only have one book to do it. At the same time, it needs to be written in a manner that is accessible to students, is practical enough for professionals, and holds up to the scrutiny of scholars. To achieve this admittedly difficult goal, I am employing a frame I call qualitative generalizability. Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2 , is a pinnacle of quantitative generalizability because it parsimoniously represents the quantitative relationships between the foundational variables of energy, mass, and the speed of light. In contrast, qualitative generalizability refers to the ability to introduce a frame that represents relationships between key variables in the subjective field—that is, the field of human consciousness and human understanding. One of the great strengths of folk psychology (i.e., the way each of us makes sense of ourselves and others in our everyday lives) is that it is strong on qualitative generalizability. When we listen to a rich story and are readily able to empathize with the characters, we are doing so based on folk psychology. In contrast to folk
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psychology, many perspectives in psychology are weak in qualitative generalizability. For example, the theories of Skinner and Freud, the two men who have probably had the greatest influence on the discipline, are both weak in this regard. Although Skinner has much to offer the field, his strong anti-mentalistic approach fatally handicapped the capacity of radical behaviorism to produce a qualitatively generalizable framework. And where Skinner seemingly refused to dive at all, Freud’s psychoanalysis dove so deeply into the hidden layers of the human mind that it ended up claiming truths about human nature far different than everyday experience would suggest. The unified theory outlined here paints a picture that is much closer to folk psychological conceptions than either of these approaches. It argues that humans have interests shaped by biology, learning, and culture, and that they spend their time and energy attempting to coordinate the flow of important resources in a manner that aligns well with economics. The unified theory further argues that social influence is a crucial resource and that much of human psychology is about relationships and navigating the dynamics of power and love and freedom and dependency in the social environment. And the unified theory posits that humans are unique animals because of symbolic language. However, it adds a specific twist to this common conjecture by pointing out that the evolution of language resulted in the adaptive problem of social justification. This is the problem of determining what is socially legitimate and explaining one’s actions in accordance with those pressures. The unified theory argues that, as a consequence of the adaptive problem of social justification, the human self-consciousness system evolved to function as a justification system, and this ultimately is why humans are constantly justifying their actions to themselves and to others and why they seek out justification narratives that provide meaning and make sense of the world and their place in it. If my point about qualitative generalizability is on target, these ideas should resonate with you. That is, it should not take long to see yourself as working to control the flow of resources, that social relationships are crucial to your mental life, and that you often—either implicitly or explicitly—are using language to justify things to yourself or to others. Indeed, according to the unified theory, you should be pondering the justifiability of my argument at this moment. Moreover, as you think about human culture—especially its laws, norms, religions, roles, and values—the notion that these are large-scale collective systems of justification that function to coordinate populations of people should make sense. My point is that although the unified theory itself is grounded deeply in science, the ideas offered here mesh reasonably well with folk psychology. That is good news because it means that the gap between folk psychology and psychological science is not nearly as wide as some have believed. As a licensed professional psychologist, professor, and director of a doctoral program that combines Clinical and School Psychology, I wear a number of different hats. I am a clinician, researcher, educator, supervisor, and administrator. I am also a theorist and something of a philosopher. This book is written from my perspective as an educator, clinician, and theorist. The goal is to introduce to the psychological community concepts that can go a long way toward organizing findings and
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providing the field with a shared language and conceptual framework for how the world works. I have attempted to write it in a way that emphasizes communication and understanding, and the goal is for one to “get” the ideas I am sharing. The book is not written as a traditional psychological research project in the sense that one will not find much in the way of lab-based experiments, hypothesis testing, or rigorous quantitative analyses. At one level this is a weakness of the book, as such research methods are absolutely necessary for detailed scientific understanding. Given this, let me acknowledge at the outset that there is some validity to a likely criticism from some scientifically oriented psychological researchers that many complicated issues are glossed over, many specific areas of psychology untouched, and many important questions unanswered. Although true, my response is that the level of detail required relates to the goals of the communication. For too long psychology has failed to address questions pertaining to the forest. This book is about the forest, and its central justification is that if we can effectively map the forest then the careful scientific work we do examining the trees will be much more meaningful and informative because we will then be able to put our findings into a context of a shared understanding that can then be given away to the public in a positive and impactful way.
Acknowledgements
The development of the unified theory has been something of a life journey, and there are many people who have had a powerful influence on me in my travels. During my graduate training at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, I was extremely fortunate to have deep-thinking professors who were dedicated to the enhancement of student learning. Richard Tedeschi’s course on psychotherapy integration provided the initial spark that led to the ideas articulated here. Lawrence Calhoun, my thesis advisor, has offered much wisdom and guidance, and I deeply appreciate his mentorship and friendship. I also am grateful for the support of my dissertation advisor, Harold Leitenberg, now retired from the University of Vermont. My dissertation was on the construct of cognitive errors, and it was crucial to my landing a job as a postdoctoral fellow working for Tim Beck at the University of Pennsylvania. It was a true honor to work with such a luminary, and I learned an enormous amount from him in my 4 years there. I came to the Combined-Integrated Doctoral Program in Clinical and School Psychology at James Madison University in 2003, and it has been a great environment for cultivating the unified theory. I am indebted to each of the core faculty members in the program, Harriet Cobb, Craig Shealy, Anne Stewart, Elena Savina, and Trevor Stokes. Humanistic and scientific, thoughtful and innovative, with an eye toward social justice and globalization, my friends and colleagues here have significantly impacted the development of the unified theory, especially in regards to its large-scale application and the ultimate values in which it is grounded. I am also grateful for Ashton Trice’s careful reading of the entire manuscript and his insightful reflections about substance and useful critiques of its style. Steve Keffer, Dave Pruett, and I shared many stimulating conversations about the nature of knowledge. I am thankful for the support, encouragement, curiosity, and constructive criticism of the doctoral students in the program. Several dissertations have been heavily informed by the unified theory and have advanced it into new areas. Heather Gow showed how the theory could provide a framework for organizing many of the conflicting perspectives in intimate partner violence. Parisa Montazeri deepened and advanced the Influence Matrix. Chase Levesque applied the unified theory to developing a systematic approach to assessing outcomes in psychotherapy. Jason Stout wrote an excellent dissertation articulating how the unified theory can assimilate and integrate key ideas from other integrative approaches in psychotherapy, such xi
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as cyclical psychodynamics, dialectical behavior therapy, and schema-focused therapy. Current projects are underway examining well-being, personality trait theory, and the development of a unified approach to psychotherapy, indicating that the system will continue to grow and evolve. I have had good collaborations with many colleagues outside of JMU. Leigh Shaffer, Steve Quackenbush, Jason Bessey, Jeffrey Magnavita, Jack Anchin, Andre Marquis, David Geary, Keith Stanovich, Paul Gilbert, Bob Sternberg, and Larry Beutler have all been helpful in advancing the ideas offered here. I also want to thank the numerous participants of the two Visions of Integration Conferences, which resulted in much stimulating interdisciplinary dialogue. An all-encompassing and life-altering project such as this one clearly requires support from both the domains of work and love. I am thankful for the many long and thoughtful conversations about the unified theory I have had with my parents and my three brothers. My father, Dr. Peter Henriques, is a historian who listened, questioned, supported, and lovingly cautioned me about the difficulty big ideas encounter in the academy. My mother, Dr. Marlene Henriques, is an award-winning educator who encouraged me to dream big and to share my insights. I want to extend a special acknowledgement to her for carefully reading the entire manuscript with an editor’s eye for grammar. Some of the most meaningful moments I have had have been teaching the basic elements of “Daddy’s work” to my three children, Sydney (11), Jon (10), and Lanie (7). I thank them for giving me such purpose in life. Last and most importantly, I thank my wife, Andee, for, well, everything.
Contents
Part I
Introduction and Overview
1 From Racing Horses to Seeing the Elephant . . . . . . . . . . Sparking the Search for the Elephant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Currently Dismembered Elephant: Reviewing Key Insights from Major Paradigms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . Behaviorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Existentialism and Humanistic Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cognitive Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evolutionary Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Elephant: The Four Pieces That Make Up the Unified Theory The Development of the Justification Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . The Nature of Justification Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toward a New Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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2 The Problem of Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology’s Philosophical Woes . . . . . . . . . . . Problems of Definition and Subject Matter . . . . . . Problems in the Philosophy of Mind and Behavior . . Problems of Epistemology, Mission, and Values . . . Problems of Disconnected Domains of Causality . . . Problems of Proliferation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology on the Fault Lines of Human Knowledge
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3 Behavioral Investment Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Six Principles of Behavioral Investment Theory . . . Applying the Insights of Behavioral Investment Theory: The Behavioral Shutdown Model of Depression . . . . . Behavioral Investment Theory and the Connection with Other Proposals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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W. T. Powers’ Perceptual Control Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arthur Staats’ Psychological Behavioral Theory of Learning . . . Peggy LaCerra’s Adaptive Representational Networks . . . . . . David Geary’s Motive to Control as the Central Principle of Mind Behavioral Investment Theory and the Architecture of the Human Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Level 1: Sensory-Motor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Level 2: Operant Experiential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Level 3: Imaginative Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Level 4: Linguistic Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Everyday Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Influenc Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Basics of the Influence Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Key Elements of the Influence Matrix . . . . . . . . . The Need for Social Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Initial State of Dependency . . . . . . . . . . . . . Competition and Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cooperation, Altruism, and Affiliation . . . . . . . . . . Autonomy and the Freedom from Influence . . . . . . . The Negatively Reinforcing Defensive Strategies of Hostility and Submission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dynamic Interrelationships Between the Dimensions Emotions on the Outer Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Self-Other Quadrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spheres of Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assimilating and Integrating Major Programs of Research with the Influence Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . The Influence Matrix and Psychodynamic Theory . . . . . The Influence Matrix and the Interpersonal Circumplex . . The Influence Matrix and Attachment Theory . . . . . . . . The Influence Matrix and Parenting Styles . . . . . . . . . The Influence Matrix and Sociometer Theory . . . . . . . . The Influence Matrix, Agency and Communion, and the Self-Other Dialectic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Influence Matrix and Personality Trait Theory . . . . . Putting the Influence Matrix into Action: An Analysis of Ordinary People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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5 The Justificatio Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Linking Human Self-Consciousness to the Adaptive Problem of Social Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Review of the Evidence for Advanced Capacity for Self-Consciousness in Humans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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The Role of Language in the Emergence of the Problem of Social Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Tripartite Model of Human Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Dual Processing Model of Cognition and Consciousness . . . . . The Three Domains of Human Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . The Context of Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Two Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assimilating and Integrating Lines of Research with the Justification Hypothesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and the Interpreter Function of the Left Hemisphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and Cognitive Dissonance . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis, Attributions, and the Self-Serving Bias The Justification Hypothesis and the Forces That Guide the Organization of Self-Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Enhancement Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Accuracy Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Consistency Motive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and Research on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and Research on Reason Giving . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and Research on Reasoning . . . . . . . Culture As the Rise of Collective Justification Systems . . . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and the Transmission of Technology . . The Justification Hypothesis and the Emergence of Norms . . . . . . The Justification Hypothesis and the Emergence of the Cultural Dimension of Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Culture as Large-Scale Collective Systems of Justification . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 The Tree of Knowledge System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seeing the World Through the Prism of the ToK System . . . A New Approach to Emergent Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and the Emergence of Sociobiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wilson’s Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge . . . . . . . Consilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reductionism Versus Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Relationship Between the Natural and Social Sciences The Fact-Value Distinction and the Relationship Between the Sciences and Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . The Need for Unification and the Nature of Knowledge . . Achieving Consilience with the ToK System . . . . . . . . . Reductionism Versus Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Boundaries Between the Natural and Social Sciences .
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The Fact-Value Distinction and the Relationship Between the Sciences and Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Need for Unification and the Nature of Knowledge . . . . . Aggression: A Concrete Example Contrasting the Two Approaches Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part III
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Solving the Problem of Psychology
7 Definin Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Defining the Basic Science of Psychology As the Science of Mental Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mental Behaviorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology’s Three Great Branches . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychological Formalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Human Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Professional Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Relationship Between Research and Practice in Professional Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8 Toward a Unifie Psychotherapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assimilating and Integrating Key Insights from the Major Approaches in Psychotherapy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Components of Contemporary Behavior Therapy . . . . Behavior Therapy Through the Lens of the Unified Theory . Key Components of Contemporary Cognitive Therapy . . . Contemporary Cognitive Therapy Through the Lens of the Unified Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Components of Contemporary Experiential Therapy . . Contemporary Experiential Therapies from the Vantage Point of the Unified Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Key Components of Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy from the Lens of the Unified Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Unified Component Systems Approach to Conceptualizing People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Biological Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Learning and Developmental Context . . . . . . . . . . The Sociocultural Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Habit System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Experiential System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Relational System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Defensive System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Justification System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Example Applying the Unified Component Systems Approach to Conceptualizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Conclusion
9 The Fifth Joint Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Unified Theory As a New Scientific Humanistic Worldview The Science Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Science As a Kind of Justification System . . . . . . . . . . . The Elements of Justification Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . Valuing the Scientific and the Humanistic Components of Justification Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Story of the Universe As Told by the Unified Theory . . . Religion and Creation Science from the Vantage Point of the Unified Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Unified Theory and Creationism . . . . . . . . . . . . . Toward the Fifth Joint Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Epilogue: The Future of the Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Part I
Introduction and Overview
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Chapter 1
From Racing Horses to Seeing the Elephant
So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1887)
What if the field of psychology had a unified theory that virtually all agreed was the correct one? What if, as a group, we psychologists could clearly define the discipline, unite the various psychological paradigms into a coherent meta-paradigm, and clarify psychology’s relationship to the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities? It boggles the mind to ponder the implications of such a thing. And yet that is what this book is about. It offers a new unified theory of psychology that attempts to do all of this—and more. It is readily arguable that it is the absence of a “unified theory” that makes psychological knowledge seem so different than the knowledge produced by the more mature disciplines of physics and biology. Knowledge in these disciplines seems, by comparison, relatively clear, objective, and coherent. In contrast, knowledge in psychology exists as a collection of competing and overlapping schools of thought, and there is an almost endless list of schisms, confusions, and disagreements about foundational issues. It is true that there are many disputes in physics and biology, but what makes these qualitatively different from the foundational issues in psychology is that there is a general agreement about the major organizing theories and concepts. Modern physics, for example, is grounded in quantum mechanics and general relativity, and modern biology is organized by natural selection, genetics, and cellular theory. In contrast, there is no generally accepted framework in psychology, but instead profound disagreement, confusion, and almost limitless opinions about the foundational issues. Moreover, camps in psychological theory and practice are too often defined against one another, both conceptually and politically. For example, the extreme anti-mentalistic stance of the behaviorists in the middle part of the twentieth century was defined in part against the mentalistic excesses of Freudian theory. In contrast, the humanistic psychologists were defined against the mechanistic and deterministic views of both the behaviorists and the psychoanalysts. G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_1,
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But perhaps such comparisons are not apt. Perhaps psychology is a different kind of entity than either physics or biology. Maybe such questions reflect a hard science envy that is misguided and born out of the jealous insecurities of some in the socalled soft sciences. Historically, there is evidence that yearning for the precision and objectivity of the “hard” sciences can have dangerous consequences. One can argue, for example, that the behaviorist reign in American psychology during the first half of the twentieth century was the product of psychological scientists parroting physicists, rather than recognizing that the distinctive way their subject matter behaved required a distinctive approach. The more recent impact of the postmodernist perspective is an indication of just how many psychologists have become deeply skeptical of traditional scientific approaches. Although there are many variants of postmodern thought, they all share the conviction that natural science approaches and assumptions of objectivity, realism, and foundationalism are seriously problematic for understanding the human condition. Postmodernists argue that knowledge about humanity is constructed rather than discovered, that there are no grand meta-narratives applicable to all, and that there is no objectively definable human nature that is separable from the socio-historical context in which individuals are embedded. Put slightly differently, whereas the modernist believes “Truth” can be separated from the political, the postmodernist is skeptical of “Truth” with a capital “T” and believes “truths” are always political. From the vantage point of the unified theory, there are aspects of the postmodern critique of naturalism that have validity. Most notably, the postmodern perspective raises crucial insights and questions regarding the intimate connection between the social construction of knowledge, the cultural context, and power in the sciences. In line with much postmodern thought, according to the perspective offered here, the connection between the social justification of knowledge, cultural context, and power in the human sciences is one that pure natural science frames have not—and ultimately cannot—effectively handle. Nevertheless, the unified theory ultimately is closer to modernist approaches than postmodern ones. This is primarily because the unified theory is directly at odds with one of the tenets of postmodernism, anti-foundationalism, which is the explicit rejection of any overarching set of ideas that will effectively and accurately organize knowledge in the human sciences (Held, 2007). The unified theory, as implied by its name, is foundationalist to the core. It proclaims universal truths about the universe and the human condition, and it connects human science to the natural sciences. Moreover, in contrast to some anti-foundationalists who have argued it is a moral obligation that psychology remains fragmented, the unified theory posits that a shared language and agreed upon conceptual foundation is not only possible, but it is also a good thing in the deepest sense of the word. In short, the unified theory represents a post-postmodern grand meta-narrative that I claim is both True and Good. Although postmodernists strongly reject foundationalism, there has been little or no acknowledgment by such authors about the fact that the absence of a general foundation has been hugely problematic for psychology, especially from the pragmatic standpoint of the field’s capacity to effectively impact society. Some
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psychologists have seen the lack of a coherent foundation as being so significant that it threatens the core integrity of the field. Sternberg and Grigorenko (2001) offered a proposal for a “unified psychology” that was justified primarily because the costs of fragmentation were so obviously preventing the discipline from reaching its full potential. There is much to be valued in the pragmatic argument for unification, and I joined with Sternberg to argue why the unified psychology approach could contribute to unifying the profession of psychology, as well as the science (Henriques & Sternberg, 2004). And yet, despite the fact that there are compelling pragmatic and political reasons for moving toward a more unified approach, it is also the case that advocating unity for unity’s sake raises some significant concerns. Without addressing the foundational issues, the pragmatic appeal of a unified psychology can be reinterpreted as asking psychologists to gloss over authentic differences in paradigms and perspectives just so that we all get along with the illusion of unity. Given this criticism, arguments for a pragmatic unity do not seem to be completely adequate, and the eclectic blending of ideas can be argued to be a weak intellectual solution. I believe that if unity in psychology is to be authentically achieved, it can only come—as has been the case in physics and biology—through a theoretical system that organizes and explains empirical findings and provides psychologists with a shared language and conceptual frame to understand their subject matter.
Sparking the Search for the Elephant The unified theory began to emerge when I was a graduate student and took a course on psychotherapy integration. Coming into the course, my approach was firmly rooted in a cognitive behavioral perspective. I thought about psychological problems in a fairly practical way, and my therapeutic style was congruent with examining problems, thinking about thinking, and taking action to effect change. I also took solace in the fact that cognitive behavioral approaches to therapy were based on research. In contrast, psychodynamic and humanistic approaches seemed to me at the time to be fuzzy, abstract, idealistic, and unscientific. The course would radically shift my thinking. Prior to taking the course I had subconsciously internalized the frame—so common in our field—of a horse race between competing paradigms. Cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic, humanistic, and family systems approaches (among others) each claim to offer a holistic account of the human condition. Entire systems of thought, core philosophical assumptions, journals, as well as training and research programs have been built up around each perspective. Students are exposed to each “horse” and pushed by various supervisors and professors to place their bets on one or another. My course in psychotherapy integration taught me that the horse race frame is all wrong. Some of the important reasons include the following: (a) many of the single schools are defined against one another both conceptually and politically; (b) there is much complementarity between the paradigms, with the strengths in one perspective being weaknesses in another and vice versa; (c) there is
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much overlap between the schools that becomes apparent as one becomes proficient in their language and concepts; and (d) no single school has both the humanistic and scientific depth and breadth to offer a comprehensive solution. Other key pieces of evidence that have led to questions about a single school approach include the fact that treatments from different perspectives have tended to yield very similar outcomes (the so-called common factors finding), and there have been a number of successful attempts to blend psychotherapy techniques and integrate across the major theoretical perspectives. The dramatic increase in eclecticism and more recently in integrative psychotherapy over the past two decades is a strong indicator of the benefits of the integrative approach. Learning about the psychotherapy integration movement, I began to shift my frame from assuming a horse race mentality to embarking on a quest to find the elephant. That is, I began to sense that the single schools’ relationship to “truth” was analogous to the six blind men who happen upon an elephant in the famous parable by John Godfrey Saxe. In the parable, each man grabs a hold of a piece of the elephant and makes strong proclamations about its true nature. One, holding onto its trunk, claims it is like a snake; a second pats down its leg and proclaims it is like a tree trunk; a third feeling its tail proclaims it is like a rope; a fourth touching the point of the tusk says it is like a spear; a fifth grabbing its ear says it is like a fan; and the sixth pushing up against its side says it is like a wall. And, in justifying the validity of his perspective, each man dismisses the others as being, well, blind to the truth. There must be a way, I came to believe, to integrate the key insights from the various approaches and see the elephant as a whole. I remember one particular lecture in my psychotherapy integration course that got me especially excited about the possibility of finding the elephant. Based on the pioneering integrative work of Dollard and Miller (1950), my instructor was introducing approach–avoidance conflicts as a frame for linking behaviorism with psychoanalytic perspectives. He entertainingly took on the role of a young man with some social anxiety at a bar who spied an attractive woman with whom he greatly desired to strike up a conversation and, perhaps, a relationship. As the man envisioned such a relationship, greater levels of approach motivation became activated, and he began to feel energized and almost initiated getting off the bar stool and introducing himself. However, as soon as the action started to materialize, images of him bungling his greeting and her chiding his efforts emerged, and the anxiety suppressed the impulse. My professor helped me to see how the approach–avoidance motives would fluctuate in strength and salience by acting out how the man might start to walk over to the woman getting halfway there only to spin around and head back to the negatively reinforcing barstool, safely avoiding the anticipated threat. Perhaps because the example strongly resonated with me at a personal level, I distinctly recall for the first time the powerful realization that psychodynamic concepts of wishes and fears could clearly be connected to behavioral notions of reinforcement and punishment. It was a simplistic connection in retrospect but a profound one for me nonetheless. Despite the problems associated with a single school approach, there remained significant difficulties achieving a coherent integrative view. First, there are
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an almost endless number of schisms in psychology, along with massive methodological complexities, and philosophical problems. Second, the so-called grand theories (e.g., Freud’s Psychoanalysis, Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism, and Roger’s Humanistic Psychology; see Demorest, 2005) have different although often implicit moral emphases and this complicates the integration process enormously. In a commentary titled Grand Theories of Personality Cannot Be Integrated, Wood and Joseph (2007) made this point, commenting that “a detailed reading of the grand theorists reveals in-depth conceptions of human nature that are fundamentally irreconcilable, and although they are fundamental assumptions, they cannot be dismissed because of their inescapable influence on therapeutic practice” (p. 57). Likewise, Wachtel (1997) offered one of the pioneering works in psychotherapy integration that theoretically linked psychoanalysis with behaviorism. Yet one of the most substantive critiques of Wachtel’s work came from Messer and Winokur (1980) who argued strongly that the psychoanalytic perspective offered a tragic and romantic view of human nature, whereas the behavioral perspective was more comic-situational, and these two kinds of narratives could not be effectively woven together into a coherent picture of the human condition without loss of their essential value. It turns out then that searching for the elephant is not only about organizing the key theoretical insights into a coherent whole in a manner that can generate an objective description of human behavior. Embedded in each major model are valuebased assumptions, which at the very least impact the application of such models in competing ways. Indeed, here was a good reason why integrating paradigms in the human sciences is qualitatively more complicated than in the natural sciences. As argued by several postmodern theorists, human science paradigms carry—either explicitly or implicitly—value-laden assumptions that have direct implications for their application. With this problem clearly in focus, it seemed to me at that time that the dreams of a unified theory of psychology were slight indeed. And yet, despite the formidable nature of the task and problems of both fact and value, this book nonetheless articulates a new unified theory that I argue deals effectively with the major philosophical, theoretical, empirical, and moral issues that have pressed upon psychology since the earliest days of its inception. Psychology is a thicket of conceptual problems, and any proposal that seeks to unify the field must be able to address the multitude of major issues. Chapter 2 surveys the key problems in the field and touches on issues as varied as the philosophy of mind and behavior, problems of values, and problems defining the proper subject matter of the discipline. I show why there is an ocean of difficulty confronting any proposed unified theory, and at the same time I point out why the mass of competing perspectives greatly hampers the field’s capacity to reach its potential. I then articulate what I call the problem of psychology, which is the claim that psychology’s conceptual difficulties exist at the very fault lines of human knowledge and represent one of the most vexing philosophical problems of the day. In looking at the tangled mass of information that is the current state of affairs in psychology, it seems clear that if the correct unified theory could be found it would make a huge difference in the role psychology plays in society at large.
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Many have raised concerns about psychology’s fragmentation, and several proposals have been made to help the field achieve a more unified vision. Although these works have many positive features, I believe previous approaches to unification have not been sufficient because they have failed to provide a broad, clear philosophical framework that sets the stage for defining the discipline and coherently unifying the major paradigms in the field. When one asks basic questions of these proposals such as “How are life, mind, culture, and behavior defined?” or “How is psychology differentiated from biology from below and the social sciences from above?” or “What precisely is the relationship between the science and the profession?” or “How are the key insights from fields like neuroscience, psychodynamic theory, evolutionary theory and genetics, behavioral science, cognitive science, systems theory, and social constructionist perspectives retained and integrated into a coherent whole?” answers are not readily forthcoming. Instead, these proposals generally struggle with or remain silent on these big questions. The analysis stemming from the problem of psychology leads strongly to the conclusion that there are deep philosophical confusions at the heart of the discipline, which have led to profound definitional ambiguities. It follows from this that what is needed is a meta-theoretical framework that crisply defines the subject matter of psychology, demonstrates how psychology exists in relationship to the other sciences, and allows one to systematically integrate the key insights from the major perspectives in a manner that results in cumulative knowledge. This is what the unified theory purports to achieve. It achieves this goal by introducing broad theoretical structures that can take the disparate and fragmented lines of thought in psychology and assimilate and integrate them into a coherent whole. In the psychotherapy integration literature, assimilative integration is a term coined by Messer (2001) and describes a perspective that allows one to incorporate key insights from other approaches into one’s own primary therapeutic outlook. He proposed that although the world of psychotherapy may appear diverse and contradictory, there is a way to achieve a more coherent view by using one’s theoretical apparatus to assimilate and integrate the observations, theories, and techniques from other perspectives. Thus, a psychodynamic practitioner might re-examine cognitive therapy principles in terms of enhancing ego strength, or a behavioral psychologist might frame the focusing of warded off thoughts and feelings a psychodynamic clinician does in terms of exposure to threatening stimuli. The point of assimilative integration is that the theorist adopts a particular theoretical frame and then looks to assimilate and integrate various insights, techniques, and findings from various perspectives. The current perspective works via assimilative integration; however, instead of operating from an existing paradigm like psychodynamic theory or cognitive science, it introduces a whole new theoretical apparatus that can assimilate and integrate the various findings and key insights from each of the major perspectives in psychological theory and practice. The purpose of this book is to provide readers with enough of an outline of the ideas to see how existing insights can be integrated
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and assimilated into a more coherent whole. But before we delve too deeply into the unified theory, a brief review of the major perspectives in psychology may be helpful.
The Currently Dismembered Elephant: Reviewing Key Insights from Major Paradigms The argument that I am making is that psychology is currently an ill-defined discipline consisting of a group of mid-level theories, perspectives, and schools of thought that each articulate some basic truths about the human condition but are organized in a manner that makes them compete against one another instead of being harmoniously and coherently interrelated. Here I offer a very brief review of six major perspectives and articulate what the key insights are that the unified theory assimilates into the whole. It should be noted that these six perspectives are not an exhaustive list, and there are many that could be included and certainly have relevance to the questions at hand. Biopsychiatry, Family Systems Theory, and Russian Activity Theory are just a few examples, not to mention perspectives from anthropology, sociology, economics, literature, and philosophy that all afford crucial insights into the human condition. But there must be some boundaries on the focus, thus I have narrowed the emphasis to the major perspectives that are influencing the science and practice of psychology in the West.
Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Theory For the first half of the twentieth century, Freud’s ideas dominated much of the psychological landscape, and although they have greatly diminished in terms of influence they nevertheless have left an indelible mark on the field and remain a notable force, especially in psychotherapeutic practice. There are several key insights from the Freudian perspective that have stood well the test of time, and there are many others that have not. Some of the claims that have not fared well and do not fit into the unified theory offered here include the following: the Oedipal Complex as a defining feature of male psychology; the notion that all psychological motives stem from two foundational drives of sex and aggression; the claim that the unconscious operates on and is gratified by symbolism; the claim that human males are more psychologically advanced than human females and that females are inherently jealous of males; the idea that development proceeds through psychosexual stages centered on erogenous zones; the proposition that most psychological disturbances are linked to specific childhood events frozen in unconscious memory; and the claim that the best treatments for neurosis are centered on transference and free association. Of course, Freud himself would be greatly disheartened to see this list, as many of these ideas are defining features of his psychoanalysis. And yet, despite this list, it remains the case that Freud was an enormously astute observer of the human condition, and he, along with many neo-Freudian theorists,
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offered lasting insights (see Westen, 1998). Psychodynamic theory, which combines aspects of Freud’s observations with psychological science, is a viable position and in many ways, the unified theory offered here is psychodynamic in nature. The central insight of a psychodynamic perspective is the fact that there are often powerful subconscious motivational reasons behind the reasons we offer to justify our behavior (see Henriques, 2003a). As discussed in Chapter 4, the human self-consciousness system does indeed function to filter out unacceptable impulses and frequently generates self-serving or protective justification narratives, often with the individual blithely unaware of the biased nature of the construction. Psychodynamic theory further teaches that these motivational forces arise out of internal working models of self and other and often operate on the edges of awareness. Psychodynamic theory is also a conflict theory, proclaiming that we often experience conflicting wishes, fears, and expectations and engage in defense mechanisms to manage the tension and anxiety that results. In addition, the early attachments that we form with our caretakers foundationally set the stage for later socio-emotional relating patterns, and these patterns are crucial to our psychological functioning, health, and wellbeing. As will become clear, all of these insights fit well with the holistic picture offered by the unified theory.
Behaviorism Perhaps second only to Freud’s psychoanalysis, behaviorism has had a huge impact on the field. Although a dominant force in academic American psychology for the first half of the twentieth century, like psychoanalysis the influence of behaviorism has markedly diminished over the past several decades. Behaviorism itself fragmented most dramatically with Skinner, with neobehaviorists tentatively allowing for internal mentalistic constructs like cognitive maps and radical behaviorists focusing almost exclusively on external determinants. Neobehaviorists generally merged with cognitivists in the latter part of the twentieth century, whose rise was perhaps most notably associated with Chomsky’s (1959) critique of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior. Since that time radical behaviorism has split off from mainstream psychology, becoming a relatively isolated, separate school of thought. From the vantage point of the unified theory, this has been something of a tragedy. Skinner is to blame in part for this, as both his rabid anti-mentalism and conception of behavior were flawed. If we are ever to achieve even a relatively complete understanding, it is clear that the internal and external causes of animal behavior must be woven together into a holistic system. Skinner was thus guilty of being excessively defined against mainstream psychology. Nevertheless, behaviorism offered many lasting insights. Associative and operant conditioning are foundational processes. And, as will be argued later, it is essential to be able to view “mind” as a kind of behavior as opposed to a separate entity that causes behavior. Moreover, Skinner’s conception of behavioral selection is fundamental to understanding mind and this insight can be merged with cognitive neuroscience in a manner that yields a powerful integrative framework.
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Existentialism and Humanistic Psychology Both psychoanalysis and behaviorism offer problematic worldviews. They are overly mechanistic, deterministic, and fail to offer a view of humanity that can at least co-exist with the great religious traditions and provide a framework for generating meaning and purpose that allows individuals to strive to reach for ever higher and nobler human pursuits. Moreover, both Freudian and Skinnerian theories can be accused of failing to appreciate the incredibly social nature of human beings, the degree to which we are embedded psychically in our relational worlds, and the importance of transcending ourselves into larger causes. The highlighting of these issues and many others, such as the incredibly idiographic nature of our existence and the importance of the stories we live by, made the existentialism of Rollo May and Victor Frankl, and the humanistic psychologies of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow a “third force” in psychological theory that emerged with great hopes in the middle of the twentieth century. These insights, in addition to the centrality of the therapeutic alliance to healing, are all heralded by the unified theory. The weaknesses of existentialism and humanistic psychology center on the ambiguity of the conceptual frames offered and that such frames were sometimes tied to ideology in a manner that hindered their ability to generate cumulative, objective knowledge. For example, the idea that people are fundamentally guided by a positive organismic growth force is more ideological than scientific.
The Cognitive Approaches The cognitive approaches include a number of loosely related lines of thought, with several of the more prominent being cybernetics, linguistics, computational psychology, cognitive development, social cognitive theory, and cognitive psychotherapy. Historically, gestalt psychologists were the forerunners of modern cognitive psychology. Advances in information science, artificial intelligence, and computational modeling all converged to offer the central insight of the cognitive approach, which is that the nervous system is an information processing system that inputs sensory data, performs computations on that information, and then produces behavioral outputs. The cognitive approach gained ascendancy in the 1950s and 1960s and probably remains the dominant school (or set of schools) of thought in the field today. Although there is much diversity in the cognitive approaches, and I am obviously painting with broad strokes, some of the major weaknesses in the early approaches were that the models of cognition were overly simplistic, symbolic, sequential and were relatively disembodied from affective, neurological, behavioral, and developmental processes, as well as the evolutionary history of the species and the cultural context in which modern humans were embedded. Interestingly, over the past 20 years there have been many developments in precisely these areas. Thus we now have cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and many models that attempt to more explicitly integrate cognitive and affective processes. Given its
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breadth and depth, it is not surprising that several have argued that the cognitive approach provides psychology with a reasonably unified framework. The current work not only incorporates the key insight from the cognitive approach but also addresses its fundamental weakness, which is its ambiguity and diffuseness, as well as its ability to fully integrate the other perspectives, such as behaviorist, humanistic, and psychodynamic approaches.
Evolutionary Psychology Emerging in the early 1990s, evolutionary psychology combines the cognitive paradigm with advances in modern Darwinian approaches to animal behavior, most notably sociobiology and behavioral ecology. The central insight from an evolutionary psychological approach is that the human mind must be understood as the product of neo-Darwinian evolutionary forces. Although other paradigms in psychology were built on basic evolutionary assumptions, they nevertheless did not effectively assimilate modern evolutionary theory into their foundational premises, and thus in that regard, evolutionary psychology represents a major advance. As we will see, the unified theory deeply incorporates the evolutionary perspective and strongly advocates for the notion that traditional psychological perspectives like behaviorism be merged with modern evolutionary perspectives like behavioral ecology. Despite this key insight, evolutionary psychology has not succeeded in providing a unified theoretical framework for all of psychology as some of its advocates hoped it would. Instead, it remains a relatively separate school of thought, and it often appears at odds with other major perspectives, especially learning paradigms and cultural approaches. I believe the primary reason evolutionary psychology fails is because the early advocates of the approach were overly committed to a fairly rigid model of domain specificity, which closes down the idea that human capacity for culture evolved out of a fairly domain general reasoning mechanism. As will be discussed later, a primary insight from the Justification Hypothesis is that, as a consequence of language, our hominid ancestors did indeed confront a relatively domain general adaptive problem, called the problem of social justification and this resulted in a qualitative shift in mental processes and the evolution of a new dimension of complexity. Thus the Justification Hypothesis opens up pathways for linking evolutionary psychology with cultural approaches.
Cultural Psychology Cultural psychology studies the impact of culture, tradition, and social practices on the human psyche. Leading proponents of cultural psychology often argue that human minds are completely dependent on the shared and constructed reality developed by peoples in various socio-historical contexts. Thus in direct contrast to evolutionary psychologists, cultural psychologists tend to argue that there are no
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universal laws for how the human mind works and that psychological theories grounded in one culture are likely to be limited in applicability when applied to a different culture. Although cultural psychologists tend to be somewhat more relativistic and postmodern in their epistemological assumptions than the unified theory, proponents of cultural psychology offer a key insight that the cultural context does indeed have a fundamentally deep impact on how human minds develop. Developed in Chapter 4, the argument from the vantage point of the unified theory is that humans have a mental organ of justification that allows them to “download” the explanatory frames of their social context and these greatly influence the manner in which they experience and act in the world. The fundamental criticism of the current overall state of affairs is that psychology presently consists of perspectives and paradigms that offer key insights into the human condition but are constructed and developed in a manner that does not allow these insights to be woven together into a coherent whole. The argument made here is that with the correct meta-theoretical framework afforded by the unified theory we can move from the current midlevel theories that offer key insights but do so in a manner that makes them appear mutually exclusive and assimilate and integrate these insights into a comprehensive set of ideas that articulates a clearer picture of the human condition.
The Elephant: The Four Pieces That Make Up the Unifie Theory The unified theory consists of four separate but related pieces that combine to provide a new frame for understanding human behavior and the human condition. They are the following: (1) Behavioral Investment Theory; (2) The Influence Matrix; (3) The Justification Hypothesis; and (4) The Tree of Knowledge System. The argument is that with these four pieces, psychologists can achieve fundamental resolution to the foundational issues that have plagued and confused the field since its inception. In other words, with the lens provided by the unified theory, psychologists will finally be able to see the elephant. The broadest aspect of the unified theory is the Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, which is a new pictographic depiction of cosmic evolution. Cosmic evolution refers to the changes that have taken place in the universe since the Big Bang that have resulted in the incredibly diverse and complex universe we know today (Chaisson, 2001). Figure 1.1 offers the most basic representation of the ToK System, and more details will be added to this basic foundation. One lesson that emerges from analyzing psychology’s conceptual problems is that we are in desperate need of a macro-level view that defines key terms and how they exist in relationship to one another. Many problems in the field stem from the fact that terms such as mind, brain, behavior, cognition, consciousness, self, and culture mean different things from different perspectives. Completely lacking is a meta-perspective map that defines these terms and defines them in relationship to one another. One of the most unique and hopeful elements of the unified theory is that it comes with such a map.
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Fig. 1.1 The Tree of Knowledge System
Although it likely has some familiar characteristics, it is nonetheless the case that the ToK System is a new map of cosmogenesis. The most novel aspect about the ToK System is the ontological claim that there are four distinguishable dimensions of complexity. Virtually all other models depict the hierarchy of nature as a single dimension of complexity that stretches from subatomic particles to molecules to organisms to human societies. But as will be articulated in detail in the chapter on the ToK System, the depiction of four different dimensions of complexity is the needed change in perspective that allows one to see how scientific theories can be organized and how psychology in particular can be defined. Why are there different dimensions of complexity, in addition to different levels of analysis? I will be answering this question throughout the book, but the short answer is that these separate dimensions emerge because of the evolution of novel information processing systems. According to the ToK System, genetic information processing gives rise to the dimension of Life, neuronal information processing gives rise to the dimension of Mind, and symbolic information processing gives rise to the dimension of Culture. These dimensions of complexity are different dimensions of causality, which is a rather profound philosophical argument. To see why, consider that Descartes’ philosophical analysis is famous for its dualism. Matter and mind were conceived by Descartes as separate spheres of substance and cause. In contrast, modern scientific views have argued for a monistic position. Mind must be some form of matter because the problem of nonmaterial causality is philosophically insurmountable.
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The ToK System is monistic in the sense that the higher dimensions of complexity supervene on the lower dimensions. By that I mean that everything that is biological is also physical, everything that is psychological is biological, and so forth, with Energy being the ultimate common denominator. But the ToK System is not greedily reductionistic. Everything is not just energy and matter, and biology, psychology, and the social sciences cannot be reduced to physics because there are fundamentally different dimensions of complexity. The separate dimensions of complexity in the ToK diagram are intimately connected to two of the three other pieces that make up the unified theory: Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis. These ideas are what are known as joint points in the ToK System. Joint points are the links between the dimensions of complexity. They provide the theoretical framework that explains how the higher dimension evolved out of the lower dimension. From the vantage point provided by the ToK System, the modern evolutionary synthesis is the joint point between Matter and Life because it is biology’s unified framework, providing the basic frame for understanding the evolution of biological complexity (Mayr & Provine, 1998).1 Using the ToK diagram, we can then ask: Are there joint points between Life and Mind and between Mind and Culture? The short answer is yes, and Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis are the respective theories. Behavioral Investment Theory, the third joint point on the ToK System, provides the framework for understanding the evolution of the animal mind, and it is the subject of Chapter 3. The basic idea of Behavioral Investment Theory is that the nervous system has evolved into an energy management investment value system that computes increasingly complex and flexible behaviors. An example here might help get you thinking about the concept. Crows on the west coast of Canada feed on whelks, which are a type of shellfish. The crows crack the shells of the whelks by picking them up and dropping them onto the rocks below. Behavioral Investment Theory makes the general prediction that animals will tend to spend the least amount of behavioral energy necessary to achieve the desired outcome, which in this case is a cracked shell that provides access to food. Researchers calculated the amount of energy required by the crows to lift the whelk to the point that optimizes the likelihood that the shell would break. If the crow does not lift the whelk high enough it will require several drops, yet flying it higher would result in the unnecessary expenditure of energy. The calculations found that the optimal expenditure of behavioral energy would be achieved by flying the shellfish to approximately 5 meters and indeed this was very close to the heights from which the birds actually dropped the whelks (McFarland, 1985). Behavioral Investment Theory consists of six fundamental principles that are generally well known in animal behavioral science, but are often not put together. 1 This is not to say that deep biological theory is totally complete, only that a consensually agreed upon outline has been achieved. Biological researchers have still not solved the fundamental problem of how life began. Thus, deeper insights are still to be made, perhaps along the lines of self-organization or nonequilibrium thermodynamics. Nonetheless, the combination of natural selection and genetics has provided enough understanding so that the joint point is relatively clear.
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They are the principles of (1) energy economics; (2) evolution; (3) behavioral genetics; (4) neurocomputational control; (5) learning; and (6) development. The value of Behavioral Investment Theory is that it consolidates existing theoretical perspectives and, in conjunction with the holistic vision afforded by the unified theory, allows for previously separate lines of thought and research to be coherently integrated. Specifically, Behavioral Investment Theory seeks to assimilate and integrate the major perspectives in mind, brain, and behavior, including (1) evolutionary biology and genetics; (2) neuroscience; (3) behavioral science; (4) computational/cognitive science; and (5) developmental systems theory. Moreover, placed in the map afforded by the ToK System, it provides a new way to think about mind and behavior through the concept of mental behavior. Mental behavior refers to the behavior of animals mediated by the nervous system and includes overt actions and covert cognitive processes. As I will clarify in Chapter 7, the mental behavioral approach creates a sensible amalgamation of mentalistic and behavioral perspectives. The third piece of the unified theory is the Influence Matrix, which is an extension of Behavioral Investment Theory to human social motivational and emotional processes. Like the ToK System, the Influence Matrix also comes with a diagram (see Chapter 4). This diagram is a map of the architecture underlying the way humans process social information, develop social goals, and are guided by emotions in navigating the social environment. The Influence Matrix posits that out of an initial bed of dependency, motives for power, love, and autonomy emerge and guide individuals’ social development. The Influence Matrix integrates a wide variety of different perspectives including attachment theory, psychodynamic theory, trait theory, interpersonal psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Research will be reviewed showing how the lens afforded by the Influence Matrix can capture and explain findings, as well as provide new insights into old dilemmas. The Influence Matrix is central to understanding the unified theory because motives for social influence play a crucial role in the manner humans construct reasons for their behavior, which is the focus of the fourth and final piece of the unified theory. Animals such as dogs, baboons, and chimpanzees clearly feel pleasure and pain, think nonverbally, strive for dominance, defend their territories, and experience strong, complicated emotional attachments. Yet only humans write books, develop laws and religions, build complex machines, engage in structured games, ponder their eventual death—and the list could go on and on. What, at bottom, makes us so different than other animals? The fourth piece of the unified theory is called the Justification Hypothesis. The Justification Hypothesis is the joint point between Mind and Culture on the ToK System. It is a theory of human self-consciousness and the evolution of human culture, and sheds new light on how humans construct meaning. The Justification Hypothesis was conceived of prior to the rest of the theory and can be considered a primary insight that laid the foundation for the development of the unified theory as a whole. Because the concept of justification systems is crucial, some elaboration on what justification systems are and how they work is necessary.
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Before I proceed, a summary statement is in order. The unified theory consists of four new conceptual pieces that together can solve the problem of psychology. Up until this point, there have been major unresolved questions as to how we can move from our scientific understanding of behavior at the physical and biological levels of analysis into the psychological and finally the sociological levels, all while maintaining a consistent framework of explanation. The unified theory argues that Behavioral Investment Theory, the Influence Matrix, and the Justification Hypothesis fill in the major missing pieces that take us from basic animal behavior to complicated socio-emotional attachments and finally into human consciousness and culture. The ToK System, with its depiction of four separate dimensions of complexity, provides the overall map, taxonomy, and definitional system.
The Development of the Justificatio Hypothesis The Justification Hypothesis is an idea about the structure and function of selfconsciousness and culture and why both evolved in humans. Insight into the Justification Hypothesis came when I was immersing myself in the literature on evolutionary psychology, social and cognitive psychology, and psychodynamic theory. The manner in which the Justification Hypothesis forms a hub between these ideas will be spelled out in greater detail in Chapter 4. For now I will share the moment I experienced the proverbial “flash of insight” that ultimately led to the development of the Justification Hypothesis. It was in 1996 when I was a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Vermont. I had just completed a psychological evaluation on a woman in an inpatient psychiatric ward. In her late thirties, she was diagnosed with Major Depression and an Avoidant Personality Disorder, which meant she was extremely shy and socially anxious and had strikingly low levels of self-esteem. A woman with an above average intellect, she had graduated from high school, worked as a teacher’s aide and lived in almost complete isolation on the brink of poverty. In a reasonably familiar story line, her father was an authoritarian, verbally abusive alcoholic who dominated her timid, submissive mother. He would also be physically abusive to her older brother, who was much more defiant of his power. She distinctly remembered several episodes of her father beating her brother, while yelling that her brother needed to be more like his obedient sister. Perhaps the most salient feature of this patient’s personality was her complete sense of inadequacy. She viewed herself as incompetent in almost every conceivable way and demonstrated an extreme dependency on the guidance of others. In presenting the case to my supervisor and classmates, I argued that the network of self-deprecating beliefs served an obvious function, given her developmental history. Namely, the beliefs she had about herself had functioned to justify submission and deference in a context where any form of defiance was severely punished. It was the first time I explicitly used the concept of justification to describe how language-based beliefs about self and others were functionally organized. I arrived home about a half an hour late following the discussion about the patient and found myself explaining to my wife that traffic was particularly bad. Traffic
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had been bad, but the reality also was that it only accounted for about 10 minutes of my tardiness. I had left work 20 minutes later than anticipated because I was eagerly discussing the patient’s dynamics with my fellow students. In a moment of heightened self-reflection, I became acutely aware that this reason for my tardiness was much less emphasized as I explained my actions to my wife. My mind had effortlessly accessed the traffic reason and just had effortlessly suppressed the reason that was significantly less justifiable, at least as far as my wife was concerned at the moment. It was upon reflecting on my own justifications and how they were selected that the broad generalization dawned on me. The patient was not the only individual whose “justification system” for why she was the way she was could be understood as arising out of her developmental history and social context. With the lens afforded by the above insights, I came to see processes of justification as being ubiquitous in human affairs. Arguments, debates, moral dictates, rationalizations, and excuses, as well as many of the more core beliefs about the self, all involve the process of explaining why one’s claims, thoughts, or actions are warranted. In virtually every form of social exchange, from warfare to politics to family struggles to science, humans are constantly justifying their behaviors to themselves and to others. Moreover, it was not only that one sees the process of justification everywhere one looks in human affairs that made the idea so intriguing. It became clear upon reflection that the process is a uniquely human phenomenon. Other animals communicate, struggle for dominance, and form alliances. But they don’t justify why they do what they do. Indeed, if I had to boil the uniqueness of human nature down to one word, it would be justification. We are the justifying animal. It is important to state here, especially in the context of the above examples, that justifications are not the same as rationalizations. Some, for example, have argued that humans are the rationalizing animal. Seeing humans as the justifying animal is a broader and more complete description. A rationalization is when someone generates a reason for their behavior that legitimizes their actions and hides the truer but more painful or less acceptable cause or causes. Nancy McWilliams (1994), a well-known psychodynamic theorist, describes rationalizations as follows: Virtually anything can be—and has been—rationalized. People rarely admit to doing something just because it feels good; they prefer to surround their decisions with good reasons. Thus, the parent who hits a child rationalizes aggression by allegedly doing it for the youngster’s “own good”; the therapist who insensitively raises a patient’s fee rationalizes the greed by deciding that paying more will benefit the person’s self-esteem; the serial dieter rationalizes vanity with an appeal to health. (p. 125)
All rationalizations are justifications; however, not all justifications are rationalizations. We often give reasons legitimizing our claims or actions that do not necessarily hide something else. This book can be thought of as a justification for the unified theory but it is not a rationalization. Likewise, laws and scientific theories can be conceived of as justifications, but are not well described as rationalizations.
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The Nature of Justificatio Systems Although one can always isolate and examine a specific justification, in the real world individual justifications do not exist in isolation. Instead, justifications exist in particular contexts and interlock to form justification systems. Justification systems are networks of linguistically mediated beliefs and values that function to legitimize actions, create meaning, and offer a particular worldview or version of reality. Because it is crucial to get a good working feel for justification systems, I’d like you to take a minute reflect on your own justification systems. Consider, for example, your political ideology, your religious affiliation, and even your theoretical orientation in psychology. The descriptors you employ (e.g., “Democrat,” “Protestant,” and “Cognitive Therapist”) are labels for various justification systems. This is an important and rather profound claim. I am arguing here that all shared socio-cultural knowledge systems can be characterized as justification systems. To grasp the breadth of this claim, make a trip to the library and open any nonfiction book at random and read the first few pages. Almost without exception, what you will find is an explicit justification for the work and an articulation of how the work exists in relationship to other justification systems. For example, I happen to have on my desk a book on cognitive behavioral therapy for schizophrenia by Kingdon and Turkington (1994). The book opens with a foreword by A. T. Beck, justifying the need for this approach. I could have pulled any nonfiction book off my shelf and found a similar opening; each book contains a system of thought or argument that must be justified. Of course, this book is no exception. Indeed, the unified theory itself is a justification system. Now turn on the television. What are advertisements, but displays legitimizing the purchase of the product, either explicitly or implicitly? Turn to a talk show, a political commentary, or a show documenting legal or political proceedings. Or watch a drama or comedy or any other show with people regularly interacting. What you will see are people advancing justification systems and justifying why the advancement of other justification systems is problematic. Shift gears and focus your attention inward. Think about your identity and self-concept. Who are you? How are you similar and different from other people? What are the core aspects that define you? What do you believe makes you unique? Why should people see the world as you do? When you are challenged, what is particularly likely to make you feel insecure or defensive? From the vantage point offered here, self-concept and identity are personal justification systems. The conscious portion of your “private self” is the stream of self-talk you engage in, the portion of your mind that attempts to develop a narrative of what is happening and why. Your global worldview—that is, your language-based version of reality—is made up of both your personal and ideological justification systems. Many people would just refer to these as systems of beliefs. Does it matter whether you call them beliefs or justification systems? Yes, for three primary reasons. First, according to the unified theory, there are two kinds of beliefs: nonverbal (i.e., perceptually represented) and verbal (i.e., symbolic). Other animals
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have beliefs, in that they form mental maps or representations regarding the world and act on those expectations. One could say, for example, that the dogs in Martin Seligman’s famous learned helplessness experiments believed they could not escape from the shocks. In contrast, justifications are linguistically based representations of how the world works. According to the map provided by the ToK System, languagebased information processing exists on a different dimension of complexity (the fourth dimension, Culture) than neuro-information processing (the third dimension, Mind), so the distinction is crucial in that regard. The second reason that thinking of language-based belief systems as justification systems is important is that the Justification Hypothesis characterizes our reasoning system as a justification system, in contrast to, say, a purely algorithmic or analytic processing system like a computer or calculator. This is a major difference because it suggests that human reasoning is largely guided by motivation and emotion. Think for a moment about how reasoning about various outcomes changes based on what you desire or how you feel. For me, one of the clearest examples is the difference in my reasoning about when I should get up in the morning the evening before I go to bed in contrast to when I first wake up. In the evening, I am convinced that I should get up early because I have much work to do, that it is good to be conscientious, and that it takes approximately 40 minutes to get ready. When the alarm goes off, a totally different narrative is activated. I decide I don’t have as much work to do, that I am already conscientious enough, and that it takes me approximately 20 minutes to get out the door. These justifications result in me hitting the snooze button. It is likely that you have had experiences in how fluctuating drives like sex and hunger influence your reasoning processes, such that sometimes you are convinced that you should act one way, and then when your motivational state changes you find a whole different set of reasons to justify actions that you previously determined to be unjustifiable. The third reason is that the term justification system implies a structure and function, whereas the term belief system does not necessarily imply any such organization. Recall that justification systems are interlocking networks of beliefs and values that ultimately function to legitimize action or claims. Thus the concept of justification system explicitly connects language-based beliefs to action, whereas belief system per se does not imply such a connection. This results in clear predictions about how language-based beliefs and values should be structured and organized. For now, I will provide one anecdote. I was raised in a secular home. Although my father experienced a religious conversion as a young adult at a Billy Graham revival, by the time I was born and raised the light had flickered out and our family was not at all religious. For some combination of reasons I do not recall, when I was in the eighth grade riding the bus home one day, I announced publicly that I was an atheist and that I thought (ala Richard Dawkins) that God was an illusion. The reaction from my fellow bus riders was surprising enough that I recall it to this day. A group of fellow students became very animated, telling me I would go to Hell, that God was real, and that I needed to ask for forgiveness. Thinking about religious systems as mere belief systems, one could be surprised as this reaction. After all, why didn’t others simply hear my description and sit with the notion that
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different people believe different things? But if we see religious beliefs as justification systems, the charged nature of the response becomes immediately clear. My views threatened the legitimacy of their views, and if their beliefs were justified, that required action. As this example highlights and as is also implied by the term justification, justification systems inevitably emerge in particular socio-historical contexts and in relationship to pre-existing justification systems. Almost by definition, emerging justification systems diverge from existing views at least in some ways and frequently they are explicitly defined against the status quo. Whether one is examining Jesus’ justifications offered at the Sermon on the Mount, Jefferson’s justifications in the Declaration of Independence, or Einstein’s justifications for the theory of relativity, it is clear that each defined their claims in relationship to existing justification systems and explained why a different path is preferred. But how broadly does the concept really apply? Are all language-based beliefs effectively characterized as justifications? For example, if I say (and believe), “There is a coffee cup on my desk,” is that a justification? The short answer is that, according to the frame offered here, all verbal behaviors emerge from and exist in a context of justification. That is, every utterance is vulnerable to the problem of social justification, which is the question of whether the utterance was, in fact, legitimate from the audience’s vantage point. Even a claim as innocuous as the coffee cup is on my desk can be questioned as to whether or not it is justifiable. Indeed, an individual could, upon hearing that claim and seeing my desk, argue the utterance was not justifiable. “Those are not coffee cups, they are travel mugs!” a pugnacious adversary might proclaim. Thus as soon as they emerge, all utterances exist in the context of justification and are defined in part by that context. Put slightly differently, the argument I am making is that language-based communication is functionally organized into systems of justification. I argued above that every social institution can be examined as a justification system, meaning that its logical structure will consist of a hierarchically arranged of beliefs and values that legitimize its existence, claims, and actions. Let us apply this lens to a social institution that is immediately relevant for this book, namely the construct of psychology. The system of ideas that make up modern psychology emerged in the West in the late nineteenth century. It is by convention dated to the opening of Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory in 1879. Of course, many of the questions currently considered by psychology were reflected upon long before that time. So why does convention date modern psychology to Wundt? The reason is because, in Western academic justification systems, modern psychology is a branch of science and is thus split off from philosophy. This claim in turn raises the question: What justifies knowledge as scientific? Knowledge is scientific when it is developed and supported by logical analysis and the systematic collection of objective evidence (i.e., observable, measurable, reliable, valid—in a word, scientifi ). The latter component is what justifies the separation of scientific knowledge from analytical philosophy and mathematics, which focus on semantic meaning and logical coherence but do not necessarily concern themselves with directly acquiring empirical evidence.
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Wundt argued that human consciousness was psychology’s proper subject matter, and he trained himself and his followers in the techniques of introspection. His goal was to identify the manner in which the elemental constituents of consciousness were amalgamated to form holistic perceptions. Unfortunately, Wundt’s method and the school of thought that came to be known as structuralism failed as a coherent scientific justification system. Why? Recall that one of the foundational justifications for knowledge to be considered scientific is that it is dependent on objective evidence. By its very nature, consciousness is a first person ontological entity. If investigator A reported some experience during his introspection and investigator B reported a different experience, there was no way to confirm or disconfirm the reports. The inherently subjective nature of consciousness clashed with the need for objectivity in science, and psychology saw its first in a long series of questions of what is justifiably considered as scientific psychological knowledge, a question that has yet to be answered satisfactorily. Thinking about psychology as a justification system highlights another question that has long haunted the field. That is, what does psychological knowledge justify? Whereas the first question concerns issues of logic and accuracy, this question brings to the foreground questions of value and, by extension, the implications that psychological knowledge has for the way people ought to be. Consider, for example, the following questions. Does psychological knowledge justify the view that religion is “patently infantile,” as Freud (1930) famously argued? Does it justify the argument that we should give up the concept of free will and simply work toward controlling the contingencies that control our behavior, as Skinner proclaimed? Does it justify the notion that we should show unconditional positive regard for our fellow humans, as Rogers maintained? The question of what psychological knowledge justifies has been even more complicated for the field than what constitutes justifiable psychological knowledge. None of the traditional frames in psychology has had the philosophical sophistication to deal effectively with this question, and the inability to deal with it lies at the heart of why so many in human psychology and other social sciences have turned toward a more postmodern perspective. This analysis brings us to an important point of debate about the nature of psychology. Is psychology a natural science, like biology or physics? If so, then maybe psychological knowledge just is a system that describes—in a value neutral way— how animals and people work. Or is psychology a social science like anthropology and sociology? Many people argue that a value neutral stance in the social sciences is inherently problematic because knowledge is culturally constructed and inevitably linked with power and context. Finally, many have wondered if psychology’s desire to be scientific about things like consciousness, love, and the human condition is misplaced and the field ultimately is more like philosophy and literature and thus more connected to the humanities. A related and implied question exists regarding the nature and difference between these three great branches of learning. I will be arguing in this book that although psychology is a unitary concept, it has three great branches, one of which is rightfully considered a natural science, one of which is squarely a social science, and the other is an applied social science profession that is
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more closely connected to the humanities because its mission is explicitly to effect change rather than describe it. Let us focus our attention for now on the difference between the natural and social sciences. From the vantage point of the unified theory, there is a fundamental difference between the two domains of knowledge, and it is a difference that was seen well by the sociologist Anthony Giddens (1987). He developed a frame that specified the difference between the natural and social sciences in a way that allows us to see clearly the nature of the problem. He forcefully argued that the social sciences are fundamentally different from the natural sciences because they confront what he called the “double hermeneutic.” A hermeneutic is a social interpretive system and overlaps greatly with what I am calling justification systems. According to Giddens, physics, chemistry, biology, and other natural science disciplines (for example, comparative psychology) are single hermeneutic disciplines where scientists must develop shared systems of thought about the appropriate way to describe the natural phenomena in question. He noted these scientists can generally be safe in their assumption that the discourse about the objects per se will do little to change the phenomena under investigation. Thus the observer and observed remain in their rightful places in natural science disciplines (complications from quantum mechanics notwithstanding), and basic natural scientists generally do not need to concern themselves with the question of what their knowledge justifies because their subjects will not co-opt this knowledge and change their very nature in the process. Giddens (1987) argued the social sciences exist between the natural sciences and humanities on the is-ought dimension (see Jones, 1965, for a clear description of this dimension) because the single hermeneutic equation changes radically when the observed is a concept-using being whose very conceptions of their actions enter into the actions themselves. According to Giddens (1987, p. 19), “The concepts and theories invented by social scientists circulate in and out of the social world they are coined to analyze.” In other words, the justifications generated by social scientists to explain some human behavioral phenomenon are digested by human actors with genuine causal consequences. The philosophical problem this creates becomes more apparent when one considers that the most successful descriptions of human behavior are precisely those that will receive the most attention. As such, one cannot have a comprehensive theory of human behavior and also expect that human behavior will remain unaffected by this very theory. Freud’s theories, for example, changed people. The double hermeneutic refers to the problem that theories of human behavior will interact with existing public justification systems, and because of this, facts and values are no longer so neatly separable. Consider, for example, the controversy that resulted following the release of Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve, a book which stated intelligence was highly heritable and simultaneously claimed that there were significant differences between racial and ethnic groups in intellectual ability. Much of the criticism against the book was focused on the implications of the book and how they could be used to justify racial inequities and maintain the status quo. In contrast, animal researchers determining that certain strains of mice run
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mazes better than others generally would not raise philosophical or ethical concerns. Such is the doubly complicated nature of developing theories about human nature. My point in raising these issues in this introduction is twofold. First, as mentioned earlier, the concept of justification systems is crucial to the unified theory, and it is important that you have some basic familiarity with it and how to apply it. Second, my goal here is to plant the seeds in the skeptical reader that the unified theory potentially offers a different kind of theoretical framework. On the one hand, the unified theory looks like a fairly traditional, modernist approach. The ToK System is advertised as a foundationalist map of reality, and other pieces like Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix likely appear to be (and are) cut of the same cloth as many traditional, modernist scientific paradigms in psychology. At the same time, the terminology and frame afforded by the Justification Hypothesis should appear (and, in at least some ways, is) more commensurate with concerns and perspectives raised by postmodernists and social constructionists. To see this more clearly consider the following quote from Richard Rorty, a well-known philosopher frequently enlisted by those in the postmodern or social constructionist camps to legitimize their perspective: [T]he only criterion we have for applying the word “true” is justification and justification is always relative to an audience. So it is also relative to that audience’s lights—the purpose that such an audience wants served and the situation in which it finds itself. (Rorty, 1998a, p. 4)
One of the main areas of tension that the unified theory seeks to resolve is between modern and postmodern versions of reality. Indeed, I see the unified theory as offering a post-postmodern grand meta-narrative.
Toward a New Vision First outlined in Henriques (2003a), the unified theory has been the subject of some debate and critical analysis in academic circles (see especially Henriques, 2004, 2005, 2008). Many scholars have lauded its breadth and novel solutions for longstanding problems. Gilbert (2004, p. 1223), for example, stated that it offered a “fascinating” and “much needed macro-level view” of psychology. Haaga (2004, p. 1229) stated that the “Tree of Knowledge taxonomy, the theoretical joint points, the evolutionary history, and levels of emergent properties are highly illuminating.” Shealy (2005, p. 82) stated that for a host of reasons, the unified theory “is as bold and audacious [a proposal] as they come, and warrants serious consideration by all scholars who are interested in identifying a framework that [offers] a truly unified theory and organizational template for the sciences.” Quackenbush (2005, p. 78) proclaimed that “The ToK System represents an Archimedean perch from which it is possible to assume our freedom as psychologists.” And Anchin (2008, p. 815) argued that the unified theory “carries the highly warranted potential to exert a major impact on the academy [as an] extraordinary metatheory infused with its own capacities for limitless growth, change, and evolution.”
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At the same time, some scholars also have offered criticisms and cautions about the system. The post-Skinnerian psychologist Steven Hayes wondered if the unified theory actually led anywhere. He wrote [L]ook at the present effort and ask, “What effective action can now be taken? Toward what goals?” Henriques does not present actual data showing that thinking of the world this way is useful in a practical or empirical sense. The only goals that are mentioned are essentially coherence goals. Thus, no new treatments are described, and no new experiments are laid out. If this analysis is practically useful why can’t it be shown in a real, practical way? (Hayes, 2004, p. 1232)
Hayes is thinking like a research scientist, and in that regard he has a point. As I mentioned in the preface, those that require the immediate collection of quantitative data to change their beliefs will not be moved by the emphasis in the present work on logical coherence and practical understanding. My retort is that psychological research over the past several decades has been dominated by attention to fact gathering at the expense of theoretical and conceptual analyses, and this has resulted in a number of detrimental consequences (Machado, Lourenco, & Silva, 2000). The discipline is producing oceans of information but little wisdom because we lack a big picture view that places our knowledge in a coherent context that allows for genuine understanding. It is this gap that the unified theory seeks to fill, and it is a gap that cannot be filled within the narrow confines of a research lab. That said, it is also my strident hope and expectation that the concepts and formulations articulated here can lead to rigorous quantitative analyses, and several research projects are currently underway in that regard. Ultimately though, the unified theory will be successful to the extent that it is digested by psychologists and others in a way that leads to a shared language and conceptual foundation, and to a more comprehensive view of human nature that can be useful to humanity at large. Perhaps the most common concern expressed by scholars has been that because the unified theory is a foundationalist system, it might result in a monolithic approach that dogmatically stamps out pluralism, the diversity of ideas, and free scientific inquiry. Stam (2004), for example, argued the unified theory was a “disciplinary maneuver,” not an act of science. Slife (2005) claimed that if the unified theory was adopted, certain individuals would be disenfranchised by definitional fiat and with very little intellectual justification. Strongly articulating this concern, Yanchar (2004, p. 1279) wrote Henriques’ proposal proceeds as if such unity were an uncontroversial goal, desired by psychologists across the discipline irrespective of their theoretical and philosophical leanings. An examination of the literature of fragmentation, however, suggests that many have cautioned against this type of unification, arguing that it would undermine open scientific inquiry and essentially force psychology into a theoretical straightjacket.
Given these concerns, the problem of the double hermeneutic, and the fact that some ideological movements in psychology (and elsewhere) have had destructive consequences, it is crucial that I articulate my value base. In accordance with Quackenbush’s (2005, 2008) interpretation of the Justification Hypothesis, natural
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scientists, social scientists, and humanists alike need to articulate their core justifications because the effective building of justification systems inevitably includes value-based components and implications. In that regard, I am offering the unified theory because I sincerely believe it offers pathways toward human betterment. Let me thus proclaim a value of nondogmatism. Dogmatism prevents divergent opinions from being explored and does a disservice to reasoned inquiry. The following quote from the Buddha summarizes my views on this issue: Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for your teacher. . .but whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conductive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all things—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take as your guide. (Jones, 2005, p. 45)
In short, I want to be very clear that I am not justifying the advancement of a dogmatic monolithic system to which everyone should pledge allegiance. Instead, I am introducing a frame that potentially offers a general background of explanation that is theoretically coherent and can account for empirical observations, and I invite critical examination of the proposal to determine its validity. As I put it in my concluding article in the special issues of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: I believe the empathetic, respectful understanding of different viewpoints is an essential aspect of the scientific humanistic philosophy for which I am advocating. Such humanistic patterns exist in stark contrast to the misunderstandings, the hostility, and the intolerance of opponents so often evidenced in important debates. It is through the empathetic sharing of ideas that the ultimate results will be constructive rather than destructive. (Henriques, 2005, p. 137)
Associated with the proposal is the additional argument that, if successful, such a unified framework would be a good thing. Currently the worldviews—the largescale justification systems—that guide human action and discourse are in a state of “fragmented pluralism,” meaning that they are fundamentally contradictory and incompatible. Fragmented pluralism does not seem to be an ideal state of affairs, and I am advocating for a shift toward an integrated pluralism (see also Mitchell, 2002). An integrated pluralism is where there are differences in emphasis that stem from disparate needs, goals, and other idiographic factors, but each individual is connected to the same common base of general understanding. To articulate this idea further it is useful to borrow from Jones’s (1965) attempt to construct a more effective bridge between the sciences and the humanities. Jones argued that the concept of “experience” is advantageously ambiguous in regards to whether or not it primarily carries a subjective or objective meaning. “‘Experience’ is ambiguous,” he explained, “because, depending on context, it may refer to either what is encountered (the object experienced) or the encounter (the experiencing)” (pp. 33–34). Jones added two simple concepts to his formulation: background and foreground structures. The background structures provide the context for experiencing foregrounds and all experiences are defined by background–foreground interactions. For example, if confronted with a poisonous snake (foreground), a herpetologist, a Pentecostal worshiper, and a snake phobic would each have radically different experiences because of their radically different background structures.
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In critiquing the unified theory, Viney (2004, p. 1275) made the strong point that there is “room for concern [in] that there is no concept of unification to date that does not neglect important aspects of human experience.” My retort is that the unified theory provides the ultimate map of the general background structure that can coherently frame but not imprison the infinite variety of human experience. Because all human experiences are the interaction between background and foreground structures, pluralism is both inevitable and, from a value-based standpoint, something to be wholeheartedly embraced. However, our general background structures of explanation are far more fragmented and incompatible than ideally would be the case. The argument is that the unified theory allows for currently disparate background structures to be coherently merged, while at the same time it preserves the uniqueness of the human experience and the integrity of scientific discovery. My position also includes a value-based claim that such a shared, general background structure could potentially be of tremendous benefit to humanity. The unified theory is a system that allows for objectivity, coherence, and pluralism, and is commensurate with the foremost concerns of natural scientists, social scientists, and humanists. Rather than placing us in an intellectual straightjacket, I both hope and believe it will result in avenues for understanding and cooperation that have heretofore been unrealized. If this overview has been successful, it has spurred in you the hope that perhaps seeing the elephant is possible after all. Maybe—just maybe—we can resolve the foundational issues and move toward an authentic unified theory of psychology. But before embarking on describing the elephant in greater detail, it is crucial that we understand the major issues that have prevented it from being seen up until this point.
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Chapter 2
The Problem of Psychology
The 19th-century belief that psychology can be an integral discipline, which led to its institutionalization as an independent science, has been disconfirme on every day of the 112 years since its presumptive founding. When the details of that history are attended to, the patent tendency has been toward theoretical and substantial fractionation (and increasing insularity among the “specialties”), not toward integration. Moreover, there are many principled considerations that underline the futility of seeking theoretical, conceptual or even paradigmatic unification Sigmund Koch (1993, p. 902)
Sigmund Koch was one of the premier scholars of psychology. He devoted his formidable intellect to analyzing the discipline’s conceptual foundations and through intensive study he came to the conclusion that there simply was no elephant. In Koch’s estimation, psychology was not and could not be a single coherent discipline. Because his professional biography reveals an enormous amount about the deep and profound conceptual problems that underlie psychology, it is worth taking some time to recount here. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Koch was a rising star in psychological science, having authored, among other things, two major articles on the concept of motivation in the prestigious journal Psychological Review in 1941. Clark Hull’s behaviorism was at its apex, and it seemed to Koch and many others at the time that the mathematization of animal behavior was truly at hand. Psychology was finally on the cusp of becoming a true, precise, objective science. Yet, within a decade following World War II, this vision had dissolved into a mirage. Koch had come to see that “virtually every Hullian assumption, explanatory strategy, philosophical canon, and theoretical prescription [was] hopelessly wanting” (Robinson, 2001, p. 421). In 1952, during the period in which Koch was becoming increasingly disenchanted with positivism and behaviorism in psychology, he was given the charge by the American Psychological Association to direct and edit a large self-study of psychology, which ultimately resulted in the six volume, Psychology: A Study of a Science (Koch, 1959–1963). Although this opus
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_2,
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magnificentissimum—as one reviewer called it (Wertheimer, 1998)—was a brilliant compilation of the most exciting and groundbreaking research of the day, it nevertheless was becoming increasingly clear to Koch that, when viewed as a whole, the products of the discipline were severely limited, the conceptual organization was chaotic, and the direction of the field misguided. Why and how had psychology become so misguided? According to Koch, one of the primary reasons was that the historical relationship between psychological knowledge and the scientific method were inverted. Other sciences, like physics and chemistry and biology, won their independence and ultimately institutional status by achieving enough knowledge to become sciences. Crucially for Koch, the methods of these sciences were developed following initial leads of knowledge. The reverse is true for much of scientific psychology. He declared that “at the time of its inception, psychology was unique in the extent to which its institutionalization preceded its content and its method preceded its problems” (Koch, 1959–1963; cited in Leary, 2001, p. 426). Thus in a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, rather than its methods being tools to justify knowledge, scientific psychological knowledge was justified by the mere virtue of applying scientific methods. By 1956, Koch increasingly saw “the damage that has been wrought by the stereotype of science as some kind of inexorable bulldozer which carves out great, linear, ever-lengthening highways of truth” (Koch, 1956; cited in Leary, 2001, p. 426). Koch argued that the ultimate consequence of this core problem of blindly applying methods was a syndrome of ameaningful thought. “Ameaningful thought regards knowledge as an almost automatic result of a self-corrective rule structure, a fail proof heuristic, a methodology—rather than discovery. In consequence, much of psychological history can be seen as a form of scientistic role playing which, however sophisticated, entails the trivialization, and even evasion, of significant problems” (Koch, 1981, p. 257). In the same paper, Koch concluded that psychology was never effectively separated from philosophy, and although parts of it are scientific, it cannot be considered a coherent scientific discipline. Because it cannot be unified, it should instead be considered a collection of loosely related studies rather than a single coherent scientific field.
Psychology’s Philosophical Woes What led Koch to such a powerfully negative conclusion regarding the possibility of a unified, scientific psychology? There are a multitude of reasons, in addition to a naïve reliance on scientific methodology. The subsequent sections provide a brief review of five major problem domains identified by critics like Koch and many others. These are (1) problems of definition and subject matter; (2) problems in the philosophy of mind, brain, and behavior; (3) problems of epistemology, mission, and values; (4) problems of disconnected domains of causality; and (5) problems of proliferation. It is important to note that my treatment of these domains will not be comprehensive, as these conceptual problems could fill—and have—many
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volumes. The goal is to ensure that you have an appreciation of the nature, scope, and complexity of the theoretical, empirical, and moral issues that have pressed upon the discipline since its inception.
Problems of Definitio and Subject Matter Physics is defined as the science of energy and matter and their interactions. Biology is the science of life. So clear and universal are these definitions that they do not need citations. In contrast, defining psychology could not be more different. Consider that The Dictionary of Psychology offered the following “definition” under the term psychology: Psychology simply cannot be defined; indeed, it cannot even be easily characterized. . . Psychology is what scientists and philosophers of various persuasions have created to try to fulfill the need to understand the minds and behaviors of various organisms from the most primitive to the most complex. . .It is an attempt to understand what has so far pretty much escaped understanding, and any effort to circumscribe it or box it in is to imply that something is known about the edges of our knowledge, and that must be wrong. (Reber, 1995, p. 617)
Psychology has been variously defined as the science of consciousness, the science of the mind, the science of behavior, the science of mental processes and behavior, the science of the human soul, and the science of human behavior, among others. These different definitions do not even include the perspective of many like Koch who argue psychology is not properly considered a science, nor do they directly address the complicated issue regarding psychology as a healing profession and the place of practice relative to science. To get a clear sense of the depth of the confusion, consider the following paradox. Most current and past definitions of psychology have included the concept of mind in some form or another (Benjamin, Bryant, Campbell, Luttrell, & Holtz, 1997). And yet B. F. Skinner—a man rated by some as the single most eminent psychologist of the twentieth century (Haggbloom et al., 2002)—explicitly argued that psychology could never be a science of mind (Skinner, 1990). Even more paradoxically, Skinner’s anti-mentalism and exclusive focus on behavior was so strong that some prominent psychologists have questioned whether he should even be characterized as a psychologist (e.g., Kihlstrom, 2004). Given these rather embarrassing problems with definition, it is a little wonder why psychology has been characterized as the Rodney Dangerfield of the sciences (Stanovich, 2001). Intimately related to the problem of definition has been the problem of proper subject matter. Leahey (2003) noted that psychology was historically founded on three distinct subject matters: (1) consciousness by structuralists like Wundt and Tichener; (2) unconsciousness by psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung; and (3) adaptation by functionalists like Spencer and James. Shortly after the turn of the century, Watson (1913) rejected each of these perspectives and argued that a fourth subject matter, behavior, was the proper subject matter of psychology. As behaviorism
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gained prominence in America, the subject matter of psychology came to center on animal behavior, a fact well expressed by Tolman in his 1937 APA Presidential Address, when he remarked: [E]verything important in psychology (except such matters as the building up of a superego, that is everything save such matters as involve society and words) can be investigated in essence through the continued experimentation and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze. (1938/1978, p. 364)
In addition to emphasizing the focus on animal behavior, this quotation also nicely captures what clearly is missing from traditional behaviorism, namely matters of society and words. As will be made clear in my solution to the problem of psychology in Chapter 7, the relationship between animal and human behavior has simply gone unresolved in theoretical psychology, and it has been one of the major impediments to coherently defining the field. Behaviorism clearly specified psychology’s subject matter as being in the domain of the animal. But a problem emerged regarding where psychology met biology (a problem that remains to the present day, see Henriques, 2003b). Consider that in 1947 a university commission given the charge of identifying the place of psychology in an ideal university characterized the field as “the systematic study, by any and all applicable and fruitful methods, of organisms in relation to their behavior, environmental relations, and experience” (Gregg, 1947, p. 2). As this characterization suggests, the subject matter broadened so far down the phylogenetic scale that it became increasingly unclear where psychology left off and biology began. Along these lines Ryans (1938) wrote, “We might. . .make a preliminary statement to the effect that psychology studies animal behavior. . .[a]nd that statement will probably not be questioned unless it may be by the very logically minded person who calls to our attention the difficulty of drawing a line of demarcation between plant and animal life” (p. 68). In a related vein, Koch (1965) pointedly commented, “Anything so awesome as the total domain comprised by the functioning of all organisms can hardly be thought to be the subject matter of a coherent discipline” (p. 65). The behaviorist argument that psychology was the science of behavior began to show cracks in its edifice by the 1960s. Serious questions regarding the concept of behavior and the viability of logical positivism, the rise of information science accompanied by the strong arguments that behavioral principles could not account for symbolic language, and the increasing growth of the profession of psychology with its need to address human problems all contributed to the loosening of the behaviorist grip on the field (see Skinner, 1987). With these changes came shifts in what was considered the proper subject matter of psychology. By the 1970s and 1980s, with the ascendance of cognitive and humanistic approaches in full force, the subject matter shifted back to focus primarily on the mind and human behavior at the level of the individual. In summary, there are several unresolved problems regarding the definition of psychology and its proper subject matter. These problems include the following: (1) whether the discipline is about cognition, brain, conscious experience, or behavior (or all of these); (2) whether the discipline is concerned with animal behavior
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in general or just human behavior; and (3) whether the discipline is scientific or humanistic in nature (more on this question below). The American Psychological Association defined psychology as “the study of the mind and behavior. The discipline embraces all aspects of the human experience—from the functions of the brain to the actions of nations, from child development to care for the aged. In every conceivable setting from scientific research centers to mental health care services, ‘the understanding of behavior’ is the enterprise of psychologists” (APA, 2011). Consistent with an organization that has achieved unity via division (cf. Dewsberry, 1996), the definition reveals an awkward amalgamation of the unresolved issues.
Problems in the Philosophy of Mind and Behavior Although the defining characteristic of modern scientific psychology was the break with philosophy and the establishment of the discipline as an independent science, it should be clear by now that philosophical problems have always haunted the field. This is due in no small part to the fact that philosophers themselves have not resolved the foundational issues upon which the effective conception of a science of psychology rests. Consider that the well-known philosopher John Searle (2004) argued all of the major perspectives in philosophy of mind (including dualism, behaviorism, functionalism, materialism, cognitivism) are wrong. The first chapter in Searle’s book, A Dozen Problems in the Philosophy of Mind, includes sections on the mind– body problem, the question of animal minds, the problem of free will, the problem of the self/personal identity, and the problem of the unconscious. As should be readily apparent, these issues are directly relevant for the science of psychology. Later I will have more to say about how the unified theory defines mind and resolves long-standing philosophical confusions. Although there are many philosophical ambiguities associated with the concept of mind, in my research I discovered there is a crucial flaw in the concept of “behavior.” It turns out that the term behavior has two mutually exclusive meanings, and this has resulted in enormous confusion. Consider that sometimes the term “behavior” is used in a general sense, such as “movements that generate measurable effects.” This meaning is implicit in the opening line of Watson’s (1913, p. 158) behavioral manifesto, which reads, “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science.” Watson (1913) argued that by focusing on behavior, psychology becomes like other natural sciences because it is observable, measurable, and thus objective. Other times, however, the term behavior is used in a specific sense, such as “animal responses under the control of specific stimuli.” This variation in usage is problematic because it results in the term behavior being used in mutually exclusive ways. For example, sometimes the term is used to connect what psychologists study to what other “real” scientists study, as in “unlike those Freudian folks, we are a real science because we study and measure behavior.” Yet, sometimes the term is used in precisely the opposite manner. That is, the term behavior is used to differentiate what psychologists study from what other scientists’ study, as in “psychology is
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the science of behavior,” which is supposedly different from what biologists study. Thus the same term, behavior, is used to justify connection with other sciences in some circumstances and used to justify differentiation from other sciences in other instances. If the same term can be used for two mutually exclusive purposes, there is a problem with it. A bottom-up perspective clarifies the issues further. The most general definition of behavior is change in object–field relationship. From this understanding of the term behavior, we can see that all sciences are sciences of behavior. Physics is the science of the behavior of objects in general. Particle physicists study the behavior of very small (e.g., fermions) using quantum theory, and cosmologists study the behavior of very large (e.g., galaxies) using the theory of relativity (Greene, 1999). If it is agreed that physicists study behavior in general, then it logically follows that other scientists study the behavior of certain objects in particular. Chemists study the behavior of molecular objects; biologists study the behavior of living objects. This analysis highlights that there are obviously significant problems with defining psychology as “the science of behavior.” It is not the fact that animals behave that makes them unique—it is that they behave so differently from other objects. The key then becomes defining the subset of behaviors that psychologists study. Another major problem with the term behavior pertains to its relationship to consciousness. Sometimes behaviorists appear to reject the concept of consciousness outright. At various times, Watson and Skinner both argued that psychology should banish terms like mind, self, and consciousness. At other times, consciousness is interpreted as a kind of behavior. Skinner made this case explicitly, and frequently argued that consciousness experiences (e.g., when one is engaged in private dialogue or experiencing a toothache) clearly existed and were actually forms of behavior. He often characterized them as “early” forms of behavior and rather than claiming they did not exist, they were simply difficult to study because of their “covert” or private nature (e.g., Skinner, 1957). We will return to these issues in Chapter 7, where, with the help of the new macro-level map afforded by the ToK System and an articulation of Behavioral Investment Theory, I will outline my solution to schism between mentalists and behaviorists in a philosophical position I call mental behaviorism. Mental behaviorism specifies that the unique way in which animals behave should be labeled as “mental” and that this unique subset of behavior is the subject matter of the formal science of psychology.
Problems of Epistemology, Mission, and Values Which is a better window into the human condition, Hamlet or a scientific treatise on human personality? Is the primary task of psychology to uncover the laws of human and animal behavior or to promote human betterment? Is the better way of understanding the human change processes associated with psychotherapy through case study in rich detail or randomized controlled clinical trials with clearly defined disorders and treatment manuals? Some of the most philosophically vexing problems have been between those who embrace a relatively more scientific versus humanistic vision of the discipline.
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Early in the twentieth century, Vygotsky argued that the multiplicity of psychologies fell into two broad categories, one natural-scientific and the other descriptivephenomenological (Cahan & White, 1992). Staats (1983) similarly listed 14 epistemological schisms inherent in the field (e.g., focus on objective versus subjective; pure versus applied science; valueless science versus values in science) and broadly characterized the split as being between behavioristic and humanistic positions. Kimble (1984) empirically documented the presence of psychology’s scientific and humanistic cultures. He further showed that students of psychology tended to enter the field with a blend of scientific and humanistic justifications, yet established professionals tended to gravitate and hold values that were consistent with one end of the spectrum or another. Along these lines, Shealy (2005) observed: One of the problems for psychology is that we have yet to figure out how to integrate “science” and “humanism” in a way that is credible, recognizable, and compelling. Instead, the scientific theories we create, studies we construct, analyses we conduct, and findings we report are too often too far removed from whatever human phenomena they are designed to explain, predict, or control. . . [W]hen we subsequently “feed” such theories and findings to our students and trainees, they often leave the table feeling empty and dissatisfied, because the humanistic “food group” has been scientifically extruded from the main course; the reason being, if we put it on the plate along with everything else that our field has neatly prepared, we’re bound to have a mess at the table. (p. 83)
Psychologists currently run the gamut from strongly defending psychology as an objective natural science that is no different in kind from biology or physics to postmodernists who view psychological knowledge as almost entirely socially constructed rather than discovered, with a group Held (2007) called “middle ground theorists” who occupy an in-between position. A related (but also separate) domain of contention has been whether psychology’s core is fundamentally that of a science or a profession or both. Of all the various conflicts between paradigms and philosophies, the conflicts between psychological scientists and professional practitioners have been the most salient, the most politically charged, and have had the most impact on the institution of psychology. Unlike other disciplines, which explicitly separate the science from the professional application of scientific knowledge (e.g., physics and engineering; biology and medicine; sociology and social work), the same term “psychology” refers to both the science and the professional practice of the discipline. In fact, in direct contrast to many who have argued that science and practice are fundamentally different endeavors no matter what the topic, the Boulder model in clinical psychology explicitly yoked science and practice together in its now famous “scientist–practitioner” model of training. Similarly, in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, Fowler (1990) argued that both the science and the profession together represented the core of the discipline. And yet around the time of his address, in what was the latest manifestation of the institutional struggle between researchers and practitioners, the American Psychological Society (now the Association for Psychological Science) had recently formed, breaking away from APA because a large group of scientifically oriented psychologists felt there had been too much drift away from the science. Robert Sternberg and I argued that the split between scientists and professional practitioners stemmed from (a) political antagonisms, which arise in the context
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of incomplete and inaccurate knowledge and often result in devaluing the “opposing” side; (b) the inherent complexity in both accruing and applying psychological knowledge; (c) the disorganization in the science of psychology; (d) major historical figures who failed to appreciated the core distinction between the science and practice; and (e) the fact that psychology is a single term used to reference both the science and a profession (Henriques & Sternberg, 2004). We further argued that the profession should be separated from the science because its fundamental mission was prescriptive (i.e., it is the application of scientific knowledge toward desired ends, such as increasing human well-being). In summary, there are long-standing disputes within the field as to whether psychology is a scientific or humanistic enterprise, and whether its core identity is of a scientist devoted to uncovering knowledge or a practitioner devoted to the improvement of human well-being. In Chapter 7, I will explain how the new view afforded by the unified theory shows why psychology should be divided into three broad interrelated domains of psychological formalism, human psychology, and the profession of psychology, which correspond respectively to the natural scientific, social scientific, and humanistic branches of psychology.
Problems of Disconnected Domains of Causality Given the above discussion, it should come as no surprise that psychologists have struggled to develop effective, comprehensive models of psychological phenomena. Consider the following questions. Is animal behavior a function of brain, cognition, or environmental contingencies? Are personality traits or situational variables the key determinants of human action? Is intelligence more a function of genetic or environmental influence? Is depression a normal human reaction, a psychological disorder, or a biological disease? The lack of a generally agreed-upon meta-theoretical framework combined with the remarkably complex nature of the subject matter has had the predictable consequence of debates about psychological phenomena being characterized by opposing sides emphasizing one slice of causation to the relative exclusion of others. The problem is not that there are debates. Every discipline will have debates about the relative importance of various factors, and this is a healthy aspect of the quest for knowledge. However, what is frequently apparent in debates about psychological phenomena is captured by the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant. Theorists and researchers make claims about the essence and etiology of a particular psychological phenomena based on frames of understanding that are, at their roots, causally disconnected from one another. Behaviorally based contingency theories tend to be causally disconnected from cognitive theories, for example. Until the recent surge of interest in epigentics, behavior genetic theories have historically not been connected to environmental influences. Again, until recently, cognitive theories tended to be disconnected from neuroscience. Evolutionary biology and culture represent yet another set of disconnected causes. One striking example of this causal disconnection is the debate between
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evolutionary psychologists and social role theorists on the origin and nature of human sex differences. In an article titled, The Origins of Sex Differences in Human Behavior: Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles, Eagly and Wood (1999) examine the “stark contrast” between the two perspectives: In the origin theory proposed by evolutionary psychologists, the critical causal arrow points from evolutionary adaptations to psychological sex differences. Because men and women possess sex-specific evolved mechanisms, they differ psychologically and tend to occupy different roles. In contrast in the social structural origin theory, the critical causal arrow points from social structure to psychological sex differences. Because men and women tend to occupy different social roles, they become psychologically different in ways that adjust them to these roles. (p. 408)
Importantly, Eagly and Wood (1999) explicitly argue that the two perspectives are not simply reflective of different levels of analysis (e.g., biopsychological versus cultural), nor are the differences a function of a different focus on proximal (social roles) as opposed to distal (evolutionary) causation. Instead, they argue both perspectives incorporate various levels of analysis and proximal and distal vectors of causation. The perspectives have framed the nature and origin of those causes in mutually exclusive ways. This debate, which despite numerous arguments and empirical investigations remains pretty much in the same place as it started (e.g., Buss, 2007; Wood & Eagly, 2007), is a prototypical example of how inadequate theoretical frames lead to disconnected causal claims that should have been put together from the start to allow for a more complete causal whole. First, it seems readily apparent to a reflective observer of human sex differences that beliefs and expectations (i.e., collective justification systems) about sex and gender play an enormously important role in influencing the manner in which boys and girls and men and women behave. Whether one compares role changes within a culture (e.g., differences between expectations for men and women within the United States in 1950 versus 2000) or between cultures (e.g., Canada versus Saudi Arabia), it is clear that any relatively comprehensive account of human gender differences must have a frame for understanding the emergence and function of social roles (i.e., justification systems for gender-based behaviors). And, as theorists like Eagly and Wood (1999) have appropriately pointed out, despite their lip service to evoked culture, evolutionary psychological frames have generally been relatively limited in their emphasis and capacity to explain such marked cultural variation (for an exception see Boyd & Richardson, 1985). At the same time, one only needs an introduction to evolutionary lenses like sexual selection and parental investment theory and the briefest of cross-cultural surveys of sex differences in some areas, such as the tendencies to engage in uncommitted sexual activity (unsurprisingly, males tend to have lower thresholds), the tendencies to engage in physical competition (unsurprisingly, males engage in more competitive aggression), and tendencies to provide more parental care for offspring (unsurprisingly, females tend to invest more in offspring), to recognize that a safe assumption can be made that evolutionary selection pressures have shaped male and female psyches differently in at least some respects (Geary, 1998). What both
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evolutionary psychology and the social role theory fail to do is provide a coherent framework for linking these causal elements into a coherent explanatory whole. In direct contrast to these causally disconnected theoretical frameworks, the unified theory knits together the key insights offered by evolutionary theory, social constructionist theory, psychodynamic theory, behavioral, cognitive, and neuroscience, and many others into a consilient tapestry that effectively maps the elephant.
Problems of Proliferation One of the earliest experiences that sparked in me the quest for the elephant was the fact that there clearly had been a proliferation of perspectives in psychotherapy (e.g., over 400 separate treatment approaches had been identified in the 1990s). The differing viewpoints, although helpful in many ways, also creates a fog that prevents deeper understanding. It turns out that the problem of proliferation is pervasive, and it is one of the most complicated issues confronting the field. In a section on the problem of proliferation, it is appropriate to point out explicitly that the present work is not the first attempt to theoretically unify psychology. There have been a few others. Arthur Staats (1963, 1996), for example, devoted his career to the development of a unified theory of psychology. Called psychological behaviorism, his approach explicitly attempted to build bridges both within the various fields in behavioral science and between behaviorism and traditional approaches in psychology (e.g., social, cognitive, and personality). Staats described his work as an inter-level, inter-field theory that cut across the various aspects of the discipline and used simpler phenomena to explain more complex phenomena. Staats (1996) articulated how animals build basic behavioral repertoires throughout their development by learning to approach positive emotional stimuli and avoid negative emotional stimuli. His model will be revisited in the chapter on Behavioral Investment Theory, and I will articulate the parallels between his system and the unified theory. Staats used his model as a building block for more complex models of human cognitive phenomena, such as language, and thus linked behavioral theory with higher cognitive processes. A particularly impressive aspect of Staats’ approach was that he developed a research methodology that could be applied to many diverse areas. But as Staats (1999) himself acknowledges, his unified theory did not “heroically [ride] off into the sunset” (p. 5), effectively solving the discipline’s conceptual problems. As he experienced the difficulty his unified approach had in getting traction, Staats (1983) turned his attention to the institution and came to the conclusion that psychology has serious structural problems that prevent unification from occurring, even if it was theoretically possible. He saw that psychology had no institutional structure for considering unifying or integrating theories, nor any systematic way of evaluating them. Instead, the institutional infrastructure and research methodologies simply reward the creation of new scientific products, while completely failing to address the organization and consolidation of psychological knowledge. This structure has led to the problem of proliferation. A proliferation of terms, theories, methods, measuring instruments, therapies, experiments, paradigms, and empirical
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findings that exist not as an organized set of information, but as a buzzing confusing mass so huge and ominous that even if there were organizing ideas, they would not be found because everyone is intent on inventing a new concept or term to measure rather than building on existing knowledge. Staats (1991) put the problem of proliferation this way: Psychology has so many unrelated elements of knowledge with so much mutual discreditation, inconsistency, redundancy, and controversy that abstracting general meaning is a great problem. There is a crisis, moreover, because the disunification feeds on itself and, left unchanged, will continue to grow. (p. 899)
One can see the nature of the problem of proliferation clearly when we consider that one of the major goals of a mature science is to consolidate knowledge into core principles that provide the foundation for understanding. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are foundational ideas that organize our knowledge and do a wonderful job describing the behavior of the material universe. Likewise, genetics, natural selection, and cell theory all work together to give a relatively comprehensive understanding of biological phenomena. When we turn to psychology and ask for the foundational principles that allow us to understand psychological phenomena, we find a disorganized proliferation of paradigms, ideas, concepts, and terms and a complete absence of foundational insights that can organize the more specific inquiries of psychological scientists. Staats (1999) offered some bold potential solutions for the problem of proliferation. Most notably he suggested creating a reward structure that recognizes attempts to consolidate findings and perspectives into more parsimonious conceptual frames. He advocated, for example, that every APA journal devote a special issue to unifying key concepts and that universities develop specialized programs in theoretical and philosophical psychology that train psychologists about the problems of disunity and the changes that need to take place to move toward a more unified discipline. The suggestion has not been heeded, although during the past two decades the joint problem of fragmentation and proliferation has received substantially more attention than when Staats first articulated his systematic call regarding psychology’s crisis of disunity over two and a half decades ago. The preceding overview of the major problem areas in psychology has attempted to provide a survey of the deep and profound conceptual confusions that exist at the heart of the discipline. Given the current state of the field, Koch’s conclusion that psychology occupies a fuzzy space between scientific and humanistic enterprises (as well as between biology and the social sciences, see Bunge, 1990) and that any dreams of being a coherent science should be given up seems justifiable. Should psychologists all join Koch, agree that psychology is a loose collection of studies that can never be unified and retire for the day? No. One fact at least should give pause. When the discipline’s relationship to other fields is surveyed, a very interesting observation emerges, which is that psychology occupies a special place in the pantheon of human knowledge. Because of that special place, the deep questions that plague psychology turn out to be relevant for understanding all of human knowledge.
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Psychology on the Fault Lines of Human Knowledge Consider for a moment some of the most basic philosophical questions. For example, consider the question of ontology: What is real? Is the coke bottle on my desk real? Are the trees outside my window real? What about the pain from the slight cut on my finger? As one ponders these questions, they quickly give rise to the question of epistemology: How do I come to know things in the first place? With some reflection, it becomes clear that, at least to some extent, what is real for me depends in part on how I come to know things. Consider also the fact that although Cartesian substance dualism is not a viable philosophical stance, it remains the case that for Descartes the one truth that could stand up to even the most radical skepticism was the truth of his own self-consciousness, captured in his famous dictum I Think, Therefore I Am. The starting point for philosophy, then, is the experiencing, reflecting human individual, which turns out to be in the domain of human psychology. Psychology, then, must address the issue of human meaning making. To use some of the terminology from the end of the previous chapter, such meaning making depends on the particular background structures that exist in the individual. For example, my background structures allow me to experience and understand the Coke bottle on my desk in a particular way, yet different background structures would result in a different reality. This point was well made in the 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, which tells the story of the dramatic impact a Coke bottle dropped by a passing airplane had on an isolated tribe in the Kalahari Desert. The tribesmen interpreted the bottle as a gift from the gods, and the film tracked how that meaning permeated the tribe and impacted its members. The centrality of psychology to human knowledge is confirmed when we examine its place in relationship to other disciplines. Scholars of the discipline know that to dive into psychology is to dive into a whirlwind of thought that pulls one simultaneously toward the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Gordon Allport characterized the discipline of psychology as existing at the center of the major intellectual fault lines in human knowledge. A rather extensive quote from Allport (1960) gives a clear articulation of his view of the problem: According to a division commonly adopted, there are exactly four winds in the intellectual heavens, springing from the four basic provinces of research and learning—the [physical] sciences, the biological sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Have you ever thought before that it is in the territory of psychology, and only there, that all these four winds collide and run a tempestuous course? (p. 4, italics in original)
Allport continued to describe the relationship of psychology to the four intellectual winds in very human terms: From the [physical] sciences comes the colossal impact of scientific methodology. I suppose in the entire history of human thought there never was a case where one science has been bullied by another science as psychology is bullied by her elder sister science, physics. From the biological sciences [come] the evolutionary and organismal points of view without which psychology would still be scholastic in character. . .In many quarters. . .[biology has] threatened to push every vestige of humanism out, leaving psychology with a plague of rats.
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Social science is causing a tornado on its own. It refuses to blend amicably with natural and biological science, but claims mind pretty much as its own province for study. Mind, they insist, takes its form almost wholly in response to cultural demands. The last wind that blows into our storm center is gentler and less voracious. . .It is the wind of humanism. After all is said and done, it is philosophy and literature and not the natural, biological, or social sciences, that have fostered psychology throughout the ages. (Allport, 1960, pp. 4–5)
Allport’s sentiment that psychology occupies a unique and central position in contemporary knowledge systems was examined in great detail in a three volume publication, Psychology and Its Allied Disciplines (Bornstein, 1984), which explored psychology’s relationship with the three great branches of learning: the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. The work examines psychology’s relationship with twenty-two different disciplines, ranging from literature, religion, and philosophy in the humanities, to sociology, anthropology, and economics in the social sciences, to physics, biology, and mathematics in the natural sciences. In reflecting on the fact that psychology has its tentacles connected to each of the great branches of learning, Bornstein makes another very interesting and relevant observation, which is that the fragmentation of knowledge has grown tremendously since psychology’s inception as a discipline. He pointed out that although knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century was far from an Aristotelian vision of unity, it nonetheless was organized in a relatively coherent way. Moreover, the domains of knowledge were manageable enough such that talented individuals could contribute positively to advancing diverse aspects of the discipline. To demonstrate this point, he tracked three of psychology’s principal progenitors, Freud, James, and Wundt, and demonstrated how each had an appreciation for psychology’s connection to the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and how each man advanced thought in each of these major domains. The situation is markedly different today. After more than a century of data collection, the amount of material to be mastered even in relatively specific domains is tremendous. Generalists have thus given way to specialists, the age of grand theory has been pronounced dead, and reward in the discipline is provided to those with precise, empirical, and technical knowledge. Questions about how it all fits together are seen as quaint and quixotic, and time for such speculation is reserved for armchairs, drinks after work, or researchers after a career of uncovering hard won empirical findings. We are now in a place to define what I call the problem of psychology. The problem of psychology is the joint observation that the field cannot be coherently defined and yet it connects more deeply than any other discipline to the three great branches of learning. Taken together, these observations suggest that the problem of psychology is a profound problem in academia at large. This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that as psychology has lumbered along acquiring findings but not foundational clarity, the fragmentation of human knowledge has grown exponentially. All of this suggests that the question, “What is psychology?” is profoundly important, one of the central questions in all of philosophy. Asking the right questions is often the
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most important step in getting the right answer. My interest in psychotherapy integration ultimately led me to ask the question, “What is psychology?”. Although I had no idea at the time, it turns out that this is the right question. And, as startling as it sounds, because psychology connects to so many different domains, the correct answer to it opens up a whole new vision for integrating human knowledge. I have now laid out two different but related arguments setting up the problem and the need for a solution. On the one hand, it seems that we should be able to see the elephant. That is, psychologists should be able to develop a way to unite the various perspectives and paradigms into a more effective, coherent, holistic view of the human condition. On the flip side, there are an enormous number of complicated problems that have prevented this integrative approach from succeeding in the past. Part II of this book offers four chapters on the four pieces that together make up the unified theory. These pieces are broad conceptual frames that provide new ways for assimilating and integrating existing lines of theory and research. We turn now to the first piece of the unified theory, Behavioral Investment Theory, which offers a new view for understanding cognition, brain, and behavior.
Part II
The Four Pieces that Make Up the Unifie Theory
This is Blank Page Integra
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To do anything—locate food, fin a mate, reproduce, compose a sonata, solve an equation—you have to stay alive with enough surplus energy to perform the task at hand. Energy management drove the foundational adaptive design of all ancestral intelligence systems. All subsequent design features evolved as integrated augmentations of this core system—including the part that ultimately gives rise to your [conscious] mind. La Cerra & Bingham (2002, p. 4) R So there you are on the couch watching TV when an Oreo cookie ad activates in you a desire to get a glass of milk. It has been a long day, and you are feeling a little spent. A small calculation takes place—almost subconsciously—as you decide whether it is worth the effort to get up and pour yourself a glass. Finally, the thirst wins out. You pull yourself up and head over to the refrigerator. But scanning the contents you find no milk, resulting in a glance over at the trashcan, where you see the empty container. Feelings of irritation follow the interruption of your goal. The thought briefly enters your mind to head to the store, but it is quickly quashed—that would clearly require too much time and effort. You settle on a glass of orange juice, with mild feelings of annoyance. Behavioral Investment Theory frames animal behaviors in terms of invested work effort, specifically expenditures of time and energy calculated in terms of costs and benefits. Watch any nature show documenting animal behavior and either implicitly or explicitly the narration will include references to animals making cost-benefit calculations about their activities. The other day I was watching a documentary on waterholes in Africa. Water can become a scarce and valuable resource for many animals, especially migrating mammals. But hungry crocodiles, lurking just beneath the surface, often patrol the waterholes. This particular episode vividly documented wildebeests tentatively approaching the water, ready to jump back at the slightest hint of danger. In the actions of the wildebeests, you could see the value of the water being weighed against the risk of a crocodile attack. For an animal to survive and thrive, its actions must ultimately result in an overall positive return on its invested work effort. That is, it must ultimately acquire more workable energy and other necessary materials (i.e., particular chemicals) as a consequence of its behavior than the behavior costs. What mechanism allows animals
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_3,
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to calculate the costs of actions relative to the benefits? The short answer is the nervous system, which not only coordinates the behavior of the animal as a whole but also computes and predicts the values of certain behaviors relative to others. Framed as such, “the mind” (more on the meaning of this term later) is a decision-making system that calculates the value of the resources obtained and losses avoided, relative to the costs of spending the actions in the first place, the risks involved, and the value of other avenues of investment. The integrative potential of seeing the mind this way has been well articulated by Herb Gintis (2009), an economist who specializes in evolutionary biology and game theory. In some ways similar to the present work, he has attempted to develop a unified framework for the behavioral sciences, which for him includes economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and political science. He has argued that the central unifying principle underlying these disciplines is the view that the mind is a decision-making organ that calculates costs and benefits to arrive at choices. It is a formulation consistent with Behavioral Investment Theory.1 With its concept of investment explicit, Behavioral Investment Theory allows us to think about animal behaviors as a form of commerce with the environment. When we think of commerce, we think of spending something to receive something of value in return. In this case, it is the actions themselves that are spent—they cost the animal calories and time and, as was the case in the wildebeest example, often increase risk of injury or harm. Actions also can result in lost opportunities. If an animal is defending a territory, it is not finding food, and vice versa. Importantly, the famed radical behaviorist B. F. Skinner at one point characterized animal behavior as commerce (e.g., Skinner, 1938). Making the connection with behaviorism allows us to see one of the most important components of Behavioral Investment Theory, which is that the consequences the actions have shape the direction of future actions and allocations of mental resources. Think about this in monetary terms. If you purchase a shirt from a store only to have it come apart at the seams the first time you wear it, you are less likely to purchase that kind of shirt again. Likewise, if a fox spends time and energy hunting a skunk only to be sprayed with a noxious smelling substance, it will likely avoid such investments in the future. The behavioral investment framework also makes clear that different environmental affordances will result in different levels of work effort. Major affordances or major dangers result in intense work effort to be acquired or avoided, smaller affordances or risks less so. If you have been exposed to major events—and almost
1 It is worth noting that there are some important differences between Gintis’ (2009) formulation and the one offered here. One major difference is the dimensions of complexity argument depicted by the ToK System. Another is the notion that the human mind consists of two separate systems of computation, a behavioral investment system and a justification system. Thus, while as an economist Gintis advocates for the rational actor model, as a psychologist, I advocate more for a rational emotional actor model, a point that will be made clearer as the book progresses. Nonetheless, it is important to note—as I have attempted to do throughout this book—connections between the unified theory and other integrative approaches.
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all of us have been—you know how powerfully your investment system can become activated. When my son Jon started the first grade, he experienced some separation anxiety, and his despair at getting on the bus and going to school each morning made for a stressful couple of weeks during the beginning of the school year. One morning during this period I got up and noticed his door closed, which was surprising because he had been getting up early. When I went to wake him, and I found he was not in his bed. I called to my wife asking if he was downstairs, and she replied he was not. Upon hearing that, my whole system shifted into an enormously activated state. Images of him being kidnapped raced through my mind, as I went from room to room and he was nowhere to be found. Within a period of 20 seconds, I had gone from that sleepy feeling after just waking up to a state of intense panic, with blood coursing through my veins and my heart racing, as I ran through the house shouting for him. When he finally emerged tearfully from his hiding place underneath a blanket in his closet—after 2 minutes that felt like 20—relief poured through my body, and I had the strong desire to maintain proximity to him. To get a basic idea of how we make investment calculations, think of the parallels in the examples mentioned thus far. In each case, input was referenced against some valued goal state, and this resulted in calculated work effort to achieve a desired outcome. In the milk example starting the chapter, the commercial made salient thirst drives that were then referenced relative to the work effort to get up off the couch. In the wildebeest example, the value of the water was referenced against the risk of attack, resulting in tentative and vigilant movements toward the waterhole. In the example concerning my son, the input that he was gone was referenced against my love for him and concern for his safety, and I was filled with energy and impulses to work toward anything that would return him to me. With this basic understanding of Behavioral Investment Theory in mind, let me offer an outline for the remainder of this chapter. In the next section, I summarize the six foundational principles that together make up Behavioral Investment Theory. These six principles weave together key insights from the physical sciences, the biological sciences, and the various brain–behavior paradigms in an integrative manner that consolidates our knowledge. Although the principles are both commonly known and shared across several disciplines in animal behavioral science, Behavioral Investment Theory nevertheless is a novel proposal that can lead to new insights. After providing an overview of Behavioral Investment Theory, we then turn our attention to the concept of depression to show how it can help us define key constructs in human psychology. There have been other proposals for unifying the mind and behavioral sciences that have much in common with Behavioral Investment Theory, and in the subsequent section I provide an overview of four such proposals. The authors of these proposals include a learning theorist who attempted to construct a unified theory of psychology, a cognitive psychologist with an evolutionary focus on the origin of the mind, a humanistically oriented computational engineer, and an evolutionary neuroscientist. By reviewing these proposals I hope to provide a fuller sense of Behavioral Investment Theory, and simultaneously show how it consolidates knowledge by providing a foundational frame of reference that allows one to see clearly
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how perspectives that are traditionally disparate can be effectively joined. In the final section of the chapter, I offer an integrative schematic depicting the architecture of the human mind as operating on four levels of information processing: (1) sensory-motor; (2) operant experiential; (3) imaginative thought; and (4) linguistic justification. The emphasis in the schematic is on how the information processing components of human psychological systems function as a whole.
The Six Principles of Behavioral Investment Theory Behavioral Investment Theory consists of six foundational principles that are well established in the animal behavioral literature; however, they are often studied by different disciplines and paradigms that adopt different emphases and are often needlessly defined against one another or at the very least are disconnected from one another. As I review these principles, it is important to keep in mind that one of the primary advantages of Behavioral Investment Theory is that it consolidates knowledge and organizes disparate lines of thought into a coherent package that can be easily shared with broad application. The first principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the principle of energy economics, which is the notion that animals must, on the whole, acquire more workable energy from their behavioral investments than those behaviors cost. To explain this principle, I need to provide a little background on energy, entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics. Let’s start with energy. Energy is the most fundamental substance in the universe, and it can be thought of as the ultimate common denominator. Matter, for example, is chunked frozen energy. Although energy can change forms, one of the most fundamental laws in physics—sometimes referred to as the first law of thermodynamics—is that energy is always conserved and cannot be created or destroyed. Thus according to modern physics, the amount of energy in the universe today is exactly the same as it was at the time of the Big Bang. Physicists define energy in terms of the capacity to do work, and any complex system will have useful energy that can be directed to perform work, and useless energy that cannot be so directed. It is the complexity, order, and heat differentiation of a system that enables it to do work. In contrast, useless energy is random, disordered, and undifferentiated and cannot be directed to perform work. While the first law states that you cannot create or destroy energy, the second law of thermodynamics states that the availability of useful energy in a closed system (a system to which no new energy is added) will always decrease. This is why you can’t build a perpetual motion machine; eventually, the workable energy must run down. Entropy is a measure of randomness and disorder, and it can also be thought of as the measure of useless or unworkable energy in a system. Thus another way of stating the second law of thermodynamics is that the entropy of a closed system will always increase. To put these concepts in more concrete terms, think of a battery as a simple system that can do work. Energy went into constructing the battery, which resulted in the differentiation of charges. When a battery is being used, the flow of energy
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between the positive charge and negative charges produces potentially useful work. The battery also produces useless work in the form of heat, which is work that cannot be recaptured and redirected. Because of this essential fact, the battery will always become weaker—that is, its entropy will always increase—so long as no additional energy is added to the system. What does the second law2 have to do with animal behavior? Everything. Indeed, it has everything to do with biology in general. The reason is because living things exhibit an enormous amount of complex design and thus are very far from a state of thermodynamic equilibrium (or the state of maximum entropy). Thus, organic systems are intricately arranged in a manner that allows them to fend off the tendency toward randomness. At least until they die. Indeed, the decomposition that occurs following death is a testament to the pressures and powers of entropic processes. The complex functional design in organisms does not represent a violation of the second law because organisms are not closed systems. They import energy to maintain their ordered, differentiated, complex state. The process by which energy is acquired and distributed to fend off entropic decay can be considered one of the fundamental problems in biological design (e.g., Schrödinger, 1967). La Cerra (2003) points out that what is true of biology is true of animal behavior as well. That is, as extensions of biological systems, neuro-behavioral systems must also be organized in a manner that allows them to solve the adaptive problem of entropy. La Cerra’s model of the evolution of intelligence systems is based on this fundamental point and she describes the relationship well. She explains Plants are autotrophs, self-nourishing life forms. . .Because they are stationary, the resources plants require for photosynthesis must be available locally. Animals, on the other hand, are heterotrophs, life forms that depend on the consumption of plants, animals, or both in order to meet their bioenergetic requirements. Evolution has conferred upon animals the adaptive advantage of behavior—which enables them to forage for resources that are not locally available, to find shelter in order to conserve heat, and to otherwise manage energy in an effective manner. But there is a cost for this benefit: behavior itself requires energy. Consequently, animals have evolved intelligence systems that function, fi st and foremost, as predictive bioenergetic cost/benefi analysis systems. (pp. 442–443)
In other words, the capacity for movement was a great new advantage for animals but it also came at a cost in terms of energy expenditure. Because of the nature of energy economics, a fundamental principle of animal behavior is that the ratio of benefits acquired to costs incurred must, on the whole, be positive or else the animal will perish. La Cerra’s (2003) article was titled The First Law of Psychology Is the 2 The fundamental nature of the second law was well captured in a famous quotation by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1929):
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
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Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is a clever, alternative way of articulating the principle of energy economics. Can we apply these insights in a manner that makes predictions? Yes. To offer just one example, a prediction from this analysis is that animals—given their knowledge and capacities—will spend the least amount of behavioral energy necessary to achieve the desired outcome. Think about this in terms of every day actions. When you are walking to class or heading to the store, you don’t wander haphazardly in the general direction of where you want to go. Instead, you subconsciously calculate the least costly path to get to your destination. And when you look for them, you see that conservation of energy principles are omnipresent in animal behavior. For example, there is a powerful line of research in behavioral ecology called optimal foraging theory which shows how animals are exquisitely sensitive to assessing costs of foraging behavior relative to the risks of their behavior and the calories acquired from successful hunts. To offer an example from that line of research, Richardson and Verbeek (1987) studied crows foraging on clams in the intertidal and noticed that they left quite a few clams behind after digging them up. A question arises from a Behavioral Investment Theory perspective. If they go to the trouble of digging them up in the first place why not eat them? Researchers noted that it was the small clams that the crows left behind and discovered that the answer to this question lies in handling time, which is the time it takes for the crows to open the clam. If the animal is assumed to be making behavioral investments so as to obtain a maximum return on energy and nutritional intake, a simple calculation can be performed that determines whether the gain of opening a small clam is optimal relative to the gain of opening a large clam plus the search and handling time. Richardson and Verbeek (1987) generated such a calculation and came up with a prediction for the percentage of clams eaten as a function of size that is remarkably similar to what the crows were observed to be doing. They were leaving small clams behind because the ratio of handling energy to energy consumed was less than that could be achieved by searching for a larger clam. Hundreds of similar types of analyses have been conducted on animal foraging patterns, all consistent with the basic Behavioral Investment Theory framework. Indeed, the principle of energy economics has long been identified in various ways by a number of scientists. One of the clearest articulations was put forth by the economist George Zipf (1949) in Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. The principle of least effort, defined by Zipf, means that a person will strive to solve his problems in such a way as to minimize the total work he must expend in solving both his immediate problems and his probable future problems. That in turn means that the person will strive to minimize the probable average rate of his work expenditure (over time). And in so doing he will be minimizing his effort. (italics in original) (p. 1)
Others have noted similar generalities in animal behavior. Gengerelli (1930) outlined the principle of minima and maxima in animal learning, which he stated was the fact that “The behavior of an organism elicited by a given situation which affords
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relief to an internal need tends, with repetition, to approach, in terms of [energy expended] the minimal limit compatible with the relief of that need.” In Principles of Behavior, the Clark Hull developed the law of less work, which he articulated as follows: “If two or more behavior sequences, each involving a different amount of work, have been equally well reinforced an equal number of times, the animal will gradually learn to choose the less laborious behavior sequence leading to the attainment of the reinforcing state of affairs” (Hull, 1943, p. 294). These are all equivalent descriptions of the first general principle of Behavioral Investment Theory. The second principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the evolutionary principle. Whereas the first principle articulates the basic physical laws that must be operating for organisms in general and mental systems in particular to operate in and on the physical universe, the second principle is a statement of the processes by which these systems were built across the generations. The evolutionary principle of behavioral investment can be stated as follows: Genes that tended to build neuro-behavioral investment systems that expended behavioral energy in a manner that positively covaried with inclusive fitness were selected for, whereas genes that failed to do so were selected against. Thus, inherited tendencies toward the behavioral expenditure of energy should be a function of ancestral inclusive f tness. This is a fairly standard evolutionary or neo-Darwinian formulation. Inclusive fitness is a term that is examined in greater detail in the chapter on the ToK System, when the unified theory is compared and contrasted with Edward O. Wilson’s approach to unifying knowledge. Inclusive fitness is the term neo-Darwinian theorists use to refer to the totality of genetic material reproduced in the subsequent generations, and as will be explained later it means that we need to keep the reproductive success of kin in mind when we are thinking about selection pressures. The word ancestral is also important. It emphasizes the fact that evolution is neither a forward looking nor an intentional process; we are not designed to spread our genes. If we were, we would behave very differently. If my primary purpose in life was to leave as many genetic copies behind as possible, I would spend much more of my time at sperm banks and in other such adventures. Instead, our genetically endowed behavioral propensities are a function of the selection pressures of previous generations, what is commonly called the environment of evolutionary adaptation. That means that if the environment changes rapidly (i.e., within a few generations), there will likely be a mismatch between evolved behavioral predispositions and current environmental challenges. For example, it makes sense that we have strong preferences for rich, high calorie, fatty foods given the relative scarcity of such food during the Stone Age. But now that there is a McDonalds on almost every street corner in America, such preferences can easily result in maladaptive eating patterns (Allman, 1994). It is now clear that the early grand theorists like Skinner, Freud, and Rogers did not effectively incorporate modern evolutionary theory into their frameworks. Although they were all strongly influenced by Darwin’s theory, they did not systematically or accurately attend to the nature by which evolutionary forces would have fashioned the behavioral investment system. This is not terribly surprising because the modern evolutionary synthesis became well known after they had developed
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their primary insights. Nevertheless, it is a significant weakness in each of the grand theorists’ models. Evolutionary psychologists like David Buss, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, and Steven Pinker have made valuable contributions to human psychology by examining mental architecture in the light of modern evolutionary theory. We now know evolutionary processes have played a tremendous role in shaping the backbone of our neuro-behavioral investment system. That is, as a consequence of evolutionary forces, we are predisposed to respond to certain stimuli and prepared to learn certain associations. Recall the example of my reaction to my son Jon’s temporary disappearance. The reaction was visceral, automatic, and reflected the basic architecture of my mammalian mental structure. The third principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the principle of genetics, which is the notion that genetic differences result in differences in behavioral investment systems. Research conducted in the field of behavioral genetics has demonstrated conclusively that a wide variety of different mental characteristics such as general intellectual abilities, personality traits like extraversion and conscientiousness, and susceptibility to various mental diseases like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism have a heritable component. Although the principle of genetics (which could also be called the principle of heredity) relates to the principle of evolution, it is important to be clear why they are quite separable. The principle of evolution is about the phylogeny of mental behavior, which refers to the various selection pressures that have operated across previous generations to shape the general architecture of the behavioral investment system. In contrast, the principle of genetics is about the genetic ontogeny of mental behavior, which is how the particular genetic combination formed at conception influences the development of the individuals’ particular behavioral investment system. Thus, whereas the principle of evolution is intergenerational and applies to the species-level analyses, the principle of genetics is intragenerational (within the lifetime of the animal) and addresses individual differences. Figure 3.1 makes the relationship and difference between the
Fig. 3.1 The relationship between phylogeny and ontogeny
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principle of evolution (distal causation) and the principle of genetics (which is a component of proximal causation) clear. One additional point that needs to be made about the principle of genetics is that it is now clear that our genetic systems are not nearly as static as was once believed by most researchers. The historical conception has been of genetic programs unfolding to build organisms, with the causal arrow being pretty much one way. Research in developmental biology and other disciplines has now made clear that environmental events switch genes on and off (Oyama, 2000) and there are constant iterative forces between genes and the environment. Thus in many ways, the life of all organisms, even plants and organisms like bacteria, is a function of a transaction between the genetic system and the environment in a way that is far more fluid and bidirectional than is often supposed. The fourth principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the computational control principle and represents the central insight from cognitive (or computational) neuroscience, which is the idea that the nervous system is the organ of behavior and that it functions as an information processing system. Although now in common knowledge, it is important to recall that the notion that the nervous system is the organ of behavior represents a fairly recent discovery in the larger span of cultural history. The nervous system’s role in animal behavior had been suspected at least since the time of the Greeks, and Descartes’ (1596–1650) conception of animal and human behavior clearly involved the brain and nervous system. However, it wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that it became clear that the nervous system consisted of cells, and it wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that consensus on how the nervous system functioned via networks of neural cells that could communicate via electrical impulses across synapses was achieved (Churchland, 1986). This understanding of the structure of the nervous system combined with advances in information science to result in the computational theory of mind, which is the idea that the nervous system is an information processing system that works by translating physical and chemical changes in both the environment and in the body into neuronal patterns of information that represent the animal–environment relationship and compute action based on those representations. Consider, for example, when you see the color red what is actually happening is electromagnetic waves are entering through the lens of your eye and falling on the retina, which consists of various neural receptor cells (rods and cones) that respond to different physiochemical energy patterns. Your experience of red is a virtual world generated by patterns of neural firing. Red per se does not exist in the outside world, but instead is one of the ways your mind/brain system represents the world. Although I chose the example of “red” so that you could see the relationship between physical information and mental representation, most of the information processed by the nervous system is not conscious. Cognitive scientists often differentiate conscious and nonconscious processes as explicit versus implicit. It is clear that most of the information processing that takes place is implicit; explicit processing is just the tip of the iceberg. Many studies utilizing a wide array of paradigms and methodologies clearly document the large number of implicit processes that are occurring as an individual experiences and considers her situation.
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One compelling line of investigation clearly demonstrating the existence of implicit processing comes from neuroscience and is the example of blindsight (Weiskrantz, 1997). When the occipital lobe of the brain is severally damaged, an individual will lose all experience of sight. However, neuropsychologists discovered that even though patients report being completely blind, if asked to take a guess they nonetheless can accurately identify the location of an object placed on one side of the room or another. The reason is because certain implicit, visual processing tracts in the thalamus are still working. The control portion of the computational control principle is crucial, and in the section on the architecture of the human mind I will offer a schematic of the human mental system as a control system. The fifth principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the learning principle, and it pertains to how animal behavior evolves during the course of an animal’s lifetime. In addition to the remarkable capacity for coordinated and purposeful movement, one of the most striking and well-documented aspects of animal behavior is the extent to which it is responsive to the changing demands of the environment over time. Animals learn to allocate their behavioral investments depending on the contingencies to which they are exposed. Processes of natural selection built the nervous system in a manner that allows it to be shaped by experiences. Although there are certainly some animal behaviors that are relatively fixed and hardwired, it is also the case that virtually all animals show some basic capacity to alter their responses to different contingencies, with some animals demonstrating remarkable flexibility in their behavioral repertoires. In describing how genes might build neuronal learning mechanisms, Richard Dawkins (1989) offered the following colorful description: One way for genes to solve the problem of making predictions in rather unpredictable environments is to build in the capacity for learning. Here the program may take the form of the following instructions to the survival machine: “Here is a list of things defined as rewarding: sweet taste in the mouth, orgasm, mild temperature, smiling child. And here is a list of nasty things: various sorts of pain, nausea, empty stomach, screaming child. If you should happen to do something that is followed by one of the nasty things, don’t do it again, but on the other hand, repeat anything that is followed by the nice things”. The advantage of this sort of programming is that it greatly cuts down the number of detailed rules that have to be built into the original program; and it is also capable of coping with changes in the environment that could not have been predicted in detail. (Dawkins, 1989, p. 57)
The learning principle can be stated succinctly as follows: behavioral investments that effectively move the animal toward animal–environment relationships that positively covaried with ancestral inclusive fitness are selected for (i.e., are reinforced), whereas behavioral investments that fail to do so are selected against and extinguished. A somewhat less formal way of stating the learning principle is the pleasure pain parallel f tness principle. In this formulation, pleasure (which includes all positive emotions) is nature’s way of tagging benefits, whereas pain (which includes all negative emotions) is nature’s way of tagging dangers and losses. The term fitness in this context has two meanings: one phylogenetic and the other ontogenetic. In the phylogenetic or evolutionary sense, it refers to the unconditioned or primary reinforcers that have been built into the system at the genetic level. In the ontogenetic or developmental sense, it refers to how pleasure and pain function to
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guide the animal to approach certain outcomes and avoid others and in the process acquire new behavioral repertoires. This relationship is explored in greater detail when discussing Arthur Staats’ three function learning theory later in the chapter. The foundational insight underlying the learning principle dates back to Thordike’s Law of Effect; however, it was Skinner who saw clearly how crucial the process of behavioral selection was to understanding virtually all complicated animal behaviors. Although Skinner’s radical behavioral philosophy was misguided because it falsely separated external from internal determinants (and tended to negate the latter), his notion of behavioral selection was a crowning intellectual insight and is foundational to all aspects of higher learning. Although most in psychology associate Skinner with concepts like reward and punishment, the idea of behavioral selection is really much more nuanced. The essence of Skinner’s behavioral selection paradigm is that animals vary in the behaviors they emit, these varying behaviors have different consequences, and those consequences play a determinative role in the frequency, intensity, and duration of behaviors in the future. Most introductory psychology students learn about Skinner in terms of behavior modification. An educational example might be if a child is given a sticker for staying in their seat, they are more likely to stay in their seat in the future. While this is both true and helpful, I find the nature of behavioral selection to both be clearer and more compelling when I consider the manner in which I am constantly interacting with the environment and how closely and immediately my behaviors are tied to consequences. For example, here I am typing away at my computer. When I hit a key, a consequence is a letter appears on the screen. My typing behavior is directly tied to this consequence. Consider what would happen, for example, if when I punched the key, no letter would pop up. First, I would likely push harder on the letters, and also vary which keys I hit. If those behaviors did not change the outcome, my typing behavior would quickly extinguish, and I would initiate another pattern of behavioral investment, like searching to see if the keyboard had come unplugged. The point here is that the letters on the computer screen are reinforcing my typing behavior, and if that reinforcer stops occurring, my typing behavior quickly alters. Fine-grained analyses of the relationship between actions and consequences are where you can see the magic of behavioral selection. Unfortunately, Skinner’s paradigm is often taught in a very blunt way, with examples of how things like candy, money, or blame might shift someone’s behavior. In actuality, we are constantly being shaped by the processes of behavioral selection. Moreover, many students don’t realize that Skinner cared quite a lot about private thoughts and feelings; he just conceptualized them as forms of behavior. Either overtly or covertly we are constantly emitting a variety of mental behaviors, which in turn produce various internal or external consequences that either reinforce or extinguish future actions. In short, the behavioral selection paradigm helps us see clearly the way consequences shape the evolution of mental behavior. The sixth and final principle of Behavioral Investment Theory is the developmental principle, which states that there are various genetically and hormonally regulated life history stages that require and result in different behavioral investment
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strategies. To provide a personal example, consider that when I was in the sixth grade most all of my friends were other boys, and I had little more than a passing interest in the opposite sex. By the time I was in the eighth grade, my investment value system had shifted dramatically, and much of my waking time was spent in daydreaming about possible encounters with girls I knew. What happened to make the shift? Was it that suddenly girls were interested in me, and I found such attention reinforcing? No, I can state with confidence that there had been little shift in the external patterns of reinforcement. Instead, what had happened was a cascade of hormonal releasers had dramatically shifted the basic structure of my investment value system; I had shifted into a new developmental stage called puberty. LaCerra and Bingham (2002) describe in detail how animal behavioral investment systems—what they call intelligence systems—are structured in a developmentally sequenced way. They refer to such developmental structuring as the Life History Regulatory System (LHRS) and characterize it as follows: In addition to bottom line maintenance, life has an agenda of higher-order, sequential goals—major construction projects such as development, sexual maturation, and reproduction—that have to be scheduled. The agenda for this is in your genes—but it is flexible. These projects can’t be launched without taking your individual life and your environmental circumstances into account. They’re energy-expensive projects, and the LHRS is a strategic manager. It makes energetic trade-offs, allocating energy among competing goals. (La Cerra & Bingham, 2002, p. 25)
These six foundational principles of (1) energy economics, (2) evolution, (3) genetics, (4) computational control, (5) learning, and (6) development make up Behavioral Investment Theory, which in turn provides a unified, holistic framework for understanding animal behavior. It is important to note that this framework is very consistent with the work of Niko Tinbergen. Tinbergen was an ethologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine with Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch for advances in the science of animal behavior. Tinbergen is well known for his work on fixed action patterns, which are fairly automatic ways animals respond to particular stimulus triggers. He is probably most famous for his framework of approaching animal behavior through “the four questions,” which are as follows: (1) What are the mechanisms underlying animal behavior and how is the behavior elicited in relationship to recent learning? (2) What is the function of behavior in terms of survival and reproduction? (3) How did the behavior develop during the animal’s life time? (4) How did the behavior evolve over the generations? I hope it is apparent to those familiar with Tinbergen’s scheme that the principles of BIT correspond quite closely with the four questions. The principle of evolution corresponds directly with Tinbergen’s fourth question. The principle of energy economics provides a conceptual framework to understand the ultimate function of behavior corresponding to the second question. The principles of learning and computational control correspond to question one. Finally, the principle of development corresponds to question three. The only principle that does not directly line up with Tinbergen’s four questions is the principle of behavioral genetics, which essentially cuts across the four questions, in some ways binding them. Given this overlap, it seems possible that some scholars who are familiar with animal behavioral research will consider the principles specified by Behavioral
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Investment Theory as being well known. This criticism was indeed raised by Goertzen (2008, p. 841) who, although agreeing with the essence of Behavioral Investment Theory, added “I would go as far as to say that BIT is not exactly unique (or at the very least, is not overly surprising).” This raises the question of whether Behavioral Investment Theory is really necessary. Does it genuinely add anything to our current understanding? Yes, but let me first acknowledge that there is some truth to this criticism. For even if they are not explicit, many researchers in neuroscience, comparative psychology, ethology, behavioral ecology, and related disciplines already adopt similar foundational principles in their approach to animal behavior. Consequently, I imagine that the initial response of many animal behavioral researchers to Behavioral Investment Theory could well be, “Of course, there is nothing new here.” So what makes Behavioral Investment Theory valuable? In a nutshell, it provides a much needed consolidation across various domains of inquiry. This consolidation is crucial in two ways, one being epistemological and the other being in terms of intra- and inter-disciplinary communication. Epistemologically, Behavioral Investment Theory spells out a core of agreement and builds bridges between extant theoretical perspectives and consolidates existing knowledge. It achieves this consolidation better than previous approaches by virtue of the fact that it exists as part of the unified theory. In so doing, it plays a crucial role in a larger theoretical system that defines biology in relationship to psychology and psychology in relationship to the social sciences in a manner that allows the continuous and discontinuous aspects of the relationships between organisms (biology), animals (psychology), and humans (social sciences) to be made. The second and related advantage of Behavioral Investment Theory is communication. As a clinical psychologist, I can confidently state that many professional psychologists are unaware of theoretical and empirical research programs in animal behavior. Sociobiology, ethology, behavioral ecology, and comparative psychology are distant disciplines that my colleagues in professional psychology tend to know little about. This is a shame because humans are, of course, animals, and any general principle about animals should also apply to humans. I believe Behavioral Investment Theory provides a simple way of communicating the key principles of animal behavior in a way that those who study and work with humans will be able to appreciate. To demonstrate the potential it has for linking an integrative frame for animal behavioral science with human problems, I will articulate how the logic of Behavioral Investment theory can help elucidate a better understanding of one of the most important constructs in clinical psychology and psychiatry, depression.
Applying the Insights of Behavioral Investment Theory: The Behavioral Shutdown Model of Depression This section applies Behavioral Investment Theory to the construct of depression, which is an issue of tremendous public health importance. The World Health Organization currently ranks depression as the fourth largest contributor to the global burden of disease and estimates it will rank second by 2020. Epidemiological
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studies conducted in the United States have documented that depressive disorders are common. The estimate of lifetime prevalence of clinical depression is between 15 and 25% with higher rates for women and minorities (Gonzalez, Tarraf, Whitfield, & Vega, 2010). The 1-year prevalence of Major Depressive Disorder and dysthymia (a milder, but more chronic condition) among community residents is estimated to be approximately 10%, with an additional 11% of the population having significant subclinical symptoms (Zhang, Rost, & Fortney, 1999). These estimates suggest that in the United States alone, approximately 30 million people suffered from a depressive disorder and another 33 million suffered from substantial depressive symptoms in the past year. Research has demonstrated that depressive disorders are associated with difficulties in both biophysical and psychosocial functioning. MDD is associated with suicide and higher mortality rates in general, missed work, cognitive processing difficulties, and difficulties in social functioning. The direct and indirect costs associated with MDD in the US are estimated to be over $36 billion dollars annually, similar to costs associated with coronary heart disease (Hirschfeld et al., 1997). Thus, depression is a major public health issue. And yet, despite its widespread importance and the enormous amount of research that has gone into the construct, there remains—as is the case with so many different concepts in psychology and psychiatry—significant debate regarding the precise nature of depression. As Ingram and Siegle note (2002, p. 87): The label “depression” has been used to discuss a mood state, a symptom, a syndrome. . . , a mood disorder, or a disease associated with biochemical or structural abnormalities. Although we may be tempted to ask, “Will the real depression please stand up?” the fact is that each of these constructs can legitimately lay claim to the term depression. Thus, depression is a construct that can mean very different things, which has important implications for decision making in research.
To get a flavor for why depression might mean different things to different researchers and how those different meanings might carry different sociopolitical implications, imagine two different television commercials. The first begins with an attractive woman isolating herself at a party. Everyone else appears to be having a good time, yet she stands in the background, ostensibly gripped in the throes of a seemingly inexplicable sadness. The cultural milieu is of upper middle class suburbia. A soft voice inquires and informs, “Have you experienced periods of depressed mood? Have you lost interest in things you used to enjoy? Do you feel tired, guilty, ineffective, or hopeless? Depression is an illness. Ask your doctor about new antidepressant treatments available.” The implicit message of this commercial is clear. When people are suffering from depression, something has gone wrong with the physiology of the brain. Now imagine a different commercial. This one begins with an impoverished woman getting slapped by her husband. Her three children are having difficulties in school. Her husband controls her, and she has little in the way of social support. She recently immigrated to the United States and cannot get a job because she only speaks a little English. She frequently faces prejudice and racism. The voice overlay asks, “Have you been feeling down or depressed, guilty or hopeless? Have you
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lost interest in things you usually enjoy? Depression is an illness. Ask your doctor about new antidepressant treatments available.” Somehow the “depression as disease” message in this commercial is less convincing. As these two vignettes illustrate, different portrayals can lead to radically different notions regarding the nature of depression. Yet how depression is conceptualized is critically important because the theoretical paradigms that guide our understanding of the condition influence public opinion, health policies, treatment strategies, and research. A Major Depressive Episode (MDE) is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) as the presence of five out of nine psychological and behavioral symptoms (depressed mood, anhedonia, agitation or retardation, fatigue or low energy, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, thoughts of death, change in appetite/weight, sleeping difficulties, and diminished ability to concentrate) every day for a period of 2 weeks. The prevailing model in psychiatry is that MDD is a disease of the brain (Judd, 1997), and there are, of course, good reasons for this position. In addition to the fact that depressive disorders are associated with difficulties in psychosocial functioning and higher mortality rates, neuroimaging studies have shown differences in the activity of the prefrontal cortex, the basal ganglia, the amygdala-hippocampus complex, and the thalamus in the brains of depressed individuals. Differences in the neuro-endocrine systems of depressed individuals have also been well documented. Additionally, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are some of the most effective treatments for reducing depressive symptoms (see Krishnan & Nestler, 2010, for a recent review). Taken together, such findings form an impressive body of knowledge demonstrating that depressive disorders are associated with difficulties in functioning, that there are differences in the brain activity and brain chemistry of depressed individuals, and that psychopharmacological treatments are effective in reducing depressive symptoms. And yet, despite these important findings, neurophysiological causal models of depression remain elusive. One possible reason for this failure is how depression is being conceptualized. When viewed as a disease, the psychological and behavioral symptoms that result in a diagnosis of MDD are generally assumed to be the product of neurophysiological dysfunctions. As such, differences in brain chemistry and/or brain activity between depressed individuals and controls are generally taken as evidence of brain pathology. However, it is important not to make a correlation– causation error when interpreting findings of associations between depression and psychosocial problems or physiological differences. A diagnosis of MDD is made on the presence of psychological and behavioral symptoms alone, not on etiology. The correct interpretation of the above findings is that depressive symptoms are correlated with difficulties in psychosocial functioning and differences in brain functioning. To infer that “depression” is the causal process underlying these difficulties requires one to make assumptions that are, at the very least, debatable. As is anecdotally illustrated by the second imaginary commercial, there are reasons to believe that depressive symptoms are often a reaction to difficulties in functioning. As will be argued below, it seems likely that depressive symptoms are both a cause and a consequence of difficulties in functioning in modern society.
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Given this background, let’s think about depression from the vantage point of Behavioral Investment Theory. The logic of Behavioral Investment Theory suggests that many instances of depression can be conceptualized as passive, avoidant behavioral strategies activated in response to situations that are chronically dangerous, humiliating, or repeatedly result in failure to achieve one’s goals. Thus, instead of always being a result of biological malfunction, depression may instead reflect the basic structural design of the way the behavioral investment system operates, which is that animals will shut down when their behavioral investments consistently fail to effectively result in change. Let me explain. Recall that, based on the principle of energy economics, Behavioral Investment Theory posits that mental behavior can be thought of as the process of expending energy or working in order to control and structure the animal–environment relationship, and that animals are disposed to expend energy in a way that corresponded to their ancestor’s survival and reproductive success. Control of larger territories, access to better food, higher social status, etc. are obviously advantageous. However, the behavioral investment needed to acquire and maintain these resources can be expensive. It costs energy both in terms of basic calories and in terms of increasing risk of injury and loss. Resources are frequently not available or cannot be acquired, which means behavioral investments are fruitless. Additionally, competition over valuable resources can be fierce, often resulting in injury. This analysis corresponds to the energy economics principle of behavioral investment. But what does this principle have to do with depression? Thinking of behavior being calculated on a cost-to-benefit ratio suggests that animals can maximize the ratio either by increasing benefits or by decreasing costs. Increasing benefits is associated with actively acquiring some resource (food, sex, status) in the environment via behavioral investment. The individual’s state of actively working to increase benefit can be described as desire. Decreasing behavioral investment can also be a way in which animals deal with the cost-to-benefit ratio. There are many examples of behavioral shutdown mechanisms in nature, such as sleep, hibernation, and exhaustion, which function to decrease behavioral expenditure and conserve energy when resources are relatively scarce. Broadly speaking, behavioral shutdown should result if an animal is consistently getting a poor return (i.e., high costs, little benefit) from its behavioral investment. That is, if an animal is spending eight behavioral units and only getting back four units of value, then that is a bad ratio. If it tries everything in its behavioral repertoire yet the ratio remains the same, a “best in a bad situation” solution is to decrease the amount of the behavioral investment in an effort to reduce net loss. It is better to expend two and get back one unit over the same period of time than the eight to four ratio previously obtained. This understanding gives rise to the Behavioral Shutdown Model which suggests that depression arises out of an evolved tendency to decrease behavioral expenditure in response to chronic danger, stress, or consistent failure to achieve one’s goals (see also Beck, 1999a; Gilbert, 1998; Nesse, 2000). Put slightly different, according to the Behavioral Shutdown Model, we should think about depression as a state of behavioral shutdown.
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The Behavioral Shutdown Model offers a potential explanation for many features of depression. For example, it strongly predicts that depression should be more likely to occur in situations that are chronically dangerous, humiliating, or repeatedly result in failure to achieve one’s goals. These are circumstances in which the cost-to-benefit ratio is the worst and therefore the most effective strategy is to reduce costs. Consistent with this prediction, situations in which the individual feels chronically trapped or humiliated are most likely to produce symptoms of depression. To give just one example, almost 50% of battered women are depressed (Golding, 1999). There is also strong evidence that the onset of many Major Depressive Episodes are preceded by major stressful life events. Also consistent with the Behavioral Shutdown Model, rates of MDD vary with socioeconomic status. Those individuals in the lowest quartile of socioeconomic status are almost twice as likely to be depressed compared with those in the highest quartile (Yu & Williams, 1999). In addition to offering an explanation as to why certain situations are more likely to result in depression, the Behavioral Shutdown Model also explains many of the symptoms of depression. The model explains why emotional pain is such a prominent feature of depression, as the pain is a signal that things are not going well. Additionally, behavioral shutdown is the antithesis of active behavioral investment, and thus the Behavioral Shutdown Model explains why anhedonia is such a fundamental characteristic of depressive conditions. It also directly accounts for why low energy is such a prominent complaint. The model also explains why negative cognitions are so prominent in depression. Cognitive theorists have clearly documented how depressed individuals are hypersensitive to any indications of loss, failure, or rejection. In direct accordance with the Behavioral Shutdown Model, recent cognitive models have conceptualized depressed individuals as investors with few resources who take risk-aversive strategies to avoid loss (Leahy, 1997). In short, the Behavioral Shutdown Model offers a potential explanation for many of the symptoms of depression. The Behavioral Shutdown Model also provides explanations for findings that are difficult to explain from a disease model perspective. Because so many different things can result in difficulties in solving important problems, the model accounts for why so many different causal pathways result in depression. Behavioral shutdown should be a matter of degree, thus the Behavioral Shutdown Model also accounts for why symptoms of depression exist on a continuum that range from chronic, severe depressions to minor depressions to adjustment disorders to low mood. Since the model suggests depression should be associated with difficulties in functioning, the model explains why depressive symptoms evidence such a high comorbidity with other mental disorders, especially anxiety. Finally, because it is an evolutionary model, it also readily accounts for the fact that there is a substantial genetic component associated with depression. The Behavioral Shutdown Model is valuable in that it links the causes and triggers with the effects and symptoms of depression in a logical sequence. To give just a few examples, the model predicts that because depressed individuals are focused on avoiding further loss, they should perceive more negative and pessimistic outcomes than those who are not depressed. Depressed individuals should also be risk
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aversive and tend to avoid potentially threatening stimuli. Likewise, depressed individuals should be hypersensitive to loss, failure, rejection, or physical pain. Because depressed individuals should be inclined to give up when faced with difficulty, such individuals should demonstrate a very low tolerance for frustration. Also, depressed individuals should exhibit diminished curiosity and explorative tendencies and should shun uncertainty, novelty, and sensation seeking. They should be very averse to conflict, particularly with others who are of equal or higher status. They should also engage in less social exchange. Depressed individuals should also demonstrate a decrease in behavioral activity. In short, the Behavioral Shutdown Model makes many clear, easily testable predictions about both the triggers and symptoms associated with depressive condition. If these predictions were not borne out by empirical data, then the model would be wrong. In addition to offering a theoretical model that makes predictions and thus may lead to new empirical insights, the Behavioral Shutdown Model also offers a way to understand the various conceptual confusions that exist about the nature of depression highlighted in quotation by Ingram and Siegle (2002) offered at the beginning of this section. The essence of the point made by Ingram and Siegle is the question of whether the construct of depression should be thought of as a normal mood state, a psychological disorder, or a biological disease. The Behavioral Shutdown Model suggests that depression, including Major Depressive Episodes, should be considered a state of behavioral shutdown. That is what depression is. With this conception, then the question of whether depression is a normal mood, a psychological disorder, or a biological disease is found in the cause of the behavioral shutdown. When an individual is depressed as an obvious consequence of serious loss or chronic frustration, we can see depression as a normal reaction. For example, if my wife and children were killed in a car accident, I may well experience a state of profound “shutdown” as my entire psychological system would need to become recalibrated given that as a consequence of the trauma my primary pathways of investment would be gone. Interestingly, the founders of the DSM seem to have recognized this when they offer bereavement as an exception to diagnosing depression if the loss occurred in the past 2 months. Yet, this exception for grief raises the question about the woman in the second imaginary commercial? Her shutting down also could be conceptualized as a very understandable reaction to the inability to find pathways of productive investment. However, as it currently stands, only bereavement exempts one from a diagnosis of MDD, whereas racism, poverty, isolation, and abuse do not. In contrast, when we see depression arising as a function of vicious cycles of behavioral investment, where initial stressors lead to an ineffectual shutting down resulting to greater loss and this in turn leads to more depressive feelings, we can consider the condition a psychological disorder. In fact, this is essentially the behavioral conception of depression and consistent with a common behavioral treatment, called behavioral activation (Jacobson, Martell, & Dimidjian, 2001). The cognitive perspective similarly emphasizes how negative interpretations can lead to vicious depressive cycles. Or, from a more psychodynamic perspective, consider how selfcriticisms so prominent in depressed individuals might sometimes function to justify submission and the inhibition of aggressive impulses, and this leads to greater
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shutdown. All of these models are conceptions of depression as a psychological disorder, whereby the shutdown is resulting in vicious cycles. The perspective here also allows for a biopsychiatric conceptualization and clarifies the distinction between a disease and a behavioral disorder. As I have argued elsewhere (Henriques, 2002) the concept of “disease” is an applied biological construct, defined as a harmful breakdown in the function of an evolved mechanism. This construct can be conceptually differentiated from psychological disorders in which rigid, maladaptive behavioral patterns result from vicious behavioral cycles, as described above in the context of depression. Thus, severe depressive responses that occur in the absence of behavioral ineffectiveness or loss can be considered depressive diseases because such occurrences reflect a breakdown in the functioning of the basic bio-psychological architecture. In sum, Behavioral Investment Theory leads to a new conceptualization of depression as a state of behavioral shutdown which offers much potential to clarify how and why depression can legitimately be considered a normal reaction, a psychological disorder, or a biological disease, depending on the cause of the shutdown. My point in articulating this example was to demonstrate that Behavioral Investment Theory offers a general conception of animal behavior that is organized in a way that leads to new formulations of important constructs in human psychology and provides new ways to achieve conceptual clarity on constructs that have historically been the source of much confusion. However, Behavioral Investment Theory is not just useful in clarifying concepts, but it is also useful in providing a frame that allows us to assimilate and integrate key insights from different theoretical proposals regarding how the mind (or behavioral investment system) works in general.
Behavioral Investment Theory and the Connection with Other Proposals In the next section I review four separate works that each attempts to provide a unifying framework for understanding mind and behavior. Importantly, these perspectives are from various traditions in the field and are just a sample from which many other examples could have been chosen (e.g., Churchland, 1986; Gintis, 2009; Goodson, 2003), but nonetheless all are consistent with the broad conceptual framework provided by Behavioral Investment Theory. By reviewing them here, I hope to show more clearly key aspects of Behavioral Investment Theory and show why and how it consolidates a multitude of perspectives in a coherent manner.
W. T. Powers’ Perceptual Control Theory One of the aspects of cognitive science that I initially had trouble digesting was that it seemed to suggest that the mind is an input–output computational system that works via a series of sequentially arranged “if. . .then” commands. This model, of course, stemmed from the analogy that the mind is like a computer, and computers
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were generally programmed by such commands at the time. While I could see that some of my verbal–conceptual reasoning structures might function that way, it did not seem plausible that such “if. . .then” programming would effectively account for the incredibly dynamic aspects of behavioral engagement. And I wasn’t clear on the relationship between such computational models and behavioral concepts like classical and operant conditioning, nor emotions such as joy or despair. Moreover, it was clear from neuroscience that the brain was not a sequential information processing system, but instead was a massive parallel information processing system. It wasn’t until I discovered William Powers’ (1973) perceptual control theory that I saw that these pieces could all clearly fit together. Deeply concerned with how orthodox behaviorism had banished the concept of purpose from science, William Powers (1973), a humanistically oriented engineer, developed perceptual control theory, which provides a powerful model that accounts for the purposeful nature of animal behavior. In the opening chapter of his classic work, Principles of Psychology, William James (1890) gave a wonderful descriptive contrast between the behavior of physical objects and the behavior of animals. Specifically, he contrasted the behavior of bubbles in water to that of a frog and iron fillings attracted to a magnet to the behavior of Romeo and Juliet. James made the point that while we can imagine “forces” causing each set of behaviors, there nonetheless is a qualitative difference. For the sake of argument, let’s use a purposeful word “want” to describe the behavior of the iron fillings attracted to a magnet and the bubbles rising to the surface in water. By observing their behavior, we might initially say that the fillings “want” to reach the magnet and the bubbles “want” to reach the surface. But James pointed out that if an obstacle is placed in their path (e.g., a card is placed between the magnet and fillings or a piece of wood blocks the bubbles from reaching the surface) neither the fillings nor the bubbles will change their behavior to reach the supposed goal. James contrasted this state of affairs to the behavior of a frog and Romeo and Juliet. Unlike the bubbles, a frog will not perpetually press his nose against [the jar’s] unyielding roof, but will restlessly explore the neighborhood until by re-descending again he has discovered a path around its brim to the goal of his desires. The case is the same for Romeo and Juliet: Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves toward her by as a straight as line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the fillings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet’s lips directly. With the fillings, the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. (James, 1890, p. 4; cited in Cziko, 2000)
James pointed out that we do not see purpose in immaterial events because the means or the forces are “fixed” (yet, for an analysis of when and why we humans do sometimes see purpose in such events, see Shaffer, 2008). In contrast, in animal behavior it is the ends that are fixed, while the means will vary indefinitely. This is the key feature that defines purposeful behavior. And William Powers realized that
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the control systems theory provided a framework to explain the purposeful nature of animal behavior. Powers’ control theory model is built on Wiener’s (1961) notions about feedback. Both the cruise control in your car and the thermostat in your home are examples of simple control systems that operate on feedback. There are a minimum of three components to such a system: (1) an input sensor; (2) a reference goal; and (3) an output mechanism. In the case of cruise control, the speedometer is the input sensor, the speed at which you set the cruise control is the reference goal, and the output mechanism is the addition or removal of gas to accelerate or decelerate the car. Now put this system in motion. Say you set the cruise control reference level to 65 mph. If you start to head up a hill, your speed will drop and a discrepancy will emerge between the set reference level and the actual speed measured by the speedometer. That discrepancy will activate an output, more gas. If too much gas is added, and say your speed reaches 68 mph, then that difference results in decreasing the gas. In so doing, the car maintains a fairly specific speed, despite significant changes in external factors, such as wind and incline of the road. Control theorists often use the following formulation to define the relationship between the key variables: input − reference goal => output. This formulation exists in contrast to the basic S→R formulation of behaviorism and the Input→Output formulation of cognitive science approaches. This control theory equation is called a negative feedback loop because the output is designed to reduce the discrepancy between the input and reference goal. Latter, I will adjust the control theory formulation slightly and characterize it as the P − M => E equation (or formulation), where the “P” stands for perception, the “M” for motivation, and the “E” for emotion. Powers (1989) developed a detailed theoretical and empirical framework that applied the insights of control theory to animal and human behavior. One of his major epiphanies was that the control theory model not only accounted for purposeful behavior in a straightforward way, it also turned the traditional behavioral Stimulus→Response conception of causation on its head. Instead of sensory inputs directly causing behavior in a sequential and linear fashion, in Powers’ model it was more appropriate to reverse the causal arrow and instead think of behavior controlling perception. That is, for Powers, animal behavioral output functions to reduce the discrepancy between the perceived actual state and the reference desired state. Thus, the function of the behavior is the control of perception, rather than the stimulus causing the behavior. For example, in traditional stimulus response theory, the crossing double yellow lines on the road is associated with punishment, thus as your car nears them, you turn back the other way out of avoidance. The double yellow lines are seen as a stimulus and turning back is the resultant response. In contrast, in control theory language, your mind has a reference goal state of the relationship between the car and the lines on the road and you work to maintain a minimal discrepancy between the perceived state and that reference goal state. In the former formulation, the stimulus triggers the response; in the latter, the response is a function of attempting to “control” your perceptions. The differences are seen in the way the two perspectives describe such variables. Traditional behaviorists speak
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of controlling variables (i.e., variables that control the animals behavior), whereas control theorists speak of controlled variables (i.e., variables that the animal attempts to control). The distinction is crucial because of the philosophical implications. In the former model, humans are mechanistic, like billiard balls. In the latter, they are purposeful, agentic creatures. Despite the important philosophical differences between traditional behaviorism and Power’s control theory, the perspectives are really only incompatible at the extremes of the continuum. Consider that although Powers developed his system in direct response to behavioral philosophy, it turns out that during the same period an integrative behavioral theorist was developing a model that cut across various learning theories and approaches and created a framework that actually is very consistent with Powers’ control theory model.
Arthur Staats’ Psychological Behavioral Theory of Learning As was mentioned in Chapter 2, Arthur Staats saw the tremendous problems associated with psychology’s fragmentation, and he devoted his career to developing a unified theoretical and methodological system that he argued could stretch from the simplest of animal behaviors to the most complex human thought patterns (Staats, 1996). Staats sought unification through a system that would first mend factions within behavioral theory (e.g., Hullian, Skinnerian, Neo-behavioral perspectives) and then, from that foundation, build conceptual and methodological bridges to traditional psychology (e.g., developmental, personality, social). Because of this bridge building between psychology and behaviorism, he called his framework psychological behaviorism. Staats’ argued that psychological phenomena consisted of multi-leveled processes, and we needed to start at the bottom and work our way up. The foundation of his model is a basic theory of learning that emphasizes the evolutionary function of emotional responses. Specifically, in Staats’ model it is the emotional response mechanisms that allow an animal to learn. It is the emotion–reinforcer relationship. . .that has been built into organisms through biological (evolutionary) development. . .Emotional responses are elicited by stimuli that are biologically important to the organism—either to obtain, like food, or to avoid, like painful stimuli. . .That is the essential behavioral reason why emotions are important, because they define what will be reinforcing for the organism in the sense of affecting what behaviors the organism will acquire. (Staats, 1996, p. 41)
Always looking for connections between disparate view points, it is useful to notice the similarity to this formulation with the quotation I offered earlier from the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in the principle of learning section. Both are arguing that instead of coming equipped with a set genetically preprogrammed list of commands of how to act, nature has built into animals’ emotional systems that assess whether the animal is effectively moving toward or away from its goals and shift the behavioral output accordingly. In a nutshell, both are also arguing for the pleasure pain parallel fitness principle mentioned earlier. Pleasure signals animal–environment relationships that
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were associated with enhanced fitness, whereas pain signals animal–environment relationships that were associated with diminished fitness. It is hardly accidental that we generally feel pleasure when eating, but pain when being eaten! This principle includes the proposition that there are two broad categories of emotional responses (positive and negative) and two broad categories of behavioral responses (seeking/ approaching and avoiding/withdrawing). The fundamental reason that there are two broad categories of behavioral responses is that there were two broad kinds of evolutionary problems animals needed to solve, namely acquiring benefits and avoiding losses. For those more quantitatively inclined, it is useful to note that one can think about this in basic statistical terms. Some animal–environment relationships positively covaried (or correlated) with survival and reproductive success, whereas others negatively covaried with survival and reproductive success. Staats (1996) called his model a three function learning theory because he asserted that the emotional response performs three crucial functions associated with learning and motivation. First, the emotional response functions to produce classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is perhaps the most basic learning process and refers to the manner in which neutral stimuli can come to elicit a response after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus. Staats’ point was that unconditioned stimuli are by definition stimuli that elicit an emotional response, and if no emotional response occurs, then no pairing or learning occurs. Second, Staats’ argued that the emotional response functions to produce operant conditioning because when an emotional response occurs after a behavior, it will reinforce the behavioral response. That is, activities that produce an outcome associated with the increase in positive emotions or decrease in negative emotions will be strengthened, whereas activities that result in a decrease in positive emotions or an increase in negative emotions will be extinguished. Third, emotional responses function as incentives. When a stimulus elicits a positive emotional response, the animal will approach the stimulus, and when it elicits a negative emotional response the animal will then emit avoidance or escape behaviors. Although closely related, the primary difference between the incentive and reinforcement functions for Staats is in terms of the timing between the stimulus and response. The emotional response is serving as an incentive function when the stimulus is presented first, but a reinforcing function when the emotional response occurs after the actions. For example, when a child sees a lollipop and has a positive emotional response based on past experiences eating a lollipop, the anticipated pleasure is serving an incentive function. When the child is struggling to open the wrapper and finally rips it with his teeth, shifting his experience from frustration to pleasure, then the emotional response has reinforced the behavior and he is more likely to rip it with his teeth in the future. Staats (1996) has demonstrated that the three function learning model can incorporate central findings from behavioral research on phenomena such as extinction, generalization, discrimination, and intermittent conditioning. He also argued that this model can form a base for understanding higher cognitive processes in humans. Although schisms abound in the mind and behavioral sciences, a major one is between behaviorism and evolutionary psychology. The former emphasizes general
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changes in behavior that are the result of experience and consequences, whereas the latter tends to emphasize specific information-processing modules built by natural selection. Moreover, evolutionary psychologists often seem to dismiss or argue against domain general processes, such as Skinner’s behavioral selection. With that in mind, it is interesting to note that a student of evolutionary psychologists’ John Tooby and Leda Cosmides developed an evolutionary approach to animal behavior that is very consistent with Staats’ learning theory.
Peggy LaCerra’s Adaptive Representational Networks Earlier in the chapter I described why LaCerra’s (2003; LaCerra & Bingham, 2002) conception of how intelligence systems manage the expenditure of behavioral energy is directly consistent with Behavioral Investment Theory, especially the first principle of energy economics. In delving into the mechanisms of how intelligence systems are constructed, LaCerra introduced the concept of Adaptive Representational Networks (ARNs). ARNs are the fundamental building blocks of intelligence systems that LaCerra argued function to encode important life events by linking together four crucial components: (1) the internal state of the animal (i.e., how it is feeling inside, cold, hungry, etc.); (2) the sensory features in the environment (i.e., what it is perceiving to be going externally); (3) the behavioral response (i.e., what the animal did in that situation); and (4) the adaptive value of that response (i.e., whether the outcome was good or bad). For example, if you felt hungry, saw hotdog, ate it, and then felt sick later, that episode would come to constitute an ARN. Because in this case the adaptive value of the response was negative, next time you were hungry and saw a hotdog, it is likely you would continue searching for something else to eat. LaCerra argued that ARNs build up over time—scene by scene, episode by episode—to form a catalogue of memories that link together internal states, external conditions, actions, and the subsequent value of the consequences. This catalogue of memories forms the bank of information that we draw on to make predictions about which behavioral investments will be most effective in the current situation. The dynamic interrelation between these four components and the manner in which they regulate actions via negative feedback loops is directly congruent with Powers’ model. In both models, input is referenced against some desired goal state and the discrepancy activates a behavioral response. LaCerra and Bingham add the point that the outcomes of those actions are then stored and used to guide future behaviors, a point Powers would undoubtedly agree with.
David Geary’s Motive to Control as the Central Principle of Mind David Geary is an evolutionarily minded cognitive and educational psychologist who has argued that the motive to control the flow of resources is the fundamental organizing principle of mental systems. Hopefully, this should sound quite familiar.
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Indeed, Geary and I had been working independently on our various proposals when we met online and discovered the striking similarities. He authored a paper detailing his model and drawing out the parallels between it and Behavioral Investment Theory. In it he wrote My proposal is that the brain and mind of all species has evolved to attend to and process the forms of information, such as the movement patterns of prey species, that covaried with survival and reproductive outcomes during the species evolutionary history. These systems bias implicit decision-making processes and behavioral responses in ways that allow the animal to attempt to achieve access to and control of these outcomes, as in prey capture. . .The thesis is here. . .that the human motive to control is indeed an evolved disposition and is implicitly focused on attempts to control social relationships and the behavior of other people, and to control the biological and physical resources that have historically covaried with survival and reproductive prospects in the local ecology. (Geary, 2005, pp. 23–24)
Geary argued for four different components of control-related mechanisms: (1) affective; (2) cognitive; (3) conscious–psychological; and (4) behavioral, and each system is embedded in various domains of the brain and nervous system. The behavioral systems are the most basic and perform the procedural sensory-motor outputs, such as those involved in walking or catching a ball. In a manner closely related to Staats’ formulation, Geary argued that affective systems guide the behavioral strategies, and provide feedback to the individual regarding the effectiveness of the behavioral strategies. Specifically, positive feelings provide reinforcement when strategies result in the achievement of significant goals, and negative feelings result when behaviors do not result in such ends. Geary used the more narrow definition of the term cognitive, meaning executive functioning and working memory that allow individuals to mentally represent and manipulate information processed by sensory and perceptual systems, as well as inhibit behavioral impulses predicted to yield problematic outcomes. Conscious–psychological systems offer an explicit representation of situations of significance. Geary described the functioning of these mechanisms in the language of control theory. That is, he views these systems as generating internal representations of the way the world is desired to be which are contrasted to the way the world actually is, and behavioral strategies are invoked to reduce the discrepancy. One of the real strengths of Geary’s model is how it provides an understanding of the classic nature–nurture divide. He offered what might be considered a middleground position between the evolutionary psychologists and traditional learning theories with an idea he calls soft modularity. As mentioned above, the evolutionary psychologists tend to view the mind as made up of domain-specific models which solve specific adaptive problems (e.g., we have specific cheater-detection modules or mate-guarding mechanisms), in contrast to learning theorists who tend to emphasize general processes by which animals adapt to their environment (e.g., operant and classical conditioning processes). Although as Geary and Huffman (2002) point out, “all serious theorists now agree that there are inherent genedriven constraints on and experience-based—especially during the developmental period—modifications of brain organization and cognitive functioning” (p. 667),
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there is much debate on the relative amount of genetic constraint versus experiential plasticity in various domains of mental functioning. An advantage of Geary’s system is that it provides a helpful way of understanding and framing the way that evolution has prepared animals to learn. Stemming from his formulation that the foundational base of the mind is the motive to control resource flow, Geary makes the following assertion about when we would expect to see high levels of constraint and high levels of plasticity: [Important] resources generate information patterns that range from invariant to variant. Invariant information is consistent across the generations and within lifetimes (e.g., the prototypical shape of a human face) and is associated with. . . processing of information that is implicit and results in bottom–up behavioral responses. Variant information varies across the generations and within lifetimes (e.g., as in social dynamics) and is associated with plastic brain and cognitive systems and explicit, consciously driven top–down behavioral responses. (Geary, 2005, p. 21)
In other words, there are some informational patterns that remain constant over long periods of time (i.e., the generations) and other information patterns that vary. The former will be hard-wired into the programming of the nervous system, and animals will have relatively automatic response patterns when processing information that was consistent across the generations. In contrast, learning mechanisms will be in place to allow the animal to adjust in response to the information patterns that are much more variable and situation dependent. Soft modularity, then, is the idea that evolution will build in to the information processing architecture basic ways of framing representations and responses, but experience and associated learning mechanisms will then fill in these frames in detail so that the animal can adjust to the idiographic nature of its particular environment. The Influence Matrix, the subject of Chapter 4, is very consistent with Geary’s motive to control formulation and is a clear example of soft modularity. The Influence Matrix posits that there are certain aspects of social relating that were relatively constant across the generations. For example, competition and cooperation are two social exchange processes that all social animals have to navigate, and thus evolutionary forces have shaped the human social motivational system with distinct information processing systems for framing these two types of relational processes. And yet, who we should cooperate or compete with and when is of course completely dependent on the specific situational context. Thus, evolution has not built us with pre-wired commands on when to compete or cooperate but instead has fashioned mechanisms that evolve with experience to guide us in the ever changing social world in which we currently live. If this review of other proposals has been successful, a basic outline of how animals calculate their behavioral investments should be emerging. Each of the various proposals outlines mechanisms built by evolutionary processes, which include inputs that are evaluated as positive or negative resulting in responses that are evaluated again, creating a behavioral feedback loop. In the next section, I offer a schematic of the architecture of the human mind and specify the nature of the behavioral control feedback loop in what I call the P − M => E formulation.
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Behavioral Investment Theory and the Architecture of the Human Mind Open any standard introductory psychology textbook, and you are likely to see in the first chapter or two an overview of the various paradigms and perspectives in psychology (e.g., behaviorism, social-cognitive, psychodynamic, cultural, evolutionary, etc.) followed by separate chapters on biological bases of behavior, sensation and perception, motivation, emotion, cognition, memory, learning, and consciousness, in addition to overviews of aspects of the field, such as clinical psychology and various approaches to psychotherapy. Although there are clear advantages to this format in terms of articulating lines of research and major empirical findings, a problem arises because not only are the theoretical paradigms often defined against one another, but the various psychological domains and lines of research are also not interconnected in a way that gives students a feel for how the human psychological system functions as a whole. When you look at the way material is presented and ask questions such as, “How does evolution relate to motivation?” or “How do perception and emotion relate to learning?” or “How do operant principles relate to cognitive phenomena?” the answers are usually not forthcoming. In contrast to this state of affairs and in accordance with the overarching goal of this book, this section offers a schematic of the human mind that attempts to make explicit the interconnections between major psychological phenomena so that one can obtain a feel for how the behavioral investment system works as a whole (Fig. 3.2). Although like all maps this schematic emphasizes certain features and
Fig. 3.2 The architecture of human mind
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leaves out others, the value in this model is that it provides a clear framework for understanding how the human mind functions to compute behavioral investments in a manner that connects evolutionary, neurological, computational, and behavioral systems approaches. Before proceeding to clarify the components of the diagram, I need to offer a few words about the definitions of important terms, including mind, brain, cognition, and consciousness. For starters, let me differentiate Mind (upper case “M” from mind). When capitalized, Mind refers to the third dimension of complexity on the ToK System and consists of the set of mental behaviors. Mental behaviors, which are discussed in more detail in Chapter 7, are behaviors of the animal asa-whole mediated by the nervous system that produces a functional effect on the animal–environment relationship. Hunting, mating, defending a territory are commonplace examples. But mental behaviors can also be covert. Perceptions, feelings, imaginings, and even nonconscious cognitive processes are also considered mental behaviors. In slight contrast to Mind, when I am referring to the “mind” as in the aforementioned diagram, I am referring to the architecture of the neuro-information processing system, as well as information instantiated in and processed by that system. In this sense, the mind is the neuro-computational control system that allows the animal to behave as a coordinated whole. The brain is the biophysical material that mediates covert and overt animal behaviors. To consider the difference between the mind and the brain, think about a book. On the one hand, there is the material dimension of the book, which consists of its weight, and the structure of the molecules that make up the ink and pages. This is akin to the brain. On the other hand, there is the informational content of the book, which is akin to the mind. The two other terms that need to be defined are cognition and consciousness, which are two kinds of covert mental behaviors. Let’s start with cognition. Cognition is a term with at least two different meanings in the literature. Sometimes the term is used in the broad sense to refer to general neural-information processing. When used this way, the broad definition of cognition includes perceptions, imaginations, and language, but also motivations, emotions, and unconscious processes. The broad definition of cognition is essentially equivalent to the definition of the mind discussed above. On the other hand, the term cognitive is frequently used in a more narrow sense of higher thought processes (commonly, language-based thinking), and such processes are conceptualized as separate from motivation and emotion. Some researchers in human cognition (e.g., reasoning and intellect) and those who do cognitive psychotherapy tend to emphasize this meaning. Consciousness refers to the subjective, first person phenomenological world. It is the experienced world of senses, images, feelings, and conscious thoughts. According to the unified theory, consciousness is a particular kind of cognitive process; thus, it is a form of neuro-information processing that through some asyet-to-be-determined process becomes experienced. There are two broad domains of consciousness: one of which is often referred to as sentience and is experiential and includes our perceptions, feeling states, and nonverbal images; and the other self-consciousness consists of language-based self-reflective thought.
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Figure 3.2 is a model of cognitive processing (broadly defined) that divides the human mind into four levels of neuro-information processing: (1) Sensory-Motor; (2) Operant Experiential; (3) Imaginative Thought; and (4) Linguistic Justification. Below I briefly describe each level and related features in the diagram. It is, however, important to note that although there is much heuristic value in dividing the human mental system into levels, it is also the case that there are constant interactions between the levels in very complicated feedback loops so that it is important not to think of these levels as completely separated from one another.
Level 1: Sensory-Motor The sensory-motor level is the most basic form of neuro-information processing and the kind that first evolved. It is called sensory motor because there is a fairly immediate connection between stimulus and response. Sensory-motor processes are the most “hard wired,” and fixed in the sense that the animal does not require much experience to develop them. There are some animals, like jellyfish, snails, and worms, whose nervous systems likely function completely at the sensory-motor level. In humans, the basic reflexes, such as blinking your eye in response to a puff of air or pulling your hand away from a hot stove, are examples of sensory-motor processing. Despite its simplicity, basic forms of learning, such as habituation and sensitization, take place at the sensory-motor level. Habituation is a decrease in a reflex response resulting from repeated presentation of an initiating stimulus. It is arguably the most basic form of learning and there are functional parallels to this form of learning present even in single celled organisms, which obviously lack a nervous system completely. Sensitization is essentially the opposite, and refers to the process by which an animal learns to increase its reflexive responses to noxious or novel stimuli. Although instinctual reflexes exist at the sensory-motor level, so do acquired habitual motor patterns like walking, which are automatic and generally nonconscious. The highest forms of sensory-motor behavior patterns—patterns that, in terms of complexity, exist just beneath operant behaviors—are fixed action patterns (FAPS). FAPS are well-defined motor patterns that are “fixed” because they emerge without much trial and error learning, are triggered by particular “releasing stimuli”, and are species typical. Historically considered instincts, FAPS are elaborated networks of reflexes that function to coordinate movement into much more complicated sequences than simple muscle contractions involved in, say, the human blink reflex. FAPs were studied extensively by the founders of ethology, Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. A classic example of a FAP is the begging behavior of young herring gulls, which is “released” by a red dot on the parent gull’s beak (Tinbergen & Perdeck, 1950). Although humans generally do not exhibit complicated FAPs that are present at birth, there are some, such as the rooting reflex. The difference between sensory-motor processing and higher forms of thought was on striking display for me and my wife during a trip to the emergency room with our son Jon in the fall of 2009. He was playing soccer, and he tripped and landed
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awkwardly, breaking both bones in his right arm. After the x-ray, the medical team came in to set the bone. The doctor asked us if we would feel more comfortable waiting outside. They informed us that although they were going to anesthetize him, it was still the case that “the body reacts to the process.” We decided to stay and observed them put him under and then we watched as they worked hard to set the bone and he moaned and his body writhed. After the anesthetic wore off, he quickly returned to a full state of consciousness with no recollection or awareness of what had occurred. Nevertheless, his mental system had been operating at the sensorymotor level.
Level 2: Operant Experiential Operant behavior patterns are much more complex, fluid, and plastic than are sensory-motor behaviors. Whereas sensory-motor behaviors are characterized by relatively rigid, immediate, and reactive behaviors, operant behavior patterns are more proactive and characterized by dynamic seek-and-approach or avoid-andwithdraw sequences. Skinner referred to operant behaviors as “voluntary” and contrasted them with “respondent” behaviors that are more reflexive in nature (i.e., level 1 processes). Operant behaviors appear later in the evolutionary sequence than sensory-motor behaviors, perhaps first emerging with the jawed fish. Fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals all demonstrate operant behavior patterns.3 Operant behavior is characterized in the current formulation as operating on the P − M => E equation, where the “P” refers to perception, “M” to motivation, and “E” to emotion. Verbally, this formulation translates into perception of an actual state relative to a motivated state leads to an emotional state. This is a control theory formulation, and I am hopeful that the earlier reviews of other proposals will make this seem rather straightforward. Recall that the basic structure of a control theory equation is input − reference goal = output. Thus, “P” refers to the perceptual input. Perception is a higher level mental process than sensation and occurs via the integration of sensory inputs that result in a meaningful representation of an object or event. Perception is a consequence of both bottom–up processing, which refers to the pattern of sensory inputs, and top–down processing, which refers to the individual’s knowledge, memory, and expectations. (Of course, the degree to which top–down input influences the perception depends tremendously on the cognitive complexity of the animal). Researchers have analyzed these processes extensively, and there are many good books on the principles and mechanisms of both bottom–up and top–down perceptual processes (e.g., Shipley & Zacks, 2008).
3 Interestingly, so do many insects, which is somewhat surprising given that their brains are smaller than the head of a pin. The complexity of insect behavior patterns deserves close attention from psychologists, for they may well challenge some of our most basic assumptions about brain and mind. Nevertheless, because our evolutionary history is sufficiently divergent from such creatures, I will not delve deeply into the latest research on insect behavior (see Prete, 2004).
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To give an example illustrating the influence of top–down expectancies, when I was in high school, a friend played a joke on me by switching the coca-cola in his can for cream soda. He then told me the coke tasted weird and asked me to take a sip. I did and immediately spit it out. It tasted horribly! He then revealed his trickery, which was particularly interesting to me because I like cream soda. Under normal circumstances when the bottom–up sensory inputs line up with my templates for cream soda, I recognize it, and it tastes good. On the other hand, when there was a mismatch between top–down expectations and bottom–up sensory input, the perceptual experience was radically different, and I reacted with disgust. Motivation, the “M” in the equation, refers to valued goal states that the animal is working toward attaining or avoiding. Stated slightly differently, the motivational system has templates for benefits to be approached and costs to be avoided. There are two broad classes of goal states, approach states and avoidance states, because the basic templates emerged as a consequence of evolutionary processes, and there were animal–environment relationships that either positively or negatively correlated with survival and reproductive success. Much research has demonstrated that there are two broad behavioral systems, which are often referred to as the behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition systems that respectively activate seek-and-approach or avoid-and-withdraw behavioral patterns. In accordance with Geary’s soft modularity, evolutionary processes built the basic frames for the motivational templates, and then learning and experience fill them in, greatly elaborating on them. For example, it is clear that many birds and mammals at birth have motivational templates for maintaining proximity to their parents, but these animals also learn via experience to identify their particular parents. Likewise, the Influence Matrix posits that humans come equipped with motivational templates to approach high social influence and avoid the loss of influence. However, it is experience that dictates who the important individuals to influence are and the methods by which such influence is achieved. Motivational templates become activated depending on both the perceptions and the internal state of the animal. For example, imagine you are camping and after about 6 hours between meals an internal state of hunger activates a goal template of eating a sandwich in the cooler. In that state you would be motivated to reduce the discrepancy between where you were and the end goal state of eating the sandwich. However, if you stepped out of your tent on the way to the cooler and saw a bear, a very different goal template would be activated, which would be one of your being safe, far away from the bear. Indeed, the perception of a bear would initiate a cascade of bodily responses, readying you for fight or flight. Some of those responses would include a massive sympathetic nervous system shift activating muscles and attention and energy would be diverted away from processes like digestion, and it is likely you would not feel hungry for quite some time after that occurrence. Although separable, perceptions and motivations are intimately intertwined. It is rather obvious that perceiving something can activate a motivational state. But the reverse is also true in that your motivational state will greatly impact your perceptual experience. Consider, for example, how you perceive food before as opposed to after eating, or sexual activity before and after sex. Along these lines, research on
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the Rorschach Inkblot Test has demonstrated that hungry individuals will see more foods and food-related activities in the inkblots than sated individuals (Epstein, 1961). Similarly, Bruner and Goodman (1947) found that children from impoverished backgrounds perceived a quarter as literally larger than children from wealthy backgrounds. More recent work has demonstrated that individuals who are fatigued will perceive distances that they need to walk as being longer than individuals who are rested (Proffitt, Stefanucci, Banton, & Epstein, 2003). Emotions, the “E” in the equation, organize the animal’s response set and are activated based on the relationship between perceptions and motivations. The two broad domains of satisfying and aversive affective reactions form the foundational base of the emotional response sets. The reduction of a discrepancy between perceptions and an approach goal state activates a positive emotional state (e.g., satisfaction, joy). Increasing the discrepancy between perceptions and an aversive state also activates positive affect, although of a slightly different tenor (e.g., relief, relaxation). In contrast, decreasing the discrepancy between perceptions and an aversive state results in negative emotions (e.g., fear, hurt), and so does increasing the discrepancy between perceptions and an approach state although again of a slightly different tenor (e.g., frustration). The strength of the emotional response is tied to the nature of the motivational state. Harking back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, significant and immediate threats to the physiological needs or safety (or such needs in loved ones) are likely to activate the strongest emotional responses. Thirty seconds without air and all resources are likely to be devoted to moving toward an oxygen source. It should also be noted that emotional responses are tethered to the rate of change between perceptions and goal states. Anyone who has experienced frustration at not making enough progress knows that one can be moving toward a goal, but if the rate is not fast enough, it will produce a negative emotional response. Whereas sensory-motor processing takes place in individual neural nets, the spinal cord and brain stem, the perceptual-motivational-affective processes associated with operant behavior patterns is associated with structures in the limbic system.
Level 3: Imaginative Thought Imaginative thought takes place in the cortex and refers to the ability to manipulate mental representations into simulations of behavioral investment patterns and then be guided by anticipated outcomes. The classic demonstration of higher nonverbal thought in animals was Wolfgang Kohler’s work on insight in chimpanzees. Kohler placed fruit that was just out of reach of the chimpanzees. He then provided materials that the chimps could use to achieve their goal. For instance, he placed boxes that the chimps could stack and then climb on to reach fruit, and placed sticks that could be stuck together to reach fruit outside the cage. These animals clearly did not engage in overt trial and error actions. Instead, their behaviors strongly suggested they achieved insight via the mental manipulation of variables that allowed them to simulate actions and changes until a clear pathway to the goal could be foreseen.
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Why, from a Behavioral Investment Theory perspective, would such capacities have evolved? From a functional perspective, the answer is straightforward. Assuming the mental simulations have at least some predictive validity, they are valuable because they are far less costly to run than actually engaging in the behaviors overtly. Imaginative thought occurs in the neocortex, and it is not accidental that mammals are generally seen as engaging in more complex thought than reptiles or birds and have larger portions of their brains being made up of the neocortex. Likewise, primates are generally considered to be the cleverest of mammals and have proportionally the most neocortex. The neocortex in humans is huge.
Level 4: Linguistic Justificatio Level four in the diagram represents the intersection of language, culture, and selfconsciousness. Although some other animals are capable of complex nonverbal thought, only humans come equipped with the capacity to generate a symbolicsyntactical representational system (Penn, Holyoak, & Ponvelli, 2008). This system is referred to by some as the language acquisition device (Pinker, 1994), although there remains significant debate about its exact nature (see Greenspan & Shanker, 2004). At a very basic level, this system allows humans to symbolically label perceived objects and their transformations in time in the form of nouns and verbs and differences between things in the form of adjectives. As is evidence by the enormous variety of the world’s languages, the system is an open system; children learn the language of the culture they are born into. Chapter 5 focuses on the dimension of linguistic justification via the lens of the Justification Hypothesis. The final aspect of the diagram that at least needs to be noted is the section labeled salient control variables. In a nutshell, the salient control variables are those aspects of the environment that influence the behavior of the animal. These consist of the set of variables and processes studied by traditional behavioral science research. I label them control variables in a nod to both behaviorists, who see these variables as the environmental determinants of behavior, and to control theorists who emphasize the notion that there are certain variables that the animal is attempting to control.
An Everyday Example As I mentioned in the preface, qualitative generalizability refers to sharing information that is intuitively understandable by most people and is one of the principles guiding the construction of this book. In accordance with that goal and in order to provide a fuller sense of how these layers might operate in everyday life, I will offer the following commonplace situation and then break it down according to the diagram to give a feel for how to apply it. Jason, a nine year old boy, is playing a video game, when he realizes he is feeling a little hungry. On the way to the kitchen to get an apple, he spies some brownies in the pantry. His mother is upstairs and one of the rules of the house is no sweets before dinner. Overtly, he stands at the pantry for several seconds, staring at the brownies before finally walking
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Starting at the first level, there is the basic sensory input that Jason is receiving. This refers to the various physiochemical changes that are taking place both inside and outside his body and are being translated into neuronal messages. On the output end, efferent neurons are translating neuronal messages into coordinated muscle movements, allowing him to play his game and then get up and walk over to the pantry. Shifting up a level, the sensory inputs are organized into perceptions, which are higher level integrations of sensations into meaningful representations. Thus Jason perceives (rather than senses) the brownies, meaning that he integrates the various sensory aspects of the shape, color, location of the brownies into a meaningful category or concept. On the same level as perceptions, motivations are the goal states that organize and direct action and attention. A goal state is a schema or template of an animal–environment relationship to be sought and approached or avoided and withdrawn from. In Jason’s case, the perception of brownies was referenced against the experience of hunger and memories of eating such brownies in the past (think here of La Cerra’s Adaptive Representational Networks). This led to the image of him eating brownies, which can be thought of as a reference goal state (think here of Power’s control theory model). The image of him eating the brownies was initially associated with a pleasurable emotional response, which functioned as an incentive to approach the brownies and reduce the discrepancy between where he was and the reference goal state (think here of Staats’s three function theory). But Jason did not eat the brownies. So what happened? To understand this, we need to move up a level on the diagram. Rather than simply responding to present perceptions, nature has equipped many animals (especially mammals) with the capacity to simulate outcomes without actually having to go through them, an ability many would refer to as thinking. So we see in the example that Jason simulated several possible behavioral investment pathways. To do so, he needed to first inhibit the actual act of grabbing the brownies while he ran through a sequence of events that ended with him being punished by his mother, or feeling guilty because he had disobeyed. The images of those consequences were aversive, thus he experienced an incentive to adopt a different path. I have seen my dog wander by the pantry where we keep our treats, stop, glance back at me, and then walk away. There have been other times when I have come down stairs only to find that she had gotten into the goodies. I would argue that the analysis of these three levels of information processing would be relevant and indeed necessary to develop a holistic explanatory account of my dog’s behavior. That is, at a minimum, animals like dogs engage in sensory motor, operant, and imaginative thought. But Jason engaged also in a fourth level, one that is not present in other mammals. He engaged in self-talk and framed his actions in terms of justifiability.
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He did not just subconsciously associate punishment with eating the brownies. He knew there was a reason for not eating them. He considered attempting to justify why there should be an exception to the rules in this case to his mother, but decided she would not accept his justification. He then generated other possible pathways that would avoid his mother’s disapproval, but decided these actions were unjustifiable. Then to help channel his behavioral investment pathway in a justifiable manner, he strengthened his own belief that eating dessert before dinner was not legitimate and justified to himself why eating apples was positive. Chapter 5 articulates the key elements of the justification system. The overall point here is that the schematic provides a basic conceptual framework for the key components of the human mind, or for those more behaviorally inclined, the behavioral investment system. It is useful to conclude this section by noting that the idea that the mind–brain consists of different levels has a long and rather robust history. Perhaps the most notable layered view of the mind is Freud’s structural theory of the id, ego, and superego and related topographical model of consciousness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness. I hope that those familiar with Piaget’s work on sensory-motor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages of cognitive development will also see clear parallels and similarities with this model. The renowned neuroscientist, Paul MacClean, who was the former director of the Laboratory of Brain and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, developed a layered model of the brain based on its evolutionary development. He called it the “triune brain theory” because he argued that the human brain is actually three brains in one, each of which was established successively in response to evolutionary need. The three layers are (1) the reptilian system, or R-complex, which consists of the brain stem and the cerebellum and functions to regulate activities associated with physical survival and maintenance of the body; (2) the limbic system, which consists of a network of related brain structures such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and houses the primary centers of emotion; and (3) the neocortex, which is the most recently developed outer portion of the brain that functions to allow for planning and prediction and other forms of higher thought (Maclean, 1993). The Russian psychologist A. N. Leont’ev (1981) wrote extensively on the evolution of the brain and mind. He also argued for a four-layered view of mental processes that included: (1) an elementary sensory stage characterized by animals that react automatically and immediately to physical stimuli (e.g., worms and jellyfish); (2) a perceptive stage, which is characterized by animals that react to their perceptions of things (e.g., birds and mammals); (3) an intellectual stage (in “higher” mammals, such as apes), which is characterized by the capacity to mentally manipulate relations between objects in the environment; and finally (4) human consciousness, which is characterized by self-reflection and the formation of conscious judgments. Although I developed the Architecture of the Human Mind prior to learning about Leont’ev’s work, the parallels are quite striking. Marvin Minsky is a well-known professor at MIT who authored the influential book The Society of Mind, which likened the human mind to a society that had different information processing agents that functioned like different roles in society. In his most recent book, The Emotion Machine, Minsky (2006) updated his view of
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the mind. One of the most salient aspects of his argument is that the human mind is layered into six levels that have obvious parallels with the architecture of the human mind proposed here. The most basic level consists of instinctive reactions, which Minsky characterizes as built in If→Do reaction rules. The next level is learned reactions, which refer to the way animals develop new ways to react to situations based on lived experience. The next higher level deliberative thinking refers to planning, considering alternatives, and simulating possibilities. The fourth level in Minsky’s scheme is reflective thinking, which refers to thinking about thinking. The fifth level, self-reflective thinking not only considers recent thoughts, but it also thinks about the entity doing the thinking. Finally, self-conscious reflection refers to thinking about how one ought to be in terms of higher ideals. Although Minsky argues for six levels instead of four, there are obvious parallels with the Architecture of the Human Mind diagram. Moreover, as Minsky (2006) himself notes the boundaries at the higher levels are “indistinct” (p. 147).
Conclusion Behavioral Investment Theory is the joint point between Life and Mind on the Tree of Knowledge System and attempts to provide a comprehensive approach to animal behavioral science and the evolution of the animal mind by characterizing the nervous system as a computational control system that calculates the expenditure of behavioral investment on a cost-benefit ratio shaped by evolution and experience. Incorporated within Behavioral Investment Theory are six fundamental principles of animal behavior, which include the principles of: (1) energy economics; (2) evolution; (3) genetics; (4) neuro-computational control; (5) learning; and (6) development. To demonstrate its utility, the lens of Behavioral Investment Theory was applied to an important construct in human psychology, depression. It was argued that depression could be defined as a state of behavioral shutdown, and this conception reconciles seemingly conflicting perspectives of whether human depressive states are normal reactions, psychological disorders, or mental diseases. A number of different broad proposals for mental functioning were then reviewed, including proposals offered by an evolutionary neuroscientist, an integrative behavioral learning theorist, a humanistically oriented engineer, and a cognitive psychologist, and showed the basic structure of mental process could be understood not as basic S→R formulations of traditional behaviorism, nor even Input→Output notions of early cognitive perspectives, but instead requires a control theory frame of P − M => E. The chapter concluded by broadly characterizing the different levels of mental processing that have evolved over the eons, culminating in humans with a language-based justification system. In the next chapter, Behavioral Investment Theory is utilized as the foundation to construct an integrative model of human social motivation and emotion called the Influence Matrix.
Chapter 4
The Influenc Matrix
“And so I became an emotional stone,” said Eduardo1 to me stoically after he relayed some powerful stories from his childhood. He and his ex-wife Maria had come to therapy because their 7-year-old son, Juan, was having difficulty during weekend transition periods. Juan was emotionally reactive toward Eduardo, becoming angry or fearful in ways that seemed unpredictable, and he would often cling to his mother prior to being dropped off with his father. In the intake, Eduardo denied utilizing major forms of physical punishment. He did acknowledge spanking Juan twice in the past year but reported these came after Juan had done something particularly bad. Eduardo did admit to having angry outbursts and frequently yelling at Juan, but at the start of therapy he stated he was comfortable with his parenting and insisted that the focus be on getting Juan’s emotional reactivity under control. However, it became clear to me early in the therapy (and later to Eduardo) that his angry, aggressive displays were central to the difficulties he was having with Juan. Indeed, problems managing his explosive anger were at the center of Eduardo’s difficulty in many life domains. Eduardo’s mother had died when he was 10. His father had capricious moods, sometimes being quite loving, other times being authoritarian, and occasionally being physically and emotionally abusive. Eduardo recalled that as an adolescent he retreated from connecting with others and vowed to look out for himself—that is what he meant by becoming an emotional stone. He also became, in his words, “obsessed with issues of trust,” and he was having significant problems with his current fiancé in large part because he discovered she had lied to him several months ago. His ex-wife Maria and he met when they were in their early 1920s. She was attracted to him and thought he was a loving person behind the cold exterior. She discovered, however, that he could become filled with rage, withholding, and be very cruel just when she needed him the most. She finally decided he could not change and left him, shortly after which he became depressed and made a serious suicide attempt. He was then hospitalized, diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, given medication, and saw a therapist twice. But he hated the medication and the therapy and quickly discontinued both. He then decided he needed to rely on himself to get
1 All
of the identifying information as well as some details of these cases have been changed.
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_4,
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his life back in order. He went back to trade school to learn how to be a carpenter and had been successful in making a good living over the past 2 years. However, he reported frequent blow-ups that his boss warned could cost him his job. Now consider another therapy case I supervised. Jennifer was a 19-year-old college freshman who presented to the college counseling center with feelings of anxiety and depression. She reported that she grew up in a loving home, although probing revealed it was somewhat emotionally restricted. She reported her mother was quite protective of her, and it was a relationship that could be described as enmeshed. Jennifer described herself as sensitive, accommodating, and reported having a strong desire to be liked and accepted. She stated that she had a generally happy if somewhat sheltered childhood, but her mood and sense of security changed when she entered college. The problems started with her roommate, who was both popular and somewhat dominating. Although they had initially gotten along fairly well, trouble emerged when her roommate started having her boyfriend stay over. This made Jennifer feel uncomfortable. She tried to state her feelings but was brushed off by her roommate. She told her mom about the situation, who became upset and told Jennifer she did not have to put up with it and that she should be more assertive. Jennifer again went to her roommate and made the request that the boyfriend should not stay over, and in the course of the exchange she let it out that she had told her mother about it. Although her roommate stopped having her boyfriend stay over, she teased Jennifer, sometimes in front of their mutual friends, for “running to her mother.” This incident had occurred 2 months prior to her entering therapy and had initiated a cascade of problems. She and her roommate now rarely spoke. Jennifer also felt her other friends looked at her negatively, and, consequently, she started feeling much more anxious, alone, and homesick. She also started having difficulty attending to her schoolwork, and she ended her first semester with Bs and Cs rather than As and Bs. This resulted in emerging doubts about her ability to succeed in college. When she came to therapy, she had started having trouble getting to sleep and getting out of bed in the morning. She had stopped attending one of the academic clubs she belonged to and was thinking about transferring to another school closer to home. To those who engage regularly in psychotherapy with adults, these two cases should sound quite familiar in the sense that the presentations and dynamics are not at all uncommon. I chose them both because they are rather prototypical and because the two presentations represent two sides of an important continuum on the Influence Matrix, the self-other dimension. As will be clarified in greater detail, the Influence Matrix suggests that humans are motivated to acquire social influence and much of the relational exchange between people involves negotiating that influence. Such negotiations take place on what might be referred to as “Self:Other” ratios, whereby individuals are theorized to represent their own interests and the interests of those they are interacting with. In most cooperative relationships, individuals initially attempt to maximize mutual interests. That is, initially pathways are chosen that maximize mutual social influence, which explains why people often
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work together to save face, frequently compliment one another, and so often have mutually reinforcing, reciprocal relationships. But it is often not possible to find jointly beneficial pathways because interests differ and sometimes, as in the case with Jennifer and her roommate, people have interests that are mutually exclusive. Thus, in conflicting situations, individuals must decide whether they will primarily emphasize their own interests or the interests of others. And it is in this way that Eduardo and Jennifer are quite different. Eduardo’s relational structure—a highly defensive, overly self-reliant, angry position—can readily be characterized as a highly self-centered position, meaning that his focus is initially and primarily on his own needs and interests. For him, depending on others is threatening. This position is quite common in individuals who have long standing interpersonal difficulties, and is somewhat more common in men than in women. In contrast, Jennifer’s relational structure can be characterized as much more other-centered. That is, her first inclination is to focus more on others’ interests, to accommodate rather than challenge and be self-sacrificing. She is more concerned with being liked than getting power, and she feels dependent on others’ attitudes toward her. This is also a common position, and somewhat more so in women than men. Of course, despite these differences, both Eduardo and Jennifer have motives and emotions associated with the “opposite side” of the equation. Eduardo wanted to get along with others if he could only trust them, and Jennifer was willing to challenge her roommate and assert her own desires, especially with her mother’s encouragement. Now consider the following questions. If we take these descriptions at face value, how did the relational structures of these two individuals develop? Why do some people develop self as opposed to other orientations? Even more basically, where do the social motives come from? What is the relationship between social emotions like shame and social motivations? How do people’s social motivations and needs guide the reasons they give for their behavior? Is there a way to connect a more clinical understanding of social motivations and emotions with the notion that the mind evolved as a system of behavioral investment articulated in the previous chapter? The Influence Matrix allows us to answer these questions. This chapter proceeds as follows. First, the Influence Matrix is described in greater detail. Like the ToK System, the Influence Matrix comes with a diagram and that is shared and the various components and their interrelations are articulated. Each of these components is defined and explained, and several examples are offered. In ways that are similar to Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis, the Influence Matrix is an integrative idea that works by consolidating many different lines of theory and research on social motivation, emotion, and relational processes into a coherent whole. The way the Influence Matrix lines up with modern psychodynamic theory, attachment theory, parenting styles, modern approaches to self-esteem and trait theory will be reviewed. Then utility of the Influence Matrix in explaining complex human relational processes is demonstrated by analyzing a scene in depth from the Academy Award winning film, Ordinary People.
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The Basics of the Influenc Matrix The Influence Matrix is an extension of Behavioral Investment Theory to the domain of human social motivation and emotion. As such, it incorporates the principles of energy economics, evolution, behavioral genetics, computational control, learning, and development. In addition, the P − M => E formulation is an integral part of the structure of the Influence Matrix. Given that, let us think some about the social world from the perspective of Behavioral Investment Theory. Behavioral Investment Theory posits that evolutionary pressures will shape the mind (or neuro-behavioral investment system) to have perceptual, motivational, and emotional structures that allow the animal to control resources historically associated with survival and reproductive success. Thus, to understand which resources were likely to be important, we need to consider the evolutionary history of the species. Since our focus here is on humans and their relationships, we can start by asking two very basic questions. “Were our hominid ancestors primarily solitary or social?” and “If they were social, did these relationships matter in terms of survival and reproductive success?” There is consensus regarding the answers to these two questions. First, it is very clear that ours has been a very social species, long before we were even human, and our hominid ancestors lived in close knit groups of fifty to two hundred. Second, these relationships mattered. Unlike some herd mammals that live in groups but do not form complicated reciprocal relationships, humans have always lived in groups that are marked by interdependency and frequent, intense, and lifelong patterns of social exchange. Given these facts, we can make the assertion that other humans were an extremely important resource in the ancestral environment. Using Geary’s (2005) motive to control formulation discussed in the previous chapter, we can then make the assertion that the ability to influence the actions of others in accordance with one’s interests would have been highly advantageous, whereas the inability to do so would have been potentially catastrophic. This brings us to the first foundational assumption of the Influence Matrix, which is that social influence, defined as the capacity to influence others’ actions in accordance with one’s interests, is a resource humans are motivated to acquire. That is, like nutritious food, social influence reflects a basic, primary need and desire. It is, of course, not the only foundational motivation humans have, but it is theorized to be a central one. The concept of social influence is admittedly quite abstract and, as we will see, there are many details to be added to this very basic notion. For example, we can immediately see that not all people in one’s relational field are equal; it may be more important to influence those with whom one is and will be intimate than to influence strangers. With some additional reflection, we can also see that the nature of social influence varies across the lifespan. The problem of social influence to an infant is very different than to a tribal shaman. And yet even here there are some important similarities. For example, in both cases the amount of attention the individual receives, the relative displays of positive to negative affect from significant others, and the willingness of others to sacrifice on the individual’s behalf are all good indications of the degree of social influence.
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These universal commonalities bring us back to Geary’s (2005) argument regarding soft modularity. Recall that soft modularity posits patterns that are relatively constant in nature across the generations will become ingrained in the automatic neuro-information processing systems that frame the animal’s initial perceptions and responses to certain events. These processing systems will then evolve with the developmental experiences of the animal, forming, in La Cerra’s and Staat’s language respectively, a complex of adaptive representational networks and basic behavioral repertoires. Soft modularity, which explicitly incorporates both evolutionary and learning processes, is the conceptual frame employed by the Influence Matrix. The Influence Matrix diagram (Fig. 4.1) can be thought of as a diagram of the basic structure of the socio-emotional “exoskeleton” that all healthy humans should share. Genetic differences will influence the structure resulting in individual differences in temperament. And, as was suggested by the cases of Eduardo and Jennifer, an individual’s life experiences shape the specific representations and strategies developed for solving problems associated with acquiring and maintaining social influence. Starting with the motivations, notice the two boxes inside the circle, one toward the upper right and the other toward the lower left, labeled high and low influence, respectively. These boxes represent core motivational templates that function as reference ideals. If you recall the arguments from the previous chapter regarding the P − M => E equation, the “M” stands for motivation, which are referential schema of animal–environment relationships that the individual will work to either
Reward Self
Self-centered/oriented strategies for influence
PRIDE
HOPE – Anticipation of pleasure
Dominance
ANGER
Autonomy
High influence
Punish other
Hostility
JOY/ PLEASURE/ APPROACH
Affiliation
LOVE
HATE
SADNESS/ PAIN/ AVOID FEAR –
Reward other
Low Influence
Anticipation of pain
GUILT Dependency Submission
SHAME
Punish Self
Other-centered/oriented strategies for influence
POWER Y-axis = INFLUENCE THROUGH COMPETITION/CONTROL LOVE X-axis = INFLUENCE THROUGH ALTRUISM/COOPERATION FREEDOM Z-AXIS = FREEDOM FROM INFLUENCE
Fig. 4.1 The Influence Matrix
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seek and approach or avoid and withdraw from. “P” stands for perception, which in this case would refer to the social cognitive processes involved in assessing others in relationship to one’s self. “E” stands for the emotions that result when there are changes in the relationship between the perceived situation and the individuals’ motivational states.
The Key Elements of the Influenc Matrix The Need for Social Influence The Influence Matrix posits that there are universal characteristics associated with high relative to low social influence and that humans have built-in capacities for perceiving these characteristics and are generally motivated to seek and approach indicators of high influence and avoid and withdraw from indicators of low influence. I have already mentioned some of the major variables that should universally define these templates. The amount of attention from others, the amount of positive relative to negative emotions expressed by others, and the degree to which others will sacrifice for one’s interests are three powerful indicators of high relative to low influence. Consequently, the prediction is that humans have built-in capacities for detecting these variables and are intrinsically motivated to work toward acquiring indicators of high influence and to avoid indicators of low influence. If social influence is something we are motivated to achieve, then a question that follows is: How do we achieve it? At first glance it seems that there are almost an infinite number of ways that we influence others. We can try to make ourselves look strong or attractive, we can give money or complements, we can tell others we need help, we can share information, we can threaten others with punishment or ridicule, we can smile and say hello, and so on. Although true, the Influence Matrix suggests that the relational processes underlying the acquisition of social influence can be grouped into three broad categories: (1) care elicitation, (2) competition, and (3) altruism. If you turn your attention back to the diagram, you will see three axes in the middle. The y-axis is labeled “Power,” which refers to competitive influence and is marked by the poles of dominance and submission. The x-axis is labeled “Love,” which refers to cooperative influence and is marked by the poles of affiliation and hostility. The z-axis is labeled “Freedom” and is marked by the poles of autonomy and dependency. I describe each of these dimensions in greater detail below.
The Initial State of Dependency At birth, human infants are completely dependent on the investment from others for their protection and survival. Of course, much of the variance on whether or not such investment occurs resides in the desires and abilities of the primary caretakers. Nonetheless, as any parent who has heard an infant cry in distress or cooed in
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satisfaction can attest, infants have powerful capacities to influence caretakers and elicit investment. Care-eliciting behaviors can be conceptualized as expressions of the infant’s dependency needs. Broadly speaking, there are two related but separable kinds of dependency needs, the biological and the socio-emotional. Biological needs refer to basic survival needs and include protection from harm, food, temperature regulation, and so forth. Socio-emotional needs refer to relational needs and include cuddling, eye contact, and the expression of positive emotion by the caretakers in the service of fostering a sense of emotional security. Although both early psychoanalytic and behavioral paradigms argued that biological resource needs were primary and that the socio-emotional needs were acquired via learned associations, animal research, and careful observations of infants who were orphaned or abandoned clearly revealed that socio-emotional dependency needs are not simply learned through association but in fact are built into the basic architecture of the human mind. The argument from the vantage point of the Influence Matrix is that the ability to influence caretakers via care-eliciting expressions of underlying dependency needs represents the developmental foundation of an individual’s social influence structure. Later we will explore the connection between attachment theory and the Influence Matrix.
Competition and Dominance As infants develop into toddlers and young children, relationships in addition to the primary caretaker(s) become crucial, and competition, cooperation via altruism, and autonomy become vital to effectively navigating the social world. Direct competition is probably the earliest form of social relating from an evolutionary perspective, and for many nonsocial animals social influence is entirely defined by brief episodes of direct competition, most often for access to important resources like food, territory, or mates. The goal of such actions is usually to display superiority in a manner that redirects the competitor’s investments away from the resource of interest. In animals with more complicated and longstanding social relationships, the goal of competitive influence is to establish and maintain dominance in the social hierarchy. Many social mammals have relatively clear dominance hierarchies, and an animal’s place in those hierarchies directly relates to access to crucial resources such as territory, mates, and food. For humans, with their incredibly complex, longstanding relationships, dominance is much more complicated than simply having the power to make another individual submit. Indeed, most of our competition is much less obvious than that. Consequently, it is appropriate to divide competitive relations into two broad categories: direct and indirect. As the name implies, direct competition occurs when there is a resource desired by two or more individuals and the outcome involves clear winners and losers. Wars, brawls, and games are all examples of direct competition, although the latter occurs in a broader cooperative context whereas the former two do not. In contrast, indirect competition does not involve clear winners and losers, but instead involves processes of social rank and comparison, where we evaluate
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ourselves in relationship to others and work to acquire capacities, characteristics, or resources that are valued by the group and thus elevate our relative position. When we work to make ourselves more physically attractive, or buy an expensive new car to impress our neighbors, or advertise that we obtained high scores on our college boards, we are engaging in indirect competition. Research on achievement motivation is relevant here. There are two broad dimensions that underlie achievement motivation. One is achievement mastery, in which the individual is motivated to develop competence in skills that allow them to effectively control some aspect of their environment. Mastery motivation can be understood from the basic principles that underlie Behavioral Investment Theory and the general motive to control the flow of resources. But there is also a separate dimension of the achievement drive called performance motivation. Performance motivation refers to the degree to which an individual is attempting to excel in an activity because excelling affords positive approval from others. Thus a child who desires to get an A in a class so she can show her parents and friends that she is worthy is demonstrating performance motivational needs. Performance motivation is an example of indirect competitive motives at work. The A in the class increases the social approval, admiration, and respect of her parents, thus signaling an increase in her social influence.
Cooperation, Altruism, and Affiliation Effectively competing for resources, either directly or indirectly, is not the only way to influence the actions of others. Think about it this way. Who would you rather spend time with, someone who takes your resources and is always trying to be better than you at everything, or someone who is giving and attentive to your needs and desires? As the obvious answer to this question suggests, by being giving and deferential an individual can become a rewarding stimulus and that, in turn, can translate into social influence for the altruist. In addition, the altruist can avoid the hostility or anger that competition can readily elicit. Thus, according to the Influence Matrix, cooperative influence or influence through altruism is another basic way to achieve social influence. Perhaps even more so than competition, altruism is a complicated construct that has been examined from the perspective of many different disciplines, such as psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy. In the service of getting a practical feel for the Influence Matrix, I will gloss over some of the complexities and offer a basic definition of altruism, explain why it is conceptually separable from the competitive dimension, and articulate the main forms of cooperative influence. At a basic definitional level, altruism involves some form of self-sacrifice for the benefit of another. To be an effective giver, one must have the capacity to identify another’s interests and have the motivation to act in accordance with those interests. Indeed, the x-axis on the Influence Matrix is defined by the poles of affiliation and hostility because affiliation means to unite with or to bring or receive into close connection with, and it is the process of identifying, sharing, and emphasizing another’s
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interests that makes the cooperative dimension fundamentally different from the competitive dimension. There are at least four distinct kinds of altruism, although they all involve basic capacities for recognizing others interests (i.e., empathy), having positive feelings toward that person or group, and a willingness to make at least some sacrifices on their behalf. The kind of altruism that first evolved is nepotistic altruism, which is giving to kin. Putting this in very concrete terms, we can ask, “Why, from an evolutionary perspective, would a mother spend so much time and energy caring for her young?” The answer is that such actions are obviously valuable in terms of reproductive success. If she did not do so, her young would die, and her genetic line would come to an end. Nepotistic altruism is altruistic at the level of the individual animal (i.e., one animal is sacrificing time and resources for another), but is selfish at the level of the gene. In Chapter 6 I provide an overview of sociobiology, which examines in detail how and why tendencies toward altruism toward kin (not just direct offspring, but siblings, cousins, and other relatives) evolved. The second form of altruism is reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism involves sacrificing in the short term to receive some benefit at a later time. When you buy a friend’s lunch who forgot their wallet and they return the favor the following week, you have engaged in reciprocal altruism. Although not incredibly common, there are clear examples of reciprocal altruism in other animals. Vampire bats, for example, have been well documented to share food with unrelated individuals and expect the favor to be returned. Reciprocity is enormously common in human relations, and it is one of the defining features of long-term relational bonds. Children, for example, are frequently taught that a friend is someone who will sacrifice for you. Although we are all embedded in a sea of reciprocity, the nature of the reciprocity in humans varies as a function of the intimacy of the relationship. Casual acquaintances tend to engage in much more immediate and clear tit-for-tat exchanges than more intimate friendships and romantic relationships. For example, if a new acquaintance has you over for dinner, it is likely that there will be much stronger pressure to acknowledge the act and return the favor than if a best friend does so. Nevertheless, both friendships and romantic relationships are built on the bonds of reciprocity, and warmth, kindness, and reciprocal liking (the positive attitude both individuals feel toward one another) are some of the most influential factors in determining friendships. The third form of altruism is sacrifice for the good of the group. When the Arizona Cardinal Pat Tillman gave up his football career and joined the armed forces—and was subsequently killed in Afghanistan—that was a prototypical example of group-based altruism. The concept of group-based altruism has a long and controversial history in biology. In the 1950s and early 1960s, group-based selection, the idea that evolutionary forces would shape behavioral tendencies such that organisms might engage in self-sacrifice for the good of the group, was generally considered a viable position. In 1966, George Williams’ vigorously attacked the concept, arguing that individual level selection pressures would always outstrip any group-based tendencies. For several decades, group-based selection was generally seen as a misguided concept. But Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson (1998), who
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were recently joined by none other than E. O. Wilson, revived the concept, and it is gaining increasing credibility. Examples of group selection processes have been observed in organisms as diverse as bacteria and lions. From a human psychological perspective, it is clear that humans identify with and invest in groups. The fourth form of altruism is moral altruism, which entails sacrifice for others mediated via the individual’s justification system. It is uniquely human, although it likely has its motivational and emotional roots in the other three forms, especially reciprocal and group-based altruism. Darwin, for example, saw moral altruism as evolving because it benefited groups: Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe. . . advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. (Darwin, 1871)
Perhaps the most universal moral message involves a form of “do unto others” and as will be clear in the discussion of the Justification Hypothesis, a powerful motivating force is the need to maintain a justifiable state of being. Thus, individuals are expected to experience dissonance when they behave in a manner that is morally unjustifiable.
Autonomy and the Freedom from Influence Dependency needs expressed via care-eliciting behaviors, competition, and altruism define the vectors of acquiring social influence from the vantage point of the Influence Matrix. But if you return to the figure you will see that the z-axis is called “Freedom” and is represented by the poles of autonomy and dependency. Although dependency is an inevitable starting condition, it nevertheless is, by definition, a rather vulnerable state. If the interests or capacities of the individual on whom one is dependent change away from the individual, then difficulties inevitably follow. In addition, achieving social influence via competition and altruism are endeavors that, from the vantage point of behavioral investment, take time and energy that could potentially be spent doing other things. These opportunity costs occur in the best of cases. In worst case scenarios, social exchanges can result in individuals either being dominated and controlled or sacrificing without receiving any beneficial return. As a consequence of all of these dynamics, individuals are theorized to be motivated toward self-reliance and the avoidance of excessive dependency on others. Autonomy, which is defined as the capacity to function independently and be free from the undue influence of others, has been emphasized as a key psychological motive or need by a number of clinical theorists and researchers. For example, Carl Jung emphasized the importance of individuation, and the separation–individuation dynamic remains central to many psychodynamic theories. Similarly, autonomy versus shame and doubt is the second developmental task in Erikson’s model of ego development. Carl Rogers argued the fully functioning person had an internal locus of evaluation and Marie Jahoda argued that self-direction and the freedom from the control of others were central to mental health. More recent psychological
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researchers have argued strongly that a sense of autonomy is crucial to psychological well-being and represents a basic psychological need (e.g., Ryff, 1989). Like power, dependency, and altruism, autonomy is a complicated construct that, as Hmel and Pincus (2002) point out, carries with it various meanings in the literature. One meaning of autonomy is self-governance, which is the ability to make choices based on self-awareness and self-interests without undue control from others or external factors. This is what Edward Deci and Richard Ryan mean by the term and is reflected in the title of their tripartite model of psychological needs, which is called self-determination theory. Although self-determination clearly relates to the current conception of autonomy, it is not identical because it draws explicitly on notions of identity, self-concept, and self-consciousness. The current conception is closer to Hmel and Pincus’ (2002) second definition, which is separation and individuation. Murray (1938) argued that autonomy was one of the key psychological needs, and he offered a clear conception of the second meaning when he characterized individuals who are high in autonomy as being motivated to “go their own way, uninfluenced and uncoerced by others” (p. 151). This captures quite directly the meaning employed here. Of course with too much independence, the opportunities for one’s other social needs to be met are greatly diminished. Indeed, extreme independence is likely to be a function of counter-dependence, meaning that the individual separates from others out of fear of failure, betrayal, rejection, or other costly social encounters. Counter-dependence relates to Hmel and Pincus’ (2002) third meaning of autonomy, and it closely relates to what Beck (1983) meant when he argued that there were autonomous personality types vulnerable to depression, and this is a conception we will return to later in the chapter. According to the Influence Matrix, a balance between independence and dependency, what might be called a state of autonomous-interdependence, is expected to be associated with optimal relational functioning and the highest levels of social influence. Consistent with the idea that some dependency is important, research has found that the capacity to appropriately acknowledge dependency needs (e.g., when a spouse acknowledges they are sometimes emotionally dependent on their partner) is associated with more self-efficacy and greater relationship satisfaction than extreme independency (Feeney, 2007).
The Negatively Reinforcing Defensive Strategies of Hostility and Submission There are two other relational positions—hostility and submission—that are listed on the Influence Matrix but have not been elaborated on. Hostility and submission are different from the other four motivational states because they are not needs per se but instead are negatively reinforcing goal states that are activated in the service of avoiding the loss of social influence. Hostility is the polar opposite of altruistic affiliation and is defined as desiring to punish or hurt another instead of sacrificing for them. Hostility is a stance elicited when others are perceived to diminish or threaten to diminish one’s social influence (or resources more generally). Thus,
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hostile inclinations emerge when we perceive that others are trying to take our resources, control or dominate us, fail to reciprocate, or fail to respond to our needs to be cared for. For some individuals (e.g., bullies and sadistic psychopaths), hostile states can become fused with power needs such that the experience of others’ pain and destruction actually is a rewarding stimulus. However, for most of us, hostile states and inflicting punishment on others is generally experienced as aversive but nonetheless necessary to alter the actions of others. That is what makes hostility a negatively reinforcing strategy. It is generally activated in the service of avoiding additional loss of social influence or other resources. Submission, which involves deferring to the power of others, is also a negatively reinforcing strategy. It is most commonly enacted to avoid furthering competitive encounters that the individual perceives he or she will likely lose and be in some way damaged from. Thus the fifth grader gives up his lunch money to the bully at recess to avoid getting punched, an employee submits to her boss to avoid a negative rebuke, a student stops working on her homework because she believes no matter how hard she tries her performance will not match that of her brother, or a football team gives up because it is down 35-0 in the fourth quarter are all examples of submitting either directly or indirectly. An important distinction is made between forced submission and voluntary submission in the service of other social influence goals. Voluntary submission occurs in a relational context where deferring to authority is nonetheless clearly associated with increasing one’s overall social influence. For example, if the President of the United States called me and wanted to use me as a psychological consultant, my response would be, “Yes, sir, whatever you need, sir.” I would not feel shame but would instead feel both pride and joy. The reasons are obvious. The phone call would allow me to establish a connection to a person with tremendous social influence. In contrast, forced submission occurs when there is a concomitant perceived loss of social influence, and the submissive stance is activated to submit to powerful others and to disengage the competition to avoid further loss. Shame is an emotion associated with defeat or the experience of forced submission. To summarize the Influence Matrix theory of social motivation, humans have a foundational motive to acquire high levels of social influence and avoid the loss of influence. Influence is defined as the capacity to move others in accordance with one’s own interests, and the Influence Matrix posits that the basic influence templates for high and low social influence have been shaped via evolutionary forces because there are universal features associated with influence. These basic templates or schema are then molded by the developmental experiences of the individual. By looking at relational process variables, the Influence Matrix posits that humans acquire social influence via competition, cooperation, care-elicitation, and its counterbalancing tendency, autonomy. Hostility and submissiveness are two negatively reinforcing strategies that are activated to avoid situations that will result in the further loss of social influence. There are four other elements to the Influence Matrix that need to be articulated, which are as follows: (1) the three relational process dimensions are often in conflict with one another, with increases in one dimension often being associated with decreases in another; (2) the emotions on the outer ring serve as response sets that guide action in response to real or imagined changes in
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motivational dimensions; (3) relational exchanges take place on “self:other” ratio calculations; and (4) individuals have a sphere of influence that consists of the important people in their lives.
The Dynamic Interrelationships Between the Dimensions The first element that needs to be clarified is that the three relational process dimensions of social influence are dynamically interrelated. That is, changes in one dimension often, if not always, lead to changes in another. Of course, sometimes the changes are all in the right direction. For example, when a football team wins the Super Bowl, the team members’ Power, Love, and Freedom may be all elevated. And, not coincidentally, such events are generally associated with strong feelings of elation. But it is often the case that increases in one dimension of social influence is associated with decreases in another. Consider, for example, how increases in exerting power over an individual may decrease his or her affiliative feelings. Indeed, the old political adage, “It is better to be feared than loved,” reflects an appreciation for this dynamic. Likewise, adopting a loving attitude toward others can complicate the task of being dominating or controlling when necessary. Furthermore, if one asks for help or attempts to elicit care from others, such behavior often can result in a decrease in power or autonomy or even affiliation if the request is perceived as a burden. Even increases in power, love, and dependency inevitably raise the rate of social exchange, which inescapably impacts on the amount of autonomy one can have. When these facts are considered, we see then that the Influence Matrix clearly posits a conflict model of social motivation and affect. Although there will certainly be some situations whereby the motivational path toward high influence is clear, much of the time individuals will feel conflicted regarding which pathway will result in the most effective outcome. For example, consider what would occur if an individual is working on a team, and another team member is not pulling his load. At what point does one speak out and complain? In such a situation the relational poles of dominance, dependency, and hostility will orient the individual to engage the situation and either explicitly ask for his help (dependency), directly tell him he needs to contribute more (power), or punish him by proclaiming him lazy (hostile). In contrast, the autonomy, affiliative, and submissive poles orient the individual to not complain, either because it is not worth the effort to get involved (autonomy), he might get angry in return (submissive), or sympathetic feelings might emerge because perhaps it seems he has had a tough time as of late (affiliative). In the final section of the chapter, a scene is analyzed from a film that captures the intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts highlighted by the Influence Matrix.
Emotions on the Outer Ring The next point that need to be made is that the outer ring on the Influence Matrix represents the notion that emotions are the perceptual response sets that provide feedback as individuals either succeed or fail in relationship to achieving social
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influence. These emotions function to orient the individual toward corrective action and are theorized to become activated based on the P − M => E equation discussed in the previous chapter. Thus acquiring social influence in general is associated with positive emotions and losing it is associated with negative emotions. Furthermore, different emotions are designed to address different problems of social influence. For example, guilt orients one to the needs and feelings of others, whereas anger serves to protect one’s own interests. Shame is the self-punishment that signals defeat and motivates disengagement and withdrawal. Hate orients one toward punishing or eliminating the other. A point that needs to be clarified is the relationship between the autonomy– dependency axis and the emotions. It may at first appear confusing that the social motivations are represented in three-dimensional space, whereas the outer emotion circle is only in two dimensions. The reason for this is that the autonomy– dependency dimension represents the degree of social involvement, and emotions are activated in response to social involvement. Thus, as one moves toward a state of pure relational detachment, the emotional responses diminish greatly. In contrast, as involvement in the relationship increases there is greater emotional reactivity. This is seen more clearly when we look at extremes on this dimension as manifested in personality disorders. At the dependency/social involvement extreme, histrionic personality disorder is characterized by both an intense need for social attention and excessive emotionality. In contrast, schizoid personality disorder represents the extreme end of the autonomy dimension and is characterized by both a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and the almost complete absence of emotional expressivity. This analysis should not be taken to mean that individuals in relationships who are motivated toward greater autonomy will not experience strong emotions. As anyone who has ever struggled with whether or not to leave an important relationship knows, such situations are associated with intense emotions. The reason for the intense emotions is that the individual is still heavily involved in the relationship and thus is in the process of navigating crucial social influence dynamics.
The Self-Other Quadrants Another element to be highlighted in this overview is how the Influence Matrix represents the “self-other” dialectic, a point introduced in the beginning of the chapter with the examples of Eduardo and Jennifer. The Influence Matrix posits that human relational processes can be conceptualized as a form of social exchange, whereby people are negotiating with one another the acquisition of social influence. To effectively negotiate such exchanges, individuals have motivational and emotional structures that allow for the representation of one’s self-interests and the interests of important others. Dominance, autonomy, and hostility, along with the emotions of pride, anger, and hate orient an individual toward promoting one’s own self-interests. When these relational poles are activated one’s self-interests will become salient and the interests of others will diminish in importance and validity.
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In contrast, the poles of affiliation, submission, and dependency, along with the emotions of shame, guilt, and love orient the individual toward the importance and validity of others’ interests relative to one’s own. The Influence Matrix posits that when we experience interpersonal conflict, both sides of the self-other dialectic become activated. Consequently, interpersonal conflict often produces a state of intrapsychic conflict, whereby individuals experience inclinations both to challenge and defy based on self-interests and accommodate and defer based on the other’s interests. Such tensions are referred to as “anger–guilt” splits, which are very common to observe in the clinic room, as individuals struggle to define their relational conflicts either primarily through their own eyes or the eyes of the other parties involved. Although the Influence Matrix posits that the potential for both components are part of the basic human mental architecture, developmental processes often channel individuals to emphasize one side or the other of the self-other quadrants. For example, a common child behavioral disorder distinction is between internalizers and externalizers. Internalizers frequently worry about rejection, have problems with self-esteem, shy away from conflict, and often go unnoticed. Externalizers are defiant, exhibit more anger and hostility, and tend to blame others for their problems. In the language of the Influence Matrix, then, externalizers are children who tend to adopt self-centered strategies, whereas internalizers tend to adopt other-centered strategies. Likewise, as is discussed below, agency and communion are two central constructs in personality theory and generally refer to the degree to which an individual is self or other focused. We can use this lens and return to two case examples offered at the beginning of the chapter. In addition to genetically influenced differences in temperament, the Influence Matrix would posit that Eduardo’s developmental experiences channeled him heavily into a self-centered frame of reference. That is, for a host of reasons he was more successful initially (or in the short term) in achieving social influence via dominance, autonomy, and hostility, rather than expressing affiliation, dependency, and submissiveness. In contrast Jennifer’s predominant style was in the opposite quadrant. Affiliation, submissiveness, and dependency were much more likely to be relational stances that historically led to social influence for her.
Spheres of Influence The final point that needs to be made about the Influence Matrix is that individuals will develop their own sphere of influence, which represents the relatively obvious point that not everyone in the world is equally important to influence. Instead, individuals with whom one has long standing reciprocal exchanges with or kin ties to are much more central than strangers. Thus the sphere of influence consists of the important people in the individual’s life, and can be usefully represented with the inner portions consisting of those closest and whose relationship is most important, and expanding outward until the contact or connection is minimal or nothing at all. There are, of course, large individual differences in the size of the sphere of
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influence. Some dependent individuals will become almost exclusively concerned with one individual and neglect all other domains in the service of the positive opinion of that one person. Most individuals’ sphere of influence will consist of one’s immediate family and friends, along with peers and colleagues at work. Of course, some leaders and entertainers have vast spheres of influence, and their constituents or fans become central to their considerations. With this outline of the Influence Matrix offered, we can now turn to survey research in human relational processes to see how the model relates to existing lines of research.
Assimilating and Integrating Major Programs of Research with the Influenc Matrix In this section I examine how the Influence Matrix aligns, organizes, and consolidates much research in social motivation and emotion. Of course there is an enormous psychological literature on human relational processes and a truly comprehensive review would itself require many volumes. The argument here is that, very much like BIT, the Influence Matrix provides a heuristic frame that allows much research in this area to be assimilated and integrated. That is, by starting with the theoretical frame afforded by the Influence Matrix, we can knit together many different lines of investigation and see themes emerge that tend to be separated by vast oceans of empirical studies. Specifically, we will review work in psychodynamic theory, Interpersonal Circumplex Models, attachment theory, parenting styles, agency and communion, modern theories of self-esteem, and trait theory, and show how they all line up rather directly with the model of social motivation and emotion posited by the Influence Matrix.
The Influenc Matrix and Psychodynamic Theory In the opening chapter I differentiated psychoanalytic perspectives from psychodynamic perspectives and argued that while the unified theory was not consistent with several hallmarks of traditional psychoanalytic theory, it was, nevertheless, very congruent with modern psychodynamic theory. In the next chapter, we examine connections between the model of human consciousness as a justification system and the nature of defense mechanisms. While the dynamic relationship between self-conscious and subconscious thinking is a hallmark of modern psychodynamic theory, so, too, are neo-Freudian theories of social motivation and emotion, and I see many of these perspectives as being highly congruent with the Influence Matrix. For example, Alfred Adler was a prominent neo-Freudian theorist who broke with Freud’s contention that sex and aggression were the two foundational motives and instead posited that the ultimate goal was social superiority. Adler argued that many individuals feared never achieving a sense of superiority and as a consequence developed subconscious inferiority complexes, which could result in much neurotic
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behavior. The focus on status and social influence clearly moves Adler closer than Freud to the conception afforded by the Influence Matrix. Erik Erickson was one of the most influential psychodynamic theorists and is probably best known for his revision of Freud’s psychosexual model into a lifespan psychosocial model of development. In direct connection to the Influence Matrix, each stage in Erickson’s sequence consists of navigating the tensions between self and others, specifically ways in which an individual expects other people will either gratify or threaten him (Swanson, 1988). For example, first there is basic trust versus mistrust, where the infant learns whether or not his dependency needs will be gratified. Second, there is autonomy versus shame and doubt, whereby, with his new found capacities to walk and talk, the child begins to explore his environment and is either successful in separating from others and gaining some mastery over his world, or is injured or punished if the parents are either neglectful or too harsh and demanding, resulting in feelings of shame and insecurity. Later stages such as initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, and intimacy versus isolation, are replete with themes of power and competition, love and affiliation, and autonomy and dependency. Karen Horney is probably best known for her consideration of the importance of social and cultural factors on the development of neurotic relational styles, as well as her original ideas about the development and growth of the self. What is striking about Horney’s observations is how her conception of neurotic relational styles corresponds to the relational process dimensions on the Influence Matrix. Horney (1945) theorized neurotic relational tendencies had their roots in a “basic anxiety,” which results from feelings of insecurity, helplessness, and abandonment. Horney originally identified 10 defensive strategies (or neurotic needs) that individuals developed to manage their basic anxiety. Importantly from the vantage point of the Influence Matrix, she subsequently clustered these ten strategies into three basic types of interpersonal styles: moving against, moving toward, and moving away from others. The first trend, termed compliant, is associated with moving toward others. These individuals have neurotic needs to be liked, wanted, loved, appreciated, protected, and guided by a partner who can solve all their problems. These individuals are often overly solicitous, compliant, and malleable in interpersonal interactions. Needs for love, approval, and affection are so pervasive among the extreme moving toward that all other urges are subjugated. The second strategy, termed aggressive, is moving against others. In contrast to moving toward, moving against individuals have neurotic needs for power, exploitation, social recognition, personal admiration, and personal achievement. Often regarded as troublemakers or bullies by teachers and peers, or as hostile or volatile by employers, the extreme moving against others has an explicit Machiavellian worldview, grounded in the need for control and a tendency to exploit others for self-serving needs. The third strategy, detached, is associated with moving away from others. Detached types have neurotic needs for self-sufficiency and perfection. Individuals with extreme tendencies to move away from others are frequently identified as shy or withdrawn or isolated. The tendency toward isolation and detachment in the moving away from others is a source of both
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discomfort and solace to the individual who feels that it is perhaps best to fend for oneself because others cannot be relied upon to provide security. It should be noted that, consistent with the Influence Matrix, Horney believed each of the three broad neurotic trends had positive, as well as negative, attributes. Such positives found in the relational trends are the following: the value of compliance allows individuals to create friendly relationships with the outside world; hostility or aggression allows individuals to survive in a competitive society; and detachment allows individuals to attain integrity and serenity in a disturbing and conflict-ridden world. Horney argued that each trend is present in healthy individuals and is employed largely dependent on the context. In contrast neurotic individuals employ these styles excessively, inappropriately, and rigidly across different situations in a way that is not balanced. Horney also believed that although these inclinations are present in everyone, they are mutually exclusive and incompatible with one another; therefore, the individual must negotiate with competing urges within the self. Quoting from Horney’s 1937 work, Paris (1994) describes such incompatible ways people may use to cope with basic anxiety: They may “at the same time be driven imperatively toward dominating everyone and wanting to be loved by everyone, toward complying with others and imposing [their] will on them, toward detachment from people and a craving for their affection.” This generates “insoluble conflicts which are most often the dynamic center of neuroses.” (p. 110)
The parallels between Horney’s theorizing and the Influence Matrix are quite striking. First, the three styles of moving against, moving toward, and moving away directly correspond to the dimensions of power, love, and freedom. Second, her conception that the potential for each style exists in everyone, that there are liabilities and advantages to each, and that a balanced rather than rigid and fixed approach is healthiest, all fit well with the framework afforded by the Influence Matrix. Third, the fact that there is conflict between the poles is also central characteristic of the dynamic control model employed by the Influence Matrix. In summary, the neoFreudian psychodynamic theorists like Adler, Erickson, and Horney all saw human social motivation in a light very similar to that outlined by the Influence Matrix and much closer to it than the picture painted by Freud’s early conceptions.
The Influenc Matrix and the Interpersonal Circumplex To those familiar with the interpersonal tradition in psychology and psychiatry, the Influence Matrix will likely have a somewhat familiar feel to it. The reason is that it is an extension and adaptation of a major line of research in personality called the Interpersonal Circumplex. Interpersonal Circumplex (IC) models describe personality and social behavior on the two relational axes of dominant–submissive and affiliative–hostile. IC models began with the work of Timothy Leary (1957), whose work in turn grew out of the works of several theorists, most notably Harry Stack Sullivan.
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Interested in developing a theory of personality, Leary classified 16 personality characteristics based on various combinations of affiliation and power, which form the x and y axes of IC models. He placed the variables in a circular sequence around the axes, which paired to form eight diagnostically descriptive octants. Starting at the top and moving clockwise around the circle formed on the axes of power and affiliation, these descriptors were as follows: Managerial—Autocratic, Responsible—Hypernormal, Cooperative—Over-Controlled, Docile—Dependent, Self-effacing—Masochistic, Rebellious—Distrustful, Aggressive—Sadistic, Competitive—Narcissistic. Leary (1957) argued that individuals could then be plotted onto the Circumplex model depending on a number of evaluations made by an observer in a psychotherapeutic setting. He also emphasized that data needed to be considered in various domains of interpersonal and intrapsychic processes. Five domains or levels were given. The first domain was public communication, “the social impact one human being has on another” (p. 91). The second was conscious descriptions, an “individual’s perceptions of himself and his world as he reports them” (p. 132). The third domain was preconscious framing, which Leary thought could be accessed through projective measures, “expressions that an individual makes, not directly about his real self in his real world, but indirectly about an imagined self in his preconscious or symbolic world” (p. 154). The fourth domain consisted of repressed or unconscious motives, specifically “those interpersonal themes which the patient consistently, significantly, and specifically omits in the other three levels” (p. 192). The fifth domain was comprised of the “ideals held by the individual—his conceptions of ‘rightness,’ ‘goodness,’ of what he should like to be” (p. 200). IC models have been researched extensively over the past 50 years and have generally stood well the test of time. In 1994, an American Psychological Association symposium honoring Leary’s legacy noted that more than a dozen major research lines can be traced to his work. Although the Influence Matrix clearly falls in the IC tradition, it should be noted that it does expand on current IC models in several novel and important ways. First, by virtue of its association with Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis, it is embedded in a system that provides a much more explicit picture of the architecture of the human mind, something that IC models have been quite limited in specifying. Second, it adds the dimension of autonomy and dependency, which, interestingly, some IC theorists have done recently. Third, it is explicitly embedded in a modern evolutionary approach to human behavior and motivation, thus providing an explanatory framework for why humans have the social motivations they do. Fourth, in a related vein, the Influence Matrix argues that social influence underlies these strategies and that human behavior is tied to the motive to acquire social influence. Fifth, although the Influence Matrix is congruent with Leary’s and other IC formulations of personality styles, the Influence Matrix model is a dynamic control systems model that allows for much more nuanced analysis of real time interpersonal exchange than a trait-based personality framework. Sixth, closely related to the dynamic control systems model, the Influence Matrix framework explicitly articulates how emotions work in conjunction with motivational systems.
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The Influenc Matrix and Attachment Theory John Bowlby’s attachment theory has been one of the most influential paradigms in psychology in the past 30 years. Bowlby was a psychoanalyst who argued infants were drawn into attachments with the primary caregiver out of powerful innate dependency needs. Bowlby argued that the nature of this relationship was crucial in understanding the socio-emotional development of the child and has long-standing developmental ramifications. His ideas were initially excluded from the psychoanalytic mainstream for many years because they emphasized the reality of the social bond over intrapsychic processes and fantasy. But there was a “relational turn” in the psychoanalytic community (Wachtel, 2008) and with recognition of the importance of real relationships both in the past and in the here-and-now, attachment theory has gained new acceptance and now represents a strong current among mainstream psychoanalytic perspectives. Importantly, Bowlby characterized attachment theory both as an ethological theory (i.e., grounded in an evolutionary analysis of animal behavior) and as a control theory (i.e., there are internal goal states the individual is working to maintain), thus sharing a basic model of mind similar to the one offered here. Building off of the work of Lorenz and others, the key control related variable that Bowlby emphasized was feelings of security associated with the primary attachment figure. I hope it is apparent, then, that the basic assumptions of attachment theory are consistent with Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix. Given these formulations, it should come as no surprise that evolutionary forces have shaped the basic perceptual, motivational, and emotional structures of both infants and parents in a way that is conducive to survival and reproduction. After all, humans are notable in the animal kingdom for their extended periods of dependency. For the first several years of their life, humans are completely dependent on caretakers for their survival needs, and it is difficult to imagine how this situation could evolve without deep parent–child attachments. Much of Bowlby’s work centered on examining and explaining the sequelae of what happens when infants and toddlers work to reduce the discrepancy between themselves and their caretakers but fail to effectively do so (i.e., because of forced separation). Specifically, children who are involuntarily separated from their caretakers almost universally exhibit distress and protest, becoming angry, fearful, and demanding. The developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth introduced the concept of the caretaker being a “secure base” from which to operate and explore the world. She also developed an enormously influential experimental paradigm called the strange situation. The strange situation involves the child and parent initially in a room together. A stranger appears, briefly converses with the parent, and then the parent leaves the room. The parent then returns, comforts the infant, while the stranger inconspicuously leaves the room. The parent then leaves again, and shortly the stranger returns. Finally, the parent returns, completing the protocol. The child’s behavior is primarily analyzed in terms of the reaction to the departure and return of the parent and the nature of play and exploration exhibited.
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Ainsworth used this paradigm to reliably identify three different attachment styles: secure, insecure ambivalent, and insecure avoidant. Secure children tend to explore freely while the primary caretaker is present, engage with strangers when the caretaker is there but not when she is not, become visibly upset when the caretaker departs, and are happy to see the caretaker return. In contrast children with an ambivalent attachment style are anxious of exploration and of strangers even when the mother is present. When the mother departs, they become extremely distressed. These children are ambivalent when she returns and seek to remain close to the caretaker. However, they also can be resentful and may hit or push their caretaker when reunited. Children with insecure avoidant attachments styles tend to ignore the caretaker and show little emotion when they depart or return. Such children may run away from the caretaker when she approaches and fail to cling to her when she picks them up. Often such children treat strangers similarly to the mother. There is not much emotional range displayed regardless of who is in the room or if it is empty. These attachment styles, examined from the vantage point of the Influence Matrix, can clearly be understood as representing different socio-emotional strategies for influence that emerge as a consequence of various relational patterns. Along with attachment theory, the Influence Matrix would posit that securely attached children have their basic needs for social influence met and, consequently, feel more positive, safe, and comforted by the presence of the caretaker. In contrast, insecure children are theorized to not have their dependency needs met, which results in a general registering of low social influence, and this is associated with negative emotions, most notably fear. The two insecure attachment styles represent two different influence strategies on the autonomy–dependency axis. Namely, ambivalent children adopt a hyper-dependent strategy, characterized by strong emotional displays of need and fear of not receiving the necessary parental investment. In contrast avoidant children adopt a hyper-autonomous strategy that can be understood as minimizing dependency needs and care-eliciting displays.
The Influenc Matrix and Parenting Styles Parenting styles refer to the broad and general relational patterns that parents utilize to socialize their children. In the mid-1960s Diana Baumrind (1966) developed one of the most widely cited models of parenting. She argued that there were two primary dimensions of parenting style: demandingness and responsiveness. Parental responsiveness (also referred to as parental warmth or supportiveness) refers to “the extent to which parents intentionally foster individuality, self-regulation, and selfassertion by being attuned, supportive, and acquiescent to children’s special needs and demands” (Baumrind, 1991, p. 62). Parental demandingness (also referred to as behavioral control) refers to “the claims parents make on children to become integrated into the family whole, by their maturity demands, supervision, disciplinary efforts, and willingness to confront the child who disobeys” (Baumrind, 1991, pp. 61–62).
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Categorizing the parents according to whether they are high or low on parental demandingness and responsiveness creates a typology of four parenting styles: indulgent/permissive, authoritarian, authoritative, and uninvolved/neglectful. Each of these parenting styles reflects different naturally occurring patterns of parental values, practices, and behaviors and a distinct combination of responsiveness and demandingness. Specifically, permissive parents are far more responsive than they are demanding. They are loving and lenient, do not require disciplined behavior, and tend to avoid confrontation. In contrast, authoritarian parents are highly demanding and directive, but not responsive. They insist on obedience to authority and expect their commands to be obeyed without challenge. Authoritative parents are both demanding and responsive. Such parents monitor their child’s behavior and impart clear standards for conduct. They are assertive but not intrusive and restrictive. Their disciplinary methods are supportive, rather than punitive, but they still maintain control. They want their children to be assertive as well as socially responsible and self-regulated as well as cooperative. Neglectful parents are low in both responsiveness and demandingness. They allow their children enormous freedom and are generally uninvolved. It is apparent that these parenting styles are congruent with the relational process dimensions posited by the Influence Matrix. Through the lens of the Influence Matrix, authoritative parents have an effective balance of power, love, and freedom. Authoritarian parents, in contrast, overemphasize power relative to love and freedom. Likewise, permissive parents tend to overemphasize love over power and freedom, whereas neglectful parents emphasize freedom relative to love or power.
The Influenc Matrix and Sociometer Theory The concept of self-esteem has long been thought to be a factor in people’s interpersonal behaviors. But only recently have models emerged that connect the concept directly to social influence in a manner fully consistent with the Influence Matrix. Mark Leary’s sociometer theory (ST; Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995) posits that the self-esteem system functions as a sociometer, or gauge, that monitors the degree of social influence. Directly consistent with the first foundational assumption of the Influence Matrix, Leary and colleagues argue that, given the importance of social acceptance and rejection throughout human evolution, human beings developed a monitoring system that responds to cues indicating real or potential rejection, which evokes feelings that alert the individual to the threat of rejection, and motivates the person to behave in ways that minimize the probability of rejection and promote acceptance. This subjective indicator monitors the quality of one’s relationships with other people with changes in state self-esteem signaling either improvement or deterioration in the degree of social inclusion and acceptance. Leary and colleagues (1995) developed sociometer theory as a response to the enormous body of research on self-esteem that leaves many unanswered questions. Most notably, sociometer theory contends that despite the fact that the self-esteem
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motive has been used to explain so many psychological phenomena, little attention has been paid to the source or function of the self-esteem motive itself. Additionally, Leary argued the field of psychology has non-critically accepted fundamental assumptions and explanations about self-esteem. He offered sociometer theory as a viable and functional explanation of self-esteem that begins to explain such assumptions, as well as some of the challenges that plague the self-esteem literature. It is a formulation consistent with the Influence Matrix.
The Influenc Matrix, Agency and Communion, and the Self-Other Dialectic The self-other dialectic is one of the most fundamental dimensions of personality that researchers have identified, and the Influence Matrix provides a clear way of framing the “self-other” dialectic. Specifically, the upper left quadrant of dominance, hostility, and autonomy are poles that orient one toward “self” interests and the lower right quadrant of affiliation, dependency, and submission orient one toward other interests. The examples of Eduardo and Jennifer that opened the chapter were chosen in part because they offered prototype examples of individuals who were operating at opposite sides of the self-other dimension, a dimension that has been a key focus of personality and social psychological theorists and researchers for quite some time. Much research on the self-other dialectic has been advanced under the terms agency and communion, terms made famous by Bakan (1966). Agency refers to self-assertion and the condition of being a differentiated individual; it is manifest in strivings for mastery, power, and differentiation. Communion refers to interpersonal involvement and relational interconnectedness, and is manifested in strivings for intimacy, union, and solidarity (Wiggins, 1991). Agentic qualities include selfassertion, self-expansion, and the urge to master; whereas communal qualities are manifested by selflessness, openness, concern with others, and a desire to be at one with others. On the Influence Matrix, the upper-left quadrant corresponds to agentic strivings, whereas the lower right corresponds to communal strivings. Gender differences in agency and communion have received much attention from researchers. Men and masculine traits tend to be more agentic; whereas, women and feminine traits exhibit greater communal tendencies. Communication styles are an area where research has revealed gender differences. Leaper (1987) describes the following differences in styles: Women typically have been found to demonstrate a communal orientation by discussing topics concerned with people more than men; women’s communion also has been revealed through the use of more supportive and expressive language forms. Conversely, men have been found to manifest an agentic orientation by discussing topics like their work or sports more than do women; men’s agency also has been seen in their greater use of controlling and instrumental language forms. (p. 138)
In the clinical arena the cognitive psychotherapist A. T. Beck (1983) posited that there were two major depressogenic personality styles, which he labeled sociotropic
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and autonomous, conceptualizations that were remarkably consistent with the formulations offered by the psychodynamic researcher and theorist Sydney Blatt (1974). Beck argued that sociotropy, or social dependence, is characterized by intense needs for positive interchange with others, with such individuals focusing intensely on acceptance, intimacy, support, and guidance, coupled with an intense fear of rejection or criticism. In contrast autonomy involves an investment in independent functioning, mobility, choice, achievement, and integrity of one’s domain (Beck, 1983). Autonomous individuals are theorized to be vulnerable to depression situations in which they fail in their own eyes. The Influence Matrix offers a readily accessible framework for understanding the agentic-communal dimension and the clinical conceptions of sociotropy and autonomy. Specifically, the Influence Matrix posits that a relative balance between agency and communion would be associated with higher social influence and better psychosocial adjustment, a point that has been made by several researchers. Beck’s sociotropy and autonomy represent extreme ends of the agentic-communal dimension. Interestingly, although the correspondence between Beck’s constructs and agency and communion are rarely noted, Bruch (2002) argued precisely this point, claiming that sociotropy could be conceptualized as unmitigated communion, whereas Beck’s autonomy was unmitigated agency.
The Influenc Matrix and Personality Trait Theory Over the past century, one of the most successful developments personality researchers have made is the establishment of a taxonomy of personality traits, known as the Big Five. Specifically, the existence of five broad clusters of personality traits have been replicated across many studies. Benet-Martínez and John (1998) describe the Big Five personality traits as such: Extraversion summarizes the traits related to activity and energy, dominance, sociability, expressiveness, and positive emotions. . . Neuroticism contrasts emotional stability with a broad range of negative effects, including anxiety, sadness, irritability, and nervous tension. . .Agreeableness contrasts a prosocial orientation toward others with antagonism and includes traits such as altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, and modesty. . . Conscientiousness describes socially prescribed impulse control that facilitates task- and goal-directed behavior. . .Openness describes the breadth, depth, and complexity of an individual’s mental experiential life. (p. 730)
The Influence Matrix is theorized to be directly related to three of the Big Five personality traits, extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness, whereas it is theorized to be much less related to conscientiousness and openness. This relationship is visually represented in Fig. 4.2. My students and I tested this model by constructing a measure based on the Influence Matrix and examining its relationship with a standard Big Five measure, the Neo-FFI. Specifically, we developed a 48-item measure, with six items assessing each of the eight social poles on the Influence Matrix (high and low influence, dominance and submission, affiliation and hostility, and autonomy and dependency), as well as items assessing the frequency of
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Extraversion PRIDE
Self-focused Dominance
ANGER
APPROACH
Autonomy
High Influence
Hostility
Affiliation
LOVE
HATE
Low Influence
GUILT endency cy y Dependency
AVOID
Submission
SHAME
Other-focused
Neuroticism
Fig. 4.2 Cross-validation of NEO-FFI and the influence matrix
each emotion. Using the Influence Matrix and its hypothesized connections with trait theory, we made the following predictions: negative affect, low influence, submissiveness, and hostility would be significant predictors of neuroticism; positive affect, high influence, dominance, and affiliation would be significant predictors of extraversion; affiliation, hostility, other-oriented affect, and self-oriented affect would significantly predict agreeableness. A hundred and thirty college students filled out both measures. As a set, negative affect, low influence, submissiveness, and hostility significantly accounted for 53% of the variance in neuroticism. Forty-five percent of the variance in extraversion was explained by the set of predictors comprised of positive affect, high influence, dominance, and affiliation, with each predictor significantly contributing to the model. As a set, affiliation, hostility, other-oriented affect (love, guilt, and shame), and selforiented affect (hate, anger, and pride) significantly explained 55% of the variance in agreeableness. In contrast less than 10 percent of the variance in either openness or conscientious was accounted for by the Influence Matrix scale. This was a preliminary study, and replication as well as much greater sophistication is required in scale development to draw strong conclusions. Nevertheless, it does serve as an example of how empirical research can be conducted based on the Influence Matrix, and how it connects to existing theories and research. In this section, I have reviewed a wide variety of perspectives in human relationship processes that have tended to exist as completely separate lines of research but can be assimilated and integrated from the vantage point afforded by the Influence Matrix. Given the current disconnected nature field, psychologists could spend their
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entire careers focusing on any one of these specific lines of thought without considering how they are interrelated. Such separateness is particularly problematic for practitioners who must deal with whole people facing unique problems in unique contexts. In addition to providing a theoretical framework that assimilates and integrates many different lines of research, the Influence Matrix is also a powerful clinical tool that provides a framework for viewing complex human interaction taking place in real time.
Putting the Influenc Matrix into Action: An Analysis of Ordinary People There is a climactic scene in the academy award winning film Ordinary People that captures the dynamic flow of motivational states represented by the Influence Matrix. The story is about an upper-middle-class family dealing with the traumatic death of the elder son Buck and is replete with themes of power, love, autonomy, and dependency. The mother, Beth, is an emotionally restrictive woman who dearly loved Buck and just cannot process his loss. The father, Calvin, is an accommodating, other-oriented individual who attempts to keep the peace. Much of the story focuses on how their son Conrad attempts to deal both with the loss of his older brother and with his mother’s confusing, emotionally distant, withholding behavior. When the film starts, Conrad had made a serious suicide attempt approximately 6 months ago and had been subsequently hospitalized for several months. He continued to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression and enters psychotherapy early in the film, with the process focused on his grief, exploring his emotions, and individuating from others, especially his mother. One of the most unique aspects of the Influence Matrix is the manner in which it captures the dynamic flow of relational processes, both intrapsychically and interpersonally. Consequently, rather than offer an analysis of each character, I analyze a scene in the movie through the lens of the Influence Matrix. The analysis focuses on the social motivational and emotional dynamics that are guiding the characters. However, because we will be analyzing transcript of the scene, much of our data will actually be the justifications offered by the characters. As introduced in Chapter 1, justifications are the claims we use to legitimize our beliefs and actions to ourselves and to others. And yet because justifications are guided in part out of nonverbal social motivational and emotional processes, we can readily analyze these processes through the justifications the characters offer. Of course, if one were to watch the actual interaction, the manner in which the emotions organize the facial expressions, body postures, and other actions becomes readily apparent. The scene begins with Beth appearing with an angry look on her face as Calvin and Conrad are starting to decorate a Christmas tree in the living room. Although Conrad was a good swimmer, he had decided to quit the swim team, in part as a way of asserting his independence. However, he did not inform his parents of this
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decision, and Beth has just found out about it through a family friend. Enormously concerned with the image of the family, she is furious with Conrad for the deceit. “What’s wrong?” Calvin asks Beth. Irritated, Beth responds, “Why don’t you ask him what is wrong? Then you won’t have to hear it from Carol Lazenbee.” Knowingly, Conrad turns to his father and says, “Dad, I quit the swim team.” “Carol thought I knew,” Beth snaps. “Of course why wouldn’t I, it happened over a month ago!”
From the vantage point of the Influence Matrix, by violating an implied social contract, Conrad has betrayed Beth and cost her social capital in terms of her image. This activates in Beth anger and indignant pride. Beth’s goal state is to have Conrad apologize and submit, as this would at least restore some equilibrium in the relationship. The conflict escalates because, as a consequence of his therapy and getting more in touch with his conflicted feelings about his mother, Conrad is not feeling inclined to apologize, as he experiences her as cold and withholding. “Where have you been every night?” Calvin asks Conrad. Somewhat sheepishly Conrad responds, “Around. . .at the library mostly.” In a concerned voice, Calvin asks, “Why didn’t you tell us, Connie?” “I don’t know. . .I didn’t think it mattered.” “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t it matter? Of course it matters—” “No, that was meant for me, Calvin!” Beth interjects sharply. Turning to Conrad, “It is really important for you to try to hurt me, isn’t it?”
Not having received an apology, and indeed being somewhat ignored by Conrad as he turned to engage Calvin, she attempts to punish Conrad by characterizing him as being mean-spirited. Now angry, Conrad replies, “Don’t you have it backward?”
Instead of submitting and avoiding as Conrad’s depressive mindset had often previously inclined him to do, this time, in part with the help of a therapeutic process that had allowed him to access his feelings of anger and hurt toward his mother, he engages defiantly in the conflict, attempting to show that in fact his mother has been the one who violates reciprocity and acts to hurt him. As is often the case in intense interpersonal conflicts, both parties now feel wronged and have activated power and hostile frames that emphasize their own self-interests. “Oh?” Beth replies. “And how do I hurt you? By embarrassing you in front of a friend? ‘Poor Beth, she has no idea what her son is up to. He lies and she believes every word of it’.”
We here see explicitly Beth’s impression management concerns. Her needs for impression management and saving face are apparent throughout the film. “I did not lie,” Conrad complains.
Lying is clearly unjustifiable and would put Conrad in a one-down position of being guilty. His anger energizes him to challenge this characterization. Beth responds by justifying why it is a lie of omission and then why she needs control over him.
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“You did! You lied every time you came into this house at 6:30.” Becoming visibility distraught, Beth declares, “It is starting all over again, the lying, the covering up, the disappearing for hours. I will not stand for it. I cannot stand for it.” Conrad angrily replies, “Well, don’t then! Go to Europe!”
A counter-dependent claim, justifying disengagement and thus challenging her need to control his actions. “Connie!” Calvin motions to calm Conrad. Conrad yells, “No, the only reason she cares—the only reason she gives a fuck about it—is that someone else knew about it first!”
Here we see, for the first time in the film, Conrad explicitly expressing his core concern that his mother doesn’t really care about him, except insofar as it impacts other people’s impressions about their family. Consistent with both attachment theory and the Influence Matrix, this core concern is at the center of Conrad’s emotional disturbance. Stepping in actively between them, Calvin turns to Conrad. “Now just settle down. Stop it, just stop it.” “No! You tell her to stop it,” Conrad says in an aggressive stance. “You never tell her a goddamn thing! And I know why she never came to the hospital she was busy going to goddamn Spain and goddamn Portugal. Why should she care if I am hung up by the balls out there?”
Now Conrad’s anger associated with his unmet dependency needs is flowing. He is finally giving voice to a dark, secret fear. It is also useful to note here that memories are categorized in part based on emotional content. Thus as his anger becomes increasingly activated he is flooded with past adaptive representational networks of emotionally similar situations (i.e., times in which his mother was withholding when he needed her care). It is also useful to note that his response to his father is telling. Even though he knows his father loves him, it is clear that Calvin’s accommodating style left Conrad feeling unprotected from his mother’s cold distancing behavior. Indignant, Beth responds, “Maybe this is how they sit around and talk at the hospital but we are not at the hospital.”
Ignoring the content of Conrad’s claim, Beth seeks to regain power and control by reminding him of his “pathology” and insisting that his actions are completely unjustifiable. Conrad yells, “You never came to the hospital! How do you know about the hospital?”
The hurt and anger remain strongly activated. Calvin again tries to lower the intensity of the exchange. “You know that she had the flu and she couldn’t come inside, but she came and. . .”
Calvin’s goal state of maintaining amicable relations is clear throughout this exchange. Here he attempts to justify Beth’s actions in manner very different than Conrad’s interpretation. It shifts the attribution of her not going to the hospital from Beth’s lack of love for Conrad to external factors.
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Conrad interrupts, “She wouldn’t have had any flu if Buck was in the hospital, she would have come if Buck was in the hospital!”
Conrad challenges Calvin’s justification with a direct comparison to Buck, attempting to demonstrate that it was not external factors, but her feelings for him that explains why she never came to the hospital. In a cutting voice, Beth replies, “Buck would have never been in the hospital!”
Beth’s comment is a searing poker into Conrad’s heart. Feeling unloved by his mother, Conrad had spent much emotional energy struggling for the reason why. First, he wondered if it was in his head. Then as he came to believe she did not in fact love him, he had to ask why. Was it because his mother was incapable of loving? No, because she clearly loved Buck. Was it because she was mean-spirited and enjoyed withholding from him? If so, that led to feelings of anger and hostility. But what if it was because there was something fundamentally wrong with him? What if he did not deserve to be loved? Core fears and beliefs about being unlovable are central to many theories of psychopathology. It was the fear that she withheld her love because there was something fundamentally wrong with him that made it such a searing comment for him. It basically says to him: “Yes, you are right. I did not come because I did not care and I did not care because you were not worthy.” “That is enough!” Calvin yells. Conrad runs off to his room. “What the hell just happened there?” Calvin asks, bewildered. “Somebody should go up to him.” Frustrated, Beth turns to Calvin. “Oh god yes, that is the pattern, he walks all over us and you go up and apologize!”
Notice here how Beth has power-related frames for the relational exchange and directly accuses Calvin for being overly giving and accommodating. “I am not going to apologize. . .” Cutting him off, Beth says, “Yes, of course you are. You always do. You have been apologizing to him ever since he got home from the hospital, only you don’t see it.” Angrily, Calvin defends himself. “I am not apologizing.” Gritting his teeth, “I am trying to goddamn understand him!” Once again indignant, Beth replies, “Don’t talk to me that way. Do you talk to me the way he talks to you!” Taking a deep breath, Calvin attempts to calm the situation. “Beth, let’s not fight, okay? No fighting, okay? Please, let’s go upstairs. . .” She stares back at him, but doesn’t move.
We see in this exchange Beth attempting to maintain her dominant position in regards to Conrad and the situation generally. From her frame of reference, Conrad has acted irresponsibly and should have apologized. Instead, he was defiant, which justified in her mind that there is simply something wrong with him. In contrast, Calvin is willing to listen, understand, and give the benefit of the doubt. Calvin’s anger almost reaches a boiling point but he quickly regains control and reasserts the need to be amicable.
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Calvin leaves and goes to Conrad’s room. Entering, he finds Conrad on the bed crying, with his face in his arms. “I need to sleep,” Conrad whimpers. “In a minute.” “I did not mean it,” Conrad says sobbing. “I did not mean any of it, I am sorry. Please don’t be mad.”
The shift in Conrad’s motivational–emotional tone is striking. Instead of continuing to be angry and defiant, he is now apologetic, fearful, and deferential. He does not aggressively deride his mother, justifying what he was entitled to from her as he had just been doing but instead he appears riddled with guilt, apologizing over and over for unleashing his rage and begging his father not to be angry with him. What could possibly explain the shift? This is where the dynamic control theory of the Influence Matrix does some of its most impressive work. Beth’s comment activated a shamebased, forced submissive reaction in Conrad. That resulted in a flip in his Influence Matrix orientation from upper left to lower right. Having lost the battle because she struck at his emotional Achilles heel, Conrad was flooded with feelings of guilt and shame, and is now motivated both to apologize and escape the consequences of the encounter. “I am not mad. I am just trying to figure out what happened down there.” “I don’t know what happened, I am sorry about it all. I am sorry about the whole thing. Just tell her I didn’t mean it. Just tell her I am sorry, will you?”
His feelings had been stuffed for a long time, for good reason. They were enormously anxiety provoking because they carried potentially catastrophic implications, either for Beth (i.e., that she was a mother who did not love her son) or Conrad (i.e., that he was unlovable). Conrad now just wants to undo the damage and restore equilibrium in the relationship. “Why don’t you tell her?” Calvin asks. As if a knife pierced his heart, Conrad calls out, “Oh God no, I can’t. . .don’t you see I can’t talk to her?” “Why not?” Calvin asks, puzzled. “Because it doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t change the way she looks at me,” says Conrad, still covering his face with his arm.
Conrad’s experiences of his mother’s coldness exist at the core of his being. Although he longs to be closer, he does not experience the feeling to be reciprocated. Thus out of counter-dependency motives, he needs to maintain his distance to protect himself. Trying to help, Calvin explains, “She was upset, Conrad. Your mother was hurt because you quit the swim team. I don’t understand it myself. . .” “No, I don’t mean just now,” Conrad’s voice rises in desperation, “Don’t you see? I don’t mean just today.” “What then? Explain it to me.” “I can’t Dad. Everything is Jello and pudding with you, you don’t see things.”
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Calvin’s nonconfrontational, accommodating style comes with consequences. To maintain an amicable view of things, he filters out many of the conflict-ridden dynamics of the family. “What things. What things. . .I want you to tell me” “That she hates me, can’t you see that?” Conrad cries out. Incredulous, “Your mother doesn’t hate you, Conrad.” Despondently giving up, Conrad says, “Alright, alright. She doesn’t. Please leave me alone.” After a moment, Calvin gets up and walks out.
And here we see Conrad’s central emotional dilemma playing out. Desperately needing validation from his father, but fearing his father’s inability to recognize what he sees, Conrad obviously vacillates between explaining his feelings and pushing his father away. Finally, he blurts out his experience, but for a host of motivational and cognitive reasons, Calvin does not see the dynamic Conrad feels. Of note, later in the film, Calvin does come to see the truth in Conrad’s claim, and it comes with significant ramifications for his relationship with Beth.
Summary and Conclusion The Influence Matrix is a model of social motivation and affect that is consistent with the logic of Behavioral Investment Theory and integrates and assimilates many traditions in personality, clinical, and social psychology. Several lines of research were reviewed here including psychodynamic relational perspectives such as those advocated for by Karen Horney, Interpersonal Circumplex Models, attachment theory, parenting styles, sociometer theory, agency and communion, and trait theory. The analysis of the film clip from Ordinary People shows how the Influence Matrix provides a conceptual frame that allows us to track very complicated socioemotional processes in real time. It is in that regard that the Influence Matrix can be an extremely useful clinical tool, a heuristic that allows one to frame both interpersonal and intrapsychic processes. It is a lens that aligns very well with interpersonal theory, modern psychodynamic approaches like Paul Wachtel’s (1993) cyclical psychodynamic perspective, as well as humanistically integrative approaches like Leslie Greenberg’s (2002) emotion-focused approach. The Influence Matrix connects to the Justification Hypothesis by providing an understanding of the underlying social motivational and affective forces that influence an individual’s justification system. Specifically, it will be argued in the next chapter that the self-consciousness system was designed in part to solve the problem of social justification, and it is to that issue we now turn.
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Chapter 5
The Justificatio Hypothesis
On June 11, 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc calmly walked to the center of a circle of protesters, sat down on a cushion, and meditated in the lotus position as he was doused by his religious brothers in a specially concocted mix of gasoline and diesel fuel. He then proceeded to light a match. Although he reportedly grimaced in agony, he did not move, scream, or cry out as his body was incinerated. What could possibly account for such a dramatic and seemingly unnatural human act? Common psychological constructs such as schedules of reinforcement, personality traits, neural networks, unconscious conflicts, social roles, and evolved predispositions do not appear to provide a framework that would allow for the meaningful interpretation of such behavior. It would seem then that journalists, poets, and philosophers would do as well or better than psychologists in offering a viable account of Quang Duc’s actions. This chapter presents a third piece of the unified theory, the Justification Hypothesis. Whereas Behavioral Investment Theory provides a framework that allows for the understanding of how human behavior is continuous with other animals, the Justification Hypothesis provides the framework for understanding what makes people such unique animals. It is an idea that casts the relationship among language, human self-consciousness, and the evolution of Culture in a new light by interpreting both human self-consciousness and Culture as justification systems. As described in Chapter 1, justification systems are the interlocking networks of language-based beliefs and values that function to legitimize a particular version of reality or worldview. Viewing the behavior of Quang Duc and his fellow monks through the lens of the Justification Hypothesis, the following question emerges: What was the justification for his actions at both individual and societal levels? One inference that can readily be made is that the coordinated behaviors of the group of monks suggest the presence of a shared justification narrative; that is, everyone involved in the protest shared the same script. Moreover, the strikingly destructive and agonizing nature of the act implies that it could be legitimized by only the strongest of justification pressures. How does the understanding afforded by the Justification Hypothesis fare in explaining Quang Duc’s actions? Before his final dramatic act, Quang Duc left a G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_5,
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letter, now known as the Letter of Heart Blood, which justified his sacrifice as an attempt to demonstrate to the world the magnitude of injustices that were being perpetrated on the Buddhist community by a repressive regime. His plan worked well, in part because the act was captured by a Western photographer and entered the world’s consciousness. Many nations consequently brought pressure on the South Vietnamese government to soften its attitude toward the traditional religion, and ultimately it complied. Quang Duc’s justification for his self-sacrifice can thus be situated within a larger constellation of cultural justification narratives and— according to the Justification Hypothesis—it is these very narratives that provide the key to interpreting a wide range of human behaviors. It is, of course, one thing to acknowledge that human beings often feel obliged to justify their actions. It is quite another to suggest that the phenomenon of justification represents a path to a comprehensive understanding of self-consciousness and the evolution of human culture. In this chapter, I show how the Justification Hypothesis provides a clear evolutionary explanatory framework that explicitly links the design features of human self-consciousness with a novel adaptive problem faced by our ancestors. I then introduce a tripartite model of human consciousness based on the insights afforded by the Justification Hypothesis that consolidates many different perspectives and allows for a readily understandable frame from which to view the major domains of human conscious experience. Then, in much the same fashion that Behavioral Investment Theory builds bridges between many disparate domains of thought connecting cognition, brain, and behavior, and the Influence Matrix connects many domains of research on human relational processes, I explain how the lens of the Justification Hypothesis assimilates and connects many lines of research in cognitive, social, developmental psychology, and neuropsychology. Finally, I explore how the Justification Hypothesis links individual level analyses with cultural level processes, providing a framework for understanding the evolution of culture and building a bridge between human psychology and the social sciences such as sociology and anthropology.
Linking Human Self-Consciousness to the Adaptive Problem of Social Justificatio Although there have been a number of proposals about the rise of self-consciousness and the rapid evolution of human culture, it nevertheless remains the case that the human capacities for self-consciousness and culture remain one of the great mysteries in the natural sciences. Consider that the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace, was so perplexed about the human capacity for selfreflective thought that he thought it evidence for the divine. Almost a century later, the famed evolutionary biologist George Williams (1966) wrote, “I cannot readily accept the idea that advanced mental capabilities have ever been directly favored by selection” (p. 14). Likewise, Lumsden and Wilson (1983) characterized it as the “greatest missing link” in evolutionary theory, a characterization more recently echoed by Terrace and Metcalf (2005).
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The Justification Hypothesis links a unique, biologically adaptive problem faced by our ancestors to the design features of human self-consciousness. Put in the jargon of evolutionary biology, the Justification Hypothesis is an exercise in reverse engineering. Capitalizing on Darwin’s fundamental insight that the complex design seen in organisms is a product of natural selection, a reverse engineer matches organism design features to problems in the ancestral environment. To offer an example, let’s say one was an alien visitor and wanted to understand why humans have outer ears. Using a reverse engineering approach, one might hypothesize, for example, that outer ears function to attract mates, much like a peacock’s tail. That would lead to a number of testable implications. If ears had a primary role in mating rituals, then ears should be displayed more prominently during such times, and ear size and shape should correlate with sexual attractiveness, and ears should be center pieces of adornment and so forth. Of course, this hypothesis does not hold very well, and because the predictions don’t align with observations one can reject the idea that the outer ear functions primarily to attract mates. Another hypothesis—that the outer ear functions to funnel sound waves into the inner ear thus enhancing hearing capacities—is a much better idea. Hearing capacity is indeed enhanced by the outer ear, and the shape of the ear is designed precisely in a manner that coordinates the flow of sound waves into the ear canal. So reverse engineering is like a theoretical lock-and-key matching process, whereby one can think of the characteristic of the organism as the “key” and the adaptive problem it evolved to solve as the “lock.” The shape of the outer ear partially “unlocks” the problem of getting sound waves into the inner ear. Now we can use this metaphor and turn our attention to human self-consciousness. When dealing with human self-consciousness there are problems with both the lock and the key. First, there is enormous difficulty conceptually specifying the “key”—that is, answering with clarity, what exactly the self-consciousness system is (recall some of the arguments visited in Chapter 2 regarding problems in the philosophy of mind and consciousness). Second, as the previous quote from George Williams suggests, there have been few compelling accounts of biological problems that the selfconsciousness system would have evolved to solve. The power in the Justification Hypothesis is that, for the first time, it affords us a clear way to conceptualize both the “key”—that is, defining the key design features of the human self-consciousness system, and a clear way to conceptualize the “lock”—the novel adaptive problem the system evolved to solve. So according to the Justification Hypothesis, what is the self-consciousness system? In a nutshell, it is an evolutionarily novel mental apparatus that functions to build justification narratives that legitimize actions and claims. To put this in everyday terms, the self-consciousness system is the language-based portion of one’s mind that is narrating what is happening, why it is happening, and why one is doing what in that context. Although this is the epicenter of adult human phenomenological experience, the Justification Hypothesis posits that such justification narratives are evolutionarily recent, emerging in close conjunction with the evolution of language in general. This is important because it suggests that the self-conscious portion of your mind represents only a part of your cognitive processes, one that
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can be at least theoretically separated from other cognitive phenomena. As we will see later, this is exactly what neuropsychologists have found. The adaptive problem (or lock) specified by the Justification Hypothesis is the problem of social justification, which is the problem of explaining the legitimacy of one’s thoughts and actions to others. Later I explain in more detail that when the evolution of language reached sufficient complexity, it afforded a window into other’s minds, which was a problem because it was not always in one’s best interest to allow one’s thoughts to be “seen.” I further explain why the ability to effectively justify one’s claims and actions must have been closely related to the amount of social influence one achieved and was thus tied to reproductive success. The reverse engineering matching process leads to several predictions. For example, this formulation clearly predicts that the self-consciousness system should be designed in such a way that it allows humans to effectively justify their actions to others in a manner that, all things being equal, tends to maximize social influence. An examination of some of the characteristics of human self-consciousness as elucidated by neuropsychology, social, cognitive, and developmental psychology will be reviewed to demonstrate that there is a large body of general human psychological research that is consistent with this proposition. It will be concluded that the problem of social justification is a prime suspect for a selection pressure that resulted in the evolution of the human self-consciousness system. Said differently, the argument will have been made that the human self-consciousness system can be thought of as the mental organ of social justification. Before proceeding, it is important to state here that although the Justification Hypothesis is anchored in evolutionary theory, I am of course not arguing that people are born with a fully functioning justification system. That would obviously not be a tenable position. What I am arguing is that humans have a mental apparatus that allows for the growth and development of justification systems with experience. This argument will become clearer as we review lines of research in social, cognitive, and developmental psychology. One way to think about it is to consider that just as evolution has prepared the behavioral investment system with capacities to experience pleasure and pain to guide the manner in which behavioral patterns develop in development, justification systems likewise develop in response to the context of social justification in which the individual lives.
Review of the Evidence for Advanced Capacity for Self-Consciousness in Humans A key element of the Justification Hypothesis is the idea that humans possess a capacity for self-consciousness that is fundamentally different than that of other animals. This is not a novel proposal. Indeed, many theorists and philosophers have suggested that it is the presence of advanced capacities for self-reflective awareness that differentiates human consciousness from the consciousness of other animals. Daniel Dennett (1996), for example, made the distinction between firstorder and second-order intentional beings. A first-order intentional being has a
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mental life, consisting of beliefs and desires about many things, but not beliefs and desires about beliefs and desires. In short, first-order intentional creatures are aware, but not aware that they are aware. Second-order intentional beings—namely humans—have beliefs and desires about beliefs and desires; they are aware of their awareness. Likewise, Edelman (1992) distinguished between primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness. He defined primary consciousness as the state of being mentally aware of things in the world, of having mental images of the present. Higher-order consciousness is awareness of the self or the process of being conscious of being conscious. He argued it is intimately tied to language and is only possessed by humans. In one form or another many others have made similar proposals. In addition to theoretical and philosophical arguments, there have been some empirical investigations of animal self-awareness. Of course, without language such investigations are obviously difficult (a point worth noting in and of itself). However, the ingenious technique of the Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) task developed by Gallup (1970) has yielded interesting results. MSR involves exposing animals to a mirror, anesthetizing them, and placing a large dot on their forehead to see if they attend to the dot when given the chance to look in the mirror upon awakening. Success at the MSR suggests at least a rudimentary cognitive capacity to become the focus of one’s own attention. Success does not mean that the animal can introspect or be self-reflective or has an elaborate self-consciousness system (Mitchell, 1994). On the other hand, failure to succeed at the MSR task is a result that is much easier to interpret and is good evidence for the lack of any genuine capacity for selfconsciousness. What is remarkable then is that virtually all animals fail the MSR task. Only adult chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and bottlenose dolphins seem to regularly pass the MSR task. Even most adult gorillas fail to pass the test (Parker, Mitchell, & Boccia, 1994). Thus, the vast majority of mammals do not possess even the most basic cognitive capacities required for self-reflective awareness. Humans generally pass the MSR task between the ages of 18 and 24 months. When one considers how adult humans explain their actions to others, worry about their death, develop grand narratives to account for their existence, and plan their actions weeks, months, and even years in advance, the gulf in self-awareness between humans and even our nearest animal relatives is truly astounding. Other empirical evidence comes from studies of individuals with brain injury. Neuropsychological investigations provide convincing evidence that human selfawareness requires specific types of information processing systems in the brain that allow for self-conscious awareness. Such investigations have demonstrated that there are linguistically based declarative memory systems in the brain that store information in a manner that allows the individual to consciously remember what happened. Brain damage can also result in gross disturbances in self-awareness, a condition known as anosognosia. Such individuals will often exhibit a remarkable, almost unbelievable, lack of self-awareness, often despite intact intellectual functioning as measured by intelligence tests. Examples include individuals who completely deny that half of their body is paralyzed despite being confined to a wheelchair and unable to move their arm or leg (Barr, 1998). Some cases have
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been reported in which the individual recognizes that his arm is paralyzed, but denies that his leg is! Many neuropsychologists explain these phenomena as disturbances in the self-awareness system (e.g., Amador & David, 1998). As explored in more detail below, the language structures of the left hemisphere are thought to be intimately related to human capacity for self-awareness. Anosognosia is often the result of right hemisphere damage, and it has long been proposed that such damage results in the isolation of the language structures in the left hemisphere that allow for self-reflection and self-reporting (Geschwind, 1965). The enormous difference between human and animal self-awareness and the presence of neuro-information processing systems that allow for self-awareness, suggests that the capacity to be reflectively conscious of our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings is part of the complex functional design of the human brain and mental architecture. A reasonable inference from these observations is that the human selfconsciousness system has been shaped by natural selection. However, the case is currently far from conclusive. It is still possible that capacity for self-consciousness is simply a byproduct of other evolved capacities, or is a purely acquired ability, like the capacity to play chess. From a reverse engineering perspective, if a particular adaptive problem could be identified that has been present only in the hominid line and would require an elaborate self-awareness system, then the case that the SCS was the product of natural selection would be significantly strengthened.
The Role of Language in the Emergence of the Problem of Social Justificatio Most evolutionists and psycholinguists agree that the human capacity for language evolved through the process of natural selection. These theorists note facts such as humans everywhere possess language; there is a developmental period in which children acquire language easily and rapidly; children learn to speak with remarkably little direct instruction; there are well-documented language processing centers in the brain; and, the vocal chords of humans are elaborately constructed to allow for extremely complex sounds to be generated (Lieberman, 1998). Further, other animals (e.g., chimpanzees) can obtain only a crude approximation of human language despite immense training (Deacon, 1997). Finally, groups of children raised in the absence of a native language have been known to develop a fully functioning language in as little as a single generation (Bickerton, 1995). In addition to these elements, the capacity for language results in many advantages. It allows valuable information to be shared cheaply and effectively, which in turn allows for more synergistic and cooperative relationships. Language also allows for the accumulation of information across the generations. Furthermore, the ability to symbolically represent perceptual objects and their transformations in the forms of nouns and verbs results in an enormously increased capacity to manipulate, elaborate, connect, and remember concepts. Finally, the absence of useful alternative explanations makes the notion that the human capacity for language is a product of natural selection quite solid.
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Crucially for our current considerations, as language sophistication advanced beyond simple descriptions and commands, it came to provide a means to more directly access and assess the thoughts and intentions of others. Although a chimpanzee can clearly send the message that she is angry or scared, without a symbolic language it is almost impossible for her to communicate the reasons why she feels that way. Humans are different. Unlike chimps, language allows humans to ask and be asked about the thought processes associated with their behaviors. Questions such as “Why did you do that?; What gives you the right to behave that way?; Why should I trust you?” force the issue. Obtaining information about what others think, what they have done, what they plan to do is obviously important for navigating the social environment in modern times and given that humans have always been an intensely social species, there is every reason to believe that it was equally essential in the ancestral past. So once people developed the capacity to use language to access the thought patterns of others, they likely did so with vigor. Now consider why the answers to those questions would have been so important. If you strike a comrade with a stick, it matters whether you tell him it was done by accident or on purpose. If you take more than your proportional share of meat, it matters how you explain that action. If you are bargaining with a stranger, you can get more resources if you emphasize why the resources you are trading are valuable, and so on. In short, a second assumption associated with the problem of social justification is that the kinds of explanations people offer for their behavior have real world consequences. If you question the validity of this assertion, I encourage you to alter your explanations to others and see what happens. For example, next time you spill your drink on someone, tell her that you meant to do it, and see if she responds differently than if you had told her it was an accident. A third assumption underlying the problem of social justification is that human interests diverge and this complicates the translation process significantly. If one’s interests always fully coincided with the interests of others, communicating the reasons for one’s behavior would primarily be a technical problem of translating one’s nonverbal thoughts into a symbolic form that could be understood. But because interests always diverge to some extent and the explanations given for one’s behavior have real world consequences, the communication task becomes one of justification rather than simple translation. Elaborating a little bit on this point with an example, consider what would happen if a male (‘Beta’), was interested in forging a relationship with a particular female, but she was paired with another male (‘Alpha’). Imagine further that Beta starts spending time with her but is then confronted by Alpha with a question such as “Why are you spending so much time around her?” If Beta simply translated his thought processes in response to the question, he would say something like: “I want to separate the two of you and have her as my mate.” Of course, such a statement seems blatantly foolish because the information would obviously be of crucial importance to Alpha, who, upon hearing it, would be able to take defensive action. From the vantage point of the Justification Hypothesis, the problem is how Beta can explain his actions without costing him vital social influence and opportunities. To do this effectively, he must reflect on his actions, take into account the interests
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and knowledge of his audience and develop a justification narrative that provides a plausible explanation of the evidence without costing him key resources. In this light a response such as, “She is teaching me how to plant seeds” might be a good justification, in that it could provide an explanation for Beta’s actions in a manner that avoids potentially negative social consequences. Of course, Alpha must then evaluate the coherence and consistency of such an explanation and decide whether or not to accept the justification. Importantly, the need to evaluate others’ justification systems would have created selection pressures for an enormous increase in “theory of mind” abilities, which are the abilities to infer the intentions of others and are one of the most advanced capacities humans demonstrate (Shaffer, 2008). To summarize the key points so far: (1) Humans have advanced capacities for self-reflective awareness that far outstrip other animals, and these capacities are dependent on particular structures in the brain that are more developed in humans than other animals; (2) As language increased in sophistication, it must have reached a tipping point whereby it allowed others access to one’s thought processes; and (3) This access to one’s thought processes created a problem to the extent that interests between individuals diverge because in such instances it put pressure on individuals to create socially justifiable explanations, not simply share their thought processes as accurately as possible. A fourth and final assumption of the Justification Hypothesis is that, given the above listed assumptions, standard evolutionary processes will operate to give rise to increasingly sophisticated capacities for social justification. Specifically, it is presumed that as better justifiers emerged, an evolutionary arms race would have ensued, resulting in increasingly adept justifiers and increasingly more sophisticated capacities to analyze and critique the justifications of others. Moreover, it will be argued later that justification systems themselves evolve.
A Tripartite Model of Human Consciousness Up until this point in the argument, the Justification Hypothesis can be considered a good Just-So Story (Gould & Lewontin, 1979). That is, I have generated a plausible “story” regarding human evolutionary history and possible selection pressures that resulted in the human self-consciousness system. Yet the value of the Justification Hypothesis is not simply in that it provides a plausible story for why the human self-consciousness system might have evolved. Instead, the real value is found in the light it sheds on understanding human consciousness and culture in the current context. For starters, I have found the Justification Hypothesis helps clarify the nature of human consciousness from a more clinical, phenomenological, and folk psychological perspective. That is, it has given rise to a rather straightforward formulation about the different domains of human consciousness that I find to be qualitatively generalizable. As a clinician and educator, I have used the formulation with much success in both understanding and guiding interventions with my patients and supervising my graduate students. Virtually everyone with whom I have shared the conception can easily relate to it. Below I show how adult human
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consciousness can be readily understood as consisting of three domains that emerge from the logic of the Justification Hypothesis: (1) an experiential consciousness system; (2) a private self-consciousness system; and (3) a public self-consciousness system. Before we proceed, however, we need to once again make sure we are clear on the meaning of our terms and the relationship and differences between cognition, consciousness, and the mind. The previous chapter introduced a schematic of the architecture of the human mind, and the focus was on the way in which information was encoded and processed by the nervous system. In this next section, the focus is on consciousness. Consciousness refers to the first person, phenomenological phenomena of experiencing and awareness. I define consciousness as an “experienced” electro-neuro-chemical representation of animal–environment relationships. Experienced is in quotes because it highlights that the fact that the processes by which neurocognitive events gives rise to felt experience remains one of the great mysteries in psychology and neuroscience (Koch & Greenfield, 2007). An important point about the definition is that it means that consciousness is a specific kind of cognitive process. All conscious phenomena are thus cognitive phenomena, but cognitive processes can be either conscious or nonconscious (or implicit or explicit in the language of some cognitive psychologists). Although often thought of in dichotomous terms, it is also important to note that we can place cognitive processes on a continuum of consciousness, from completely nonconscious to somewhat conscious to fully self-conscious. Researchers have documented much information is processed completely nonconsciously. And when we consider altered states of consciousness (either induced by drugs, diseases, or hypnotic trances), dreaming, day dreaming, and transitioning from sleep to wakefulness, we can see the dimensional aspect of conscious awareness. A second consideration relating cognitive and conscious processes is seen when we consider the issue of memory and stored information. When we think about all the information that we can remember and contrast it to what we can be conscious of at any particular moment, we can clearly see that consciousness is not synonymous with all the information stored in the mind. Freud called information stored in memory that is potentially accessible the preconscious. The preconscious is material that can be freely brought into conscious but is not currently the focus of attention. So you have stored memories about your last meal or of your parents or an important accomplishment that can be brought into consciousness either via external stimuli or self-initiated efforts to recall. And then there is the domain of subconscious processes. Subconscious processes are experiences that are at the edge of self-awareness but do not receive enough allocation of attention for them to enter full consciousness. This might be because the stimuli or experiences were not salient enough to warrant the attentional resource or because the individual was motivated to shift attention away from them. We will have more to say about the latter process when we introduce the concept of filtering. But if you have ever had the experience of trying not to think about something or have been guided to experience something you knew was inside you all along but previously could not allow yourself to be conscious of, then you are familiar with
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the idea of subconscious processes. With these definitional issues addressed, we can turn to looking at human consciousness from the lens of the unified theory.
A Dual Processing Model of Cognition and Consciousness The unified theory strongly supports a two domain view of the human mind, which is the idea that human mental architecture consists of two kinds of information processing systems. The first system, as framed by Behavioral Investment Theory, is a nonverbal, perceptual–motivational–emotional (i.e., P − M => E), parallel neuro-information processing behavioral guidance system that computes resource availability and organizes action. The second system, framed by the Justification Hypothesis, is uniquely human and is a verbal (symbolic–syntactical), reflective, logical–analytic, sequential information processing system. Importantly from the perspective of integrating psychological theories, dual processing models of the human mind are found in work in psychotherapy, neuropsychology, cognitive, and social psychology. In fact, so fundamental is this general conception of two broad mental domains that it has been proposed as the basis for a central dogma in human psychology (Cook, 1989). Because consciousness is a particular form of cognitive process and because humans have two distinct forms of information processing systems, it follows that humans have two different forms of consciousness. And, indeed, there are two broad categories of mental experience—domains that can be referred to as sentience and self-consciousness. Sentience is the term used to describe nonverbal conscious experiences, such as feeling pain, seeing red, being hungry, or imagining an event. In contrast, self-consciousness refers to the language-based, self-reflective thought. Whereas the former involves experiencing (e.g., feeling hungry), the latter involves self-awareness and verbal making-meaning about that experiencing (“Here I am, feeling hungry, and wishing that I could get home for dinner”). Epstein (1994) proposed a two domain model of the human mind and consciousness that integrates psychodynamic theory with cognitive science in a way that is very congruent with the unified theory. Epstein labeled the first domain the “experiential” system. The experiential system processes information relatively automatically, holistically, in parallel and via images. It is self-evidently valid, as in “seeing is believing.” He labeled the second domain the rational system, which processes information sequentially, via words and symbols, is reason-oriented and requires justification via logic and evidence. Epstein reviewed a large body of evidence congruent with this model of consciousness and pointed out how the model is consistent with folk psychological notions of the distinction between thinking and feeling, head and heart, and reasoning and intuition. It is also congruent with observations about people with irrational phobias. Consider how these individuals “know” at a rational level their fears are unjustified but are nevertheless unable to act differently because of the power of the experiential system. A gap in Epstein’s innovative model—filled in by the Justification Hypothesis— is a conceptual frame explaining why the so-called rational mind evolved in humans
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and why it exhibits the design features it does. Epstein explicitly stated his model was congruent with a modern psychodynamic perspective, and the Justification Hypothesis enriches this picture significantly because it characterizes the second domain as a justification system that inhibits and filters out nonverbal thoughts, images, and impulses that are painful or unacceptable and allows justifiable actions to be expressed. Another related area that results in extending Epstein’s model is because the Justification Hypothesis emphasizes the important role of social justification, it leads to insights about the difference between the private and public self-consciousness system. To see clearly how the Justification Hypothesis does this, we can turn to another influential model of the self-system constructed by a psychologist interested in ego development. Loevinger (1976) defined the ego as the self-system that (a) manages impulses; (b) allows individuals to understand and explain themselves to others; and (c) allows individuals to experience themselves as a coherent entity over time. She argued that as children grow into adolescents and adults, their egos develop into increasingly complex networks of justifications regarding themselves, others, and the world around them. An example can help illustrate some of these elements. Several years ago I was discreetly observing my 4-year-old daughter, Sydney, playing with my 2-year-old son, Jon. I watched as the playing escalated into a more direct competition, which resulted in Sydney pushing Jon down, resulting in a cry of distress. Appearing on the scene and seeing Jon crying, I somewhat angrily asked Sydney what had happened. Almost immediately, she replied “he fell.” As this example illustrates, impulses are not always controlled and incriminating information (i.e., the fact that she pushed him) is often filtered out quite automatically. From the vantage point of the Justification Hypothesis, the first two aspects of Loevinger’s model (i.e., impulse control and explaining one’s self to others) highlight two distinct steps in the justification process. The first step involves the process of translating the nonverbal images into the self-consciousness system and blocking those impulses that are problematic, painful, or not consistent with the individual’s identity. The second step involves determining whether and how to share one’s private thoughts with others. This two-step process highlights an important component implicit in the Justification Hypothesis; namely that for adults, there are two domains of justification: the private (our internal self-talk) and the public (what we say to others). With this separation highlighted, let me introduce a figure that maps out the essential components of human consciousness, social context, and overt behavioral investments.
The Three Domains of Human Consciousness As depicted in Fig. 5.1, there are three broad domains of human consciousness: (1) the Experiential Self; (2) the Private Self-Consciousness System (the Private Self); and (3) the Public Self. The experiential self refers to the sentient aspects of consciousness, and it is made up of the qualia or the “raw feels” of conscious experience. Consistent with the P − M => E formulation, these experiences can
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Fig. 5.1 The three domains of human consciousness
be generally classified into sensations and perceptions (e.g., seeing red, touching a rock), motivational urges (e.g., hunger, sexual desire), and feelings and emotions (e.g., sadness, joy, anger), as well as imagined objects or occurrences. The two other domains of human consciousness represent the two separable domains of justification, the private and the public. The private self is the center of self-reflective awareness in adults, and it is made up most immediately of the internal dialogue that weaves a narrative of what is happening and why. It is a second-order awareness system, one that translates and feeds back onto the experiential system. Psychodynamic theorists generally consider this the conscious portion of the human ego. It also is the part of the mind targeted by traditional cognitive psychotherapy, which teaches individuals to monitor the content of their private justifications, identify how those justifications influence feeling states and behavior, and develop strategies for analyzing the accuracy and utility of those justifications in promoting adaptive action (Henriques, 2007). The public self exists between individuals and is the explicit articulation to others of what one thinks, along with the image one tries to project. It is my contention that these three domains of consciousness should be readily identifiable by every healthy human adult. Early in the developmental sequence, the private and public justification systems are not clearly separated. As language develops, specific actions are either inhibited or allowed depending on the strength of the rule, the magnitude of the impulse, and the development of executive functioning. Although this is indeed a justifying filtration process as illustrated by the anecdote of my daughter described earlier, it is not genuinely reflective in early childhood (i.e., ages 2–3), as it does not involve the
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clear separation of one’s own perspective from that of others. The private justification system emerges as dialogue is internalized, and in later childhood and certainly by early adolescence there is a distinct psychosocial identity that becomes the seat of reflective self-awareness in adults. The following quote from Carl Jung captures this emergence vividly: I was taking the long road to school. . .when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud. I knew all at once: I am myself!. . .Previously I had existed, too, but everything merely happened to me. . .Previously I had been willed to do this and that: now I willed. This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was “authority” in me. (Ryckman, 2004, p. 75)
The public self is a mixture of how we want to be seen and how we imagine we are seen by others, although both may be quite different from how one’s presentation is actually received by others. A number of seminal theorists have emphasized the importance of and dynamic tension between the public and private identity. James (1890, p. 294), for example, argued that identity was so intimately tied to the social world that people have “as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares.” Cooley’s formulation of the “lookingglass self” and Jung’s concept of the persona are other well known examples of early theorists emphasizing the role of others in shaping our identity. From the perspective of the Justification Hypothesis, one of the central tasks of navigating the social environment is maintaining a justifiable position in the eyes of others. The microsociology of Erving Goffman (1959) makes a strong case in favor of the importance of the public persona in a way that is very consistent with the Justification Hypothesis. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman describes face-to-face interactions and examined such processes through the lens of stage acting. He articulated how interpersonal interactions could be considered “performances” as actors learned to manage their impressions to others in both the structured and improvised roles of everyday life. Specifically, Goffman suggested that actors work to convey a positive, predictable impression, so as to be perceived as justifiable in the eyes of the audience. Interestingly, Goffman argued that in cooperative settings, actors work to preserve the justifiability of one another, and frequently move away from trajectories that could be unflattering or embarrassing for either party in the interaction. Over the years, his writings and the work of others provide a rich catalog of strategies and tactics that performers employ with the hope of managing the impressions others will form of them. The relationship between the public self that people attempt to project and how it is received is a crucial element of interpersonal relations and mental health. As you undoubtedly can imagine and likely have experienced, disconnect between the image we attempt to convey and the image received can happen for a multitude of reasons. We can misread what others want or expect, we can simply fail to impress despite our best efforts, and we often need to manage conflicting interests, both ours and those with whom we relate, and this can become especially complicated when we are aligned to interpersonal systems that are in conflict. Consider, for example, when one friend complains to you about another. In supporting one
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friend, tension emerges with the other. Moreover, lying, impression management, saying one thing and doing another are common everyday occurrences, so other people are naturally attuned to the possibility of filtering, deceit, and incongruence between actions and words, and are constantly wondering about what people are really thinking compared to what they are socially presenting. These issues make the social world complicated, which in turn results in a heightened self-focused attention for many. Researchers have documented empirically the distinction between the two domains of self-focused attention (the public and the private), have shown that individuals differ greatly in the extent to which they focus on one or the other or both, and have demonstrated that high levels of self-focused attention in one or both domains is associated with anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychopathology (Fenigstein, 2009).
The Context of Justificatio The three domains of consciousness are not the only aspects in Fig. 5.1. Above the two figures is labeled “The Context of Justification,” which refers to the network of symbolically based beliefs and values that provide the interacting members a shared frame of reference for their interaction (cf., Reichenbach, 1938). The context can be considered on the dimensions of time and scope. Scope refers to the size and scale of the context one is considering. Uri Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory provides a useful framework for considering the scope of the system, although I should note that he was concerned with the whole societal context, which would include the biophysical ecology and technology, in addition to the systems of justification. Nevertheless, his levels are useful for framing our perspective on the context of justification, and thus I briefly review them here. Bronfenbrenner delineated four separable, but interrelated and nested contextual levels: (1) The microsystem consists of the immediate relational environment that individuals interact in, such as the home or school; (2) The mesosystem refers to the interconnections between the various microsystems (such as the interaction between school and home), and this level can also be thought of as the general community in which the individual lives; (3) The exosystem refers to the larger, distal contexts that the individual does not necessarily directly experience in, but can nevertheless have an influence (for instance, the economy shifts and a child’s parent loses her job); and, (4) the macrosystem refers to the larger cultural context, especially the beliefs, values, laws and mores that define the culture as a whole. Time is the other dimension on which the context of justification needs be analyzed, as all justification systems arise out of a historical context and are legitimized in part by that history. Bronfenbrenner also integrated this dimension into his model, labeling it the fifth “system,” which he called the chronosystem. By considering the time dimension, we can place the immediate justifications in a historical and developmental context. Thus, if we are considering someone offering an excuse for a dishonest act, the history of making such excuses will play a large role in how the justification is received by others.
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In addition to applying to the more immediate context of individuals giving reasons to one another as in the clip from Ordinary People highlighted in the previous chapter, the Justification Hypothesis also readily applies to the macro-level cultural context, which consists of the laws, religions, and political positions that exist at national levels and beyond. The religious, legal, and normative systems of social convention, situated as they are in historical trajectories, all provide the larger context in which the specific actions and scripts of local individuals are played out. Because all these systems broadly frame which actions are legitimate and which are not, they can readily be considered as large-scale or collective justification systems. For example, consider racial attitudes in America through this lens. Prior to the 1950s in America, there was a general legitimization of the racial superiority of Whites by the people in power, such that in many circumstances it was acceptable to publicaly denigrate minorities. However, with the rise and relative success of the Civil Rights Movement, explicit racism became generally unjustifiable and now such pronouncements, if made in public are appropriately met with scorn and punishment. A host of other possible examples are available and later in the chapter I articulate how religion can be readily conceived as a large-scale justification system. Actions are also labeled in the figure, and are fairly straight forward. These are the set of observable behaviors that the individuals engage in, and are explicitly defined as the functional changes between the individual and the environment (as opposed to changes within the individual). Actions thus are overt mental behaviors. In more colloquial terms, we can think of actions as the practices people engage in, or the work of everyday living. Thus, if you are cooking a meal, taking a trip to the emergency room, paying the bills, or making love, these are the practices or actions you are engaged in. If we consider the major variables highlighted in the picture, we can see that people must navigate and attempt to align their justifications with their practices in particular relationship and social contexts.
The Two Filters Inside each of the individuals in the figure are two filters, labeled as the Freudian and the Rogerian. The Freudian filter exists between the experiential self and the private self and refers to the process by which unjustifiable or painful images and impulses are filtered out and/or are reinterpreted to be consistent with the individual’s conscious justification system. It is called the “Freudian” filter because the dynamic relationship between self-conscious and subconscious thoughts and feelings was (and still is) a central focus in both classical psychoanalysis and modern psychodynamic theory. Indeed, I have argued that the idea that the self-consciousness system filters out socially unacceptable motives in a manner that allows for a defendable conception of the self is arguably the founding insight of Freudian psychology (Henriques, 2003). Consider, for example, that repression and rationalization, two central defense mechanisms, can be readily thought of as two sides of a filtering process. Repression blocks or filters out unacceptable experiences; and rationalization
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is the process of attempting to provide an acceptable verbal narrative for those actions that are expressed. Why are certain impulses filtered? According to the Justification Hypothesis, the reason is to maintain a consistent, relatively stable justification narrative of the self and to maintain a justifiable image in the eyes of others. In his book Ego Defenses and the Legitimization of Behavior, Swanson (1988) made exactly this point, explicitly arguing that we should think of all ego defenses as “justifications that people make to themselves and others—justifications so designed that the defender, not just other people, can accept them” (p. 159). The formulation remains a hallmark feature of modern psychodynamic models and is also present in general models of personality and social psychological research on cognitive dissonance and psychopathology. The current understanding of this filtering process from a modern psychodynamic view is nicely captured by the Malan Triangle of Conflict shown in Fig. 5.2 that depicts impulses/feelings at one point, anxiety at another, and defenses at the third. The Malan triangle represents how impulses and feelings begin to emerge, but those that are painful, problematic, or socially unjustifiable result in signal anxiety, which in turn activates a defense mechanism like repression or rationalization to avoid the threat and restore psychic equilibrium. Psychodynamic conceptions of anxiety and defense can thus be thought of as part of the filtration processes that regulates the relationship between affectively laden subconscious experience and self-conscious thought. Seen in this light, the classic psychoanalytic technique of free association, whereby the primary instruction for the analysand is to say whatever comes into his or her mind, fits well with this formulation in that it speaks to how Freudian theorists conceptualized the process as a filter that required a special context and instruction for it to be turned down, resulting in access to the blocked material. To help clarify how the relationship between unjustifiable images and thoughts, affectively laden experiences, anxiety, and defenses consider the following imaginary exchange between husband and wife: Dan is a 43-year-old high school football coach who has a masculine identity and beliefs about the importance of self-reliance, mental toughness, and self-assurance. Despite this conscious identity, it is also the case that Dan’s mother died when he was 8, and he struggled with unmet dependency needs during his early years. Fifteen years ago, Dan married Janice, and they had a fairly traditional marriage, where Dan worked and Janice raised their two kids who are now 12 and 10. However, six months ago, Janice began a new job in marketing,
Defenses
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Impulse/Feeling
Fig. 5.2 The Malan triangle of conflict
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which Dan initially supported. She is currently traveling to make her first major marketing pitch and is away for four days. She calls him after the first day to share her excitement that her portion of the presentation went well. Janice excited, “Hi, Dan. You are not going to believe this, but I did it and did it well! I am serious, I really impressed them.” Dan, in a monotone voice, “That is great, honey. What time did you say you are coming home Thursday?” “Around 5:00 pm. Anyway, I gave them the idea about nature and connecting the materials to the green revolution, and they thought that it was an excellent idea that I should definitely develop further. Isn’t that great? Oh that reminds me, could you water the plants I just seeded? I am worried they will die if they don’t get water every other day.” “If I think about it,” Dan replies vaguely. “What is that supposed to mean?” Janice says, her tone of voice changing to anger. “It is important. Actually, my presentation was important! What is wrong with you?” “Nothing at all.” Dan responds, in a somewhat irritated tone. “I don’t know what it is, Dan, but I swear you undermine me sometimes.” “Whatever. . .” Dan says, dismissively. “Fine, and thanks for all your support.” Janice says sarcastically and hangs up. Dan gets off the phone, thinking that Janice was in a lousy mood.
With this vignette, we can readily imagine the dynamics that are taking place in Dan’s intrapsychic system. On the one hand, Dan has an image of himself as selfreliant and self-assured and thus when Janice started to go back to work, consistent with his own identity, he said it was fine. However, her redirecting her time and energies elsewhere activated in him some subconscious feelings connected to the unmet dependency needs prominent in his childhood. Yet, these memories were both painful and challenged his own private justification system for who he was and how he should be. Consequently, as these images and affects began to take form in his consciousness they were associated with signal anxiety, which led him to avoid and repress (defense mechanisms) them. The conflict begins to boil on the phone because Janice is reporting success in her job, which Dan subconsciously knows will mean more time away. And yet, given that she is his wife, that he supported her decision to go back to work, and that he sees himself as a self-assured and self-reliant man, he consciously feels he should be happy for her, and the anxieties that her success activates in him cannot be explicitly justified. And yet his underlying feelings of unmet dependency move him to want to avoid supporting her success. Thus his attention shifts, initially landing on when she is coming home. When she continues and asks him to do something for her, he is vague and noncommittal, although he doesn’t say he won’t do it because that would not be justifiable. Sensing something amiss, she asks him if something is wrong. Dan, of course, cannot even tell himself what is wrong, and so certainly cannot publicly share his thoughts with Janice. Consequently, he engages in denial and implicitly suggests Janice is seeing things that aren’t there. Janice attempts to call him on his lack of support but because he has been vague, he can deny that accusation and attribute the bad turn the conversation took to Janice being in a bad mood, projecting the negativity on to her and explaining away the conflict. While the focus in the example was on the filtering between the experiential and private self-consciousness system, there is, of course, also filtering between the
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private and the public. The film Liar starring Jim Carey provides an excellent illustration of the nature of the private to public filtering. In that film, Carey plays an unscrupulous but effective lawyer who is always making promises to his son, but fails to follow through. After failing to show up for his son’s birthday party, his son makes a wish that his father cannot tell a lie for 24 hours that magically comes true. The film is a situation comedy that shows what would happen if we could not filter our private thoughts, but instead when asked, we had to share our private justifications in an unabridged manner with others. I call the filtering that takes place between the private and the public self the Rogerian filter because in relationship to early psychoanalytic thinking, Rogers shifted the focus from deep and largely subconscious intrapsychic processes to more conscious thought and experiences and here-and-now interpersonal processes. He emphasized that the root of much psychopathology was in how judgmental others would stunt the development of one’s “true self.” This is because, fearing judgment, individuals filter out their true desires and put on a mask—a “social self”—to appease influential others. Person-centered therapy is based on the premise that through forming a relationship with an empathetic, nonjudgmental other, individuals can stop the problematic stunting caused by the private to public filtering process, reinvest in their true sense of self, and return to a path of growth and fulfillment. This said, I do want to note here though that Rogers was also very concerned with filtering between the private self and experiential consciousness and many modern day neo-Rogerian therapies like Greenberg’s (2002) Emotion Focused Therapy focus much of their attention on this aspect of intrapsychic functioning. Social psychologists have also shown much interest in the filtering between the public and private selves. For example, Snyder (1974) explored individual differences in amount of filtration people would engage in. He termed those who tended to filter their private thoughts and work harder to share the beliefs and values of the people around them as “high self monitors.” Those individuals who were more likely to “speak their minds” and focus more on their own opinions he characterized as “low self monitors.” Numerous empirical investigations have confirmed the importance of this variable in influencing behavior in various social circumstances. Jackson (1988, p. 121) offered the following characterization of what the research in social psychology has found: People assume that if their behavior can be observed that it will be interpreted and evaluated. They attempt to avoid negative evaluation in the process of constructing their conduct, before it “emerges” for public interpretation. In a social situation, participants monitor others’ reactions to their own conduct. Their behavior acquires a situated meaning, specific to the social act. If one’s conduct means something different to others than what one intended or assumed, one makes verbal and behavioral adjustments until one obtains the desired reactions.
An example of research into repression serves well to highlight both the Freudian and Rogerian filtering processes and the dynamic interplay among the experiential self, the private self, and the public self. To explore the dynamics of sexual guilt, Morokoff (1985) divided a sample of women into “high sexual guilt” and
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“low sexual guilt” groups and had them watch an erotic film for 12 minutes. Each woman’s arousal was measured physiologically, and they were also given self-reports. The results indicated that the high-guilt women experienced more physiological arousal but reported less arousal than the low-guilt women, and this was interpreted as evidence of repression. Specifically, the data from the physiological measure was offered as evidence that a subconscious portion of their experiential minds responded to the explicit material with relatively high levels of sexual arousal, and yet they ostensibly did not have self-conscious access to such arousal, presumably because their identity judged such arousal to be unjustifiable. If this was the case, this would be the Freudian filter at work. Of course, it could be that the women consciously recognized their arousal but did not want to publicly share that with the experimenter and intentionally minimized their self-reported arousal due to social demand characteristics. If so, this would be an example of the Rogerian filter at work. In summary, the Justification Hypothesis, in conjunction with Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix, leads to a new tripartite model of human consciousness that consists of an experiential self, a private self, and a public self, along with two distinguishable filtering processes. The model is derived first from the notion that the experiential consciousness evolved as part of the behavioral guidance system, whereby pleasure and pain serve as signals to approach and avoid, and images serve to simulate behavior so that the animal can anticipate outcomes without expending the energy on the overt behavior. Then symbolic language, a new system of information processing, emerged. Understanding the language system as being functionally organized as a justification system that evolved in response to the problem of social justification, we deduced quite clearly why there would be two domains of justification—the public and the private—and that there would be filtering processes among the three domains of consciousness. Crucially, exactly the kinds of filtering processes suggested by the logic of the Justification Hypothesis are found in psychodynamic theory, Rogerian theory and therapy, cognitive science, and social psychology.
Assimilating and Integrating Lines of Research with the Justificatio Hypothesis The Justification Hypothesis was the first piece of the unified theory to be developed, and it was because I saw processes of justification everywhere I looked, combined with the fact that the idea seemed to be able to assimilate and integrate disparate lines of research in cognitive, developmental, and social psychology that started me down the path of developing a new way to unify psychology. In the subsequent section, lines of research on the interpreter function of the left hemisphere, cognitive dissonance, self-serving biases, the organizing forces in human self-knowledge, implicit and explicit attitudes, defense mechanisms, how people give of excuses and accounts of their behavior, and reason giving processes are reviewed that together show why the Justification Hypothesis is an integrative hub of an idea.
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The Justificatio Hypothesis and the Interpreter Function of the Left Hemisphere The Justification Hypothesis posits that the capacity to justify is a unique and relatively recent addition to hominid mental architecture. An implication of this assertion is that we should be able to identify the portion of the brain responsible for reason giving and that such processes should be separable from other mental processes. The reason for this claim is that evolution builds on existing structures and because the capacity to justify evolved rather late in the game, we should be able to identify it as such. A unique circumstance in the field of neuropsychology actually allowed this implication to be explicitly examined, and there is now clear evidence of a separable, interpreter system located in the left cortex. Some individuals experience severe seizures, which result from excessive, uninhibited neural firing that spreads throughout the brain. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, neurosurgeons began to cut the corpus callosum in the brains of some patients with severe seizures in an attempt to minimize the spreading of the out-of-control neural firing. The corpus callosum is the set of neural fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, and thus when it is cut, communication between the two hemispheres is broken. These patients—who came to be called split-brains— generally lived normal lives but careful research revealed some striking findings. For example, some patients would report a condition called “alien hand syndrome,” in which the left hand (guided by the right hemisphere) would seemingly act as if it were controlled by a mind of its own (Scepkowski & Cronin-Golomb, 2003). A patient with alien hand might go into the closet to get a blouse, and find that both her hands would reach for separate garments, and there might literally be a tragic–comic struggle between them! Roger Sperry began to systematically research the consequences of split-brains. He devised a technique for sharing information with only one half of the brain, usually by presenting it to only the right or left visual field. These studies added findings to the idea that the brain is quite lateralized, meaning that the two halves of the brain specialize in different functions, with the left hemisphere being more linguistic and rational and the right being more spatial and visual. Sperry’s student Michael Gazzaniga (1985) began to systematically study how split-brain patients would explain their actions. He reasoned that since it houses the language center, the left hemisphere would be the seat of self-explanation. He wondered what would happen if information was given only to the right hemisphere and people then acted on it. How would people explain their actions in the absence of the correct information? The Justification Hypothesis argues that the human self-consciousness system functions first and foremost as a social justification system, so the prediction is that people should confabulate socially acceptable justifications even when the system does not have access to the necessary information. This is exactly what happened. Gazzaniga (1992) found that if simple commands were flashed to the right hemisphere, such as “walk around” or “laugh,” the patients would follow these commands (the right hemisphere does have rudimentary linguistic capacities). However, when asked to explain why they were performing these behaviors (e.g., walking or
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laughing), patients would confabulate a reason, and say “I am going to get a drink” or “Because you guys are so funny.” In other words, their self-consciousness system justified the behavior in the absence of necessary information. Gazzaniga characterized the system of cognitive processes that allows for these interpretations to occur as “the Interpreter.” He wrote It is easy to imagine selection pressures promoting an interpreter mechanism in the human brain. A system that allows for thought about the implications of actions, generated by both others as well as the self, will grasp the social context and its meaning for personal survival. . . .Also, the interpreter function generates the possibility for human uniqueness. . . . I think that the built-in capacity of the interpreter gives each of us our local and personal color (Gazzaniga, 1992, p. 134).
That the self-consciousness system appears to be designed in such a way that it develops socially justifiable interpretations of behavior is an important piece of evidence consistent with the Justification Hypothesis.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive dissonance is a classic area of research in social psychology. Initiated by Leon Festinger, one of the most influential social psychologists in history, research into cognitive dissonance involves examining how people experience tension when they hold psychologically inconsistent beliefs and the things people do to resolve that tension. An example of two psychologically inconsistent beliefs would be to believe that one is a good, helpful person and then observe one’s self acting in an unhelpful manner. According to cognitive dissonance, individuals will experience tension if they were to hold such beliefs simultaneously and that they will then work to change their beliefs to reduce the tension. To get a flavor for research on cognitive dissonance imagine the following situation. After completing an extremely boring task for a psychology experiment, the experimenter asks you to do her a favor. She tells you that she is examining how expectancy biases influence people’s experiences. The next participant for the study has arrived. Unfortunately, her graduate assistant—who was supposed to inform the participant that the task is exciting and enjoyable—is not there and she needs someone to fill in. She then offers you either $1 or $20 to tell the student the task was great. After you comply, she then asks you what you really felt about the task. As is now well known, if you received $1 you rate the task as more enjoyable and less boring than if you received $20. Why, according to cognitive dissonance, do people do this? Cognitive dissonance researchers frame this in terms of insignificant justification. Telling a fib for $20 makes sense. However, telling a fib for a small reward does not; there is not sufficient justification for the act. So, individuals reduce the tension by altering their beliefs. The lens of the Justification Hypothesis and its focus on the problem of social justification adds that what people are doing when they reduce dissonance is working to maintain a justification narrative that allows them to frame their actions in an acceptable manner. This can be seen if one extends the scenario. For example,
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imagine that 2 hours after the experiment you are walking around campus and you come across the participant you lied to. “Hey,” he calls, “that task was boring as anything, why did you lie to me and tell me it was exciting?” If the experimenter gave you $20, you have a reasonable justification and might respond, “Sorry, but it was something they were going to tell you anyway, and she gave me $20 to say that.” If however, you only received a $1, it is much harder to justify that you lied. The excuse “she gave me a dollar to lie” is not valid. Yet, if you did not find the task to be so bad, you could defend yourself as follows: “The experimenter asked me to say that. Besides, I didn’t think the task was so bad.” What cognitive dissonance researchers have discovered is that when confronted with such evidence about the self, people alter their belief systems in a manner that better justifies their previous action. Decades of study and hundreds of experiments have demonstrated that such a process is hugely influential in how people form beliefs about themselves. It is now very clear from social psychological research that people are motivated to justify their actions, beliefs and feelings, and they are acutely attuned to the possibility of being in an unjustifiable state. Moreover, modern researchers have honed in on what exactly is meant by Festinger’s concept of psychologically inconsistent beliefs and now emphasize the concept of self-justificatio (e.g., Aronson, 2007). Directly consistent with the Justification Hypothesis, self-justification refers to the process by which people are motivated to construct justifiable narratives of their actions, beliefs, and feelings. The dramatic and pervasive tendency of people to engage in self-justification and the powerful impact such processes have on everything from politicians who will not apologize for mistakes to torturers who feel no guilt to therapists who are certain they are uncovering repressed memories to physicians who are unduly influenced by drug companies is wonderfully illustrated in Tarvis and Aronson’s (2007) book, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. From the Milgram experiments to the Watergate scandal to vicious cycles in marriages that lead to ugly divorces, the authors show how time and again the pressures of self- and social justification coupled with blind spots resulting from dissonance reduction can lead individuals down a slippery and dangerous slope, where they find themselves engaging in acts or supporting beliefs they never would have done initially. Importantly, the processes that function to maintain self-justification and reduce cognitive dissonance generally operate outside of self-awareness. For example, if we were to ask individuals in the above-mentioned experiment what went through their minds, few—if any—would respond, “I initially felt that the task was boring, but then when I found myself willing to lie about it for only a dollar, I realized that this made me vulnerable to attack and criticism for committing a fairly unjustifiable act with insufficient reward. As such, I changed my belief in how boring the task was so that I would be in a better place to justify my actions.” People are conscious only of the result of the dissonance reduction process, rather than the process itself. Likewise, children are not taught directly about dissonance or about how to adjust their beliefs accordingly. Indeed, the whole process is implicit, and it took social psychologists to document its occurrence. The findings associated with
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cognitive dissonance research are obviously directly consistent with the Justification Hypothesis, and the implicit nature of cognitive dissonance strongly suggests that it is a design feature of the human mind. Also important from the vantage point of the Justification Hypothesis is that there is currently no good foundational theory for why people engage in dissonance reduction. For example, leading dissonance researcher Joel Cooper (2007, p. 87) recently commented: Where does dissonance come from? Why do we suffer an unpleasant tension state when, for example, we convince someone to believe in an issue we do not believe, suffer to achieve a goal, choose a course of action, or perform any of the behaviors that research has shown to lead to cognitive dissonance? We have no firm answer to this question but it is interesting food for thought.
Of course, the Justification Hypothesis provides a clear answer as to why being unjustified is an aversive state. To effectively solve the problem of social justification, we must have a justifiable narrative of our actions.
The Justificatio Hypothesis, Attributions, and the Self-Serving Bias Attributions are the causal explanations people develop for why things happen. From the perspective of the Justification Hypothesis, attributions are a particular and important kind of justification. Attributions are crucial because they allow us to represent and frame the forces working in the world, both physical and social. In a subsequent section of this chapter, Leigh Shaffer’s analysis of animistic attribution and its relationship to religion through the lens of the Justification Hypothesis are examined. Animistic attribution is the process by which people make purposeful attributions regarding physical events, such as when Pat Robertson attributed the 2010 earthquake in Haiti being caused by their having made a pact with the devil (James, 2010). Our focus here is on how attributions about the self should be organized according to the Justification Hypothesis. That is, if our self-consciousness system functions to solve the problem of social justification, what implications does that insight have for how people explain what they do and the causes of their actions? One implication is that it suggests that people should generally construct their justifications in accordance with social influence, meaning that in cases where the cause is ambiguous, people should tend to give themselves the benefit of the doubt. Specifically, they should explain good things that result from their actions in a manner different than they explain bad things. Consistent with the Justification Hypothesis, people tend to explain bad outcomes in terms of external, temporal, and local causes and good outcomes in terms of internal, stable, and general causes. To be concrete about it, after failing a math test an individual is more likely to claim it was because the teacher asked unfair questions or because they were tired. However, when an individual aces the literature exam, they are more likely to think it was a
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good and fair test, they studied hard, and that the result is to be expected because they are bright. It is called the self-serving bias for obvious reasons, and the tendency has been confirmed in literally hundreds of psychological studies and can be considered one of the most robust findings in social psychology. To demonstrate the pervasiveness of this tendency, Friedrich (1996) found that after students were taught about the self-serving bias they tended to see themselves as less self-serving than most other people, a phenomenon he humorously coined the ultimate self-serving bias. The Justification Hypothesis directly accounts for these findings because people want relationships with more skillful, giving, powerful people, the more positive picture of yourself you can justifiably paint the better. A review and meta-analysis by Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, and Hankin (2004) found strong support for the pervasiveness of the self-serving bias. The average effect size (a metric researchers use to compare differences) across several hundred studies was large. Importantly, these authors looked at cultural differences. Although people in all cultures engage in self-serving biases, those in Western, individualistic cultures exhibited a substantially greater tendency to engage in selfserving biases than those in Eastern, communal cultures. This raises an important point to be made about the Justification Hypothesis. In introducing the idea the initial emphasis was placed on how the evolution of language must have created the problem of social justification, and that in turn shaped the adaptive design of the human self-consciousness system. The point of the Justification Hypothesis is that the self-consciousness system is designed so that it allows the individual to “download” the justification narratives of the current cultural context and utilize those narratives to navigate the social environment. Obviously, then, the justification system is sensitive to cultural context. Being born into a cultural context that emphasizes the group or collective as the primary unit of functioning will lead to a different justification system than being born into a group that emphasizes the level of the individual. And it thus follows that we would expect to see larger selfserving biases in individualistic cultures. The point here is that the Justification Hypothesis emphasizes the self-consciousness system as an organ of culture, one that is profoundly shaped by experience and cultural context.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and the Forces That Guide the Organization of Self-Knowledge If the self-consciousness system was shaped in response to the problem of social justification, then the way knowledge about the self is constructed and organized should be related to the kinds of pressures that would result in the capacity to respond to social justification. Flipping this on its head, we can ask: What would make someone unjustifiable in the eyes of others? Some ideas that immediately come to mind are (1) that someone has done something unacceptable (e.g., “You should not have done that!”) or that someone is undesirable (e.g., “She is ugly,” “You are stupid”); (2) or that someone has claimed something inaccurate (e.g., “That is not true,” “You don’t
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know what you are talking about”); or (3) someone is inconsistent (e.g., “You said this and now you are saying that!?! You can’t have it both ways!”). Interestingly, in his review of the forces that drive the organization of self-knowledge, Brown (1997) identified three central motives: (1) the enhancement motive; (2) the accuracy motive; and (3) the consistency motive. The nature and evidence for each is reviewed below.
The Enhancement Motive The enhancement motive is characterized by researchers as the push people experience to think and feel about themselves positively. The strong evidence for the self-serving bias reviewed above can be interpreted through the enhancement motive. That is, because people think about themselves causing good things, they feel better and are more likely to gravitate toward such explanations, with the inverse also being true. But the tendency to enhance the self is apparent in more than just attributions. In an article titled The Totalitarian Ego, Greenwald (1980) surveyed the vast social psychological literature on how information about the self is processed. He likened the human ego to a personal historian that is totalitarian and relentless in the manner in which it revises and fabricates history to make the individual seem more important, altruistic, and effective than the evidence would warrant. In characterizing the “positivity bias,” Brown (1997, p. 62) notes, “When it comes to their ideas about socially valued qualities and abilities (e.g., their kindness, attractiveness, and intelligence), many (if not most) do not have entirely accurate views of themselves. They regard themselves as better than they really are.” Brown’s note about the kinds of things people enhance is very important—general qualities that are socially valued. This, of course, connects directly to the Justification Hypothesis and its emphasis on the problem of social justification and how social pressures influence justification systems.
The Accuracy Motive Although people in general tend to be biased in the way they think about themselves, they are not completely blind to reality, and there are many circumstances and reasons that people engage in what Brown calls the accuracy motive. The motive for accuracy is not hard to understand from either a behavioral investment or Justification Hypothesis perspective. If we think about our perceptions and thoughts as representations that function as maps of the outside world and then ask the question: “Does it matter if your map is accurate?” The answer is obvious. As anyone who has operated from a faulty map or faulty set of perceptions or assumptions can tell you, it can be a significant problem when we have misinformation about reality in general and ourselves in particular. The enhancement motive and accuracy motive often exist in tension with one another, the reality of which I have seen as a clinician and experienced personally.
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For example, early in my high school years, the enhancement bias was operating as I considered my “mate value.” Overestimations of my own attractiveness led me to ask out several of my female peers who were—to be blunt—out of my league in terms of physical appearance. The predictable consequence was that I was rejected on several occasions. After several such disappointments, I distinctly recall a conversation with a female friend where I was honestly and earnestly asking her for a “true” assessment of my attractiveness. Consistent with this anecdote, evidence suggests people seek accurate information to reduce uncertainty, to achieve goals, and to understand prior errors (Trope, 1986). Although I do not know of research in this area, a prediction from the Justification Hypothesis is that the accuracy motive is the motive people are most conscious of when developing their justifications. That is, when asked about what was influencing their reasoning, people will most often claim that they are trying to be as accurate as possible, as opposed to selfenhancing or consistent, which is the other motive that drives the organization of self-knowledge.
The Consistency Motive If one of the primary functions of the self-consciousness system is to generate a justification narrative that helps the individual function in and navigate the social world, it follows that the system would require a degree of stability and consistency, both for the individual and in relationship to the expectations of others. Several authors have argued that a need for consistency is a central principle of mental organization in general, and the understanding of the self in particular. As an early proponent of this view, Lecky (1945; cited in Brown, 1997, p. 52) argued the following: According to self-consistency, the mind is a unit, an organized system of ideas. All of the ideas which belong to the system must seem to be consistent with one another. The center of the nucleus of the mind is the individual’s idea or conception of himself. If a new idea seems to be consistent with the. . .individual’s conception of himself, it is accepted and assimilated easily. If it seems to be inconsistent, however, it meets with resistance and is likely rejected. (p. 246)
From the vantage point of the unified theory, consistency would play a more central and organizing role in the justification system than in the behavioral investment system because of the issue of social justification. The Justification Hypothesis predicts that people should be motivated by consistency for at least two reasons. On the one hand, as suggested by the quote above, the more inconsistency, the greater likelihood for logical contradictions and incoherence leading to potential breakdowns in the justification system. Swann (1990, 1996) has marshaled an impressive array of findings that people strive for consistent self-knowledge and seek information that verifies their existing self-knowledge. Second, although we certainly sometimes want people to change their beliefs, it is also the case that we rely on the predictability of others and the coherence of their justification systems. As a consequence, there should be social pressures for consistency, and individuals who frequently alter their beliefs, waffle in what they say,
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or are flat out contradictory should be criticized, disliked, or lose social influence. Although I could not find any direct research supporting the idea that people who tend to be inconsistent are less well liked, in anecdotal support of this idea, flipflopping is a common criticism that political opponents use against one another. For example, George W. Bush used the criticism with great effect against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, especially after Kerry, when speaking on his attitude for funding the Iraq war, told a crowd “I voted for the bill before I voted against it.”
The Justificatio Hypothesis and Research on Implicit and Explicit Attitudes An attitude is an evaluative judgment made about an object, event, or idea that is either favorable or unfavorable. Attitudes are some of the most researched constructs in cognitive and social psychology. Early definitions of attitudes generally did not discriminate between attitudes that were conscious versus those that were subconscious, presumably because of the long scholarly tradition of researchers staying away from the murky concept of consciousness (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). But by the 1990s researchers had clearly documented the need for distinguishing between two broad domains (or kinds) of attitudes. On the one hand there are attitudes of which the individual is conscious, meaning that they can state or report on a questionnaire, and are able to offer reasons explaining the attitude. On the other hand, there are attitudes that exist outside of self-conscious awareness. Researchers initially documented the existence of a second class of attitudes by demonstrating that people could form attitudes subliminally. For example, researchers would expose subjects to a flash of an image that happened so fast they did not even that know they saw anything. However, if in the image a neutral object was subliminally paired with a noxious object, the individual would develop an unfavorable attitude toward the neutral object. This attitude would exist despite the individual being completely unaware that he or she had seen it previously (Greenwald, Klinger, & Lui, 1989). Researchers have variously called these two classes of attitudes unconscious–conscious, unaware–aware, automatic–controlled, direct–indirect, and more recently associative–propositional (Gawronski & Bodenhousen, 2006). Here I refer to the two kinds as implicit and explicit, which is consistent with most of the literature. Although only a few decades old, the literature on the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes is vast, and I only review a small slice of it here. First, it is useful to note that the identification of two broad classes of attitudes, one that functions on associations and is automatic, fast, and affective, and a second class of attitudes that functions on language and is deliberate, slower, and reasonbased is very consistent with the two domain model of the human mind suggested by the combination of Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis. But we can go further than that because the Justification Hypothesis suggests that there will be a particular kind of relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes. Given that explicit attitudes connect the individual to the social world via the
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dimension of justification, we can make the prediction that where we see explicit attitudes diverging from implicit attitudes, a central variable should be the social justifiability of the attitude. That is, our explicit attitudes should be more in accordance with our identity and that which what is socially justifiable, whereas our implicit attitudes may diverge from that narrative. One line of strong evidence for this prediction comes from examining implicit and explicit attitudes regarding race, especially the attitudes that Whites have toward Blacks in America. Dovidio and colleagues used a variety of different procedures to assess the implicit racial attitudes of Whites toward Blacks (e.g., Dovidio & Gaertner, 1993). For example, these researchers found using subliminally presented schematic faces of Blacks and Whites as primes, that White participants have faster response times to negative traits after Black than White primes and faster response times to positive traits after White than Black primes (Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997). Other researchers have confirmed these findings with similar, but different response latency techniques, such as the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Consistent with the framework provided by the Justification Hypothesis, the negative implicit attitudes were often divergent from the explicit attitudes, which often were positive and egalitarian. Wilson, Lindsey, and Schooler (2000) offered an explanation of these findings in a manner very consistent with the Justification Hypothesis. They argued that “dual attitudes” (i.e., when there is divergence between implicit and explicit attitudes) arise developmentally. Because Whites are exposed to negative images of Blacks through the media and to stereotypes about Blacks through common socialization experiences, they may initially develop largely negative attitudes toward Blacks. Yet they are often simultaneously given social prescriptions to be egalitarian, along with dictates about the general evils of prejudice. It is these mixed messages that give rise to dual attitudes and implicit racism. Dovidio, Gaertner, Kawakami, and Hodson (2002) offer a fascinating discussion of how such dual attitudes can set up vicious cycles of miscommunication, misunderstanding and difficulties empathizing between Whites and Blacks.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and Research on Reason Giving Perhaps the area that most directly connects to the Justification Hypothesis is the work done on reason giving, the process by which people give reasons for what they do and why things happen. In everyday language, reason giving and justifying are essentially synonymous. One fairly prominent class of defensive reason giving is excuses, which were defined by Snyder, Higgins, and Stucky (1983) as explanations that are designed to lessen the negative implication of an actor’s performance, thereby maintaining a positive image for oneself and others. These authors argue that excuses are prevalent in social exchanges and are used regularly when things are not going well and the individual or group or institution is threatened with a negative evaluation or consequence.
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The authors offer a straightforward taxonomy of excuses as consisting of three broad classes that include denying the individual had any responsibility (the “I did not do it” class), minimizing the negative consequences (the “It wasn’t so bad” class), and acknowledging but redirecting (the “Yes, but . . .” class). Interestingly, the authors begin their survey with a chapter on the philosophical implications of excuse making, which they argue relates to debates about free will, determinism, and personal responsibility. Their theory of why people make excuses is very consonant with the Justification Hypothesis and the Influence Matrix. Simply put, the authors argue the reasons people give for their behavior have social consequences, and people are motivated to maintain a positive image of themselves (private selfconcept) and of the way others view them (public self). Thus when situations arise that might threaten the social capital in either the eyes of others or their own, people generate reasons to minimize, deflect, or defend against the loss of social capital from occurring. In his book Explaining and Arguing: The Social Organization of Accounts, Antaki (1994) takes an even broader look at reason giving. Antaki reviews the way a number of different perspectives in the social sciences have attempted to tackle the pervasive tendency of humans to engage in explaining and arguing in social exchange. He highlights the different approaches to the topic taken, which range from cognitive psychologists working from an attribution theory framework who attempt to understand the cognitive processes underlying the generation of explanations to micro-level sociologists who analyze the function conversation has on regulating the actions of individuals. Antaki’s book is scholarly and is difficult to summarize tersely, so readers are referred directly to it for a sophisticated overview of the various approaches to analyzing the process by which humans give accounts. A more generally accessible account of reason giving was recently offered in the book Why? What Happens When People Give Reasons. . . and Why by Charles Tilly (2008). Tilly opens the book with a fairly dramatic review of what happened to people as the events of September 11, 2001 unfolded. Specifically, people everywhere were caught completely off guard by the tragic events, and this resulted in a frantic search for the reasons for what was happening. By using this example, Tilly highlights an important point about reasoning and events. Humans are always operating at least implicitly from a justification narrative for what is happening and why. When events unfold that are in contrast to that implicit narrative, the need to make sense out of them and to have a shared justification narrative with others for what is happening is extremely powerful. The more dramatic and unexpected the events, the greater the need to for such a narrative, a point Tilly makes clear in his review of the way people responded to the September 11th attacks. Moreover, Tilly (2008, p. 8) sees the centrality of reason giving in human behavior. He wrote As eyewitnesses at the World Trade Center and Pentagon searched for reasons, they followed an extremely general human routine. We might even define human beings as reason-giving animals. While, by some definitions, other primates employ language, tools and even culture, only humans start offering and demanding reasons while young, then continue through life looking for reasons why.
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Tilly’s (2008) book is built on an interesting taxonomy of reason giving. Specifically, he argued that there are four broad categories or contexts that frame reason giving: 1. Conventions are reasons given in social exchanges that frame everyday actions, usually offering an explanation for an action or related event that was unexpected or potentially negative, such as excuses for being late (e.g., the traffic was bad), explanations for success or achievement (e.g., I worked really hard on this), or reasons that justify deviations from the norm (e.g., he beats to his own drummer). 2. Stories are more detailed narratives that explain longer cause–effect sequences, such as the events of 9/11. They are generally shared in more intimate relationships, in contrast to conventions which are given between acquaintances. Stories themselves are usually relational in nature, having protagonists, plots, antagonists, and ending. Individuals place their broader actions in storied accounts and share those accounts with important others. Thus, individuals will share stories of their first love, when they failed at a big event, or why their family moved. 3. Codes are governing policies that officially regulate and legitimize practices. Thus, laws and legal procedures, company policies, ethical codes, and religious decrees are all codes and people often justify action or its inhibition on the basis of codes. 4. Technical accounts are the specialized, often scientific causal explanations of events. They are given by experts often in a language that is not accessible to lay people. Although there are likely many different approaches to developing taxonomies of justifications, Tilly’s four contextual categories seem reasonable to me, and I have generally found that I can usually classify explicit justifications as falling into one or the other category, although as Tilly himself admits, they blend into one another quite frequently. One noteworthy aspect of his categories is that they stretch from justifications that are more social on the one hand (conventions and stories) to those that are more analytical on the other (codes and technical accounts). This raises one of the most important points about the concept of justification, which is that the concept stretches from defensive rationalizations through social conventions into explaining and arguing and finally into technical accounts and scientific explanations. Up until this point, the examples we have been discussing generally emphasize social reason giving, and it seems to paint a picture of people as rationalizers. However, as discussed in Chapter 1, the argument is not that humans are rationalizers. That is too pejorative and overly simplistic. The argument is that they are justifiers. And the process of justification bridges us from social reason-giving to analytical reasoning.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and Research on Reasoning One only needs to read the lucid description of great ape behavior offered by primatologists like Franz de Waal (1982), Diane Fossey (1983), and Jane Goodall (1986) to realize that our nearest relatives live intricate and complicated social lives. These
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descriptions strongly suggest major similarities between humans and other great apes in the basic biopsychological motivational and affective systems that guide behavior in the social domain. At the same time, one only needs to confront our great ape relatives with tasks that require basic analytic reasoning to realize that the gulf between humans and other great apes is oceanic in this domain. Why, according to the Justification Hypothesis, would humans be good reasoners? For the same reason that we pay smart lawyers more than foolish ones. Determining logical inconsistencies in ones’ own and others’ justification systems is obviously of crucial importance. The only way to identify such logical inconsistencies is via the process of analytic reasoning. Some evolutionary psychologists are fond of pointing out that there cannot be a domain general learning device because of the frame problem and because there are no general adaptive problems that must be solved (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). The Justification Hypothesis challenges this assertion, at least in the sense that to solve the problem of what is and what is not justifiable requires some capacity for analytic reasoning. However, the Justification Hypothesis does not just provide a frame for understanding why humans have capacities to reason, it actually goes further and specifies exactly what kinds of reasoning skills we humans will have developed best. A logical corollary of the Justification Hypothesis is that the general reasoning capacity in humans emerges out of determining what is and what is not justifiable in the social context, and this gives rise to another implication of the Justification Hypothesis. If social reasoning gave rise to general reasoning, then humans should be particularly adept at social reasoning, at least in comparison to other forms of general reasoning. This is precisely the case. Cognitive psychologists have long noted that humans reason more effectively about what one may, ought, or must not do in a given set of social circumstances than they do when reasoning generally. Cognitive psychologists refer to reasoning about socially justifiable acts as deontic reasoning. After noting how crucial it is to be able to reason about what is and is not socially justifiable in virtually all social situations, Cummins (1996a, p. 823) summarized the findings on deontic reasoning in adults as follows: In contrast to their performance on statistical reasoning (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982), indicative reasoning (e.g., Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972), and mathematical or scientific problem-solving tasks (e.g., Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981), adults typically perform consistently and well on tasks requiring deontic reasoning (e.g., Cheng & Holyoak, 1985, 1989; Griggs & Cox, 1983; Manktelow & Over, 1991, 1995). In fact, so robust and reliable is performance on deontic tasks that numerous proposals have been put forth to explain it.
Cummins (1996a) proceeded to demonstrate that 3- and 4-year-old children also show superiority when reasoning about what is and what is not socially justifiable compared to tasks requiring general reasoning. In a separate article arguing that the ability for deontic reasoning is a consequence of evolutionary pressures, Cummins (1996b) observed that deontic reasoning “emerges early in childhood, is observed regardless of the cultural background of the reasoner, and can be selectively disrupted at the neurological level” (p. 160). In short and in direct accordance with the Justification Hypothesis, there is an abundance of evidence that suggests that humans reason better about what is and what is not socially justifiable than they do when reasoning about abstract general truths.
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The Justification Hypothesis further characterizes human reasoning as ultimately emerging out of the behavioral investment system and being intimately tied to social influence processes and this gives rise to a different picture regarding the relationship between motives and reasoning than a pure reasoning model. A pure reasoning model of human higher thought, advanced by some researchers (see, e.g., Miller & Ross, 1975), posits that the language-based cognitive system uses logic and evidence to arrive at conclusions that are as accurate as possible. In such a model, motives or goals follow after reasoned conclusions are reached. Spock from Star Trek or the notion of a dispassionate scientist in the lab crunching objective data represents the analytic reasoning ideal. The Justification Hypothesis, especially in combination with Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix, argues for a different view of reasoning. Instead of a disconnected, pure reasoning system that processes information according to formal rules of logic, the view afforded by the unified theory is that of a motivated reasoning system (e.g., Kunda, 1990). Motivated reasoning argues that more often than not we use our reasoning process to arrive at previously determined desired outcomes. Thus, in motivated reasoning, the goal or desired outcome generally comes first and the reasoning about the goal follows. Although under some conditions our primary desire is to arrive at an accurate conclusion (for example, when we are confused or uncertain or when receiving a reward for arriving at the correct answers), much of the time—especially in day to day social interaction—individuals have desired outcomes that they want to arrive at first and then reason back from that goal. So according to a motivated reasoning model, instead of usually relying on pure reasoning to arrive at goals, the more common everyday sequence is that individuals have desired outcomes that they want to move toward first “but their ability to do so is constrained by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for these conclusions” (Kunda, 1990, p. 480). In this view the human reasoning system is much more akin to that of a defense attorney whose reasoning is framed by a predetermined goal state than it is to an independent, dispassionate scientist attempting to decipher the objective truth. Haidt (2001) offers an analysis of moral reasoning and judgment that is very congruent with the model of human cognitive processes suggested by the unified theory. Called the social intuitionist approach, Haidt argued that pure moral reasoning rarely causes moral judgment. Instead, Haidt posited that humans have both intuitive (experiential) and rational (justifying) systems of cognition, and that they way most people arrive at moral judgments is they arrive at a sense as to whether the situation in question was good or bad through the intuitive system, and then utilize their justification system to generate post hoc rationalizations as to why. Specifically, “People have quick and automatic moral intuitions, and when called on to justify these intuitions they generate post hoc justifications out of a priori moral theories” (Haidt, 2001, p. 823). Haidt argued that two major classes of motives direct and guide reasoning. First and foremost are relatedness motives, which translate roughly into the various relational dimensions highlighted by the Influence Matrix, and includes concerns about impression management and smooth interactions with
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people. Second, people have motives to maintain consistent and coherent, so that their overall narrative is justifiable. In this section we have reviewed a wide variety of different domains of research that can be integrated and assimilated through the lens of the Justification Hypothesis. We have shown that the formulation that the self-consciousness system evolved in response to the adaptive problem of social justification leads to a picture of that system that can readily account for findings in cognitive, developmental, and social psychology. Specifically, the Justification Hypothesis provides a causal explanatory framework for the interpreter function of the left hemisphere, the forces that organize self-knowledge, self-serving biases, cognitive dissonance, explicit and implicit attitudes, social reason giving, and reasoning in general. This shows that the Justification Hypothesis is a powerful lens for human psychology. However, one of the great advantages of the Justification Hypothesis is that it not only frames insights for how individuals behave, but it is a consonant framework for societal level processes. In this next section, I review how the Justification Hypothesis can frame the evolution of human culture and why we can understand the defining feature of human culture as being the emergence of large-scale collective justification systems.
Culture As the Rise of Collective Justificatio Systems Anatomically modern humans existed more than 100,000 years ago but with crude technology, little or no art, and primitive social interaction. However, by 50,000 years ago a pattern of cumulative growth began that would result in a creative, technological, and social explosion. During the past 10,000 years, the pace of innovation has continued, including such achievements as agriculture, specialized division of labor, and systems of written language. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a marked continuation of knowledge and technological growth, a pattern Piel (1972) characterized as the acceleration of history. The rate and character of such change makes it clear that explanations for it will not be found simply in terms of biological evolution through natural selection but instead must be considered to be a consequence of socio-cultural evolution. Although culture has been notoriously difficult to define, theorists now generally agree that the term “culture” does not refer to the totality of human lived experience or all aspects of society, but it specifically refers to the patterned sphere of beliefs, values, symbols, signs and discourses that are shared by a group of people (Smith, 2001). As framed by the Justification Hypothesis and the ToK System, Culture (with a capital “C”) is the fourth dimension of complexity, and consists of symbolically mediated justification systems that exist at the large-scale level and function to frame human action. Culture, then, is theoretically separable from spheres of technology, human behavioral investment patterns, and the biophysical ecology in which humans live, although there are clearly complex interrelations between these various domains. With Culture so defined, we can then ask, “Where did Culture come from?,” and “Why is the rate of cultural evolution accelerating?”
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The Justification Hypothesis answers the question, “Where does Culture come from?” by locating the combustible spark as the problem of social justification that emerged as language evolved enough sophistication to allow for a window into the minds of others via the capacity to ask questions. The result of this spark was the emergence of justification systems at the individual and small group level and these systems then become networked together to coordinate populations of people. This section elaborates on arguments for how the Justification Hypothesis frames Culture. First, I briefly describe how the Justification Hypothesis provides a frame for the cultural transmission of technology through justification systems that prescribe procedural knowledge and actions. Second, I touch on how social processes lead to the emergence of norms and how these norms impact human behavior. Third, the argument is made that justification systems carry with them the necessary ingredients to spawn their own evolution. And, finally, I show how the Justification Hypothesis provides a framework for understanding societal institutions like religion, law, and science, and why such systems have become increasingly complex and differentiated.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and the Transmission of Technology The sophistication of the tools and artifacts developed by modern humans (Homo sapiens) was far greater than those developed by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), suggesting more advanced cognitive capacities (Wynn & Coolidge, 2008). Moreover, unlike the Neanderthals whose technological sophistication remained fairly constant over a 200,000 year period, in the last 50,000 years the technology of modern humans evolved quite rapidly. Shaffer (1981, 1998) has articulated a conceptualization that links justification processes and transmission with the evolution of technology. He argued that cultural skills and technological developments are transmitted via packets of “recipe knowledge,” which are justified by knowledgeable experts to novices. To envision how this process occurs, imagine a circumstance where novices observe an experienced toolmaker and form “why” questions: “Why do you strike the stone at this angle?” or “Why do you carve the bone this way?” A likely response given by an expert toolmaker would have been a justification: “I strike the rock this way to make it flake—if you strike it that way, the hammer will glance off the rock and you will end up striking your hand!” or “If you carve the bone this way it will crack and the hook will be useless.” This analysis suggests that processes of justification will lead to systems of reasoning that will be amenable to planning and innovation. And in contrast to Neanderthals, the technology of early humans was indicative of such planning. For example, as early as 10,000 years ago, humans learned to build fish weirs across streams to trap fish within easy reach of the shorelines (Wynn & Coolidge, 2008) and to build kites by gathering and piling large rocks at narrow places in the paths of migratory animals or the entrances to valleys in order to funnel and corral fleeing animals to fall into pits and traps close to hunters’ blinds and to bring them within
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easier reach of spears or arrows (Betts, 1987). These weirs and kites required considerable time and effort to construct, and thus hunters had to forego opportunities for traditional hunting activities during the construction process. Importantly, this potentially costly innovation requires justification: “If we have always done this, why should we do that instead?” The social influence needed to coordinate the construction of such structures must have required leaders to justify the expending of time and energy. In sum, justification processes provide a readily accessible way to tool construction and tool use to justification via recipes and legitimized purpose.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and the Emergence of Norms A second explanation for the emergence and accelerating rate of cultural evolution provided by the Justification Hypothesis is the fact that sociolinguistic exchanges between individuals give rise to complex systems of justification (Shaffer, 2005). This process was examined empirically in the influential work of Muzafer Sherif. Sherif realized that the apparent movement of a stationary point of light in a dark room (the autokinetic effect) represented a means to create a laboratory analog of events in early human history before the establishment of shared norms, which Sherif believed was the essence of culture. Sherif (1966) found that, when participants were asked to make judgments of the apparent motion by themselves, their initial judgments usually exhibited considerable variability. With repeated judgments, participants reduced the variability around a personal anchor termed a “personal norm.” Others’ evaluations, however, were typically very influential in the participants’ subsequent judgments. Moreover, eventually groups would establish norms that would specify the legitimate perception of movement in a manner that carried moral overtones. The powerful influence that shared norms can have on individuals was demonstrated in an equally influential study of social conformity by Solomon Asch (1956). As is now well known, participants in this study were asked to make perceptual judgments regarding the lengths of lines, and although the answers were clear, participants were asked to give their answers in a group format following confederates who would give incorrect judgments to certain responses. Although the strength of the confederates’ influence varied with their number and degree of unanimity, a substantial portion of participants gave what they knew to be incorrect judgments in the interest of conforming. Consistent with the Justification Hypothesis, these individuals reported being concerned about the social justifiability of their responses. For example, Asch quotes one subject as reporting that, “You have the idea that the attention of the group is focused on you. I didn’t want to seem different. I didn’t want to seem an imbecile” (Asch, 1956; p. 31). In short, Asch’s elaboration of Sherif’s paradigm demonstrates how actors feel social pressures expected under the Justification Hypothesis. To perform in concert with others is to perform in a justified fashion, but to perform in violation of group standards is to experience the discomfort associated with adopting an unjustifiable stance. Taken together, these classic studies of social influence illuminate the omnipresent selective pressure that
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leads to the development of justification systems composed of norms that can affect a whole group.
The Justificatio Hypothesis and the Emergence of the Cultural Dimension of Complexity We have reviewed how the Justification Hypothesis provides a framework for the cultural transmission of technology through justification systems that prescribe procedural knowledge and actions and how the idea is consistent with research on how norms emerge in groups and how these norms impact human behavior. A third advantage of the model of Culture afforded by the Justification Hypothesis is that it provides a readily accessible frame for understanding why it evolves. Justifications are a great example of what Dawkins (1989) called a meme, which is a unit of cultural evolution. Much like genes, justifications interlock to form complex, functional systemic networks. And such systems can easily be envisioned to evolve. To do so, consider how justifications offered by individuals sometimes become accepted by the group, and thereby come to provide the informational “glue” necessary to coordinate the behavior of large groups of people. Confidence that justification systems would evolve is enhanced by the fact that they clearly involve the three key elements of evolution: variation (different justifications are offered), selection (certain justifications are better at legitimizing action than others) and retention (selected justifications are stored and repeated). Kuhn’s (1996) analysis of scientific revolutions is obviously commensurate with the idea that justification systems evolve. In Kuhn’s view, scientific paradigms—i.e., scientific justification systems—begin to weaken when data cannot be accounted for by the existing explanatory system. Such data are used to show the current system is unjustifiable, and adherents of new scientific justification systems will emerge.
Culture as Large-Scale Collective Systems of Justificatio The final way in which the Justification Hypothesis provides a framework for understanding Culture is that it provides a framework for understanding human beliefs and values at the macro-level. Science, law, and religion can all be readily considered to be large-scale collective justification systems. One question the Justification Hypothesis immediately helps to addresses is why there is such a diversity of different kinds of justification systems. Traditional societies are relatively undifferentiated, with religious worldviews, explanations for natural phenomena, and prescriptions for social conduct provided by global justification narratives. In contrast modern developed nations have distinct systems of justification, with religion separated from law, government, philosophy, science, and other cultural institutions. The reason, according to the framework afforded by the Justification Hypothesis, is because different foundational goals serve as a force for differentiation within the larger stream of cultural evolution. We have both science and religion in modern
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society because humans have needs for describing the world around them as accurately as possible, and humans also have needs for determining right from wrong and finding meaning and purpose in the world in which they live. Shaffer (2008) argued strongly for the utility of conceptualizing religion as largescale justification systems. He notes While the term “religion” symbolizes a staggeringly diverse set of individual systems, . . . many documented practices and beliefs are clearly related to the process of finding justification both in human conduct but also in the “actions” of supernatural forces, spirits, or gods. Religions not only develop normative systems that define a believer’s obligations and serve as justification systems for communities of like-minded believers, but religions often develop belief systems (that sociologists call “theodices”) that serve to justify the actions of God himself!
Shaffer (2008) argued persuasively that the framework afforded by the Justification Hypothesis explains such diverse features of religious phenomena as (1) the normative function religious beliefs play in legitimizing actions; (2) the nature of theodices, which are the belief systems that serve to justify the actions of God(s); and (3) animistic attribution, which is the process by which people come to see natural events has being caused by personal intent. The following story makes these elements clear.1 In 1984, Anglican priest David Jenkins had been nominated for the post of Bishop of Durham. Jenkins had an impressive record of church service and was considered well-qualified for the post except for one problem: Jenkins had publicly stated that he did not believe in the literal interpretation of the doctrines of the Resurrection or the virgin birth of Jesus Christ (Iyer & White, 1984). Despite cries from its evangelical wing, the Anglican Church had decided to confirm his appointment and to consummate the process with a ceremony in the historic cathedral at York, Minster. The ceremony was held on a Sunday. The following Wednesday evening during a severe thunderstorm, the wooden roof of the south transept of the church was struck by lightning and caught fire. Following a night of battling the flames, the fire was contained to the wing where the bolt originally struck, but even before the flames were extinguished the Anglicans had already begun to debate the “angry God” hypothesis. Not surprisingly, the battle lines were drawn for this debate along the same lines that had been drawn over the Bishop’s confirmation in the first place—the two sides corresponded roughly to those who held traditional, evangelical views and those who held to more recent, modernist views. Time magazine captured the clash of worldviews this way: “It was an unholy coincidence that many took to be divine retribution” (“A bolt from the heavens,” 1984, p. 62). It seems clear that the Justification Hypothesis readily accounts for much of this basic narrative: Jenkins was perceived to represent a threat to the cohesiveness of the justification systems of the evangelical wing and, hence, these individuals wove a series of events into an account that allowed them to claim legitimacy for their position of resisting his appointment. However, there is an aspect of this narrative
1I
am indebted to Leigh Shaffer for this story and analysis.
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that seems at first blush to be somewhat distally removed from the Justification Hypothesis: the process by which these individuals came to see the lightning strikes as personally caused misfortunes and sought reasons rather than causes for these events. In other words why did these individuals make purposeful attributions about ostensibly inanimate occurrences? Shaffer (2008), who offers a detailed analysis of both animistic attribution and theodices, answers this question as follows: But why would the [Justification Hypothesis] tend to favor individuals who see the universe in anthropomorphic terms and to favor societies that would develop formal systems of religious belief, ritual, and moral codes? My answer is that just as a species that had developed a Theory of Mind would question the justifiability of others’ actions and develop a looking-glass self to justify its own actions, such a species would also turn its “mindreading” capacities toward natural phenomena, begin to make animistic attributions and elaborate them into depictions of the world of the gods in anthropomorphic terms, and then try to find ways to justify its conduct to the gods and try to hold the very gods of the universe accountable for their actions.
Conclusion As I hope is clear from the above analyses, with the concept of justification systems, the Justification Hypothesis has the capacity to link the individual with social levels of analyses, thus providing a frame to bridge psychology with the rest of the social sciences. Moreover, when considered in concert with Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix, the Justification Hypothesis is directly bridging an important gap in the current knowledge landscape, the gap between the natural and social sciences. Edward O. Wilson, whose ideas and contributions are explored in detail in the next chapter, explicitly characterized the rift between the natural and social sciences as one of the great remaining problems in science. He further suggested that the lack of a coherent framework that integrates the natural and social sciences prevents the science of human behavior from effectively progressing. He wrote We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalities of human nature. What, in the final analysis, joins the deep, mostly genetic history of the species as a whole to the more recent cultural histories of far-flung societies? That, in my opinion, is the nub of the relationship between the two cultures. It can be stated as a problem to be solved, the central problem of the social sciences and the humanities, and simultaneously one of the great remaining problems of the natural sciences. At present time no one has a solution. But in the sense that no one in 1842 knew the true cause of evolution and in 1952 no one knew the nature of the genetic code, the way to solve the problem may lie within our grasp. (Wilson, 1998, p. 126)
The Justification Hypothesis, in conjunction with the rest of the unified theory, provides the solution and clearly articulates the link between the natural (or perhaps more appropriately, nonhuman) and social (or human) sciences. The essence
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of Culture is the presence of large-scale justification systems that function to coordinate and legitimize human behavior, and the fundamental point of a social science perspective is that human behavior must be understood in the context of the larger socio-linguistic system in which it is immersed. The theoretical problem has been that there was no systematic way to understand how the evolution of mind in general, and the human mind in particular, led to the emergence of these cultural justification systems. As such, social scientists have tended to focus simply on the systems themselves and not concern themselves with the origins of their emergence. As an inevitable consequence of this starting point, these social science models lacked any systematic framework for integrating biopsychological causation and thus were obviously incomplete. Unfortunately, however, the biopsychological models built by taking a bottom-up perspective have proven inadequate for providing a framework for understanding the emergence of the large-scale justification systems examined by macro-level social scientists. As a consequence, we have biopsychological levels of causation essentially disconnected from sociocultural levels, something we saw clearly in Chapter 2 when we examined the debate regarding gender differences between evolutionary psychologists and social role theorists. The Justification Hypothesis completely changes this state of affairs because it (1) offers a clear formulation of the evolutionary changes in mind that gave rise to human culture; (2) offers a theory of human self-consciousness that links human psychological with sociological levels of analysis; (3) integrates a wide variety of different theoretical perspectives (e.g., psychodynamic theory, social cognitive theory, everyday life sociology) into a coherent whole; (4) organizes and explains vast domains of empirical data; and (5) offers a framework of explanation that is consonant with frameworks in the social sciences. Prior to delving into the fourth piece of the unified theory, let me offer a general summary of the terrain we have covered. The argument so far has been that the field of psychology is a thicket of conceptual problems, consisting of a multitude of conflicting and overlapping paradigms, and the nature of these problems are such that they cannot be solved with ever-increasingly sophisticated data collection methods. Instead, what the field desperately needs is a meta-theoretical perspective that allows us to integrate the key insights from each major perspective and see the elephant as a whole. Toward that end, three large pieces of the puzzle have been offered. The first piece was Behavioral Investment Theory, which provides a general theory of animal behavior built on an evolutionary foundation that merges computational/cognitive science with behavioral and neuroscience. With Behavioral Investment Theory we can knit together the many of the branches of psychology that are most strongly associated with the natural sciences. Building off of the Behavioral Investment Theory framework, a schematic of the architecture of the human mind was presented that consisted of four levels: (1) the sensory-motor; (2) operant-experiential; (3) imaginative thought; and (4) human self-consciousness. We then introduced the Influence Matrix, which in many ways serves as a bridge between Behavioral Investment Theory and the Justification Hypothesis. On the one hand, the Influence Matrix is an outgrowth of Behavioral Investment Theory, applied to human social
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motivation and emotion. On the other hand, the problem of social justification is intimately tied to social influence. With the Influence Matrix, we developed a model that allows us to richly view dynamic relational processes that guide humans and shapes the kind of justifications they offer. In this chapter we have detailed the Justification Hypothesis, which argues that the evolution of language created the problem of social justification, and this adaptive problem spurred the evolution of both the human self-consciousness system and Culture. In conjunction with the Justification Hypothesis, we introduced a new tripartite model of human consciousness that consists of an experiential self, a private self, and a public self, along with filtering processes between these domains. We then reviewed many different domains of research, such as cognitive dissonance, attributional biases, human reasoning and reason giving and demonstrated that the Justification Hypothesis forms a hub of an idea that can assimilate and integrate many lines of research. The final piece of the unified theory to be explored is the Tree of Knowledge System. As was briefly touched upon in the first chapter, the Tree of Knowledge System is a map of cosmic evolution that defines key concepts like Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture, and depicts how they exist in relationship to one another. The need for such a meta-theoretical framework is clear when one considers the problem of psychology. For unlike physics or biology, psychology—with its joint focus on both animal behavior in general and human behavior at the level of the individual— has confusingly spanned across two dimensions of complexity, that of Mind and Culture. In the next chapter we examine the ToK System and how it provides a way to bridge the terrain between the natural and social sciences and solve the problem of psychology.
Chapter 6
The Tree of Knowledge System
We have a surfeit of facts. What we do not have, and most of us in the quiet of our nights know it, is an overarching conception of context in which we can put these facts and, having done so, the truth then stands a chance of emerging. —S. B. Sarason (1989, p. 279).
The fourth and final piece of the unified theory is the Tree of Knowledge (ToK) System, which attempts to provide a macro-level conception of context that gives us a way to place our hard-won scientific facts into an overarching conception of context that allows the truth to emerge. In the first chapter I introduced a basic representation of the ToK System. Figure 6.1 depicts the ToK System again, only this time there are some significant additions. One addition to this diagram is that now the four joint points are listed. Joint points are the theories that link the dimensions. Quantum gravity is the first joint point and is theorized to be the link between Energy and Matter. It refers to the theoretical merger between the twin pillars in physics: quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The modern evolutionary synthesis is the joint point between Matter and Life, and refers to the merger of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with genetics. The modern synthesis can be thought of as the unified theory of biology because it provides the framework for understanding how complex, self-replicating organic molecules were ultimately transformed into organisms. Biology is a unified discipline precisely because it has a clear, well-established definition (the science of Life), an agreed upon subject matter (organisms), and a unified theoretical system that provides the causal explanatory framework for its emergence (the modern evolutionary synthesis). Some key elements of the modern synthesis will be explored later in the chapter, when we delve into Edward O. Wilson’s work. Behavioral Investment Theory is the joint point between Life and Mind because it merges fundamental insights across the cognitive, behavioral, and neurosciences to provide a framework for understanding how Mind emerges out of Life. Finally, the Justification Hypothesis is the joint point between Mind and Culture because it provides a framework for understanding the changes in the human mind that resulted in the evolution of self-consciousness and human culture.
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_6,
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Fig. 6.1 The Tree of Knowledge System
Another notable feature of this diagram is the addition of science. From the unified theory perspective, science is a particular branch in the evolution of justification systems. In smaller and less complex societies, justification systems are initially undifferentiated, meaning that the shared narratives that coordinate the populations are global/religious/political narratives that explain how the world worked, how people should act, what was good and bad, and why. As societies grow in complexity, justification systems become more complicated and differentiated, and branch into various domains such as law, politics, mathematics, and religion. The ToK System suggests that science is a particular kind of justification system built on the value of accuracy and it depicts how science exists in the dimension of culture and functions to map the four dimensions of complexity. The reciprocal feedback loop of (1) systematic observation and measurement; (2) theoretical explanation; and (3) prediction and testing leading back to measurement provides the basic three-step process that underlies the scientific method and allows scientists to build increasingly accurate representations of the universe and the objects in it. The right side of the diagram depicts science as consisting of four broad, separable domains: (1) the physical; (2) the biological; (3) the psychological; and (4) the social. This correspondence between science and the dimensions of complexity is an important feature of the system. Philosophy is very much about knower–known relations, and the ToK System is the only system I know of that shows both the evolution of complexity, and where and how scientific knowledge about that complexity exists in relation.
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Importantly, especially viewed in light of the problem of psychology, the correspondence between the dimensions of complexity and the domains of science provides a possible way for solving psychology’s philosophical woes. Why? Because the gestalt offered by the diagram suggests that psychology can be as crisply defined as biology or physics. This fact, combined with the integrative conceptual frames offered by Behavioral Investment Theory, the Influence Matrix, and the Justification Hypothesis, provide a new pathway to solve the problem of psychology, an argument I give in detail in the next chapter. But why is the Tree of Knowledge System so named? First, the metaphor of the tree illustrates how various branches of complexity are interconnected and emerge over time from more basic beginnings, thus placing us in the context of a cosmic evolutionary narrative. A tree also conveys a holistic, organic, and systemic view of knowledge (cf. Maturana & Varela, 1987). The primary reason it is named the Tree of Knowledge is because it serves as a reference to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the book of Genesis in the Bible. I made this connection because I wanted to emphasize the tremendous need for a new mythology for modern times. In the traditional Genesis story the message is relatively clear: Obey God with blind faith and paradise will be delivered—challenge God’s authority and all hell breaks loose. In contrast to this traditional message, I believe that humanity has matured to the point where it is clear that we should not be led by blind faith. Indeed, unquestioning obedience to traditional dogma is precisely the wrong starting point. We must instead take charge of our own destiny, and to do so we must be committed to asking questions about our nature, where we have come from and where we are going, and be committed to developing authentically justifiable answers. Thus, metaphorically speaking, we must eat heartily from the Tree of Knowledge if we are to flourish. Yes, eating from the Tree comes with some existential burdens. But it is our best hope. For it is only by acquiring such knowledge can we successfully and deliberately coordinate our actions and move humanity away from Evil toward Good.
Seeing the World Through the Prism of the ToK System “Look, Daddy, I drew your work!” I looked down to see a picture that warmed my heart both as a father and as the developer of the unified theory. At the age of four, my daughter Sydney was presenting me with the picture in Fig. 6.2. “See,” she said, “Rocks, plants, animals, people.” One of the grand hopes of the unified theory is that it will provide a scheme that can be comprehended by children in its broadest strokes but is nevertheless deeply informed by science. In this section I explore how the ToK System can function like a prism to organize our understanding of the world around us. The brightest and most complex thing in our world is the white light of human behavior, and to get a feel for how the ToK System works to organize nature’s complex hierarchy, we will begin by applying it to human self-consciousness. First, though, think about what happens when white light shines through a prism. Out the other side comes a
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Fig. 6.2 Rocks, plants, animals, people
rainbow of colors. Why? Each beam of light, with its own particular wavelength, is slowed differently by the glass. Since violet light has a shorter wavelength, it is slowed more than the longer wavelengths of red light. As a consequence, violet light is bent the most while red light is bent the least. The use of the prism reveals the separate beams that make up white light. As a prism can be used to see the colors that make up white light, the argument here is that human behavior is made up of processes that operate on different behavioral frequencies that can be separated according to the dimensions of informational complexity represented by the ToK System. Let us apply the prism of the ToK System to the phenomenon of human consciousness because this is something with which you have intimate experience. Human self-consciousness is also a particularly interesting phenomenon because it is the one phenomenon where all four of the dimensions of complexity are simultaneously occurring. That is, during every reflective self- conscious moment, there is a layering of the physical, biological, psychological, and sociocultural dimensions of reality. We can start at the “top” of human consciousness and work our way down. The fourth dimension on the ToK System is called Culture, which is capitalized because it has a specific meaning, referring to the dimension of individual and collective justification systems. I am communicating with you now through the dimension of justification. Specifically, as you read this book and interpret its message, it is interacting with your pre-existing justification system(s), whereby you are trying to both derive the meaning of the message and match that meaning with your own semantic understanding (i.e., your verbal–conceptual systems for how
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the world works). According to the ToK taxonomy, the meaning and dialogue that ensues about the content of the book—whether public or private—is taking place on the fourth dimension of reality, Culture. Of course, the language-based dialogue is only part of your conscious experience. You are also likely to be able to identify images and feelings associated with the dialogue, along with other sensations. These elements make up your experiential self. If the message in the book is comprehendible and meshes well with your preexisting beliefs (both verbal and nonverbal) you will likely feel positive, interested, and motivated to continue. If the meaning of the message is unclear or does not mesh well with or challenges your understanding, you are likely to feel irritated, uninterested or, if motivated at all, motivated to show why it is incorrect. There are many other elements of your experiential consciousness that exist mostly in the background but for a host of reasons could be brought into the forefront of awareness. For starters, there are the perceptual experiences that you can identify by looking and listening. Perhaps there is a noise outside or a flower on a table. Or perhaps there are internal urges or feeling states that you can identify. Maybe you have an ache somewhere in your body or feel some emotional distress due to a recent conflict with an important other. Obviously, then, there is much to our mental experience that is not verbal. As described previously, sentience is the term used to describe nonverbal mental experience, and it is separable from language-based self-consciousness because it operates on a different dimension of information processing and thus on a different behavioral frequency. Sentience is an emergent consequence of neuro-information processing and occurs both phylogenetically and developmentally prior to languagebased self-reflective thought. That is, animals were sentient before humans existed, and children are sentient prior to being able to talk. According to the taxonomy provided by the ToK System, the capacity for sentience emerges in the third dimension of complexity, Mind. That is not to say that Mind is synonymous with sentience—it is not. However, sentience emerges in the mental dimension of complexity, and nonverbal sentient experiences are third-dimensional phenomena. The mental dimension also includes the enormous number of nonconscious neurocognitive processes that are also occurring when you (or a sentient being like a dog) behave. When and how sentient experiences emerge from neurocognitive processes are very good questions for which we do not have clear answers, but the point I want to emphasize here is that according to the ToK System, your nonverbal experiences—that is, your perceptions, drives, feelings, and images—are thirddimensional phenomena. Thus in the frame offered by the ToK, you can rather simplistically but nonetheless justifiably think of your self-consciousness as your cultural mind, and your basic experiential self as your animal mind. Whereas words relate to the outside world through speaking and writing, your animal mind relates to the outside world via your overt actions. If you are following me you can see that, according to the ToK System, your conscious experience is made up most immediately of behavioral frequencies operating at the third (mental) and fourth (cultural) dimensions of complexity. I should also
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note that your self-consciousness can be seen “from above” as taking place within a macro-level cultural environment. That is, the largest, most complex “objects” on the ToK System are human societies, and the informational glue that holds human societies together are the collective systems of justification that coordinate human action (Culture). The ToK System posits that your language-based thought processes are significantly influenced by the large-scale cultural justification systems in which they are embedded. From “below” your sensory experiences are taking place in a biological environment, consisting of neuron action potentials, neuron growth and metabolism, neurotransmitters, hormones, as well as the other organs and organ systems that keep you alive. Your experiential self is thus “embodied” in biology—cells, organs, and organ systems. These systems, as well as the plant on your desk or the trees outside your window, operate on the second dimension of complexity, which is the biological or organic dimension. According to the ToK System, psychological or mental behaviors operate at meta-level frequencies relative to specific brain processes. Although mental behaviors cannot be reduced to biological behaviors, biological processes do provide the conditions of possibility for mental behaviors emerging in animals. For example, if someone’s brain was scrambled with, say, a bullet to the head, their mental behaviors and experience would quickly dissipate. Moving up a level of complexity for an analogy, the relationship between brain processes and mental behaviors is akin to the relationship between individual personalities and the behavior of a society as a whole. Just as we could never understand the behavior of the United States of America by analyzing the sum total of the individual personalities of its citizens, we will never understand mental behavior solely by analyzing the brain. Instead, we must also look at the behavior of the individual as a whole. Understanding the relationship between wholes and parts is also crucial to have a good feel for the levels and dimensions of reality argument offered by the ToK System. The integrative theorist and philosopher Ken Wilber (2001) views nature as a holarchy, or a nested hierarchy, where wholes at one level are parts of wholes at another. For example, a molecule is a whole at the chemical level and is part of a cell, which is (or can be) a whole at the biological level. A cell is a whole at the biological level, but is only a part of an animal like a pigeon, which is a whole at the psychological level. A person is a whole at the level of human psychology, but is only a part at the level of society. Nelson (1996) offered the following example in the form of a sentence to help in thinking about the relationship between wholes and parts: “Thiss sentence has threee errors.” To understand the point of the example, a consideration must be made at the object level (the individual words) and the meta-level (the meaning of the sentence as a whole). There are two errors at the object level (the two misspellings) and one error at the meta-level (the fact that there are two spelling errors instead of three). To extend the analogy, if we think of the behavior of a rat as akin to the whole sentence, a behavioral psychologist would focus on the sentence as a whole (behavior of the rat), a biologist would study the word level (organ systems, organs, and cells), and a molecular geneticist the particular letters (genes and molecules).
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When we shift our attention to lower dimensions of complexity on the ToK System, we see that the relationship between higher and lower order phenomena remains analogous. Although it is impossible to reduce biology to chemistry, it is still the case that biological behaviors are populations of enormous complexes of chemical behaviors, which exist in the material dimension of complexity. Molecules are complex material objects and are made up of simpler objects called atoms. And atoms are, in turn, made up of even more basic material particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons. Although electrons are fundamental particles, remarkably it turns out that protons and neutrons are made up of particles called quarks. Quarks and leptons (electrons and another particle called neutrinos) are the simplest material particles and make up all the matter in the universe. Called fermions by physicists, they exist at the very bottom of the material cone on the ToK System. There is, however, one thing more fundamental than matter. That is energy. Matter is made up of frozen chunks of energy, and energy is the ultimate common denominator in the universe. There is one other element about the taxonomy provided by the ToK System that I would like to mention. Once again, take a look around you. Sitting on a chair or a couch, holding this book or staring at a computer screen in your home or office, you are most likely surrounded by technology. Technology is an interesting category when viewed via the ToK prism. On the one hand, technology generally operates on the material dimension of complexity. On the other, it is the result of human intention and cultural evolution. That makes technology a “hybrid” between dimensions, and I characterize technology as material culture. Material culture, or technology, is obviously related to Culture (the dimension of language-based justification), but is, in the taxonomy provided by the ToK, separate from it. Indeed, by making the division between material culture and Culture, we can posit that the human societies are made up of the combination of four different domains as follows: (1) Culture (the large-scale justification systems that coordinate people’s actions); (2) Material culture (the tools and technological innovations and inventions); (3) Overt patterns of behavioral investment (i.e., tacit knowledge, habits, and skills of individuals); and (4) the biophysical ecology in which the society exists (e.g., geography, natural resources, flora and fauna, climate, etc). The taxonomy of behaviors provided by the ToK System hopefully feels both quite familiar and yet quite novel. What may be familiar is the notion that nature can be effectively parsed into different levels of complexity. That is, atoms exist at one level, molecules another, cells another, and so on. Seeing nature as consisting of different levels of complexity has been extremely common and is part and parcel to many broad systems of science and philosophy. The classification scheme of material objects, living objects, animals, and people should also have a familiar ring to it as this categorical system aligns with thousands of years of common sense. Since the beginnings of culture and including great thinkers like Aristotle, people have seen these four categories in nature. But despite these familiar components the ToK System is nonetheless a novel proposal that solves many longstanding philosophical problems. To understand why, it is helpful to locate the ToK System in relationship to previous proposals.
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A New Approach to Emergent Evolution I was perusing the library on a lazy Friday afternoon when I stumbled on a book written in 1958 by Oliver Reiser. Upon seeing the title, The Integration of Human Knowledge, I eagerly flipped through the pages. When I saw Reiser’s proposal for a scientific humanism and his diagrams, which included the Temple of Knowledge (p. 51), Levels of Emergent Evolution (p. 271), and the Relations Between the Levels in a Spiral Action of Time (p. 85), an eerie sense of familiarity washed over me. So strong was the correspondence between his integrative vision and the ToK System that a Jungian might have labeled it a moment of synchronicity. The similarity did not end with the overlap in the vision. In fact, Reiser (1958) began his book with a justification for his system that has strong parallels with the current work. He argued passionately that philosophy and science were producing oceans of information but were not generating a comprehensible, synthetic vision of knowledge in general. He wrote In this time of divisive tendencies within and between the nations, races, religions, sciences and humanities, synthesis must become the great magnet which orients us all. . .[Yet] scientists have not done what is possible toward integrating bodies of knowledge created by science into a unifie interpretation of man, his place in nature, and his potentialities for creating the good society. Instead, they are entombing us in dark and meaningless catacombs of learning. (Reiser, 1958, pp. 2–3, italics in original).
Although I was not aware of it when I initially developed the ToK System, I have since learned that at the beginning of the twentieth century a group of scientists and philosophers argued for a conception of nature that was similar in form and spirit to the ToK System, and Oliver Reiser’s work was part of that tradition. The great comparative psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan was the primary scholar associated with the movement, and he coined the term emergent evolution to capture the new approach. Emergent evolution was described by Morgan as a third way, one that existed between the two dominant philosophies at the time. One dominant position was that of material reductionism. Advocates of this approach argued that life and mind were, at bottom, just complicated arrangements of energy and matter and, eventually, everything would be reduced to physics. The other position was vitalism, whose proponents argued that a supernatural life force had to be added to the physiochemical arrangements to explain phenomena of life and consciousness. Emergent evolutionists argued a middle-ground position. Like the vitalists, they argued that biological and mental properties were genuinely and qualitatively novel and were not reducible to physics and chemistry in any meaningful way. However, in contrast to the vitalists, they argued that these properties emerged from evolutionary changes rather than supernatural forces. In reviewing the history of emergent evolution, Blitz (1992) captured the primary claims of the emergent evolutionists as follows: Emergent evolution combines three separate but related claims. . .: firstly, that evolution is a universal process of change, one which is productive of qualitative novelties; secondly, that qualitative novelty is the emergence in a system of a property not possessed by any
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Fig. 6.3 Llyod Morgan’s conception of emergent evolution
of its parts; and thirdly, that reality can be analyzed into levels, each consisting of systems characterized by significant emergent properties (p. 1).
Importantly, Morgan (1923) and other emergent evolutionists saw the levels in nature in a manner that carries obvious parallels with the depiction of complexity offered by the ToK System. Building on aspects of Alexander’s (1920) formulation, Morgan generated Fig. 6.3 to represent his conception of emergent evolution. He described it as follows: At its base space–time (S & T) extends throughout all that is. At its apex, but within it no less than space time, is deity (D), an emergent quality that characterizes (sic) only certain persons at the highest and latest stage of evolution along a central line of advance (N). The narrowing which gives the pyramid its form expresses such a fact as that the range of occurrence of material events as such is more extensive than that of events which are also vital. . .[The diagram is] a synoptic expression, or composite graph, of a vast multitude of [objects and events—atoms] near the base, molecules a little higher up. . .higher still, plants (in which mind is not yet emergent), then animals (with consciousness), and, near the top, our human selves.
With the possible exception of the introduction of the concept of “Deity,” this formulation should sound quite familiar because it carries clear parallels with the ToK System. It should be noted that although Morgan offered some theological musings in his proposal, his version of emergent evolution was a fully naturalistic approach, and “Deity” held a meaning closer to spirituality, values, and beauty as opposed to a supernatural God or force. That is why he makes the comment that some humans are closer to Deity than others; in Morgan’s view as humans are striving for such things they are reaching the pinnacle of complexity. There are also significant differences between Morgan’s representation and the ToK graphic. The differences should not be underestimated because they hold the key to why the ToK System will succeed where previous proposals for emergent evolution failed. One important difference is the manner in which the ToK System represents time. When emergent evolution was being proposed, philosophers and theorists almost universally held a steady state theory of the universe. In contrast, the ToK’s depiction is consistent with modern cosmology’s theory of the Big Bang and cosmic evolution (Chaisson, 2001).
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The second major difference is the ToK’s depiction of different dimensions of complexity and associated joint points. Although emergent evolution attracted much attention during the 1920s and 1930s, a problem emerged because numerous proposals appeared and each offered a slightly different scheme for carving nature at its joints. For example, W. M. Wheeler (1928) argued for three levels: matter, life, and society. In contrast Broad (1926) argued for four levels, the physical, the chemical, the organic, and the mental. Sellars (1926) offered a vision of four levels that directly parallel the four domains of the ToK System: inanimate matter, animate nature, mind, and society/persons/civilization. These and other proposals followed in Morgan’s tradition of emergent evolution. But in the mid 1930s the influence of emergent evolutionary perspectives waned because none of the proposals precisely defined the levels nor explained why or how they came into existence, and there was no clear way to determine which of the myriad proposals contained the most validity. With its proposed joint points and dimension of complexity argument, it is precisely these gaps in emergent evolutionary models that the ToK System fills in. Another factor in the eclipse of emergent evolution was the rise of logical positivism. Logical positivism combined an emphasis on empiricism with a focus on logical coherence in an attempt to produce a purely scientific account of everything. Promoted by a group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle, logical positivism became enormously influential. One of the leaders of this group, Rudolf Carnap, was a physical reductionist. His philosophy was an essential leveling down, so that chemistry, biology, and psychology would ultimately be reduced to physics. Carnap also argued strongly against building grand schemes of nature. Instead, he saw science as a cooperative, cumulative exercise of specialists. The logical positivists thus saw the grand schemes of the emergent evolutionists as incorrect both because such schemes seemed to argue against reductionism and because they were superfluous. Although now generally considered debunked, logical positivism was very influential from the 1940s through the 1970s. To summarize, at the turn of the twentieth century a host of scholars led by Morgan offered a vision of nature that is quite similar in form and function to the ToK System. These emergent evolutionists argued, in contrast to the vitalists, that no supernatural force was necessary to explain phenomena like life and mind. However, in contrast to the physical reductionists, they argued these phenomena were not just energy and matter, and they could not, even in principle, be reduced to physics. Despite these insights, a proliferation of competing proposals and lack of agreement about what exactly the levels were, why there were levels, and how they emerged resulted in major stumbling blocks for the emergent evolutionary philosophy. A reductionist revival occurred in the mid 1930s, and grand knowledge schemes were relegated to the dustbin of history. But the reductionistic systems of the logical positivists have also generally failed as coherent philosophies, a point made strongly by philosophers like Oliver Reiser and others. Currently philosophers of science offer conceptions of nature that either lean toward reductionism or emergence, but there is little consensus, clarity, or agreement regarding these concepts. One modern day theorist who clearly has philosophical roots in the tradition of Carnap and the logical positivists is Edward O. Wilson. Recognized as the father of
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sociobiology and currently one of the most widely known and influential scientists, in the late 1990s he offered a new grand synthesis called Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Analyzing Wilson’s career and his proposal provides a useful model to compare and contrast with the ToK System, and the next section of this chapter is devoted to this story.
The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and the Emergence of Sociobiology The modern evolutionary synthesis is the second joint point on the ToK System, providing the framework for understanding how biological complexity (Life) emerged out of material processes. The modern synthesis unified biology and is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century science. It refers to the merger of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with genetics, such that current understanding is that biological complexity is ultimately a function of natural selection operating on genetic combinations across the generations. It is important to note that the modern synthesis was a hard fought intellectual struggle that emerged over decades of debate, dispute, and research. In the 1920s and 1930s, biology was a fragmented science. Fundamentally incompatible versions of evolution were being advanced, and there was a vitriolic split between the “naturalists” and “experimental geneticists.” The naturalists, who studied organisms in the wild, tended to advocate for a more holistic, gradual, organic view of evolution that was generally consistent with Darwin’s natural selection but was often also infused with Lamarkian notions. In contrast, the early experimental geneticists tended to be saltationists who believed that change resulted from major genetic mutations and that natural selection played a minor role. Mayr and Provine (1998) provide a wonderfully rich and detailed history of how disputes in biology were ultimately resolved with the formation of a single, coherent paradigm. Mendelian genetics was finally recognized to fill major gaps in Darwin’s theory; namely, it provided the mechanisms for inheritance and variation. Importantly from the vantage point of the ToK System, the modern synthesis provided the theoretical framework to differentiate biology from chemistry. George Williams (1966) summed up the issues as follows: We are dealing with life when we are forced to invoke natural selection to achieve a complete explanation of an observed system. In this sense the principles of chemistry and physics are not enough. At the least one additional postulate of natural selection and its consequence, adaptation, are needed. (p. 5)
Richard Dawkins (1999, p. 113) similarly described how “living matter introduces a whole new set of rungs to the ladder of complexity” (emphasis added) via natural selection operating on genetic combinations across the generations. Although genes are coordinated populations of molecules, individual molecules are not “small” genes. Genes are irreducible points of complexity and can be conceptualized as digits of bio-chemical information. In this light, biology can be thought of as the
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study of genetic information generated by the complexity building feedback loop of natural selection. The modern synthesis provided the intellectual grounding for Edward O. Wilson, who emerged onto the international scene in 1975 with an influential and controversial text called Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. The strength of the book—its foundational organizing insight—resided in explicating the synthetic explanatory power that kin selection offered for understanding animal social behavior in general and explaining altruism in particular. It was William Hamilton, building on the work of R. A. Fischer and others, who was most responsible for elucidating the crucial relationship between kin selection and altruistic behavior. Altruism is sacrificing one’s own resources, survival or reproductive capacity for the benefit of another, and there are many examples of altruism throughout the animal kingdom. This was a problem for traditional Darwinian models. If animals varied in their tendencies to be self-sacrificing, it followed that those who tended to be more self-sacrificing would leave fewer offspring behind and thus the tendency should decrease in frequency across the generations. And yet altruism, especially toward kin, is a fairly common behavioral tendency. Hamilton took a gene’s eye view on the issue and made a major breakthrough with an idea he called inclusive fitness. Inclusive fitness refers to the reproductive success of the individual and individual’s kin, relative to their genetic relatedness. He made this insight by recognizing that natural selection operates on genetic material and that genes are shared among kin. We share 50% of our unique genetic makeup with our parents and siblings and children, 25% with our grandparents, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews, 12.5% with cousins, and so forth. Hamilton recognized that actions that benefit kin benefit one’s genes, hence the term kin selection. In concrete terms, if I decide not to marry and have no children but instead I sacrifice to raise my brother’s four children, in the currency of genes in the next generation, it is the equivalent of me having two children. Thinking about this in terms of behavioral tendencies that would evolve, imagine that my brother and I are part of a tribe that has had difficulty hunting lately, and we are both extremely hungry. I am fortunate and spear a wild pig. I cook it up and eat my fill, but my brother returns empty handed. He is hungry and requests some meat. Should I give it to him? Speaking solely from a gene’s eye view, the answer is probably. Because I have eaten my fill, the remaining meat is now less valuable to me. Let’s give it an arbitrary energy value of three units. My brother, however, is famished and the same amount of food is worth a value of eight energy units to him. Hamilton realized that behavioral tendencies would be selected for in a manner that can be represented in the following simple equation c E formulation. From the perspective of the fragmentation within the field of psychology, the concept of mental behavior bridges the divide between radical behaviorism and traditional psychology because it allows us to retain Skinner’s central insights and simultaneously remove key mistakes that he made that prevented his views from being integrated with cognitive neuroscience. From the perspective of mental behaviorism, Skinner’s key insight was that animal behavior was not reducible to biological theory and that psychology could be separated from biology with an “evolutionary theory” much akin to the manner in which the modern evolutionary synthesis separates biology from chemistry. Skinner’s biggest error was the manner in which he defined radical behaviorism against traditional psychology and conceptually and methodologically separated internal from external determinants and argued that psychology should focus only on the latter. On the night before he died, Skinner (1990) completed an article for American Psychologist summing up his argument for why psychology could never be a successful science of mind. Skinner’s anti-mentalistic perspective can be summarized as follows: First, in a manner directly paralleling the ToK System, he argued that human behavior was the product of three separate levels of variation and selection (the parallel dimensions on the ToK are in parentheses): (1) natural selection (Life); (2) behavioral selection (Mind); and (3) verbal selection (Culture). He then corresponded each level to its own discipline: (1) biology; (2) psychology; and (3) anthropology/social sciences. Second, Skinner defined mind as an unobservable cause of behavior, akin to a vitalistic life force that causes organism complexity. (Recall from Chapter 6 that vitalists interpret life as arising from a supernatural force). Third, Skinner argued that Darwin’s theory of natural selection provided the framework for understanding how an environmental selection process can create biological complexity, and in so doing it removed the need for vitalism. Finally, Skinner concluded that, in the same manner that natural selection removed the need for vitalism, the concept of behavioral selection removed the need for mentalism. In short, Skinner argued that if psychology were to ever become a real science like biology, the field must give up its notion of unobservable, mentalistic forces causing animal behavior. To Skinner and his radical behavioral followers, this argument is straightforward, sound, and confers many scientific benefits. For example, it clearly defines the proper subject matter of psychology as the behavior of the animal as a whole. Second, it differentiates psychology from biology with the same basic logic that biology is differentiated from the physical sciences. Third, it defines psychology as
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a science of behavior and removes the problematic concept of something nonbehavioral (i.e., nonphysical), causing something physical to behave. All of these benefits are genuine, and I believe they should be embraced wholeheartedly. However, the argument is not entirely sound. In fact, from the vantage point of the unified theory there is a glaring problem. According to the ToK System, Mind is the same type of concept as Life. Both are emergent dimensions of informational complexity generated by feedback loops of variation, selection, and retention. Darwin’s theory of natural selection removed the need for the concept of vitalism, but it did not, of course, remove the need for the concept of life. Indeed, the idea of Darwin being “anti-life” is absurd. Biology is crisply defined as the science of life, and the set of organic behaviors are what biologists are attempting to describe, explain, and predict, and, in some circumstances, control. Likewise, the unified theory in general and ToK System in particular suggests that psychology can be crisply defined as the science of Mind, and the set of mental behaviors are what psychologists are trying to describe, explain, and predict. Thus, the mental behaviorist answers Skinner’s (1990) question, “Can psychology be the science of mind?” with the answer, “Yes, so long as ‘mind’ is defined as a particular type of behavior.” In contrast to many popular characterizations of Skinner’s position, he did not argue that consciousness did not exist. Instead, he simply characterized it as behavior that required explanation and was opposed to thinking of it as a mentalistic force that caused behavior. The mental behavioral position largely agrees with this formulation. First, as Skinner and other behaviorists appropriately argued, simply attributing the cause of behavior to an “inner man” is potentially problematic and circular. And like Skinner I also find it helpful to divide mental behaviors into two broad domains: (1) overt mental behaviors, which are behaviors that take place between the animal and the environment; and (2) covert mental behaviors, which take place within an animal’s nervous system. Overt mental behaviors, to put in fairly straightforward terms, are what an animal is observed to be doing and include actions such as a fly avoiding a fly swatter, a beaver building a dam, and a man giving his lover a kiss. Covert mental behaviors are the neuro-computational or neurocognitive processes performed by all brain systems that mediate overt mental behavior. It is important to explicitly note that the adjective mental includes both conscious and nonconscious cognitive processing, as well as overt, observable patterns of behavior. The mental behaviorist position leaves open various positions that have been taken regarding one of the key debates in animal psychology, which is the degree and kind of anthropomorphizing that has a legitimate place in the science of animal behavior. Anthropomorphizing is the tendency to ascribe conscious thoughts and feelings that would be commonly reported by a human to explain the actions of an animal. For instance, if, after coming home from work and finding that your dog had gotten into the trash and made a mess, whereupon she then presents to you in a submissive deferential position, you then ascribe to her the experience of a guilty conscience and thoughts that she has disappointed you, then you are engaging in anthropomorphizing. The place and utility of such anthropomorphizing in science has been the point of much contention. Early in the history of animal
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psychology, Rommanes freely attributed sophisticated consciousness to many animals with limited operationalization, specification, or empirical validation and was justifiably criticized for offering unscientific labeling of phenomena, circular reasoning, and making pseudo-scientific claims that did not really explain anything. More recently, perhaps most notably through the work of Donald Griffin (1976), anthropomorphism has seen something of a qualified revival, although there remain many strong critics of any form of anthropomorphism (e.g., Wynne, 2007). While not rejecting outright any form of anthropomorphism, the insights afforded by the Justification Hypothesis strongly caution against imputing self-reflective, language-based justifying thought processes in non-human animals. And along those lines, it is clear that many of the objections against the scientific viability of anthropomorphism have validity. At the same time, in contrast to the early behaviorists, Behavioral Investment Theory strongly suggests the need to allow for an animal-centered view, one that includes perceptual, motivational, and affective states that guide and regulate behavioral output (cf., Panksepp, 1998). Importantly, William Timberlake (2007) has outlined precisely such a system, which he argued can integrate the approaches from ethology, the experimental analysis of behavior, and neuroscience. His theromorphic (animal centered) behavioral systems approach is very congruent with the mental behavioral approach to animal psychology advocated for here. Some have criticized the above argument for mental behaviorism as a form of word play (e.g., Goertzen, 2008), claiming that it does not resolve the fundamental differences and tensions between the mentalist and behaviorist perspectives. My reply is that mental behaviorism rightly identifies the key conundrum regarding the relationship between mind and behavior, and offers a “golden mean” solution, whereby the key insights from both perspectives can be assimilated and integrated into a coherent whole. Specifically, it dispenses with a problematic substance dualism and embraces aspects of the behaviorist criticism when “mind” is conceptualized as an ephemeral, unobservable, disembodied entity that causes behavior. At the same time, by emphasizing “mental” as a description of the unique behaviors in need of an explanation, the conceptual door is clearly opened to theorizing about cognition and consciousness as aspects of mental behavior, as depicted in the Architecture of the Human Mind diagram and the new tripartite model of human consciousness. There is one other issue that must be addressed if we are to proceed in characterizing the proper subject matter of the basic science of psychology as mental behavior. Mental behavior refers to the behavior of the animal-as-a-whole, but given that, we must now consider the fact that the majority of researchers currently working on animal behavior are biologists. And surely there are those like E. O. Wilson who would disagree with the claim that the science of animal behavior should be characterized as a psychological discipline. Moreover, the significant majority of psychologists currently deal with humans. Along these lines, in his commentary on the unified theory, Kihlstrom (2004, p. 1244) argued that psychology “is first and foremost the science of human mental life.” How does that fact square with the analysis that psychology is defined primarily in relationship to the third rather
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than fourth dimension of complexity on the ToK? Another important issue that any attempt to define the field must address is the relationship between the science and the practice of psychology. These issues highlight that there are still some complications to be worked out. In the next section, I spell out why, consistent with the formulation provided by the unified theory and the definition of psychology offered previously, psychology should be divided into three great branches of learning. This formulation elucidates more clearly how the unified theory solves some of the longest standing dilemmas in the field, specifically whether psychology is a natural or a social science, the relationship between psychology and biology, the line between animal and human behavior, and the difference between the science and the profession.
Psychology’s Three Great Branches The current proposal to solve the problem of psychology divides the institution into three related but separable branches. The three branches are (1) the basic science of psychology, what I refer to as psychological formalism or basic psychology, and whose proper subject matter is mental behavior; (2) human psychology, whose proper subject matter is human behavior at the individual level and includes a particular focus on the human mind and human self-consciousness; and (3) professional psychology, which involves the application of psychological knowledge for human betterment. Thus, not only am I attempting to unify psychology but I am also advocating for some fundamental divisions as well. Is it reasonable to argue on the one hand that psychology is a singular coherent entity, and then proceed to divide the concept up into three conceptually separable branches? Kihlstrom (2004, p. 1244) raised this issue when he commented that, “There is considerable irony, I think, in the discussion of the unity of psychology that immediately divides the field.” Kihlstrom is correct in noting the irony, but from my vantage point, the irony is revealing. Through its unexpected and somewhat paradoxical solution, the unified theory reveals why the problem of psychology has historically been so difficult to solve. In responding to the criticism that the unified theory claims to unify psychology but then divides it, it is useful to point out that the soundness of the logic of the divisions proposed by the unified theory can be demonstrated by showing that there are clear parallels between the divisions that I am proposing and the way in which other sciences are organized and divided. Consider, for example, the relationship between biology, neuroscience, and modern medicine. These disciplines are interrelated in the following way: (1) Biology, the science of Life, is the basic science; (2) Neuroscience is a hybrid between biology and psychology; and, finally, (3) Modern medicine can be legitimately defended as the application of biological science in the service of human betterment. The institutional arrangement and conceptual interrelationships between these disciplines directly parallels the arrangement I am arguing for regarding the three separable branches of psychology, a point illustrated in Fig. 7.1. Psychological formalism, the science of Mind, is the
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Fig. 7.1 Psychology’s three great branches and parallels with biology
basic science. Human psychology is a hybrid between psychological formalism and the social sciences, and professional psychology is the application of psychological science in the service of human betterment. One additional element that I find helpful in clarifying the nature of three branches is the association of each branch with a major icon in the field. Specifically, I associate B. F. Skinner with the formal science of psychology, Sigmund Freud with human psychology, and Carl Rogers with professional psychology. Associating these icons with the three domains is more of a heuristic than any profound philosophical truth claim. Nevertheless, the unified theory is organized to effectively incorporate the key insights of these major figures into its system of understanding, and by associating each icon with a particular branch a heuristic map is constructed that has good pedagogical value. As will be delineated in greater detail below, Skinner is associated with the formal science of psychology because he argued that psychology: (1) has as its proper subject matter the behavior of the animalas-a-whole, which we are now referring to as mental behavior; (2) is differentiated from biology with the same logic that biology was differentiated from chemistry because animal behavior evolved as a function of the selection of consequences in a manner that had direct parallel to the evolution of life; and (3) is a purely natural science discipline. Freud is the icon associated with human psychology because he (1) identified key aspects of the dynamic relationship between self-conscious processes and subconscious motives and emotions; and (2) saw the connections between the justifications that individuals offer to maintain psychic equilibrium and the cultural narratives, myths, and taboos that coordinate populations of people. Carl Rogers is associated with the profession of psychology because he (1) identified the centrality of the therapeutic relationship and associated factors like empathy and acceptance in fostering human change during psychotherapy; and (2) recognized that the vision of the human condition afforded by the science of psychology had important implications for how people were viewed and treated. These three icons, of course, were the primary leaders in the three great paradigms in American psychology—behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic
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psychology—thus suggesting a link between the three great branches of the discipline and the three most historically significant schools of thought. The reasonableness of associating each of the three great branches with these icons is supported by a fascinating book by Demorest (2005) titled Psychology’s Grand Theorists: How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas. In it she offers powerful profiles of Skinner, Freud, and Rogers, articulating how their unique life patterns were associated with the ideas they promoted. I found Demorest’s justification for choosing these figures especially heartening and supportive of the heuristic formulation offered here. She wrote, “As prime representatives of what historically have been the three dominant [forces] in psychology, Freud, Skinner, and Rogers were all obvious choices” (2005, p. xi).
Psychological Formalism Psychological formalism is the basic science of psychology, and its subject matter is mental behavior, the set of which makes up Mind and is represented as the third dimension of complexity on the ToK System. I call it psychological formalism to denote that this branch of psychology is a purely natural science discipline. It is hoped that eventually the term will simply be shortened to psychology, but because the generic term psychology can currently be applied as readily to the other two branches of the field (human and professional), the specification of “formalism” is needed for now. The prior argument regarding the definition of mental behavior suggests that most research on animal behavior should fall under the discipline of psychological formalism. This raises some significant questions regarding the relationship between biology and psychology, a relationship and dividing line that is currently not clear. The histories of the disciplines attest to the fact that they meet in the domain of animal behavior. However, the dividing line between psychology and biology remains poorly delineated, and currently the science of animal behavior is an interdisciplinary enterprise that consists of both psychological and biological scientists. Early in the twentieth century, psychology was probably the more dominant force in the science of animal behavior. Behaviorists conducted the majority of laboratory research on animal behavior patterns, and comparative psychologists like C. Lloyd Morgan, T. S. Schneirla, Robert Yerkes, and Harry Harlow were hugely influential. The landscape has changed since that time. With the ascent of cognitive and humanistic perspectives in the latter part of the twentieth century, psychology shifted more toward focusing on human behavior. This combined with the rise of ethology, sociobiology, and behavioral ecology, and it is now the case that most who study animal behavior are biologists. Given these considerations, it should be noted that my prescription requires a shift in the gravitational center of the discipline. Although this is likely to be a concern for some, there are good reasons to suspend judgment and entertain the possibility that animal behavior mediated by the nervous system constitutes the proper subject matter for the formal science of psychology. First, the current conventional definition of psychology as a science of behavior and
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mental processes either includes the vast majority of animal behaviors with a general definition of “mental” (as advocated for here) or struggles enormously with ambiguity of what animal behaviors to consider if it is anchored to a conception of mental as being equivalent to sentience or consciousness or a disembodied, nonmaterial force that causes behavior. Second, American psychology was essentially defined as the science of animal behavior for much of the twentieth century; thus, there already exists a rich tradition in which this conception has been the rule. Third, humans are, of course, a type of animal and thus are obviously included. Fourth, even the simplest nervous systems, such as that in the planarian, have been found to exhibit basic psychological phenomena such as associative learning. Fifth, defining psychology solely in terms of human behavior opens up a host of serious problems. For example, if only human behaviors are psychological behaviors, what kinds of phenomena are sensation, perception, motivation, emotion, motor development, memory, attachment, dominance, eating, mating, etc. that are currently studied in animals? Finally, according to the ToK System, there is a clear dividing line between Life and Mind, suggesting that there is a specifiable way to differentiate biology from psychology. To understand the nature of the dividing line between biology and psychology we can ask the question: Is animal behavior reducible to biological theory? In other words, can standard biological theory adequately explain animal behavior or are new theoretical ideas required to achieve a complete explanation? Interestingly, two scholars who have figured prominently in this book so far offer strikingly different views on this question. Edward O. Wilson, the prominent sociobiologist, believes animal behavior is reducible to biology. In contrast, as mentioned above, B. F. Skinner fundamentally disagreed with this claim and argued strongly that the behavior of the animal-as-a-whole was not reducible to biological theory. He argued instead that the science of animal behavior was as conceptually distinct from biology as biology was from chemistry and physics, and for a very similar reason. Animal behavior, like life generally, evolves as a consequence of variation and selection giving rise to emergent properties, and thus could only be understood with psychological concepts (e.g., operant principles) rather than biological ones (see Naour, 2009). In contrast to Wilson’s version of reality, the ToK System depicts a clear demarcation between biology and psychology and thus is aligned with Skinner over Wilson in the claim that the behavior of animals with a nervous system represents a qualitative shift in complexity that is not fully reducible to biology theory. The ToK System adds the point that animal behavior mediated by the nervous system represents a qualitative shift because the behaviors are organized by a second information processing system (the nervous system, in addition to the genetic system). I associate Skinner with psychological formalism because of his view of animal behavior as an emergent level of complexity. Given this formulation, what are the disciplines that constitute the formal science of psychology? The list would include the following: Comparative/Animal Psychology, Behavior Analysis, Ethology, Behavioral Ecology, Behavioral Genetics, Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Psychophysiology, Biopsychology, Psychobiology, and Psychophysics. The unified
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theory further posits that Behavioral Investment Theory provides the integrative theoretical formulation to account for animal behavior.
Human Psychology From Descartes’ dualistic conception of the conscious human mind and the physical body and concomitant assertion that animals were purely mechanistic creatures that did not think or feel to Wundt and Tichtener’s early conception of psychology as the science of human consciousness, a number of historical traditions have explicitly claimed that psychology only applies to humans. In contrast to these positions the functionalists, spurred on by the work of Darwin, argued strongly for at least some forms of mental continuity between humans and other animals, thus opening the door for animal psychology. With Watson (1913), the behaviorists took this position a step further and explicitly proclaimed that there was no dividing line between man and brute. And yet, more recently, the shift in the science of psychology has been back toward the human. In his critique of the current status of the field, Robinson (2002, p. 10) wrote the following: It might now be time to open the cages, let the birds fly south and the rats find their way back to barns and marshes. Whatever the study of non-human animals might yield at the level of fact, it is doubtful in the extreme that it will contribute significantly to an understanding of the civic, aesthetic, moral, and transcendental dimensions of human life. . .Find creatures with the power not only radically to alter the world as it is given but to do so in a deliberate manner based on a critical appraisal of themselves and of that very world, and the conditions under which an Evolutionary Psychology would be credible are simply eliminated.
As with so many other domains, the unified theory assimilates and integrates both of these seemingly contradictory positions. It achieves this by showing via Behavioral Investment Theory that human behavior is continuous with other animals, while simultaneously positing via the Justification Hypothesis that human behavior is qualitatively different than that of other animals. Thus, according to the unified theory, just as animal behavior is not reducible to biological theory human behavior is likewise not reducible to Behavioral Investment Theory and the formal science of psychology. Instead, as is suggested in Robinson’s critique, individual human behavior is (a) mediated by another information processing system (symbolic language), (b) self-reflective, and (c) embedded in a macro-level cultural context of justification. Because of this qualitative shift (depicted on the ToK System as the emergence of Culture), human psychology must be separated from the formal science of psychology. In short, Watson was wrong—there is a dividing line between man and brute. Moreover, unlike basic psychology which is conceptualized here as a purely natural science, human psychology is part of the social sciences and must then grapple more with issues of value, epistemological relativism, and cultural context because of the problem of the double hermeneutic mentioned in Chapter 1. Sigmund Freud is the icon I associate with the discipline of human psychology. It would certainly be justifiable to challenge the appropriateness of this association
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given how separate Freudian theory is from academic human psychology and how much Freud originally got wrong. As I mentioned above, the association of the icons with domains is more of a pedagogical heuristic rather than a deep analytic truth claim. My primary reason for doing so is because the Justification Hypothesis aligns well with Freud’s fundamental insight pertaining to the nature of human selfconsciousness, which is that there are systematic motivational reasons behind the reasons that people give for their behavior. In the language of psychoanalytic theory, Freud discovered the dynamic unconscious. Freud was, of course, not the first to question the completeness of the conscious rationales people offered for their behavior. But he was by far the most influential individual in articulating the systematic nature of the relationship between conscious and unconscious thought. In essence, Freud ultimately observed that the justifications that people offer for why they do what they do could be understood as arising from the inherent tension between biopsychological drives that guide behavior and the socio-linguistic system in which the individual is immersed. This is, of course, directly in line with the Justification Hypothesis, and it is the reason I associate Freud with human psychology. I also think we should be looking to separate the psychodynamic baby from the psychoanalytic bathwater and build bridges with academic psychology so that we can move forward toward building a cumulative science of human psychology. For example, we should recognize that social psychologists’ work on cognitive dissonance has many parallels with psychodynamic notions of ego defense. I use the icons of Skinner and Freud to make an additional point pertaining to the theoretical unification of psychology. Although they are arguably the two greatest figures in the field, the two perspectives appear on the surface to be wholly incompatible. Skinner pejoratively dismissed “mentalistic” approaches and placed the focus on the causal role of the environment in the selection of behavioral responses. He also took an extreme fact-based approach to science and even questioned the need for deep theoretical constructs in psychology. The foundational database for his behavioral selection paradigm was the behavior of animals in the lab. Conversely, Freud’s psychoanalytic paradigm was unabashedly mentalistic in nature. Stemming from observations of troubled humans’ free-associating on a couch, Freud wove together powerful insights with wild speculations and formulated an elaborate but problematic grand theory of the human mind. Of course, both Freud and Skinner are much maligned in opposing circles and the vast majority of psychologists view each of their respective paradigms as incomplete and at least partially incorrect. Yet both Skinner and Freud remain pillars of the field, and there is not currently a way to blend the insights of the two together in a coherent fashion. If there is in fact an elephant to be seen, a unified theory of psychology would coherently unite the ideas of Skinner and Freud within the same overarching system, clearly spelling out the errors and inconsistencies in each paradigm while retaining the key theoretical insights from both perspectives. My argument in using these icons is that the unified theory aligns the central insights of Skinner and Freud both with one another and with science at large, allowing us to finally see the elephant. Some additional graphics offered in Fig. 7.2 might help communicate this point. Specifically, the diagram on the left shows how psychology
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Fig. 7.2 Solving the problem of psychology with the unified theory
is currently a fragmented discipline that exists between biology and the social sciences, with psychologists on a spectrum of positions in the philosophy of science, the ends of which are occupied by Skinner and Freud. The diagram on the right represents the argument that by recasting Skinner’s central insight in light of Behavioral Investment Theory and Freud’s central insight in light of the Justification Hypothesis, we can align their insights with each other and biology from below and the social sciences from above and see a coherent vision of the whole. Given this discussion and the overarching goal of developing a precise definition of psychology, the following question arises: If psychological formalism corresponds to the third dimension of complexity on the ToK System, where is human psychology? Because humans are animals, psychological formalism provides the appropriate framework to view human behavior from a bottom-up perspective. We can and should attempt to understand people’s behavioral investments from the general principles derived from Behavioral Investment Theory. But it is further argued that the behavior of human objects is qualitatively different from other animals because human behavior is imbedded in a meta-level societal context and is associated with a novel information processing system, language. Thus to be complete, human psychology must effectively allow for the top-down socio-cultural perspective as well. According to the ToK System and alluded to earlier in the context of the discussion of meta-levels, the human individual is seen as the smallest unit of analysis in the social sciences. Many share this conception. For example, Baumeister and Tice (1996) proposed a very similar formulation, although their focus was on personality. The point here in reference to the question raised is that human psychology should be thought of as existing at the base of the social sciences and should be thought of as a hybrid between psychological formalism and the social sciences. Moreover, it is human psychology that is a subset of psychology more generally. Humans are, after all, a subset of animals, rather than the reverse.
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Because some may find the notion that human psychology is a hybrid discipline between psychology and the social sciences confusing, it may be useful to point out other hybrid disciplines that have quite impressive track records. Molecular genetics, for example, is a hybrid between chemistry and biology and has seen some of the most impressive scientific accomplishments of any discipline in the past 70 years. Similarly, neuroscience is a hybrid between biology and psychology, and it has also been witness to explosive growth and numerous revolutionary discoveries in recent decades. As with my proposed conception of human psychology, both of these disciplines adopt an object-level perspective (molecular and cellular, respectively) on phenomena that simultaneously exist as part of meta-level informational system processes (Life and Mind, respectively). What would the discipline of human psychology look like? A glance at the current American Psychological Association is instructive in this regard. A perusal of the subdivisions that currently make up the APA will demonstrate a relative lack of correspondence between psychological formalism and the primary concerns of the APA. While some might be inclined to use the lack of correspondence as strong evidence that my conception of psychology is faulty, the answer regarding the lack of correspondence is found in the fact that what has happened historically to the field of psychology is that it has shifted its center of gravity from its base in psychological formalism to now locating its center in human psychology. Although this shift has occurred, the term “human” is very rarely used as a modifier, which results in semantic confusion from the vantage point of the unified theory. Nevertheless, in this regard, it becomes clear that the APA is primarily an organization of human psychology (along with the profession), rather than psychological formalism. In other words, according to this analysis the APA should technically be renamed the American Human Psychological Association. This insight offers readily available explanations as to why so many individuals in the basic psychological sciences (e.g., behavior analysis, cognitive science, biological psychology) have expressed serious objections that their interests have not been well served by the APA and have changed affiliations to organizations such as the Society of Neuroscience, the Psychonomic Society, the American Psychological Society, and the Association for Behavior Analysis.
Professional Psychology In contrast to the relatively few proposals that have advocated for a break between basic and human psychology, much attention has been focused on the relationship between the science and the profession of psychology, and several major figures in the field have advocated that the two are separate branches in much the same way that I advocate for here. And there have long been institutional demarcations between the science and the profession. For example, the American Psychological Association only accredits programs in professional psychology, specifically programs in clinical, counseling, or school psychology or some combination therein. Likewise, professional psychologists are demarcated in society by
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virtue of licensing and other public safeguards such as the requirement to maintain continuous education. Thus, the proposal to formally separate the science from the profession is not new and has already been done to some degree at an institutional level by virtue of the different regulations and competency requirements. Nonetheless, unlike the clear distinction between biology and medicine, there has not been nearly as clear a division and distinction between the science and the profession as there ought to have been and it remains yet another example of the field being plagued by confusing semantic issues. I noted previously that the sciences are separated from the humanities because at its core the former concerns itself with questions of descriptive accuracy, whereas the latter consist of creative–expressive enterprises that inform us regarding how the world ought to be (Jones, 1965). Recalling the difference between these two cultures is important here because it highlights what underlies the fundamental distinction between the science and the practice of psychology (Henriques & Sternberg, 2004; see also Kimble, 1984). The fundamental task of professional psychology is not to describe animal or human behavior but instead is to improve the human condition. This is what makes it a more value-laden and prescriptive than the science of psychology. It is not accidental, then, that Carl Rogers is the icon I associate with profession of psychology, as he was the most influential humanistic psychologist. He argued passionately that the vision of humanity offered by both psychoanalysis and behaviorism was too deterministic, limited, and pessimistic, and that psychology could and should offer a more hopeful, uplifting message regarding human potential. I also emphasize Rogers because of the way he valued people, and that one of his foundational insights was that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is central to the psychotherapeutic processes. As I tell my students, good therapy begins with Rogers. Donald Peterson has been one of the most prominent and vocal leaders of the professional psychology movement and has offered a vision very congruent with the one promoted here. Characterizing the field as evolving from a pre-professional phase through the scientific–practitioner phase to a full professional phase, he has articulated with clarity and precision why professional psychology was ready to establish itself as an independent field and how that identity is separate from psychological science (e.g., Peterson, 1991, 2002). Defining professional activity as discipline inquiry, Peterson specified the distinction between science and practice as follows: “Science and practice differ in fundamental ways. Science begins and ends in a body of systematic knowledge. . .Professional activity begins and ends in the condition of the client” (Peterson, 1991, pp. 425–426). Thus, the goals of the scientist are qualitatively different from the goals of the practitioner. The goal of the psychological scientist is to contribute to the fund of general, scientific knowledge. By positioning him or herself as an objective observer, the task at hand becomes fundamentally descriptive. False positives are a major concern and experiments are conducted to discard errant leads. The primary task of the practitioner is different. It is not to describe change, but to affect it, usually in terms of improvements in the functioning and well-being of the client. To the practitioner, psychological knowledge is not the end, but a means to the end. It is through the clear recognition of
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this fundamental difference that the complementary roles of the scientist and the practitioner are both seen as necessary and good. Interestingly, many seminal thinkers in the field have not shared this conception of the relationship between the science and the profession. O’Donohue and Halsey (1997) reviewed the views of Freud, Skinner, Ellis, and Rogers and found marked differences in the substance of their views regarding the science–practice relationship. Both Freud and Skinner had visions that were in fairly direct contrast with the science–practice relationship envisioned by Peterson and shared by the unified theory. For example, Freud saw psychoanalysis as both a therapy and a scientific process. Consistent with the claim that there are tensions between the goals of therapy and the goals of science, Wachtel (1993, p. 180) reported that Freud experienced many “epistemological anxieties” viewing psychoanalysis both as a treatment and a method for conducting research on the unconscious mind. Specifically, Freud struggled with making suggestions and giving advice in psychoanalysis in part because, although such interventions might be helpful, they nevertheless would taint the objective nature of the results revealed. Regarding this conflict, Freud (1916/1943, cited in Wachtel, 1993) wrote, “The danger still remains that our influence upon the patient may bring the objective certainty of our discoveries into doubt; and that what is an advantage in therapy is harmful in research.” Skinner also did not see a clear difference between science and practice. This in large part was because Skinner reduced everything to behavior and argued that the control of behavior was primary, and he also construed it as the ultimate goal of science. As a consequence, he tended to view behavior therapy as a logical extension of lab-based principles. His writings on how humans should give up the “myths” of freedom and dignity speak to his views that behavior was all. And yet, as is made very clear by Skinner’s Walden II and the criticisms it evoked, much value-focused debate is elicited in the attempt to determine which behaviors to control and why, and one cannot use the scientific method to resolve these issues. I argued above that because it was explicitly concerned with promoting human betterment, the profession was more value-laden and more closely connected to the humanities. Although this is true, I want to be clear that I am not characterizing the profession as a purely humanistic enterprise like literature. I view professional psychology as an applied social science and health profession. And I argue professional psychologists should be considered as scientific practitioners. The logic of this argument is seen when professional psychologists are compared to other helping professions, such as ministers or lawyers. In contrast to these professions, professional psychologists are trained in scientific methodology and anchor their knowledge base to a scientific discipline. The parallels between professional psychology with medicine and engineering offer further clarity in seeing how professional psychologists can be considered scientific practitioners. As stated by the National Council of Schools in Professional Psychology guidelines and consistent with the model advocated here, “The properly trained professional psychologist is a scientist in the sense that a skilled physician is a local clinical, biological scientist and the skilled engineer a local physical scientist” (Peterson, Peterson, Abrams, & Stricker, 1997, p. 376).
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Debates between scientific and professional psychologists constitute some of the most contentious and long-standing issues within the field. One flashpoint in these debates is the conflict surrounding Empirically Supported Treatments (ESTs). In the 1990s, a movement emerged in professional psychology that practicing psychologists should employ only treatments that have been supported by scientific research. At first glance, such a proposition sounds very reasonable. After all, who would choose a treatment that was not supported by science over one that was? It turns out, however, that the issue is extremely complicated. In the following section, I articulate some of the problems associated with the EST movement, and explain how the unified theory sets the stage for a much healthier relationship between the science and the profession.
The Relationship Between Research and Practice in Professional Psychology From 1999 to 2003 I directed a randomized controlled clinical trial exploring the efficacy and effectiveness of a brief cognitive therapy intervention for patients presenting to an emergency room following a suicide attempt. I learned many valuable, eye-opening lessons in carrying out this work. One lesson was that the magnitude and complexity of the problems these participants faced was humbling and, at times, even demoralizing. Consider that the modal number of psychiatric diagnoses was three, two-thirds had a serious problem with substance abuse, the average scores on a depression inventory were in the severe range, most were unemployed, a quarter homeless, histories of abuse were the norm, and over 70% made less than fifteen thousand dollars a year. Another lesson was that the current system was failing these individuals. Psychiatrists would offer diagnoses and medication management, and social workers and counselors would lend a sympathetic ear and perhaps encourage patients to enter a group or music therapy program in the afternoon. With rare exceptions, professional psychologists were nowhere to be found. Brief hospital stays followed by missed outpatient appointments were the norm. My sense that there were serious problems with the ecology in which these folks lived and with the health system that was providing treatment was greatly reinforced when I discovered that the degree of psychopathology exhibited by the population of suicide attempters in Philadelphia had markedly increased over the past 30 years (Henriques, Brown, Berk, & Beck, 2004). In the early 1970s, Beck and his colleagues had evaluated hundreds of suicide attempters with the same basic instruments we were using in our outcome trial. I realized that this afforded us a remarkable opportunity for a cohort comparison— and when the comparison was made, the results were striking. On every substantive measure of psychopathology and distress, the present-day suicide attempters were worse. Perhaps the most striking and disconcerting finding was the difference in subsequent suicide attempts. Four times as many present-day suicide attempters made
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a suicide attempt in the year following the index attempt than was the case in the 1970s (40% compared with 10%). What does this have to do with the unified theory? Everything. Why? Because there is no current single-school approach that has the conceptual sophistication and depth necessary to address the incredibly complex and multifaceted nature of the problems associated with the suicide attempters. This is a key point because one of the major impediments to a healthy relationship between the science and the profession has been the fact that the scientific frames offered to date have been either ambiguous, wrong, or too narrow to effectively guide the practitioner. But in this case, what about cognitive psychotherapy? After all, the treatment was generated by the founders of cognitive psychotherapy and was derived from general principles of cognitive theory and therapy for the emotional disorders (e.g., Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979), and it was found to have a positive impact cutting the subsequent suicide rate in half, as well as reducing self-reported levels of depression and hopelessness relative to controls (Brown et al., 2005). Although I am a strong believer that the treatment principles in cognitive psychotherapy can be useful and effective, as the individual who directly conducted or supervised the majority of the therapy, I can say with firsthand knowledge that the treatment included many additional elements that are beyond the scope of cognitive psychotherapy’s focus and consequently were not included in the written reports of the project. By reviewing some of these issues, I want to help the reader understand some of the complexities associated with conducting research on psychological treatments and why the debate about ESTs is so complicated. To understand some of the complications, let us start with the development of the study. I arrived at the University of Pennsylvania just before the grant for the suicide attempter project was awarded. Upon its award, I was placed in the role of project director, which essentially required me to assume primary responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the project. The original design of the study was to screen for eligible participants in the ER, and after obtaining informed consent, have participants who were randomized to the cognitive therapy condition assigned to therapists working at the Center for Cognitive Therapy. These therapists were well-trained and highly qualified. There became a serious problem, however, with the study design. Participants would generally not show up, or if they did show up, it was frequently at the wrong times. Moreover, we were supposed to track patients for as long as 2 years, but given their relatively chaotic lifestyles and transitive living arrangements, we quickly lost contact with many of the patients. During the first year, we brought sixty subjects into the study, with thirty assigned to the cognitive therapy condition and thirty assigned to the treatment-as-usual for a control group. Of the thirty people assigned to the cognitive therapy condition, only about one-third received four or more sessions, whereas one-third received between one and three sessions, and one third never received any treatment. We also lost track of approximately 50 percent of the patients in both conditions after the first month of tracking. Not surprisingly given these numbers, when we examined the data on the folks we did have, there were few differences between the groups.
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Given all of these difficulties, we made a number of changes. Indeed, the changes were so dramatic that we scrapped what we called “Study 1” and began “Study 2,” and started the data collection process completely from scratch. For Study 2, we changed the protocol for tracking participants, and assigned an undergraduate research assistant to each participant to maintain contact in order to facilitate followup. We also changed the way we paid subjects, changed the way we interviewed them, and especially ensured that we maintained contact as they were transitioned out of the hospital. Perhaps most importantly, we changed the basic structure by which the therapy was provided and who provided it. Instead of referring patients to the Center for Cognitive Therapy, our research unit became responsible for delivering the therapy. I personally provided therapy to many of the patients and directly supervised many others. The reason for this was because, as a researcher, I had much more flexibility in my schedule and could assume much more responsibility for getting the participants to their sessions. (I should also comment that, given my role in the project, I had a stronger vested interest in having participants attend sessions). For example, I could see the patients if they showed up on Monday when their therapy was on Tuesday or if they were in the hospital or if they had no transportation and needed to be seen at home. In addition, although I helped develop the treatment manual and certainly followed it to the best that situations allowed, it is nevertheless true that I was also trained in psychodynamic and humanistic approaches and inevitably employed lenses and techniques from these traditions in my work. There was quite a dramatic shift from the Study 1 results. In Study 2, we successfully tracked the vast majority of the patients and 75% of those in the cognitive therapy condition completed four or more sessions. And, as mentioned, the intervention was found to have a significant and substantial impact on patient functioning. From a research perspective, these facts raise interesting points. For example, given that I provided much of the treatment, either directly or through supervision, and that I also used humanistic and psychodynamic treatment principles (by which I mean I would sometimes use deep empathy to elicit powerful emotional experiences and sometimes helped patients gain insights into defensive processes of which they were not aware), how are we to glean the extent to which these techniques influenced outcome? Moreover, from the point of view of basic research design, we did in fact have an A-B design with Study 1 representing phase A and Study 2 representing phase B. And we had good evidence that what we were doing in phase A had no notable impact, but what we did in phase B did. Interestingly, cognitive therapy was constant across both phases; what had changed was how it was delivered and who provided it. In short, we had strong data suggesting that the novel developments that distinguished Study 1 from Study 2 were central to the efficacy and effectiveness of our intervention. And yet in the major outcome article publishing the findings, it was the cognitive therapy that was claimed to be the primary agent of change (Brown et al., 2005). And although articulated in professional presentations, none of the above factors were reported in the primary written record of the study. Why not? The answer is fairly straightforward. The complexity of delineating these additional factors, the fact that
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they did not fit clearly within the scope of cognitive therapy, and the desire to promote the successes of cognitive therapy all combined to result in the biased selection of methodological reporting and framing of the results. I do not say this with any smug sense of superiority. I am proud of the work we did, what we published, and stand by it. But it remains the case that if our broad and general frame of understanding were different, we would have reported the results from the study in a different way. For example, imagine that after the initial trouble in conducting Study 1, Beck had connected with a colleague in the Social Work Department who agreed to serve as a consultant on the condition that if the changes were undertaken and the results were successful, they would be the focus of the research report. If this had occurred and resulted in the above-mentioned changes, the write-up would have been quite different, and the message to the scientific and therapeutic communities would have been significantly altered. But given cognitive therapy’s scope—which is broad but, unlike the unified theory, is not comprehensive—we only reported our findings through that lens, with the consequence being that those who read about the study are given the impression that it was a rather straightforward application of cognitive therapy when the actual reality was notably more complicated. This would not be the first time that theoretical and conceptual frameworks employed by clinical researchers resulted in written accounts that cloaked processes that in fact were much more complicated than the language allowed for by the operating theory. Consider, for example, the story and perspective offered by Paul Wachtel. Wachtel was trained in psychoanalytic theory and, based on his reading of behavior therapy, “found it foolish, superficial, and possibly even immoral” (Wachtel, 1997, p. xix). And yet when Wachtel actually observed behavioral therapists relating to patients and conducting interviews and interventions, he found much sophistication and relational grace that was virtually never the primary focus of the written accounts. He was so impressed by what he saw that he set out to develop a theoretical rapprochement between behavioral and psychoanalytic perspectives. What relevance do these stories have for psychology’s fragmentation and the consequent need for the unified theory? On the one hand it highlights the lack of comprehensiveness of the language of current paradigms. Although some proponents of cognitive therapy have called it a “unified theory” (e.g., J. Beck, 1995), when one takes an interdisciplinary viewpoint it is clear that the frame offered by cognitive therapy is of a relatively limited scope. The lack of comprehensiveness gives rise to problems in terms of the reporting and interpreting of data, problems that are greatly exacerbated when individuals from different backgrounds and paradigms interpret the findings. The combination of incomplete paradigms, biased data reporting, and political antagonisms create a volatile brew, especially when it comes to making policy decisions about how practitioners ought to practice. This is why the debates about ESTs are so heated. One does not need to look hard to see the struggle regarding the relationship between research and practice playing out in the field. A recent editorial in Newsweek (Begley, October 12, 2009) proclaimed baldly that psychologists
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(note that she meant professional practitioners) ignore scientific evidence, and she explicitly called for the public shaming, stigmatization, and marginalization of practitioners who fail to employ cognitive or cognitive behavioral treatments for depression, anxiety, bulimia, PTSD, and other conditions. The editorial was based on a recent report (Baker, McFall, & Shoham, 2009), which in turn was accompanied by a strongly endorsing foreword by the noted psychologist Walter Mischel (2009). The Baker et al. (2009) report is notable mostly for the vigor and militant voice with which the authors make their case, rather than the novelty of the message. The content of the message is straightforward: Cognitive and cognitive behavioral interventions have been shown to reduce symptoms associated with many psychiatric disorders equal to or better than competitors, and, consequently, there is an ethical obligation to train psychological practitioners in these methods, and ensure that they employ them. Moreover, the argument continues, many psychological practitioners are soft thinkers, often anti-science, and tend to go on personal experience rather than scientific evidence, and this is a trend that, if anything, has gotten worse over time. Consequently, researchers, and psychological policy makers (i.e., accreditors) need to insist on better scientific training and greater conformity to the manuals that have been supported by the hard fought, scientific data gathering process. As one who worked directly with the Father of Cognitive Therapy on a randomized controlled clinical trial and who now directs a practitioner-oriented doctoral program, I have a rather unique vantage point on this perennial arm wrestle within the field. From my perspective—a view that is informed by the unified theory and my personal experiences on “both sides of the aisle”—the resolution proposed by Baker et al. (2009) and endorsed by Begley and Mischel is doomed to failure. That is, instead of working toward achieving their stated goal of closing the gap between science and practice, it will almost certainly add to the antagonisms and splits between scientists and practitioners. The reason is quite simple. Like many clinical researchers, the authors are methodological fundamentalists and thus tend to be blind to larger issues of theory, conceptual analyses, and sociopolitical forces. By this I mean that the authors believe in the power of the scientific method to reveal divine truths that all should pay homage to, while failing to recognize that facts and fact gathering via the scientific method are only part of the equation. In their excellent article in which they liken psychology’s epistemological structure to a triangle that consists of facts, theories, and concepts, Machado, Lourenco, and Silva (2000) show in a number of different ways that psychological research is dominated by attention to fact gathering at the expense of theoretical and conceptual analyses, and this results in a number of detrimental consequences for the field. I made a similar point when I argued that psychology has serious problems with research proliferation sans conceptual consolidation. Returning to the issue at hand, consider, for example, the question of what kind of enterprise is psychotherapy? Two conceptually distinct models have been offered (Wampold, 2001). On the one hand, some argue that psychotherapy should be modeled on medicine in general,
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and thus consists of specifiable and conceptually transferable diagnoses of disorders and concomitant treatments. Yet psychotherapy can just as readily be seen as primarily a relational process between two individuals with the unique nature of the relationship and the quality of the therapeutic alliance being the central defining features that result in change. Baker et al. (2009) are committed completely to the former conceptual framework and seem to be defined against the relational perspective, despite the fact that the empirical case can be made strongly for it. The situation is obviously complicated at the theoretical and paradigmatic level as well. Consider, for example, that the authors only explicitly endorse cognitive and cognitive behavioral treatments, despite the fact that there is empirical evidence for treatments that emphasize psychodynamic, interpersonal, and humanistic perspectives. Thus, although Baker et al. (2009) frame the issues in terms of good scientific researchers committed to the truth versus feel-good anti-science practitioners that go with their gut, the fact of the matter is that the conceptual and theoretical issues are muddled and debatable, and their emphasis at the empirical level is clearly influenced by political horse racing. Yet the authors pay virtually no attention to these issues, and certainly offer nothing in the way of resolving them. Consequently, I can say with much confidence that their argument will be seen by those who have different conceptual and theoretical frameworks for psychotherapy as simply another power play, an effort to ensure the dominance of cognitive and cognitive behavioral interventions over humanistic and psychodynamic ones. As one who saw firsthand the manner in which the limitations of such frames can combine with ego investment and political aspirations to result in the somewhat biased reporting of particular data, I am inclined to agree. I believe the unified theory can help move the field of psychotherapy toward a more comprehensive and coherent view of psychotherapy, one that sets the stage for building more effective bridges between science and practice because the scientific frame it offers allows for the assimilation and integration of numerous different major viewpoints into a coherent, comprehensive picture of people in general. This is in contrast to the Baker et al. (2009) position, which employs a frame of what is “scientifically plausible” that is narrowly associated with behavioral and cognitive science perspectives and does not effectively include scientifically grounded experiential or psychodynamic lenses. In short, much of the debate and confusion surrounding ESTs is confounded with the theoretical confusion and the horse racing between the paradigms. If a coherent unified theory of psychology were shared by both scientists and practitioners alike, the tensions between research and practice would change from fundamental disputes about paradigms and concepts to much more specific debates about what principles and processes are actually supported by theory and research in the service of human betterment. In the subsequent chapter, I articulate in greater detail how the unified theory leads to a unified approach to conceptualizing people that effectively integrates and assimilates insights from the major perspectives and sets the stage for a general approach to psychotherapy that could fundamentally alter the research–practice relationship because it offers a comprehensive view of people grounded in psychological science.
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Conclusion The goal of this chapter was to demonstrate how the structure of the unified theory can be applied to solve the problem of psychology. Psychology can be defined as the science of mental behavior and the human mind, and the professional application of such knowledge toward the greater good. The unified theory characterizes psychology both as a unified discipline and as having three branches that should be clearly delineated and guided by different philosophical guide posts and assumptions. This paradoxical solution helps us to understand why the field has resisted an effective definition for so long. How do we move the institution forward in the direction depicted by the unified theory? I believe we should take a kind of family therapy solution to solving the problem of psychology. In many forms of family therapy, problems are identified in the roles, structures, and boundaries that members of the system have and the therapy focuses on clarifying the nature of the overall system and the specific role each member plays. I am arguing that there is a subset of psychologists, the basic psychologists or formalists, who should identify as natural scientists, whose subject matter is mental behavior, and whose charge it is to delineate the basic relationships between cognitive processes, the brain, and overt action. This of course includes animal behavioral science, but also investigations of isolated or specific aspects of human psychological functioning, such as the psychophysics of human perception. In contrast, the human psychologists are concerned with human behavior at the individual and small group levels. These theorists and researchers are concerned with what Quackenbush (2005) calls the cultural person-as-a-whole and study developmental, personality, and social psychology. Their identities should be of social scientists because in addition to being grounded in the basic science of psychology, they also need to understand the impact of culture, human social systems, and language on thought and behavior. As social scientists, there likely will be a wider variety of epistemological leanings, ranging from those who align themselves more with natural science epistemologies to those who question the values and benefits of such natural science approaches and advocate for more relativistic and value-reflective approaches. Third, there is the profession of psychology, made up of licensed individuals who are trained primarily as mental health professionals with a specifiable set of competencies shown to positively impact human functioning and well-being. Such individuals should be informed by the science of psychology to engage in the practices most likely to be effective in alleviating human suffering and enhancing human flourishing. The last point to be made is that although I am proposing clearly identifiable boundaries between the domains, this does not mean we would not have individuals working on the boundaries. For example, we need clinical researchers who work between the science of human psychology and the profession. It is my hope that an effective definition of psychology will allow us to rise above the tendency to define ideas against one another and instead develop a more harmonious conception of the field. The chapter has been primarily concerned with definitional and conceptual issues and the institutional alignment. Although these
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issues are central, as a trainer of budding clinicians, I am well aware that many pragmatic and practice-oriented issues have not been addressed. Indeed, I argued at the end of the chapter that one of the serious impediments to an effective relationship between the science and the practice is that the single schools have not provided comprehensive models for human functioning and the EST movement was entangled in politics and the promotion of cognitive and behavioral orientations over psychodynamic and humanistic ones. In contrast to this state of affairs, the unified theory opens up the possibility of a broader, more holistic perspective on personality and psychotherapy. In the next chapter, we address more directly the implications the unified theory has for how we understand and help people.
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[P]sychotherapists behave like members of competing tribes, with different esoteric languages and rituals. Unificatio assumes that we all work in the same realm with the same processes regardless of the subsystem or specifi domain we emphasize and specialize in. A unifie model encourages us all to be aware of the larger picture and even if domain-specifi treatment is undertaken, an understanding of the system and interconnections of domains and processes keep us alert to other possibilities for further developments. Magnavita (2008a, p. 273)
Single-school approaches dominated the practice of psychotherapy in the 1960s and 1970s. The majority of therapists identified with a particular school of thought (e.g., psychoanalytic, behavioral, or humanistic), tended to see their model as representing truth, and many engaged in vigorous—sometimes vitriolic—debates with practitioners from other perspectives. The 1980s saw the rise of eclecticism, which is the unsystematic blending of ideas and techniques from the various schools of thought. Eclecticism is noteworthy because it reflected an attitudinal shift from single-school approaches to more openness to looking at complementary aspects of treatment from different angles. In the 1990s and 2000s, psychotherapy integration became a genuine movement. The Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) formed in the mid 1980s and began swelling in size and influence. The early 1990s witnessed the publication of two handbooks in integrative psychotherapy (Norcross & Goldfried, 1992; Stricker & Gold, 1993), which both detailed a multitude of important developments toward a more integrative approach to the field. As the psychotherapy integration movement has grown over the years, different approaches to integration emerged, and now four routes to integration are generally recognized, although there certainly are other possible approaches (see Ingram, 2006). The most general approach has been the common-factors approach. Identified strongly with Jerome Frank’s (1973) classic work, Persuasion and Healing, the common-factors approach is conceptually grounded in a sophisticated folk psychology that emphasizes the general processes of healing that cut across all of the approaches, such as establishing a productive healing relationship, G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_8,
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giving individuals the opportunity to tell their story and be heard and validated, the instillation of hope and expectation of positive change, and the respected attention of a caring professional. The common-factors approach is empirically grounded in the so-called dodo bird effect, which is the argument that, overall, different theoretical approaches and techniques generally produce similar outcomes, and that the primary variation that is responsible for good outcomes is associated with therapist, client, and relationship variables, rather than specific theories or techniques (Wampold, 2001). Technical eclecticism is another line of integration, and it focuses on applying techniques that work from any perspective, although relatively little attention is given to the theoretical or conceptual structure that gave rise to the technique. A third approach, assimilative integration, is like technical eclecticism in that an advocate maintains a particular theoretical foundation, but the focus is more on assimilating and integrating key ideas from various perspectives, at both the level of theory and techniques. Sophisticated forms of assimilative integration have been developed from psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral schools of thought. Although I am now characterizing my approach in terms of assimilative integration in that I use the unified theory to assimilate and integrate key insights from the major approaches, theoretical integration is the final route to integration and is probably nearest to the approach adopted by the unified theory. Theoretical integration focuses its attention on the theoretical structure of two or more schools of thought and looks to blend the ideas into a more coherent model. Although the integration movement has grown and is now certainly part of the mainstream of thought in psychotherapy, it nevertheless has faced obstacles and detractors, and currently it is unclear if the movement will continue to grow, if it will evolve into a unified movement, or if it has reached its apex and conceptual disagreements will remain pervasive. Norcross (2005) listed five obstacles that confront psychotherapy integration: (1) partisan zealotry and the territorial interests of proponents of “pure” schools of thought; (2) inadequate training and the difficulties of developing an effective, comprehensive training program; (3) fundamental differences in epistemology and ontology; (4) the lack of a common language and background of understanding resulting in a Tower of Babel; and (5) the challenge of continually expanding elements that need to be incorporated. I believe that the name of the primary professional organization in psychotherapy integration, SEPI, is telling in this regard in the sense that the most the early pioneers hoped for was individuals who were open to exploring the possibility of some rapprochement, as opposed to the actual vision and commitment to a clearly specified integrative viewpoint. It is my firm belief that these obstacles can be overcome and when they are, a new phase in the evolution of psychotherapy will emerge, that of unification. Indeed, several pioneering scholars have already carried the baton forward in this direction, and before I articulate how the unified theory advances the shift toward a unified approach to psychotherapy, it is important to review the recent developments that others have made in this domain. Jeffrey Magnavita has probably
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done more than anyone else in this area, and has recently founded the Unified Psychotherapy Project, of which I am a proud contributor. In 2008, he and his colleague Jack Anchin co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration that was devoted to the movement toward a unified psychotherapy (Anchin & Magnavita, 2008), reflecting a possible shift in the Zeitgeist (see also Curtis, 2009). In laying his vision toward a unified psychotherapy, Magnavita (2008a) called for the construction of a unified clinical science, which consists of the intersection and amalgamation of personality theory, developmental psychopathology, and psychotherapy in a way that allows for the identification of the structures, processes, and mechanisms that are involved in the major domains of human functioning. In terms of the unified theory, unified clinical science represents the effective cooperation between human psychology and the profession. Much as in the present work, Magnavita outlined a hierarchy of human functioning on a dimension of complexity that began with the neurobiological and extended into the intrapsychic and then into relational processes at dyadic, triadic, and small group levels. Finally, there is the broad sociocultural ecological system in which events taking place at each of these more microscopic levels are embedded. The utility of this framework is that it provides a holistic picture that allows clinicians and researchers a map of the various places in which one can intervene, and from it Magnavita (2008a) delineated a unified component systems approach that specifies the parts in the system that make up the whole. For example, Magnavita (2005) identified the intrapsychic level as being mediated by neurobiological processes and consisting of broad, interconnected domains or systems that are frequently the focus of intervention. He identified four intrapsychic systems, which included (1) the attachment system, with refers to the constellation of relational needs and internal working models; (2) the affective system, which refers to the emotional feeling states of the individual; (3) the defensive system, which refers to the ways in which individuals consciously or unconsciously structure their internal experience to maintain equilibrium and comfort; and (4) the cognitive system, which refers to the schema or information-processing templates that individuals have for making sense of the world. As Magnavita (2005) noted these systems are closely interconnected and reciprocally influence one another but they nevertheless can be conceptually separated readily enough to have meaning for classifying intrapsychic processes and interventions. With his unified component systems in place, Magnavita (2008a) then broadly characterized psychotherapy as the process of restructuring various aspects of the system to achieve better functioning. I hope that it is apparent that there is much correspondence between the unified approach to psychotherapy being proposed by Magnavita and the framework offered here. A primary difference is that the unified theory explicitly concerns itself with the deep philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual issues that have plagued the field since its inception, whereas Magnavita has tended to not dive as deeply into these issues but instead his approach has been to invite scholars to see the possibility of a general, unified conceptual scheme. Nevertheless, it is clear that both Magnavita
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and I are seeing the outline of the same elephant. Both of us emphasize the need to think in terms of nested hierarchies that range in scope from the biological to the sociocultural, and there are clear similarities in the major intrapsychic component systems that Magnavita delineates and the domains and architecture of the human mind outlined by the unified theory. For example, the affective system has strong parallels to the experiential system, the attachment system parallels the Influence Matrix, and the defensive system with the Freudian and Rogerian filtering processes. From the vantage point of the unified theory, Magnavita’s cognitive system would need to be divided into nonverbal perceptual processes and language-based justification systems. Later in the chapter I present a unified component systems approach to conceptualizing people built from the structure of the unified theory that directly corresponds with Magnavita’s approach.
Assimilating and Integrating Key Insights from the Major Approaches in Psychotherapy The unified theory is proposed as a new system of thought that can assimilate and integrate many different lines of research and practice in psychology into a coherent whole via the insights afforded by Behavioral Investment Theory, the Influence Matrix, the Justification Hypothesis, and the ToK System. The introducing of a new meta-theoretical formulation makes the approach to a unified psychotherapy taken here quite different from other approaches to psychotherapy integration. That is, most clinicians and theorists in the integrative psychotherapy movement have based their claims for integration on combining existing theories or on the findings of equivalence of outcomes or combining therapeutic techniques or on the logic of seeing the clients and the world through each of the major perspectives rather than explicitly generating new theoretical formulations that can assimilate the existing paradigms (for one such exception, see Marquis, 2008). In the next section, I show how the unified theory can help psychotherapists overcome one of the major obstacles to greater unification, which is the lack of a shared language and conceptual framework to guide our inquiries. However, before articulating how the unified theory accomplishes this, I need to acknowledge a caveat. The field of psychotherapy is vast, with an enormous number of perspectives and techniques delineated by a wide variety of variable clusters, such as (a) the nature of presenting problems (e.g., anxiety or marital difficulties) and diagnoses of psychopathology (e.g., Major Depression or Borderline Personality Disorder); (b) schools of thought (e.g., cognitive or psychodynamic approaches), associated techniques (e.g., relaxation, role playing, or dream interpretation), and treatment modality (e.g., individual, couples, family or group therapy, or pharmacotherapy); (c) ethnic and demographic characteristics of the client (e.g., age, race, religion or gender), as well as specific characteristics and values of the client (e.g., the degree of resistance or level of intellectual functioning); as well as (d) the characteristics of the therapist (both general and specific); all of which are influenced by (e) biological functioning; and (F) the larger social context in which the therapy is taking
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place. Given the enormous number of variables and the incredibly large body of research in psychotherapy a separate book (at least!) would be needed to cover the relevant issues. As such, I need to hone in on particular areas. I am choosing to focus specifically on the guiding conceptual frameworks for the major approaches to individual psychotherapy with the argument being that the unified theory can go a long way toward providing a shared background of explanation that can assimilate and integrate the key insights from the major approaches in a way that is consistent, coherent, and comprehensive. Thus, the focus here will be on sampling current approaches from the major schools of thought and showing how the key conceptual pieces can be easily understood with the framework provided by the unified theory. There are six primary domains or schools of thought, represented in Fig. 8.1, which I attempt to integrate into a coherent whole. They are (1) the biological domain, which includes evolutionary theory, genetics, neurophysiology, and biopsychiatry (i.e., mental disease processes); (2) the social domain, which includes the macro-level socio-historical, political, and economic contexts, the communitylevel context including socioeconomic status, and the more immediate, micro-level relational systems (i.e., the group, the family, and dyadic and triadic relational alignments); (3) Behavioral approaches that emphasize patterns of living, habit formations, associative and operant conditioning, and how individuals adapt to environmental affordances and stressors; (4) Humanistic/Experiential approaches that emphasize the importance of the therapeutic relationship and the centrality of emotional experiencing in mental health; (5) Psychodynamic approaches that emphasize the dynamic relationship between impulses/feelings, anxiety, and defenses, and the centrality of internal working models of self and others, and current interpersonal functioning; and (6) Cognitive psychotherapy approaches that emphasize the structure and content of language-based beliefs, as well as the broad ways individuals make meaning of their lives and the world around them found in existential and narrative therapy approaches. The latter four approaches all emphasize the human psychological level or the level of the individual, whereas the biological approach is “bottom up” and the social systems approach is “top down.” My goal in this chapter is to show that the key concepts, formulations, and insights afforded by the four major individual-level perspectives in psychotherapy
Fig. 8.1 Six primary schools of thought
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(cognitive, behavioral, humanistic, and psychodynamic) can readily be incorporated into the conceptual structure provided by the unified theory. To do this, I will review and summarize the key elements, assumptions, and aspects of each therapeutic approach based on the way they were summarized in a recent volume, 21st Century Psychotherapies: Contemporary Approaches to Theory and Practice, which attempts to provide an overview of “the most popular and widely practice methods in psychotherapy today” (Lebow, 2008, p. 5). For the purposes of demonstrating the utility of the unified theory in assimilating and integrating various perspectives, I chose to utilize a single volume when articulating the key elements of these perspectives because it allowed me to narrow the scope of review and because the authors were given the same outline to follow, and all included information pertaining to history, contemporary practice, key theoretical and treatment principles, and a case study. After reviewing each of the four major perspectives, I will then introduce an approach to conceptualizing based on the unified theory that demonstrates how the key insights from these classic approaches can be assimilated and integrated into a whole.
Key Components of Contemporary Behavior Therapy Zinbarg and Griffith (2008, p. 8) open their chapter on behavior therapy as follows: “The central defining feature of behavior therapy is that it involves the application of the laws of learning to the modification of problematic behavior.” They go on to report that learning theory includes associative and instrumental conditioning and related theoretical concepts like discriminative stimuli, generalization, and extinction. Crucial to the behavior therapy approach is the functional assessment, which involves the attempt to determine the contingencies that are maintaining the problematic behavior and single case designs, usually A/B designs, whereby the therapist obtains a baseline and then intervenes, tracking the changes in the frequencies of emitted behaviors. The authors review the contributions of major behavioral researchers like Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner. The authors then review major behavioral techniques, such as systematic desensitization and behavioral activation. Systematic desensitization is based on Joseph Wolpe’s (1990) idea of reciprocal inhibition, which is the notion that opposite emotional states cannot be experienced simultaneously. In this intervention patients are taught relaxation skills, taught to rate their anxiety and then are exposed either in actuality or via imagination to increasingly threatening stimuli arranged on a fear hierarchy. The theory is that relaxation inhibits the pairing of the stimuli with the fear and enables the individual to habituate. Behavioral activation is a framework for depression that emphasizes the nature of reinforcement in behavioral activity. Based in part on Lewinsohn’s (1974) theory that depression arises when there is a scarcity of positively reinforcing contingencies, behavioral activation focuses on ways in which the patient can increase the frequency of positive events and engage in self-monitoring to learn what activities (or lack thereof) were
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associated with positive or negative mood states. The authors reported on a dismantling study by Jacobson et al. (1996) that suggested behavioral activation was the most active ingredient in reducing depressive symptoms. Other behavioral interventions described included behavioral rehearsal, flooding and exposure, stimulus control, contingency management, shaping, and skill acquisition. With regards to the evolution of behavior therapy, the authors note several times in the chapter that there have been two major changes. First, over the past two decades there has been an increasing trend for behavior therapists to incorporate cognitive therapy techniques, and there are now far more therapists who identify as cognitive behavioral as opposed to purely behavioral in orientation. Second, there has been increased recognition of the important role the therapeutic alliance plays in generating good outcomes. As for the case example, the authors described the treatment of a 55-year-old woman who suffered from chronic depression and generalized anxiety precipitated by losing her job as a nurse 12 years previously. She presented as having lost interest in virtually all activities, low energy, and feelings of worthlessness. She also described many worries, the most troublesome being about her grown son who had had employment difficulties. The treatment initially focused on behavioral activation, which began with psychoeducation about how the withdrawal from activities that afforded mastery and pleasure were likely maintaining her depression because they removed her from coming in contact with positively reinforcing contingencies. Initially, she had a number of negative expectations associated with trying new things, and when she did engage in them she tended to be critical and perfectionistic. Consequently the therapists—who noted that they do utilize cognitive techniques— engaged in cognitive restructuring, which helped her take pride in her willingness to try new things and shifted focus away from negative events. As her depressed mood began to lift, anxiety became more prominent and the therapist shifted the focus to her worries, especially with regards to her son. The technique known as imagery exposure was used. The authors were informed by Borkovec’s model of generalized anxiety (e.g., Borkovec & Inz, 1990), which posits that the shifting attention and linguistic ruminations of those with generalized anxiety disorder paradoxically function to keep the individual from fully experiencing catastrophic images and associated emotions, and this prevents habituation. According to Borkovec’s theory, processes of rumination and shifting attention are strengthened through negative reinforcement because they function to avoid the catastrophic image and painful emotional experience. However, the condition is maintained because the unprocessed catastrophic images and associated autonomic arousal continue to emerge periodically and motivate continued avoidance in the form of attentional shifting and linguistic rumination. The therapist in this case worked to maintain exposure to the client’s feared images of her son’s potentially future failings, such that she was even able to imagine her son committing suicide as a consequence of his employment difficulties. As she became habituated to these images she integrated them into her thought processes and became much less bothered by them. By the end of treatment, her symptoms were greatly reduced.
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Behavior Therapy Through the Lens of the Unified Theory The key insights afforded by traditional behavior therapy can be assimilated and integrated into the unified theory via Behavioral Investment Theory. As the authors articulate, the key principle of behavior therapy is learning theory, which is explicitly listed as the fifth principle of Behavioral Investment Theory. Recall that Behavioral Investment Theory argues that action is a function of the developmental transaction between the animal and the environment, and behavior therapy focuses on and attempts to shift the associations and contingencies in the environment to change the individual’s patterns of behavior. If we think about behavior as a form of commerce between the individual and the environment, the behavior therapist focuses on changing what the environment is “selling.” This can be seen in how the therapists initially attempted to get the patient exposed to different environments and invest in activities that result in greater mastery and pleasure. Indeed, the primary conceptualization and approach to depression the behavior therapists use is directly consistent with the Behavioral Shutdown Model of depression. Moreover, we can think about the environment selecting the path of behavioral investments via associative and operant conditioning principles. Thus, the logic of Borkevec’s model of generalized anxiety would also fall under the conceptual frame provided by BIT. The problem with a traditional behavior therapy approach is that it historically operates on the assumption that associative and operant learning are all that are necessary to understand people. Consequently, it struggles mightily with effectively explaining complex human relationship processes, intrapsychic experiences, defense mechanisms and conflicts, and sociocultural contextual variables. Given these limitations, it is not at all surprising that the evolution of behavior therapy has been on broadening its focus to include more intrapsychic and relational processes, such as incorporating cognitive perspectives and emphasizing the therapeutic relationship. From a unified theory perspective, this is a good development, but much more needs to be done to effectively incorporate emotional or experiential elements, intrapsychic relational motivations and conflicts, and defensive processes. Behavioral approaches are also vulnerable to criticisms that they are unable to effectively provide a framework for understanding the role of large-scale beliefs, values, and practices, and their influence on assessment and treatment.
Key Components of Contemporary Cognitive Therapy Kellogg and Young (2008) begin their review of cognitive therapy (CT, or cognitive behavior therapy, which the authors consider as synonymous) by articulating that the approach is based on the foundational assumption that “emotional disturbances are seen as emerging from problematic, maladaptive, and/or unrealistic interpretations or information processing systems” and that the “core of cognitive therapy is the elucidation of these processes into consciousness that is then followed by a jointly enacted project to modify or eliminate these belief systems” (Kellogg & Young,
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2008, p. 43). In terms of history, the authors focus primarily on the works of Aaron T. Beck and Albert Ellis, whose approaches they rightly label as semantic therapies because the focus and techniques tend to be on the language-based interpretations and belief networks. The authors also include the influence of several prominent therapists who were initially trained in the behavioral tradition but came to incorporate cognitive principles into their models and practice, as well as the influence of the philosophy of constructivism. With regards to the process of therapy and techniques, the authors emphasize the important role of the therapeutic alliance, which is framed in CT through the concept of collaborative empiricism. Collaborative empiricism is the process whereby both the client and therapist enter into an investigation regarding the accuracy and utility of the patient’s interpretive scheme in a manner that parallels the way a scientist would test hypotheses and gather evidence. Active CT interventions usually begin with psychoeducation regarding the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and patients are provided with examples of how different interpretations and meanings of events are associated with different emotional and behavioral responses. This education serves as the rationale for the approach. The therapist then engages in a Socratic-like dialogue with the patient to clarify the problems and the interpretive schemes, and to identify linkages between particular interpretations and responses. Beck’s approach to cognitive therapy has been the most influential, and it characterizes cognitive processes into three levels that range from immediate surface thoughts to deeply organizing schema. Automatic thoughts are the basic, quick evaluations people make of their situation, such as when a socially anxious person arrives at a party and makes the automatic evaluation, “This is not going to go well.” Reasoning processes are conceived of as operating on an intermediate level of depth, and Beck’s cognitive theory proposes that anxious and depressed individuals tend to make errors in logic that lead to overly negative conclusions, such as when someone starts to do poorly on a test and concludes that because the first section did not go well, the entire test and perhaps even the entire class will turn out poorly. Core beliefs or schema reside at the deepest level of organization. Core beliefs are foundational beliefs about the self, especially self in relationship to others. Individuals who are prone to developing depressive, anxiety, or personality disorders are theorized to have beliefs about the self as being fundamentally unlovable or ineffectual. Kellogg and Young (2008) describe a host of interventions that are designed to impact the interpretive schemes of patients at each of these three levels of organization. Analyzing the costs and benefits of a particular belief, generating alternative explanations, and positive reframing are techniques focused on changing automatic thoughts. Evaluating patients’ assumptions, values, and processes in logic—such as distinguishing progress from perfection—are techniques targeted at the middle-level distorted reasoning processes. Finally, historical identification and letter writing are techniques for eliciting and altering core beliefs. Perhaps the most central intervention associated with cognitive therapy is the Dysfunctional Thought Record (DTR), and Kellogg and Young review this method in detail. The DTR is a form
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that systematizes the cognitive intervention techniques, and trains patients to systematically link situations, interpretations, and emotions, and then to develop more adaptive responses. With regards to the evolution of cognitive therapy, the authors note that CT has grown markedly over the past several decades and is now applied to a multitude of different diagnosable conditions, including psychotic problems, substance abuse and dependence, and eating disorders. Traditional CT approaches have been integrated with other lines of thought, especially with approaches of acceptance and mindfulness that stem from Eastern philosophies and theories of mental health, and psychodynamic and interpersonal approaches. The latter part of the chapter delves into Jeffrey Young’s Schema Focused Therapy, which is an integrative therapy for personality disorders that combines the cognitive approach with an integrative psychodynamic approach in an attempt to elucidate and remedy the early maladaptive self-other schema that develop in childhood and then create problems in current relationships. The case example is of a middle-aged man who suffered from what is known as a double depression. That is, he experienced mild to moderate levels of depressive symptoms chronically, punctuated periodically by Major Depressive Episodes. The man had experienced much conflict about his attitude toward relationships, on the one hand feeling lonely and desiring connection, and on the other fearing intimate relationships and isolating himself. This conflict likely emerged from his childhood experiences, which were marked by the death of his father at age eight and mother at age twelve. These deaths led him to be raised by his stepfather, a man he characterized as gruff and domineering. The case was complicated, and the therapy was divided into short-term and long-term goals. The short-term goals were to decrease his paralysis at work and ensued using traditional cognitive approaches of identifying his automatic thoughts (e.g., “I am incompetent,” “They don’t care about me,” “I should have learned this before”) and learning to develop more adaptive responses both in therapy and at home through the use of the DTR. After some initial improvement in mood and activity, the therapy stalled, and his inability to process his feelings became a focus. The therapist worked with the patient and identified a core schema of defectiveness and helped the patient become aware of when this schema was being activated in his relationships with others. Several meaningful interpersonal exchanges occurred where the client saw how his interpretive schema played a key role in how he responded and this awareness and practice at developing alternative possibilities allowed him to act different in these specific situations. However, there remained little generalized progress. A final pivotal point came in the therapy when the therapist realized that she was working harder than usual to help this patient, and shared this with him. She stopped taking such initiative and waited for him to take responsibility for his life. Although he initially resisted, the intervention finally broke through. His energy level shifted, and he seemed to internalize the prior work, with the final outcome resulting in fairly dramatic changes in mood, identity, occupational and relational functioning.
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Contemporary Cognitive Therapy Through the Lens of the Unified Theory Having spent 4 years working directly with Beck, I have received the most in-depth training in this specific school of thought. CT has many positives, as evidence by the empirical research literature that Kellogg and Young (2008) briefly review and its growing popularity over the past several decades. I think it represents a significant advance over traditional behavior therapy, as it pragmatically incorporates many behavioral therapy interventions and directly and systematically opens up ways to address thought patterns and processes. Support for this opinion is evidenced in the point the authors of the behavior therapy chapter make, which is that the vast majority of behavior therapists now incorporate cognitive therapy principles. The key insights of CT regarding the central role of semantic thought processes and the notion that certain interpretations and ruminative patterns are maladaptive, can contribute to emotional disturbance, and can be changed with a concomitant result in positive functioning are all important. CT, however, does not succeed as being a general model of psychotherapy for several reasons. Just as behavior therapy is a perspective limited by an almost exclusive focus on one aspect of the whole picture, traditional CT suffers from a similar fate. Although the term cognitive is quite ambiguous and is used to mean many different things ranging from general information processing to, more specifically, reasoning and interpretation (an ambiguity apparent Kellogg and Young’s description of cognition), we can use the tripartite model of human consciousness offered in Chapter 5 to clearly identify the primary domain that traditional cognitive therapy targets. With its emphasis on self-talk, dysfunctional thought records, and analyzing beliefs in terms of their accuracy and utility, it becomes clear that cognitive therapists focus primarily on the individual’s private justification system and the role it plays in producing negative affect and problematic behaviors. Thus in the language of the unified theory, the cognitive in cognitive therapy translates into the justification system, and Kellogg and Young (2008) are correct when they consider cognitive therapies as semantic therapies. Seeing traditional cognitive therapy as targeting the justification system highlights both its strengths and its weaknesses. The private justification system plays a crucial role in how people experience and respond to various events, and its alteration can potentially result in important changes in the overall system. But it is also the case that the private justification system is only part of the human whole. Traditional cognitive therapy does not say much about the structure of the experiential system, social motivations like power, love, and freedom, conflicts between various motivational strivings, defense mechanisms or the filtering between subconscious, self-conscious, and public domains, nor does it offer much in terms of understanding human relationships, family, or social systems. Of course, it is precisely these areas that experiential and psychodynamic theories focus on and have the most to offer and, as we will see, the unified theory gives rise to an approach to conceptualizing that effectively incorporates all of these elements.
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Key Components of Contemporary Experiential Therapy Pos, Greenberg, and Elliot (2008) begin their chapter on experiential therapy with the central insight from the experiential perspective that there are two ways of knowing: (1) Conceptual (knowledge by verbal, analytic description), and (2) Experiential (knowledge by direct acquaintance or experience), and that experiential therapies emphasize the importance of using the latter form of knowing when facilitating patient change (in contrast to cognitive therapies, which emphasize the former). This emphasis includes fostering in clients the capacity to be better aware of in-the-moment experiences, to find symbols and words that authentically capture, reflect, narrate, and make sense out of felt experiences, and to use that understanding to create a more open, authentic, genuine, and adaptive way of living. The authors note three crucial concepts emphasized by experiential therapists: (1) awareness, which is enabling experience to become the focus of conscious attention; (2) process, which is the way experience either enters or is blocked from consciousness; and (3) dialogue, which refers to the way meaning is constructed about experience in a relational context. The authors note that modern experiential therapies have their roots in the humanistic “third force” that swept through North America in the 1950s and 1960s. These early movements emphasized a more positive orientation toward human nature, the central role of felt experience, and the human capacity for choice. The authors report that some of the early experiential approaches became associated with many excesses of the counterculture period and, consequently, the momentum for them waned during the 80s, when there was a rising interest in cognitive approaches. However, there is now a renewed interest, particularly with the rise of Emotion Focused Therapy (e.g., Greenberg, 2002). The authors highlight three primary roots that historically ground modern experiential therapies. Carl Rogers’ person-centered (previously called client-centered) therapy is central for two primary reasons. First, Rogers emphasized the centrality of the therapeutic relationship and the importance of following the client via deep empathetic attunement. Rogers’ insights along these lines have become so well recognized that virtually all therapeutic perspectives acknowledge that a strong therapeutic alliance is at least necessary (if not sufficient) for good therapy. The second reason Rogers was central to experiential approaches was his general emphasis on phenomenology and the utilization of deep empathy to access aspects of the “true self” that had been hidden, split off, or poorly integrated as a consequence of fear from judgmental others, or internalized self-judgment. Pos et al. (2008) also highlight the contributions of Gendlin, who developed techniques for deepening experience, and Rice who emphasized the importance of examining of how individuals constructed meaningful narratives out of their experiences and articulated methods for how therapists could actively foster such processes. Gestalt therapy, developed by Fritz Perls, also was a major line of thought in which modern experiential therapies have their roots. Gestalt theory integrated key ideas from a number of sources, including phenomenological philosophy, liberal theology, psychoanalysis, and field theory. The authors also point out the important
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role that existential philosophy has played in these approaches, with its central concern on human uniqueness, the importance of focusing on the immediate and the whole person, and its emphasis on the meaningful development of human potential. In outlining modern forms of experiential therapies, the authors briefly review Dialogical Gestalt Therapy, Mahrer’s Experiential Psychotherapy, FocusingOrienting Psychotherapy, and Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). I will limit my review here to EFT as this is the primary therapy focused on in the chapter and has probably the largest following and the most empirical support. EFT is a neohumanistic treatment that views emotions as playing a central role in the experience of self, in both adaptive and problematic ways. It is a perspective that is being increasingly informed on a theoretical level by cognitive and affective neuroscience and investigations of the affect system as an innate, adaptive system that functions to guide thought and behavior in relationship to fundamental motives. EFT proposes that emotions generally have adaptive potential that, once activated, can help clients change problematic psychological states or unwanted self-experiences. In fact EFT views emotions as templates formed from interlocking networks of images, motivational states, and action tendencies that function to produce felt experience (note the parallel with the P – M => E formulation). Such felt experiences can be accessed, reflected upon, and woven into the conscious narrative of the self. However, it is not always the case that individuals are able to do so in a manner that has adaptive long-term consequences. Instead, for a host of reasons— most notably feared social consequences and threats to one’s identity—emotionally derived felt states are often distorted, denied, or redirected. EFT classifies emotional responses into four broad categories, only one of which is considered truly adaptive. Primary adaptive emotional responses are responses to immediate stimuli that foster adaptive action, such as when an individual gets angry in response to a personal violation and sets an appropriate boundary. Primary maladaptive emotional responses are also strong and immediate but are not adaptive and arise usually as the consequence of past traumas. Secondary emotional responses are countered reactions to primary emotional responses, such as when an individual initially feels hurt by a comment but processing such hurt feelings is blocked and instead the individual lashes out secondarily in anger. Finally, instrumental emotional responses are habitually learned emotional displays that are used to manipulate others, such as when an older child chronically expresses suffering to her permissive mother so that she will give in to her demands. Emotional change occurs by means of awareness, regulation, reflection, and transformation of the emotion. Clients are taught to arrive at emotionally charged states, assess the nature of the emotional response as adaptive or maladaptive, primary or secondary, and then create a meaningful adaptive narrative of the experience. This is followed by a leaving phase where the individual lets go of the emotional experience. Therapists are taught to track emotional markers and specific interventions for eliciting feeling states. The two chair and empty chair techniques are common, where clients assume different roles or feeling states and are invited by the therapist to generate feeling-rich dialogue stemming from various parts of themselves that are in conflict (two chair) or their conflicts in relationship to
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other people (empty chair). Treatment is broken up into three phases. First, there is bonding and awareness, where primary emphasis is on the development of the therapeutic alliance, creating a safe place to explore emotionally rich experiences, and beginning the development of a frame for understanding the person’s core concerns. The next phase is evocation and exploration, whereby evoked emotion is explored and the therapist and client work to delve into successively deeper levels of the individual’s emotional experience. Finally, there is the phase of transformation and generation of alternatives, whereby having arrived at the core experiences, the emphasis shifts to the construction of alternative ways of responding emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. The case in the chapter is of a 39-year-old woman who engaged in EFT for depression which, as the authors note, has received substantial empirical support and does generally equal to or better than CBT in randomized controlled outcome trials. EFT for depression is, of course, based on EFT more generally, but it includes some specific components that are often part of the emotional processing and responding of depressed individuals. The woman reported that she had been chronically depressed, but that the past year had been particularly difficult. She was not working and had become increasingly isolated and withdrawn. Numerous problems with her family of origin were reported, including an alcoholic mother with whom she no longer had contact and a critical and judgmental father who frequently employed harsh physical punishments. The therapy began with a focus on developing the therapeutic bond via empathic affirmations and validations to communicate understanding and trust. The therapist noted that the client could gain access to her felt states with his guidance but would normally work to avoid painful or difficult emotions. A pattern of emotional responding was identified, whereby whenever the woman experienced anger or hurt at not having her needs for closeness or acceptance met, she shifted to a secondary emotional response of helplessness and hopelessness. This pattern suggested to the therapist that there were unprocessed primary feelings about her parents in general and unresolved issues with her father, in particular. The therapist further hypothesized the secondary emotional response of helplessness, and hopelessness became tied into a self-critical narrative for needing things she could not have and not being worthy to be loved in the first place. In session four, the therapist initiated an empty-chair dialogue, whereby the client voiced some of her split-off feelings about her father. This allowed her to connect to some of her primary adaptive feelings of anger, and it also revealed clearly to both the client and therapist that her reaction to these feeling was to become self-critical and berate herself for making too much of her needs. In session five, the therapist helped the client to initiate the self-critical dialogue, which was then followed by a response to the criticism, justifying her need to be loved and explaining that she was not loved not because she was unlovable, but because her parents were incapable of showing such emotions. Sessions seven through nine focused on the client’s experience of not being loved and how she had coped with that experience, namely through what they labeled “the interrupter,” which both criticized her and then proceeded to shut off the needs with
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justifications like, “You are wasting your time in feeling bad because you want them and they are not there. So it is best for you to shut your feelings off and not need them” (Pos et al., 2008, p. 114). The therapy continued to stay with her primary adaptive feelings of hurt and anger at her father’s cruel and neglectful treatment, encouraging her to give voice and meaning to these primary feelings without reverting to the self-critical interrupter stance. The last sessions were marked by a transformative shift in the affective tone. As she felt validated for her anger, she felt less shame regarding her need for love, and as the anger was processed, another primary adaptive feeling emerged, sadness both for herself and her father in terms of her lost childhood and the relationship that could have been. This shift included a more empathetic view of her father, who was a concentration camp survivor, and she reinterpreted some of his actions through his own trauma and shortcomings rather than stemming out of vitriolic feelings specifically toward her. At the end of the therapy, the client reported symptom relief and that the anger was no longer sitting on her chest, and reported a greater ability to be authentic with herself and communicate and connect with her sisters.
Contemporary Experiential Therapies from the Vantage Point of the Unified Theory The experiential therapies in general and EFT in particular share much overlap with the perspective of the human mind and consciousness afforded by the unified theory. Most obviously, both perspectives emphasize a dual processing view of the human mind, with one being conceptual, analytical, and linguistic, and the other being experiential, perceptual, and affect based. Moreover, EFT explicitly emphasizes the relationship between these two domains of mind and consciousness, highlighting how maladaptive filtering processes can result in long-term psychological distress and dysfunction. Indeed, the case formulation and treatment detailed in this chapter strongly paralleled the case I was assessing when I developed the Justification Hypothesis, as described in Chapter 1. Specifically, both women had initially experienced anger and hurt at the poor treatment by their fathers. However, in the context of their home life growing up, these feelings could not be channeled in an adaptive direction. Consequently, a justification narrative developed that induced shame, thus interrupting and inhibiting their angry reactions. Although this was somewhat adaptive in that it facilitated submission to powerful authority figures who could be cruel, this shame-based narrative resulted in both women feeling shutdown and feelings about their fathers unprocessed. The EFT helped the woman to develop a narrative that reaffirmed the justifiability of her feelings and, upon their being processed, allowed her to integrate them into her self-narrative, habituate to them, and develop additional adaptive feelings (e.g., shared sadness) about the loss. The primary weakness of experiential therapies from the perspective of the unified theory is that they emerged more out of technique and philosophical assertions about what it means to be human instead of being grounded in a general theory of human functioning. As the authors note, “A general theory of human functioning
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and pathology. . .has tended to lag behind its more developed theories of practice” (Pos et al., 2008, p. 93). Of course, a general theory of human functioning is precisely what the unified theory attempts to offer, and thus it is heartening that the therapeutic practices conform well to the model.
Key Components of Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy Magnavita (2008b) began his chapter on psychoanalytic psychotherapy by stating that the key psychodynamic insight is that much of our motivation lies outside consciousness and that we experience conflict from opposing forces or parts of our intrapsychic make-up. He then described the magnitude of Freud’s influence on the academic landscape. And he pointed out the cultural context in which psychoanalysis was born, specifically the fact that it was a puritanical, repressive society, and this undoubtedly influenced the form Freud’s theories took. Citing Theodore Millon, Magnavita (2008b, p. 208) listed four seminal themes that define psychodynamic thinking: 1) The structure and process of the unconscious, that is, the hidden intrapsychic world; 2) the key role of early childhood experiences in shaping personality development; 3) the distinctive methodology he created for the psychological treatment of mental disorders; and 4) the recognition that the patient’s character structure is central to understanding psychic symptomatology.
Magnavita then reviewed some of the contributions of seminal figures in psychoanalytic thought, including Harry Stack Sullivan, Heinz Kohut, Habib Davanloo, David Malan, Otto Kernberg, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein, and then provided a brief summary of the major schools of psychodynamic thought, including drive theory, object relations and interpersonal theory, and self-psychology. The structural model of the mind (i.e., id, ego, superego) and topographical model of consciousness (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious) were then presented, and given their familiarity, I will not repeat them here. Throughout the chapter Magnavita (2008b) emphasized the relational turn that psychoanalysis has taken in the past several decades. For example, when discussing the topography of the mind he pointed out that rather than the unconscious being seen as a repository for unacceptable sexual and aggressive feelings, it is now considered primarily in terms of unconscious relational schema, scripts, expectations, and desires that people use to navigate the social world. He cited research on implicit social cognition that supports the idea that important self-other schemas can be activated and operate either with or without conscious awareness, that emotion results from the activation of relational schema, and that self-regulatory processes are evoked in response to real or imagined threats to self-other schema. The key therapeutic elements of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the dynamics of intrapsychic processes are then reviewed. Magnavita (2008b, p. 215) argued, “The therapeutic foundation on which all psychodynamic therapy rests is the construct of transference.” Here Magnavita is using a broad definition of transference, which essentially refers to the patient’s relational schema and how those schemas
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influence the intrapsychic and relational patterns of the individual, both inside and outside of the therapy room. The psychodynamic therapist seeks to enter the patient’s relational system and restructure it through a corrective emotional experience and through insight that is achieved via the interpretations made by the therapist. Magnavita then introduced the two Malan Triangles as the central conceptual frames that guide contemporary psychodynamic approaches. The first Malan triangle, The Triangle of Conflic with its three poles of impulses/feelings, anxiety, and defenses, was introduced back in the chapter on the Justification Hypothesis. The second Malan triangle, The Triangle of Persons, is depicted here in Fig. 8.2. This triangle takes into account the internal working models of the individual, how they are formed by important others early in life (and are especially impacted by trauma), and how they are impacted by current relations. This provides a framework for the therapist to understand what the patient expects in relationships and why and how those expectations reciprocally influence interpersonal processes. Magnavita (2008b) then reviewed the psychodynamic view of health and pathology, drawing on the recently published Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM Task Force, 2006). According to the PDM, psychological health consists of the following capacities: • • • •
To view self and others in complex, stable, and accurate ways To maintain intimate, stable, and satisfying relationships To experience self and perceive in others the full range of age-appropriate affects To regulate impulses and affects in ways that foster adaptation and satisfaction, with flexibility in using defenses or coping strategies • To function according to a consistent and mature moral sensibility • To appreciate, if not necessarily conform to, conventional notions of what is realistic • To respond to stress resourcefully and to recover from painful events without undue difficulty Psychopathology is generally viewed developmentally and assumed to be caused by a combination of genetic predispositions interacting with traumas and stressors, especially those of a relational nature, like one’s early attachment to caregivers. In describing the contemporary psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy, Magnavita (2008b) explained how psychodynamic therapists strive to establish a Therapist/ transference
Fig. 8.2 The Malan triangle of persons
Current relationships
Past relationships
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collaborative relationship that focuses on the expressed needs of the patient and the developmental issues that need to be addressed. The psychodynamic therapist assesses the individual’s level of functioning, especially focusing on the relational (self-other schema, transference and countertransference, history of relationships, current support) and defensive structures (regulation of impulses, awareness of affect). Through assessment and collaboration, the therapist establishes with the patient a framework for the therapeutic process. Magnavita commented that most psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists utilize the following approaches: (1) long-term therapy in which the individual is seen 1–3 times a week for a period of several years, and the therapist generally takes a nondirective, interpretive stance allowing the process to unfold much on its own accord; (2) brief supportive therapy to help individuals during crisis or longer term supportive therapy to help maintain their functioning; or (3) short-term psychodynamic therapy, which can last anywhere from 4 to 80 sessions, where the therapist takes an active stance in helping the individual restructure their relational, affective, or defensive processes. In regard to major intervention strategies and techniques used, Magnavita (2008b) highlights the central role of the therapeutic relationship as forming a crucible in which the process of change unfolds. He commented that most contemporary psychodynamic therapists use a variety of different techniques to mobilize the process of growth and development. Some of the more common techniques or processes emphasized include clarification, empathetic attunement, validation, reflection of feeling, interpretation, defense analysis, confrontation, challenging of dysfunctional beliefs, fostering insight, support, working through emotional trauma to desensitize the system to unmetabolized affect, and supporting resilient strategies. He also highlighted that although elements like homework and medication were not utilized historically, they are now regular aspects of psychodynamic treatment. Change is theorized to occur via a number of mechanisms. The relationship is seen as offering a corrective emotional experience in which the patient, via exposure to intense feelings in the context of a healthy relationship, is able to restructure the representation of self and other, and the manner in which emotional experiences are processed. The interpretations of the therapist allow the patient to develop insight into defensive processes, and together the therapist and patient collaborate to develop new, healthier ways of responding, such that old problematic relational and emotional patterns are not repeated. Magnavita (2008b) noted that systematic research on psychodynamic outcomes is not nearly as well developed as it is for cognitive behavioral therapies, but he commented that data do suggest that short dynamic interventions are as effective as CBT in effecting change. The case presented is of a divorced male in his 50s, with chronic, refractory depression. The man is described as an other-oriented individual who worked to please people, comply with their wishes, had low self-esteem, and was “cut off” from his anger associated with his relational stance. Medication and supportive psychotherapy had been tried, but he was still quite symptomatic. Assessment revealed that he was functioning at the neurotic level of personality organization, which meant he was in touch with reality and could tolerate some levels of distress without decompensating (e.g., he had never been hospitalized or been suicidal), but he
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had many maladaptive relational and defensive coping styles that resulted in his suffering and being unable to grow and effectively meet his needs. The treatment started by collaboratively developing a psychodynamic conceptualization with the patient. This was achieved by linking his current relational and defensive style with his family life and his role in it. He described his father as a distant man who was not very involved with his life, and it was noted that the patient did not cry or say good-bye at his funeral. On the other hand, his mother was very involved with him and saw him as special. However, as the patient revisited his relationship with his mother, he came to view her as relying on him emotionally, and he connected his suppression of his anger and own needs to being pulled by his mother to support her. The therapy was framed by both the therapist and patient as being the process by which they would, as rapidly as possible, get to the core of his difficulties and face his emotions. Specifically, it was formulated that he experienced core injuries via the neglect of his father and the emotional manipulation of his mother. Therapy would afford him the opportunity to (re-)experience the feelings and relational schema associated with these issues, and metabolize them. Initially the man presented with a number of defenses in treatment, specifically detachment, intellectualization, and avoidance, which were interpreted by the therapist as a means to regulate the therapeutic relationship and his feelings associated with his core injuries. Over time, as the defenses were made conscious and their maladaptive consequences became apparent, he began to open himself up to experiencing an intimate connection with the therapist. A powerful discussion occurred regarding his tendency to sabotage and attack himself, through which he became increasingly aware that he tended to both subjugate himself and keep others at bay because he feared that if he was intimate with others they would either manipulate him or reject him, like his mother and father had done respectively. He began to reexperience the feelings associated with the patterned interactions with his parents, such as the grief he felt about the fact that his father never attended any of his school events or activities. In the context of the healing therapeutic relationship, he became increasingly conscious of the linkage between his defenses, relational patterning, and avoidance of core emotions. This awareness afforded him the opportunity to rewrite some of his core scripts and develop healthier self-other representations. He found, for example, that he could much more effectively assert himself without becoming paralyzed by fear and withdrawing. In addition, his depressive symptoms drastically diminished, and he found he could significantly deepen his intimacy with his girlfriend and other important relationships.
Contemporary Psychodynamic Therapy from the Lens of the Unified Theory The unified theory shares much in common with modern psychodynamic theory. For example, the recognition that self-other schemas are central to the psychological health of individuals is captured by and very congruent with the Influence Matrix. Moreover, the perspective regarding the functional organization of conscious
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thought provided by the unified theory is very similar to modern dynamic formulations. By that I mean both contemporary psychodynamic theory and the unified theory look at the subconscious, relational, and emotional forces that motivate and guide the functional organization of people’s self-conscious justifications. If, for example, we return to the exchange between Dan and Janice in the chapter on the Justification Hypothesis or to the scene from Ordinary People analyzed in the chapter on the Influence Matrix, we see a view of the relationship between conscious and subconscious thought that is very congruent with how it would be framed by most modern psychodynamic theorists. The biggest difference with the unified theory is found with more traditional aspects of psychoanalytic theory. Many psychodynamic theorists do not draw as sharp a line between psychoanalytic and psychodynamic as I do here. Magnavita (2008b), for example, uses the terms psychoanalytic and psychodynamic rather interchangeably in his chapter. In contrast, as noted several times throughout this book, the unified theory explicitly identifies key original components of Freud’s psychoanalysis as flawed and erroneous and argues that the good psychodynamic ideas should be explicitly separated from psychoanalytic psychobabble. In particular the model of the unconscious proposed by traditional psychoanalytic theory is unworkable. Instead of primary process symbolism, it is images, impulses, and affects that make up the subconscious (i.e., defended against) mind. Moreover, rather than sex and aggression being primary motivational processes, more realistic and central are relational forces, such as the dimensions of power, love, and freedom represented by the Influence Matrix. It is important to note that, as Magnavita’s review indicated, these are generally changes that have already occurred in contemporary psychoanalytic circles. Nevertheless, the old analytic tradition maintains strong ties on current practice, and it is those ties that tend to prevent more effective integration with other more contemporary approaches and, consequently, the unified theory advocates for separating the systems. We have embarked upon a review of the major individual-level approaches to psychotherapy to give one a clear sense of how practitioners from these primary paradigms are conceptualizing and treating cases. It is also important to be clear that each of the above perspectives comes from a separate theoretical tradition in psychology and psychotherapy, and they tend to be taught at separate schools and by separate faculty, although over the past three decades the cognitive and behavioral approaches to therapy have largely merged together, such that there are now three primary schools of thought that guide individual psychotherapy: (1) Cognitive Behavioral; (2) Psychodynamic; and (3) Humanistic/Experiential. I am arguing that if we approach each perspective with the meta-theoretical lens afforded by the unified theory, we can identify what piece of the puzzle of the human condition each perspective is emphasizing and see the whole. In the next section, I outline how the unified theory gives rise to a way to conceptualize people that cuts across the different paradigms and shows how they can be integrated. In a real sense, then, we have come full circle, back to the place that provided the initial spark that resulted in the quest for the unified theory. We are now back to the question as to whether one could develop a meta-theoretical perspective that
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incorporates the key insights from the major schools of therapy in a coherent and holistic manner. Before proceeding, however, I must again note that there are many elements that need to be considered to develop a truly unified approach to psychotherapy. Not only are there issues of fact—that is, developing a comprehensive and coherent descriptive explanatory framework for why people are the way they are—but we must also be prepared to deal with questions of value. To highlight some questions in this domain: Should we be thinking of the people who enter psychotherapy as patients or clients? Should we be more concerned with promoting their understanding of their situation or emphasize the reduction of suffering? What is the relationship between individual interests and the interests of the social systems in which the individual is embedded? Are psychiatric diagnoses and individual psychotherapy helpful social constructs or do they pathologize normal suffering or promote victimized mentalities and naval gazing? A comprehensive treatment of a unified approach to psychotherapy would address these questions. However, as mentioned earlier, space limitations prevent a comprehensive treatment of how the unified theory gives rise to unified psychotherapy, and in the remainder of the chapter, I am honing in on how the unified theory leads to a unified component systems approach to conceptualizing that effectively cuts across the major perspectives.
The Unifie Component Systems Approach to Conceptualizing People I teach my students that there are three broad domain sets to consider when breaking down the enterprise of psychotherapy. First there is the counseling and relational skill set, which refers to the abilities to consistently: (a) create a setting of trust, hope, understanding, and acceptance; (b) generate therapeutic flow (i.e., engage in deep, meaningful, well-flowing conversational exchanges); and (c) build a strong, collaborative therapeutic relationship with clear, mutually agreed upon goals. Research consistently finds that the ability to create a good relationship, collaboratively set goals, demonstrate effective empathy, and instill hope in patients is a (if not the) major factor associated with treatment outcome (Norcross, 2011). Because I am convinced that an accurate understanding of how people work can lead to better working relationships and faster and better ideas for problem identification, treatment goals, and assessment of outcomes, I am not of the opinion that the therapeutic relationship is all there is to psychotherapy. Nonetheless, counseling skills and the capacity to develop such relationships are crucial and can be conceptually separated from the theoretical approach and specific interventions used. The second domain of psychotherapy is the conceptualization skills, which refers to the ability of the therapist to develop a comprehensive picture of the patient that is grounded in good psychological science, resonates with the client, and leads to a formulation of the kinds of changes that will be adaptive as opposed to maladaptive for the individual. The outline of my approach to using the unified theory to develop such conceptualizations is the focus in the remainder of this chapter. The third domain of psychotherapy refers to the interventions the therapist uses, and
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includes the therapist’s awareness of evidence-based techniques, timing and skill in employing them, and tracking their impact on the client’s functioning by monitoring outcomes. Although I will not spend much time on the interventions, the conceptualization is intimately intertwined with how a therapist intervenes. Before I introduce the unified component systems approach to conceptualizing people, let me explicitly define what is meant by the conceptualization. The conceptualization weaves a narrative together from the various relevant domains of human functioning that tells a story of who the person is and how and why they got to where they are and what will influenc their trajectory in either an adaptive or maladaptive way. It is this last component that directly links the psychotherapeutic conceptualization with intervention, as the goal of the intervention is to form a relationship with the individual (or couple or family) that maximizes the likelihood that they will experience an adaptive outcome. This definition begs the question of what are the relevant domains of functioning, and it is here that the map of the component systems depicted in Fig. 8.3 comes into play. As I articulate below, this map for conceptualizing people systematically aligns behavioral, cognitive, experiential, and psychodynamic perspectives onto a comprehensive view of human functioning. It also explicitly enables us to consider the biopsychosocial perspective, heralded by many in the field. And because it is grounded in the unified theory, it allows for effective bridges to be built not only between the various paradigms in psychotherapy but with more recent advances in personality psychology as well. Over the past two decades there has been a veritable explosion of research on human personality, and several researchers are now working toward developing more holistic and integrative models of personality functioning. One prominent example was promoted by McAdams and Pals (2006) in an article titled A New Big Five, and it is useful to briefly review their proposal here so that linkages between the unified component systems approach and recent research on personality can be seen. McAdams and Pals (2006) stated that it is crucial that personality researchers move beyond the success of the “Big Five” trait theory and return to the field’s original
Fig. 8.3 The unified component systems approach to conceptualizing people: three contexts, five systems
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mission as envisioned by its founders to develop an integrative vision for understanding the whole person. Toward that end, McAdams and Pals (2006) proposed a new big five for conceptualizing personality as. . . (a) an individual’s unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of (b) dispositional traits, (c) characteristic adaptations, and (d) self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially situated (e) in culture and social context. (p. 204)
McAdams and Pals (2006) go on to specify the elements that go into each of the five domains listed above. For example, in regard to the first domain they describe the importance of human evolutionary history and the insights from evolutionary psychology. The second domain, the dispositional traits, are “the broad, nonconditional, decontextualized, generally linear and bipolar dimensions” that “constitute the most stable and recognizable aspect of psychological individuality” (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 207). Of course, the primary traits researchers have identified are the “Big Five” of extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. In contrast to traits, characteristic adaptations are mid-level personality units that “include motives, goals, plans, strivings, strategies, values, virtues, schemas, self-images, mental representations of significant others, developmental tasks, and many other aspects of human individuality that speak to motivational, social–cognitive, and developmental concerns” (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 208). The authors note that it was the trait researchers Costa and McCrae (1994) who introduced the term characteristic adaptations, a term they chose because such aspects of the personality system help the individual fit into the ever-changing social environment and make up the unique core of the individual. Importantly, McAdams and Pals (2006, p. 208) note that “there exists no definitive, Big Five–like list of these kinds of constructs.” As we will see, the unified component systems approach offers a direction to fill in this gap and articulates five different characteristic adaptational systems. The fourth domain in McAdams and Pals (2006) system refers to the life narratives that people generate to make sense out of themselves and the world they live in. They review the literature on the way that people construe their lives as stories and how these stories regulate behavior, solidify identity, and help people connect with and navigate within the larger social and cultural context. The fifth and final domain is the sociocultural context in which personality develops. McAdams and Pals (2006, p. 211) define culture “as the rich mix of meanings, practices, and discourses about human life that prevail in a given group or society” and articulate how culture has a modest effect on the expression of dispositional traits, exerts more sizable effect on characteristic adaptations, and plays a major defining role in the development of life narratives. I have reviewed McAdams and Pals’s (2006) proposal in some detail for three reasons. First, it shares parallels with the unified component systems approach, and thus by reviewing their proposal, we are in a better shape to frame and understand the current approach. Second, I wanted to introduce the distinction between traits and characteristic adaptations because the unified component systems approach
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focuses more on the latter than the former and offers up a new way to conceptualize characteristic adaptations. And, although I will not elaborate on it here, the unified theory provides a new way to think about the relationship between traits and characteristic adaptations. This is seen perhaps most clearly in the formulation offered by the Influence Matrix, which provides a framework for thinking about both traits and the dynamic ways people engage in the social environment. Finally, as both Singer (2005) and Magnavita (2005) have pointed out, there is currently a substantial gap between modern personality theory and psychotherapy that needs to be filled in, and I wanted to highlight the fact that not only does the approach taken here integrate the various psychotherapy paradigms, but it also jives well with modern broad proposals in personality research. The Unifie Component Systems Approach to Conceptualizing People, depicted in Fig. 8.3, consists of three broad contexts and five intrapsychic systems. This is the map I use to teach my students about the key elements to consider when developing an effective conceptualization. Starting with the left side of the figure, there are three broad contexts delineated. The arrows are drawn as such to indicate the time trajectory and the relationship between the contextual levels and the individual psychological level, which is the focus of the diagram. Thus, the biological context represents a “bottom up” conceptualization, whereas the learning and developmental context is horizontal (i.e., at the psychological level), and the sociocultural context is “top down” in the sense that one considers the society or social context as the whole and moves downward to the individual. The circle in the middle of the diagram represents the individual in question and extending outward are the five characteristic adaptational systems that are derived from the unified theory, along with brief definitions describing their key elements. Finally, on the right side of the diagram is a place holder to put the individual in a current and future environmental context that consists of both valued affordances (resources in the environment the individual could use to grow and develop or meet important needs) and stressors. Below I briefly describe each component (three contexts and five systems) and connect it to conceptualizing individuals in the context of psychotherapy. The descriptions will not be comprehensive but will instead be described with enough detail so one can see how the approach provides a unified framework for conceptualizing people that emerges from the unified theory and is consistent with modern personality theory and the major approaches to psychotherapy reviewed earlier in the chapter.
The Biological Context The biological context refers to three broad domains: (1) the evolutionary history of the species; (2) the unique genetic make-up of the individual; and (3) the current functioning of the individual’s physiology and anatomy. Evolutionary biology and psychology provide the lenses and approaches to consider the first element. As represented clearly by the unified theory, we need to understand the shared evolutionary history of the species and the phylogenetic forces that have shaped the basic human
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psychological architecture during the environment of evolutionary adaptation. The science of behavioral genetics is the province of the second element of the biological context, and research has demonstrated that virtually all major categories of mental behavioral dispositions (e.g., psychological traits, intelligence, tendencies toward psychopathology like schizophrenia and depression) have a genetic component. Finally, all psychological processes are mediated by physiological processes, and medicine (especially neurology, endocrinology, and biopsychiatry) provide the lens to consider the impact of physiological functioning on human mental behavior. From the vantage point of conceptualizing a patient presenting in psychotherapy, the biological context is crucial. Family histories of illness and temperamental tendencies are useful to place traits and dispositions toward psychopathology in a behavioral genetic context. And allergic reactions, infections, hormonal fluctuations, diseases, and side effects from medications can all have a substantial impact on psychological functioning. It is, of course, the nursing and medical professions that have the primary charge to assess biological functioning and intervene when necessary and possible, and it is always a good idea to have a medical consult when conducting psychotherapy, especially if there are any unusual or unexpected symptoms, symptoms that do not change with environment, or symptoms that are not readily understandable given the psychological conceptualization of the individual.
The Learning and Developmental Context Mental behavior evolves through time and one can only understand the current response tendencies by placing them in a temporal context. As noted in the chapter on Behavioral Investment Theory, we need to consider the learning history, specifically what patterns of investment have been selected for and what have been selected against, along with the life history stage or developmental context the individual is in. The diagram also notes the distal, which refers to the early learning and development that laid the foundation for growth, and the proximal, which are the recent significant events (e.g., break up, failure to get into school, new job) contributing to current functioning. In terms of conceptualizing people, it is crucial to consider reinforcement and punishment histories, important role models, past environmental affordances and stressors, early patterns of attachment, parental discipline, emotional expressiveness in the family system, domains of success or failure (such as academics or sports), early peer relations, formative memories from childhood and adolescence, as well as major traumatic events. In terms of development stages, I find Erik Erikson’s psychosocial developmental stage model to be particularly useful, not so much in terms of the specific stages and timeframes, but as a heuristic for the kinds of developmental tasks individuals are likely to be facing. For example, as one who regularly treats or supervises college students in psychotherapy, issues pertaining to the development of identity and intimacy regularly surface.
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The Sociocultural Context The sociocultural context refers to the societal and relational context in which the individual is embedded and, following Bronfenbrenner (1979), we can consider the socioecological spheres ranging from the broadest macro-level context where customs, values, roles, and norms function as the large-scale justification systems that coordinate the population, to the more intermediate range of community-level influences, such as local cultural tones and socioeconomic status, and finally the micro-level relational environment consisting of the individual’s family and friends. In conceptualizing individuals, the macro-level cultural context is crucial for understanding individual identities, values, and existential narratives. Notions about healing, traditions, and rites of passage, and elements like collectivist versus individualistic cultural orientations are crucial to take into consideration when framing the psychotherapeutic enterprise, which was born in a Western individualistic culture and often carries assumptions associated with that worldview. In addition, human identities are very much formed from the dialectical tensions between self and society, and it is crucial to understand which beliefs about purpose, meaning, change, and destiny that are swirling around in the social sphere have been internalized by the individual and those that have not been. In regards to the meso-level sphere, issues of class and social status and quality of the living community (e.g., noise, traffic, daily hassles) are enormously relevant for psychological functioning. Finally, as will be made directly apparent when we explore the nature of the characteristic adaptational systems, it is difficult to overstate the impact of the immediate relational world on psychological development.
The Habit System The most basic system of adaptation is the habit system. Habitual responses are automatically initiated upon the presence of specific environmental cues and are shaped based on associations and consequences. The relatively automatic and rigid nature of habits has remained a central assumption in several contemporary areas research in human as well as animal behavior for many decades. Whereas consciousness is activated in response to unexpected changes, routine actions conversely become engrained in the habit system. I informally characterize the habit system as that which involves doing without thinking. For example, a couple of months ago, I had to drop something off at a friend’s house prior to going into work. Despite knowing this consciously, on the drive to work I shifted into my regular routine and it wasn’t until I was pulling into the parking lot at work that I realized I had been on autopilot and completely forgot to make the drop off. My habit system had kicked in and I was nonconsciously following a routine. William James (1890) argued that habits were extremely useful because they enabled people to perform actions in an automatic mindless fashion, opening up more attentional resources for conscious thought. The concept of habit was, of course, central to the behaviorists, many of whom argued that all behavior could be reduced to habit formation.
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From the vantage point of the unified theory, the habit system is the most foundational system of mental functioning and consists of sensorimotor patterns and reflexes, fixed action patterns, and procedural memories that can be produced without any conscious awareness. If one returns to the Architecture of the Human Mind diagram in Chapter 3, the habit system corresponds to the first level of mental processes. From a neurological perspective, the habit system is made up of many different components. Nonetheless, we can identify it as a key aspect of human psychology. In terms of conceptualizing people, we can look at an individual’s daily routines, general activity levels, patterns of eating, sleeping, sexual activity and exercise, and stimuli or triggers that evoke particular kinds of responses patterns. The lens of the habit system is particularly useful in considering addictive or maladaptive behavior patterns (e.g., drinking, smoking, or gambling) that a client or patient wants to alter. Indeed, many, if not most of the actions that people consciously wish they did not engage in will have a strong habitual component to them. In addition, because of its direct connection to and elicitation by environmental stimuli, thinking about the habit system opens up ways to think about how to potentially restructure the environment that might minimize the triggering of bad habits, a lens well developed by behavioral psychology.
The Experiential System The experiential system refers to the nonverbal feelings, images and sensory aspects of mental life. Examples of experiential phenomena include seeing red, being hungry, and feeling angry. The unified theory posits that such first person mental experiences are a form of cognitive process and are emergent phenomena that somehow arise from waves of neural information processing (what neuroscientists studying sentience call the binding problem). As mentioned previously, how exactly such neurocognitive processes give rise to sentience or even which animals are sentient and which are not remain unanswered questions. Nevertheless, the unified theory posits that the experiential system operates on the P – M => E equation, whereby objects and events are perceptually categorized, made meaningful, and then referenced against motivational goal templates that then result in action orienting affective response tendencies. This formulation connects the experiencing mind to operant behavioral principles. In addition, the experiential system also includes imagination, fantasy, and remembered images, as it includes the capacity to simulate objects, events, and actions. Levels two (Operant-experiential) and three (Imaginative) on the Architecture of the Human Mind diagram correspond to the experiential system. Emotions play a key organizing role in the experiential system and when conceptualizing individuals from the vantage point of psychotherapy, it is probably most useful to focus on first emotions when analyzing the functioning of the experiential system. Specifically, one can focus on how emotions are expressed and experienced. Questions to help the conceptualization of the experiential system include
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the following: What is the range of emotional expression and experiencing? Are there emotional states that dominate an individual’s experience, as is the case in depressive and anxiety disorders? Are certain emotions restricted, warded off, overregulated, or inhibited? Other questions pertain to the cohesion and sensibility of the individual’s experiential world. Are images or feeling states constantly vying for conscious attention in conflicted ways? Are aspects of the experiential system split off, disconnected, or repressed in some way? In addition to emphasizing emotions, images, and fantasies, felt experiences within the body are important components to assess and consider when getting a full picture of an individual’s experiential system.
The Relational System The relational system is a specific aspect of the experiential system, but it is so important to human psychological functioning that it needs particular specification. The relational system refers to the internal working models and self-other schema that guide people in their social exchanges and relationships. The Influence Matrix is the framework employed here to understand social motivations, how selfother representations are coded, and how (real or perceived) changes in important relationships are associated with particular kinds of affective responses. In conceptualizing people in this domain, I think first in terms of general social influence. Recall that social influence refers to the capacity to influence important others in accordance with one’s interests. This is not meant in a Machiavellian sense of consciously manipulating others but instead is considered more in the fundamental indicators of social influence, such as the amount of admiration, love, respect, and positive relative to negative attention received from others. The amount of influence is then considered both in an absolute sense (How do others view this person?) and in a relative sense in relation to important others (Does the individual have more or less influence than their friends or family members?) and to the individual’s past (Have they recently lost or gained social influence?). In many instances, psychotherapy is initiated primarily because of recent changes in social influence, such as the break-up or loss of a romantic relationship, humiliation at failing at school or in one’s job, or the sense that one is not respected or valued either by one’s family or society at large. The lens afforded by the Influence Matrix also raises the question of where individuals tend to fall on the agentic-communal dimension in most circumstances. Are they self-focused, tending to emphasize power, autonomy, and self-reliance, or are they more communal, relationship centered, and adopt more of a go along to get along stance? More specifically, we can look at their motives for power and love, and freedom and dependency, the extent to which needs are being met or not in these domains and the extent to which there is a conflict between them. Of course, as was discussed in the chapter on the Influence Matrix, current patterns emerge in part based on schema formed in early childhood, thus it is frequently useful to draw connections between past and present relational patterns.
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The Defensive System The defensive system refers to the ways in which individuals manage their actions, feelings, and thoughts, and shift the focus of conscious attention to maintain a state of psychic equilibrium. In more everyday terms, the defensive system can be thought of in terms of how people cope with distressing thoughts and experiences. In many regards, the defensive system is the most diffuse of the characteristic adaptational systems because it doesn’t directly correspond to domains in the Architecture of the Human Mind diagram. Instead, it refers more to the interrelationships between the domains and the strategies utilized to maintain mental harmony and coherence. This is not to say that the defensive system cannot be identified or studied. Psychodynamically oriented clinicians and theorists have long documented and analyzed defense mechanisms. And the Freudian filter, described in Chapter 5, provides a framework within the unified theory to understand repression and avoidance of threatening material emerging from the experiential system into self-consciousness. Closely related to psychodynamic conceptions of defense, social psychologists have experimentally examined defensive processes under the guise of cognitive dissonance, and have documented the enormous tendencies to arrange one’s beliefs and actions in such a way as to maintain a justifiable narrative of the self. In conceptualizing people in regards to psychotherapy, the nature of their defensive system is crucial in understanding the nature of psychopathology and to understand both the kinds of changes that are possible and those that will be very resistant to change. Many different kinds of defense mechanisms have been catalogued and are indicative of levels of psychological functioning in patients that have clear treatment implications. Many psychological problems can be understood as arising from maladaptive defenses, whereby individuals perceive something as threatening—often particular feelings, images, or memories—and develop ways of avoiding such experiences, but this in turn ends up creating more problems.
The Justification System As should be familiar by now, the justification system refers to the language-based beliefs and values that an individual uses to legitimize actions and develops a meaningful worldview. Especially from the vantage point of psychotherapy, we can think about the justification system from two lenses. One is the more cognitive and social psychological view that emphasizes the interpretations people make and the expectations they have of their environment and their ability to influence it. These are the semantic elements characterized by Beck as automatic thoughts, the immediate self-talk an individual engages in during an activity or moment of reflection. Some important constructs in the social cognitive literature relating to these kinds of justifications include pessimism and optimism, self-efficacy, and an internal versus external locus of control. The other lens that is useful is the broader and deeper lens of existential perspectives articulated by Victor Frankl and more recently narrative therapists who focus on the guiding justification narratives that people tell
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regarding who they are, what their purpose is, and why they are doing what they are doing in an autobiographical way. This is the level of identity and life narrative that is so central to personality that McAdams and Pals (2006) characterize it as a fully separate component of personality. In many ways, the justification system is the most important component to conceptualizing adults in psychotherapy. The reason is because in the vast majority of cases of individual psychotherapy, the most direct window into the personality structure and circumstance of the client is the justifications that are shared by the individual defining the presenting problem. That is, although as therapists we observe appearance and mannerisms of our patients in the consulting room, we usually get to observe only a very small slice of the patient’s behavioral repertoire. And although we can certainly obtain clues and patients can verbally share their experiential world, we can never know that experience directly. Thus, as therapists, what we have direct access to is the justification narrative given by patients of the problems they are facing. It is usually from that we must infer about habits, experiences, relationships, and defenses. And, of course, we don’t even get full access to the justification system, only to the portion of the justification system that is shared and not filtered. This is in large part why the quality of the therapeutic relationship is so important. The better the relationship and the more accurate the empathy, the less the filtering between the public and the private justification systems there will be. Cognitive psychotherapy provides a useful lens to think about the nature of private self-talk and how interpretations and expectations can impact subsequent feelings and actions. Catastrophic automatic thoughts and negatively biased errors in reasoning are part of the mental cycles that drive people toward anxious and depressed moods, although there are more reciprocal feedback loops with the other systems than traditional cognitive psychotherapy suggested. At structurally deeper levels, it is crucial to consider the depth and breadth of the individuals’ justification system. Question such as, “How much does the individual reflect on the meaning of life?” and “What role does religion or philosophy play in guiding the individual?” and “How open and reflective relative to closed and rigid are the individual’s justification systems?” are crucial. Far more could be said about each of these domains. Indeed, each of these domains has been a primary focus of assessment, conceptualization, and intervention in major schools of psychotherapy. But the point of this section in the chapter is not to fully delineate each characteristic adaptational system and their relationships to the others, but to share an outline that articulates a system of thought built off of the unified theory that is congruent with modern personality theory and can incorporate key insights from the major psychotherapy paradigms. To further facilitate this linkage, Fig. 8.4 maps the unified component systems approach both to the four pieces that make up the unified theory and the four major approaches to individual psychotherapy. The linkages between the psychotherapy paradigms and the five characteristic adaptational systems should be particularly clear. Specifically, the behavioral paradigm corresponds with the habit system, the experiential paradigm (especially Emotion Focused Therapy) corresponds to the experiential system, the psychodynamic paradigm corresponds to both the relational and defensive systems, and the cognitive paradigm corresponds to the justification system. If one returns to
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Fig. 8.4 Mapping the unified component systems to the unified theory and major psychotherapy paradigms
the review of the key components of the major perspectives and to the approaches to treatment and how the cases were detailed, one will see how the various perspectives tend to each hone in on an adaptational system and develop interventions with that system in mind. It is my hope that the relationship between the unified theory and the unified component systems view is also relatively clear. The ToK System provides the broad overarching frame, clearly delineating what is meant by the (physical) biopsychosocial context. Behavioral Investment Theory provides the conceptual linkages between the biological context and the habit and experiential systems. The Influence Matrix, as an extension of Behavioral Investment theory, maps out the relational system. The Justification Hypothesis links our linguistic reasoning apparatus both with our social motivations mapped out by the Influence Matrix and with the uniquely human cultural dimension of existence. Now, to see more precisely how the unified component systems approach can be applied, I offer an example of a case conceptualization.
An Example Applying the Unifie Component Systems Approach to Conceptualizing I attended a conference presentation in 2010 at the annual meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration in Florence, Italy, that starkly affirmed the need for the unified component systems approach. The presentation
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consisted of Leslie Greenberg (who is one of the founders of the Emotion Focused perspective) and Paul Wachtel (an integrative psychodynamic therapist) critiquing a videotape series of cognitive behavioral therapy for perfectionism conducted by Dr. Martin Antony (Wachtel & Greenberg, 2010). The patient was a motivated, attractive, verbal young woman completing a graduate degree in psychology who strove for perfection in many areas of her life. She was extremely focused on organizing, planning, and succeeding at everything she did. She also had occasional panic attacks and issues concerning her body image. What was striking about the presentation was how Dr. Antony focused almost exclusively on the habit system and her automatic thoughts, the portion of the justification system emphasized by traditional cognitive psychotherapy. In contrast, emotions and felt experiences, her relationship processes and internal working models, and her defenses were essentially ignored. For example, at one point in the first session, Dr. Antony inquired about the woman’s eating patterns and, with tears welling up in her eyes, she hesitantly reported that, self-conscious about her body image, she purged about once a day. Dr. Antony made little acknowledgement of her feelings or of her pained experience sharing this information. Not surprisingly, it was precisely these elements and the way they were ignored that Drs. Wachtel and Greenberg criticized the video. Indeed, at one point, Dr. Greenberg commented that he did not believe that cognitive behavioral therapies treated the whole person. I am arguing here that the unified component systems map provides a conceptual frame to justify that assertion. To make that point and to help get a flavor for how the system works, I offer one example here of a case presentation, followed by a conceptualization guided by the unified approach. Reducing individuals to paragraph descriptions always results in a poverty of information, and I should note that the conceptualization that follows is, of course, not inevitably correct based on the brief case description. Instead, this example is simply intended as a prototype of how a description of an individual can be plugged into the unified component systems approach in a way that leads to a conceptualization, which in turn could easily lead to ideas about ways of intervening that might be effective in assisting the individual. Emily is a 29-year-old Caucasian female who entered psychotherapy because she was concerned about the direction her life was headed. Her mood over the past year has worsened, a mood she described as “sour” and “joyless”, and she reported to you in the first session that she finds herself wondering what the point of her job, her marriage, and even her life is. Her family of origin was intact and upper middle class. She has two younger sisters, aged 26 and 24, both of whom have children. She described her mother, a librarian at a University, as strict, protective, and loving. Her father is good natured, but distant. He is a pediatrician. She indicated that negative emotions were generally dismissed in her family. She stated her relationship with her father is the same as it has always been, but she did not elaborate. She did report that her mother seemed closer to her younger sisters than to her. She was raised Methodist and is not currently attending church. She reported she is religious, although she does not like “institutionalized” religion. She has always had a lot of friends, but few of them have been very intimate. She graduated from a good law school in the top 20% of her class, and always achieved good marks in school. She also described herself as a feminist. She was treated once previously with anti-depressants at 23. Her most immediate concern is that her marriage of four years to Jacob (28) is experiencing difficulties. Both are lawyers in a local firm. They are doing well financially, but she
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reported they have lost the spark. Much of the difficulty according to her stems from her not wanting to have children. Although when they got married, she thought she wanted kids, she now doesn’t. In reporting this, she somewhat defensively asked the intake interviewer “Don’t I have the right to change my mind?” They have sexual relations approximately once a month and have “yelling” arguments at least weekly. She stated that she frequently feels irritated and annoyed by other people and came across to the interviewer as guarded. She describes her job as “fine” but did not elaborate. She did mention that if she wants to make full partner, she needs to increase her billable hours.
From this description, what follows presents an example of how we might translate the case presentation into a holistic conceptualization based on the unified approach. After each aspect of the conceptualization, I label how that aspect of the conceptualization relates to an aspect of the unified component systems approach. It seems Emily is at an important developmental stage in her life and it is likely that the avoidance of certain important emotions (Experiential and Defensive System), rigid beliefs (Justification System), and conflicts regarding relational needs (Relational System) have combined with environmental and social stressors leaving her feeling empty, stuck, or dead-ended in her life trajectory. Associated with these problems, she is shutting down in some areas and may meet criteria for a Major Depressive Episode, probably of mild severity. Depressive episodes impact brain functioning in a way that makes individuals more susceptible to future episodes and since this may be a recurrent episode, it increases the importance of getting symptom relief and thus medication should be considered (Biological Context). The important developmental life stage pertains to her struggles between love and work, specifically as a career-oriented woman in America in the twentyfirst century (Macro Sociocultural Context). On the one hand, she is facing significant demands at work (Environmental Stressors), and likely has a self-concept grounded in high achievement (Justification System). Her long history of achievement (Learning and Developmental Context), her entering into a competitive and traditionally male domain (Macro Sociocultural Context), and her difficulties with intimacy (Defensive and Relational System) suggest a strong agentic orientation (Relational and Justification System), meaning that she likely values independence and self-reliance, along with self-promotion and high achievement relatively more than connection, sharing, and emotional solidarity. And although she has achieved much in that domain, to go farther (i.e., make partner), she is being asked to invest more and more in the direction of agentic achievement (Environmental Stressor and Affordance). There are a number of indicators that, from an emotion-focused perspective, Emily over-regulates, avoids, and is cut-off from a number of primary emotions (Experiential and Defensive Systems). Evidence for this is seen in her indication that emotions were “dismissed” in her family (Learning and Developmental Context), that she has had few, if any, “intimate” relationships (Learning and Developmental Context and Relational System), her sense that her father was “distant,” that her mother was likely closer to her sisters than to her, her difficulties in her current marriage (Micro-Level Social Context, Learning and Developmental Context, Relational System, and Current Stressors), and, perhaps, in her decision not to have children (Relational, Defensive and Justification System). This relatively poor track record on forming and maintaining close relationships, coupled with her success in the achievement domain, suggests the possibility that Emily has unmet needs for belonging, intimacy, and affiliation (Relational System), which in turn likely give rise to feelings of guilt, shame, or self-doubt. However, given her success in competitive domains and her developmental history of dismissing emotions, it is very likely that such feelings of guilt or shame or dependency are threatening, and she is likely highly motivated to avoid them (Defensive and Justification Systems).
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One can thus readily hypothesize that if Emily experiences primary feelings of guilt or shame or even loving feelings that make her more dependent, her intrapsychic system would likely become disequilibriated (i.e., confused and unsteady), she would feel anxiety and then shift her attention to more familiar ground of valued independence and self-reliance (Defensive System). Consider, for example, the comment regarding her “right” to change her mind regarding having children (Justification System). Very likely from the vantage point of her husband, the issue is not whether she has the “right” to change her mind, but instead the implications her changing her mind has for their shared future (MicroRelational Context; Current Stressor). If her husband were invested in having children, then her changing her mind would have a tremendous negative impact on him. Given the above formulation regarding Emily’s conflicts about relational motives and associated affects, one can readily hypothesize that the idea of children is anxiety producing and likely activates a host of images that are conflicted and affect laden (Experiential, Relational, and Defensive Systems). If she does experience such conflicts and then is feeling pressured by her husband, there is a very high likelihood that she will shift from experiencing what may well be adaptive primary affects (e.g., love at the thought of her child, guilt/shame/fear at not being a good enough mother or about having to give up career goals) into secondary emotions of indignant anger. If such processes are occurring, they would almost certainly have maladaptive consequences for both of them (e.g., he would feel unfairly attacked; she would be confused about what the “real” issues are). Although the focus here is on likely dynamics between the two in terms of children, it is clear that there are significant relationship troubles, and thus more information is needed about other common domains of marital strife, such as money, sex, in-laws, careers, religion, and daily responsibilities. Another crucial area to assess, intimately related to the above, is Emily’s beliefs about herself, her world, and her future (Justification System). Given Emily’s high achievement motivation, it is important to ask what needs she has that are associated with this. Specifically, we could hypothesize that such achievement motivation might be a compensation for underlying insecurities (Defensive System). There could, for instance, be a core belief that gets activated when she is depressed that she is “incompetent,” and it is possible that her achievement strivings function to compensate for this. Or, perhaps more likely, she has core doubts about her “lovability” and she compensates for difficulties in “love” by excelling at work and being self-reliant. Her family history would be consistent with this hypothesis (Learning and Developmental and Micro Relational Context). Several other domains of belief would be important to explore. For example, given her achievement strivings, we can wonder about her beliefs about certain feelings, such as feeling sad, guilty, or anxious. In addition, any histories of trauma or abuse would be important to screen for. Furthermore, it would be important to discuss her grander notions about what it means to be human, life’s ultimate purpose, and how her autobiography fits into that larger narrative. It would also be important to get a clear sense of her daily routines, eating and sleeping patterns, and substance use (Habit System), and consider if any major changes in these areas might be helpful. Finally, it is extremely important to note that Emily brings with her many strengths that can be valuable resources in helping her more her life in a more adaptive direction. She is bright, verbal, high achieving, and financially secure.
My goal in this section has been to introduce a way of conceptualizing people grounded in the unified theory that is congruent with the key insights from the major paradigms in individual psychotherapy and modern research in personality more generally. As is well documented, one of the major roadblocks to greater unification has been the absence of a shared language and conceptual framework to move the field forward. The point of this chapter has been to show that a unified approach to conceptualization is feasible, which in turn is a major step toward a unified psychotherapy. Of course, there is more to psychotherapy than the conceptualization,
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and work is currently being done on a project that systematically develops a holistic approach to psychotherapy, which includes formal assessment of an individual’s functioning, specified treatment guidelines, and the assessment and measurement of treatment outcomes.
Conclusion The intellectual journey that ultimately resulted in the unified theory began with questions about how various approaches to psychotherapy might be integrated. As I delved into this question, it became apparent that to effectively develop a unified psychotherapy, it must be based on a clear answer to the question of “What is psychology?” The first seven chapters of the book were devoted to that question, in many ways providing the background of explanation that I intuitively sensed was there as my professor in graduate school showed me how each of the perspectives might be akin to the blind men and the elephant. This chapter has thus brought us full circle, and we have shown how the understanding of the unified theory provides a way to assimilate and integrate key insights from the major therapeutic perspectives into a coherent whole. But there remain questions, especially questions of value and of the tensions between scientific and humanistic visions of the discipline and the human condition. In the final concluding chapter, we consider these questions and the implications the unified theory has for the academy at large.
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Conclusion
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Chapter 9
The Fifth Joint Point
The singularity is near. Kurzweil (2005)
What kinds of creatures are we? Why do we do what we do? Where are we headed? What should we be doing? These are the questions that humans have struggled with since the capacity to ask them first emerged. And with such questions came the first collective systems of justification that ultimately separated the human world from the rest of the universe. Following Matter, Life, and Mind, Culture became the fourth great emergence. With the outline of the unified theory now in place, we can return to these timeless questions and reflect on them anew. Humans, the unified theory tells us, are the justifying animal. Our singularly unique accomplishment was not tools, opposable thumbs, or the ability to walk, but instead our ability to construct systems of justification that coordinate human groups and provide narratives for how the world works and our place in it. I want to suggest here that our future destiny is tied to the kind of justification systems we build. It is in that light I submit that our transcendental purpose is the construction of a new global system of justification that effectively merges wisdom with science and technology in a way that fosters the emergence of a new global age. Return for a moment to the picture of cosmic evolution depicted by the ToK System. A pattern is apparent. Matter emerges out of Energy, Life emerges out of Matter, Mind emerges out of Life, and Culture emerges out of Mind. The natural question that follows is, what emerges out of Culture? A sensible answer is MetaCulture, and the unified theory suggests that the way there is through the construction of the fifth joint point. But what would such a joint point look like? Joint points are the links between the dimensions, so we should consider the nature of other dimensions of complexity and what gave rise to their emergence. Each dimension that has evolved following Matter’s emergence from Energy at the Big Bang has been associated with the evolution of a novel information processing system. The dimension of Life emerged via genetic information processing, Mind via neuronal information processing, and Culture via symbolic information processing. It is thus reasonable to suggest that
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_9,
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the dimension of complexity that follows Culture will arise in the context of a new system of information processing. Just as this formulation suggests, Kurzweil (2005) argued we are at the cusp of a phase transition and new human epoch because of the Information Age and the associated emergence of electronic computational technologies and the Internet (i.e., a connected, novel information processing system). Kurzweil defined epochs in very much the same way that I view dimensions of complexity. His first three epochs correspond directly to Matter, Life, and Mind, and consist of information in material objects, living objects, and brains. His fourth epoch, technology, roughly corresponds to Culture on the ToK System. His book is about the emergence of the fifth epoch, which he believes will be achieved by the merger of human technology with human intelligence and human biology. The unified theory corresponds well with Kurzweil’s vision in the sense that both systems clearly point to the possibility of a new phase transition associated with the emergence of new information processing systems. But the unified theory further suggests that novel information processing capacities are not enough. In addition to new computational systems, we need a way to assimilate and integrate human knowledge into a global system of understanding. Indeed, many have argued that one of humanity’s greatest threats is the possibility that we will create technologies that far outstretch our wisdom to control them. To counteract this problem, great technologies must be fused with a deeper understanding of human nature. Yet what science has produced so far is the capacity to understand and control the physical and biological worlds. Progress has been far slower on the profound questions regarding the nature of human nature, consciousness, morality, and so forth. By bridging the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, the unified theory attempts to change the status quo. If it could be successful and effectively combined with great technological innovations, the theorized consequence would be the fifth joint point and the emergence of a MetaCultural dimension of reality. In this final chapter, I explain how the unified theory offers a scientific humanistic worldview, clarify its relation to some of the major existing worldviews, and articulate an ultimate justification that can serve as a guide in constructing the fifth joint point in a manner that ensures the betterment of the human species and the world we live in.
The Unifie Theory As a New Scientifi Humanistic Worldview The academy has failed to offer a coherent picture of the relationship between science and human values. By far the most well-known insight regarding this relationship is that one cannot justifiably derive moral oughts from what is scientifically true. It is a profound insight with many important implications. But does it mean that science is fully separate from human values? No. That is not a conclusion that logically follows from the Humean separation of is and ought. The unified theory posits that all human knowledge systems are systems of justification and even if, as
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a body, science attempts to factor out human values, scientific justification systems inevitably interact with policies, laws, religious narratives, and other components of the social fabric and thus must be developed with this in mind. In this section, I build the case that the unified theory carves a pathway toward the construction of a scientific humanistic worldview that can weave together the empirical truths uncovered by the scientific method, the authentic human passions artfully expressed by the humanities, and the diversity of large-scale justification systems embodied by cultures around the world into a global justification narrative.
The Science Wars An interesting debate between modernists and postmodernists emerged in the 1990s. Called the science wars, the debate highlighted the fact that—as has been popularized at least since C. P. Snow’s (1998) famous characterization of the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities in 1959—the academy has failed to produce a consensually agreed-upon vision of the human condition and nature of knowledge. The first clear shot in the science wars came from Paul Gross and Norman Levitt (1994) in their book Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, in which they argued that the postmodern project is muddleheaded and politically dangerous. The debate rose to a fevered pitch in 1996 with the publication of a special issue of the journal Social Text devoted to the science wars and developed largely in response to Gross and Levitt’s (1994) critique. In that special issue there was an article by the mathematical physicist Alan Sokal (1996a) who, in his paper, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” offered a postmodern interpretation of some of the fundamental issues in physics, especially concerning the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Although the paper was accepted as presenting a genuine argument, shortly after the article was published, Sokal (1996b) announced it was a parody written to send a shot across the bow of postmodern scholarship. He had written the paper as a “mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever” (Sokal, 2008, p. 93) to demonstrate that much postmodern scholarship was intellectually vacuous. Sokal articulated his justification for the hoax in a subsequent publication a few weeks later. One of my goals is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” that contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group) are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years . . . My concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the left. (Sokal, 2008, p. 93)
The hoax was covered by The New York Times, and it became a legendary academic controversy. On one side were the hardnosed scientists committed to the notion that science in general and physics in particular could reveal or at least approximate
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timeless objective truths about the universe and our place in it. On the other side was a certain sect of sociologists, historians, philosophers of science, and other postmodern intellectuals who were studying science as a social construction and were arguing or implying that science should not be granted the status of final arbiter of ultimate truth. Conferences, articles, and books followed, with some attempting to clarify the arguments and misunderstandings of both sides (LaBringer & Collins, 2001) and others offering sophisticated arguments for rapprochement and moving beyond the science wars (e.g., Hacking, 1999). The science wars nevertheless remain a clear symptom of the fragmented pluralism in the academy. To understand why the science wars erupted, we need to place them in the proper socio-historical context. Since the earliest attempts to formally characterize the nature of human knowledge, there has been a tension between a focus on what truly exists (i.e., questions of ontology) and how we come to know about it (i.e., questions of epistemology). The relationship between ontology and epistemology can be seen in how most modern philosophers conceptualize the nature of knowledge. Most current theories of knowledge hold that knowledge is justified true belief, and knowledge is generally considered by philosophers as consisting of three things: (1) the belief the individual has (which relates strongly to epistemology); (2) the truth (which relates strongly to ontology); and (3) the degree of justification for the belief (which relates to their relation). Questions and propositions about the nature and kind of justification required for a belief to be true constitute an entire branch of philosophy known as epistemic justification. It is important to note, however, that when philosophers speak of justification, they generally have in mind the analytic dimension as opposed to the social or pragmatic dimension of justification. For example, in opening his book on epistemic justification Swinburne (2001) explicitly noted that he was not concerned with justification in terms of social or pragmatic values, such as believing that one’s spouse is faithful—even though the evidence suggests otherwise—because it is easier to be happy or keep the family together. Instead, he was concerned with what justifies a belief as true in the analytic sense of the word. The relationship between epistemology and ontology has always been complicated, and philosophers and intellectuals have historically ranged anywhere from extreme objectivism (we see or can discover the world as it truly is) to extreme subjectivism (the only thing that really exists is our subjective experience of the world) with many variations and combinations therein. In the 1930s and 1940s, with the rise of logical positivism and the power of modern science in full view, the pendulum had swung toward a strong objectivism. But the foundations of the logical positivists were cracked by several philosophers, perhaps most notably Karl Popper. The pendulum swung further toward emphasizing the social process of how knowledge was constructed with Thomas Kuhn’s (1996) famous book, The Structure of Scientifi Revolutions, which argued that science consisted of paradigms that are in many ways socially constructed and rise to power, work to maintain control, and then are overthrown with the emergence of new data and arguments. Paul Feyerbend, Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and others piled on, questioning the notion of objective knowledge and making various arguments as to why science was a social
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institution that constructed knowledge as a consequence of political pressures and the intersubjective agreement of its practitioners. That this view was gaining significant traction in some intellectual quarters (especially the social sciences and humanities) spurred the defenders of science (i.e., Gross, Levitt, Sokal) to act and try to move the pendulum back away from the pernicious “penchant for subjectivism” that they saw in postmodern perspectives. So how are we to make sense of the questions posed by the science wars from the vantage point offered by the unified theory? First by viewing human knowledge— including science—as systems of justification, we can better understand the central claims of both sides of the debate and eliminate the extreme straw men characterizations (i.e., science is the Truth versus science is an arbitrary social construction). Second, we can see the rise of postmodernism as a symptom that something is wrong with a purely natural scientific worldview and conclude that natural science alone is not up to the task of guiding humanity with purpose. The solution from postmodernists is to adopt a position of multiple epistemologies and to challenge any claims to universal truth applied to humans. In contrast to this solution, the unified theory offers a foundational scientific humanistic worldview, one that can deal effectively with the problem of value (see Quackenbush, 2008).
Science As a Kind of Justificatio System It is clear when reading both sides of the science wars that the term science can mean many different things. It can refer to a collection of empirical facts and findings, a societal institution, a methodology, or a worldview, not to mention the various kinds of scientific disciplines that fall into grey areas (e.g., Is anthropology a science?). Because of its multitude of various meanings, questions about the degree to which “science” is a social construction or is value-laden are confounded. The unified theory characterizes science as a kind of justification system that can then be considered as a set of specific facts and claims, a system from which to view the world, an institution, a collection of methods, and various domains of inquiry corresponding to different dimensions of complexity. It is my strong sense that much clarity would have been achieved in the debates by understanding science along these lines. For starters, when we think about science as a system of justification, it becomes akin to other systems of human knowledge, like law or religion, in that it is a human construction that emerges in a particular socio-historical time and place. Although those in the science studies typically do not characterize science explicitly as a kind of justification system, they do look at it as a social process similar to other socially constructed systems and consider how the institution of science is intertwined with human values and cultural and political forces (i.e., what gets funded, what ideas are attacked or embraced by the culture at large, what topics are taboo to research, how moral forces shape the kinds of research done, etc.). But when framed this way there is little to object to from the vantage point of the hardnosed scientist, as even the most ardent defenders of science recognize it as a “human endeavor, and like any other human endeavor it merits being
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subjected to rigorous social analysis” (Sokal, 2008, p. 117), including analyses of which problems are counted as important, who gets prestige and power, and even what types of theories can be conceived and entertained by the human mind. What the defenders of science object to is the notion that science is just a social justification system, with the implication being that the theories are arbitrary and carry no more truth validity than other human narratives. As Sokal put it, he does not aspire “to be the Emily Post1 of quantum field theory” (2008, p. 94), meaning that while manners and social conventions are just social constructions, physics produces equations that map onto a reality that exists independently of human desires, politics, or other social pressures. This is, of course, a justifiable argument. Anyone who argues that the mass of an electron was determined in the same way people decided the fork should go on the left side of the plate has not the faintest idea about how justifications in the physical sciences are built. And yet virtually no one in the science studies or postmodernist camps argues that specific facts discovered by science are arbitrarily constructed. And it is rarely the specific scientific findings such as the mass of an electron that the postmodernists take issue with. Instead it is the institution of science, the nature of scientific debate, and the scientific worldview coupled with its causes and consequences in society that many postmodernists want to emphasize and examine from a more relativistic lens. Understanding science as a justification system allows us to consider it both as collection of specific findings (which can be characterized as descriptive or explanatory statements justified by scientific methodology), and how it becomes a worldview when we consider it a system of interlocking justifications. But when considered as a worldview, science can then be characterized more along the lines of a value-laden normative vision about how people ought to view the world and their place in it. This shifting in meaning creates complications because as soon as we move from the realm of specific empirical facts uncovered by the scientific method to considering science as a worldview, the object under consideration has changed. The argument that the scientific worldview is a human construction that has normative elements and cannot necessarily be judged to be superior to others becomes a potentially reasonable position to defend, whether one is a postmodernist or not. Later, I will make the argument that the natural scientific worldview per se is both incomplete and problematic, although postmodern relativism is not the solution. Let us go back for a moment to my brief summary of some of the work done in epistemic justification and consider the fact that philosophers in epistemology focus primarily on the analytic—as opposed to the social or pragmatic—meaning of the term justification. One of the reasons I became fascinated with the term justification is that it carries both social and analytic connotations. For example, when some people hear the term “justify,” they think it is equivalent to rationalizing. And yet others see it as a good description of the central problem in analytic philosophy. Still others (mostly philosophers) wrestle with the relationship between the social (or moral or subjective) and the analytic connotations of the term. This ambiguity
1 Emily
Post was famous for her writings about etiquette and manners in the early 1900s.
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about the nature of justification, combined with the lack of clarity regarding the nature of science seems to have played a big role in the debate. From the vantage point offered here, if all the combatants in the science war debate had clear notions of science as a kind of human justification system that comprised of both analytic and social components, clarity about the precise nature of the disagreements would have been achieved much more quickly. What likely would have emerged is a fundamental disagreement about the value and comprehensiveness of a scientific worldview and its authority in human discourse to justify human action. Framed this way, the postmodernists question the wisdom to grant authority to any single worldview and criticize the scientific worldview as obviously incomplete and wanting in some areas. They also see it as ineluctably enmeshed with Western civilization and values, and are concerned with imposing such culturally relative perspectives on others. In contrast, the scientists see science as revealing universal analytic truths (e.g., the Periodic Table) that must be incorporated into any worldview claiming truth value (which all worldviews do). They also argue that the scientific method and the results it yields should be granted general political authority as they are far more reliable than authority based on social power, revelation, or tradition. Moreover, in response to the multiple, local epistemologies position taken by postmodernists, many scientists raise the criticism that if all knowledge systems are equally valid, how are we to justify the prevention of a Big Brother government like that depicted in George Orwell’s 1984, which could easily be characterized as postmodernism gone mad? Along these lines, Cromer (1997) argued that Hitler used justifications for controlling science that had a “chilling” resemblance to postmodern frames. Each side of the debate has some merit, although the vision I am offering is ultimately more in line with modernist conceptions than postmodern ones because of its foundationalism. Nevertheless, the purely natural scientific worldview adopted by many is incomplete because it fails to effectively characterize the problem of values, a point I will return to below. On the other hand, it seems that much of postmodernism’s fuel, like that of creation science, is found in the criticism of scientific authority. With its anti-foundationalism and periodic implication that all knowledge systems are power-based, local, and equally valid, postmodernism fails to generate cumulative knowledge, sets a dangerous stage for intellectual sophistry, and carries the seeds of its own implosion. What is needed is a new vision of human knowledge that effectively characterizes the relationship between science and humanistic values and points the way toward a higher purpose.
The Elements of Justificatio Systems This discussion leads fruitfully to the question of what are the fundamental elements that make up human justification systems. We have already implied two broad domains, one that is scientific and concerned with analytic truth and the other that is humanistic and is concerned with human values and prescriptions about what ought to be. I have found it fruitful to divide these two broad domains further, each
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into three separate elements, and I briefly lay out here the six foundational elements that appear to underlie all justification systems. What I mean by this is that when analyzing a particular justification, it can be considered from at least the six angles I articulate here. The six components are as follows: the semantic, the analytic, the evidentiary, the subjective, the social, and the moral. 1. The Semantic Element refers to the language or symbolic–syntactical aspect of justification, including the conceptual meaning of words, symbols, and signs, and the relationship between the signifier and what is being signified. Composed in English, we can wonder how the meaning of this book would be altered if it were translated into Chinese, Swahili, or French. Language is a fundamental component because it provides the thread from which the tapestries of justification systems are woven, although in contrast to what was argued by the more extreme versions of the now discredited Sapir-Worf hypothesis, language is not all there is to knowledge. Linguistics, the philosophy of language, and semiotics are all domains of study that focus on the semantic component of justification systems. 2. The Analytic Element refers to the logical coherence and internal consistency of a justification system. Logical coherence is often considered as a necessary feature of truthful systems, and there is a strong human tendency to seek narratives that have an internal logic. And when confronted with a justification system, one of the first things people will tend to do is to analyze its logical consistency. Mathematics represents the purest form of analytic justification and analytic philosophers explore the development of systems based on pure logic. 3. The Evidentiary Element refers to how the justification system incorporates and is shaped by external evidence. As a justification system, science is considered to be fundamentally defined by its emphasis on the collection of objective evidence. Indeed, in its origin myth, science’s break with philosophy occurred when investigators got up out of their armchairs and started to collect evidence for their conjectures. The evidentiary component lines up with the correspondence theory of truth and refers to the degree to which the system corresponds to the outside world. Of course, in everyday interactions, whether involving legal proceedings where judges and juries examine the degree to which claims by prosecutors and defendants correspond to the evidence collected, or parents determining the veracity of their child’s account of apparent misbehavior, the evidentiary element is commonplace in human justification processes. 4. The Subjective Element refers to the particular perspective, biases, preferences, and interests of each individual and how these influence personal justification systems. Put in the frame of the unified theory, the subjective element refers to the interaction of the justification system and the experiential system. To get a flavor for the importance of the subjective component in understanding justification systems, consider the enormous variation in responses that occur as individuals are exposed to ideas. Or consider the relationship between certain specific life experiences and the larger justification narratives people espouse or gravitate to.
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Demorest (2005), for example, articulates why the personal histories of Freud, Skinner, and Rogers influenced the theories they proposed. 5. The Social Element refers to the large-scale collective justification systems guiding the group, especially social narratives, laws, conventions, and policies that state what is appropriate and acceptable and what is not. Religious beliefs, political stances, legal systems, nationalistic identities, and gender roles all fall under the social component of justification systems, which are analyzed by sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists. In both subjective and social elements, the interests and investments of the individual or group are crucial in understanding the nature and form and content of the justification system. 6. The Moral Element refers to ideas about the way the world ought to be. Whether this simply represents a subset of subjective and social justification or is its own separable dimension is a point of debate, but data are emerging supporting the idea of an innate moral sense or at least an innate sense of fairness and capacity to be sympathetic and altruistic. And other research has demonstrated that young children can separate social convention from moral arguments. I have come to see the value of ultimately grounding the other components in a moral dimension, a point I will make at the end of this chapter. The argument I am making here is that every justification has at least these elements and can be examined from the vantage point of each angle. To get a clearer sense of how we might apply this taxonomy, consider the following justification: The earth goes around the sun. We can start with the semantic element, noting that the statement is in English, and move from that to clarifying what the various words in the statement signify. Second, there is the logical coherence of the statement, which is usually referenced in relationship to other statements with which it is networked (Dewitt, 2004). For example, if it were claimed that the earth went around the sun, and the moon went around the earth but the sun went around the moon, the logical coherence of the justification system would be faulty. Then there is the evidentiary component. What evidence is invoked to support the claim? The mapping of the planets and the capacity of astronomers to place satellites in the solar system with predictive consequences would be some of the evidence to support this claim. The subjective component angles us to look at who is making the claim, and why at this moment is the individual doing so. In this light, we want to consider the statement as a behavioral investment, anchored in an individual’s experience. So in this context we might ask what current experience has activated this justification, what motives are associated with it, and how long has the individual held the claim. (Consider that I am making the claim right now to justify the elemental analysis of justification systems.) The social context asks how the statement fits into the context of justification at the various levels of social analysis. Of course, this statement is a part of the generally accepted worldview. Consequently, a greater emphasis would be placed on the subjective if the individual claimed that the sun went around the earth. Finally, the moral component asks the extent to which the statement has moral value or might have moral implications. Of course, although in today’s world the statement does not carry moral implications, it did in the context of Galileo’s world.
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I have found this taxonomy of the elements that make up justification systems useful on several accounts. First, it provides me a way to systematically analyze the various components that go into justifications. Second, it has been helpful in allowing me to see why we have certain broad domains of academic disciplines and how they are related. For example, it allows me to see why the semioticians were so hopeful that their line of inquiry might be foundational because the formulation suggests that indeed language is foundational to justification systems. In a similar vein, it helps me to consider the difference between mathematics and science, whereas the former focuses on the logical relationship between symbols and the latter focuses also on gathering evidence. Another perhaps more important way this taxonomy has been helpful has been the way it allows one to more clearly see the difference and distinction between the scientific and humanistic components of justification systems. The first three components make up the scientific epistemic triangle (cf. Machado, Lourenco, & Silva, 2000), meaning that purely scientific justification systems strive to factor out the subjective, social, and moral elements and develop frameworks of understanding that consist of semantically represented concepts that are logically coherent and are mapped onto external “reality” via the evidence gathering tools that make up the scientific method. Objective definitions, quantification, experimental controls, predictions, independent replications, etc., are all designed to minimize or reduce the influence of subjective, social, and moral elements. With this point in mind, let us consider how science has impacted human justification systems at large. One of the most significant consequences of the Enlightenment and the modern scientific revolution has been the displacement of pre-modern mythologies. In many regards this displacement can be viewed as positive. Historically, many such mythologies were grounded in intuition, revelation, tradition, and authority, rather than logic and evidence. Consequently, such worldviews can now be seen in light of modern scientific knowledge as naïve, implausible, and in many cases plainly inaccurate. Thus, those following science can take solace in its insights and scoff at the immaturity of those ideas of yesteryear. And yet, although science has undeniably provided us more and more accurate models of the universe, it has also come with a significant price. Schwartz (1986) detailed the battle for human nature that took place as the rise of science occurred, and he examined the fallout at the levels of values, meaning, and purpose. He detailed how, just over a century ago, the higher educational system in America taught moral philosophy, and in so doing it attempted to create a community of common values and shared aspirations. Following the growth of science and its (in)famous insistence on the separation of ought from is, higher education became a place where people learned about how the world was, but were no longer taught how they ought to be. Schwartz argued that the result has been the loss of moral direction. To see why a scientific worldview might have this effect consider that a text titled, The Scientists, opened with the line, “The most important thing that science has taught us about our place in the universe is that we are not special” (Gribbin, 2002, p. xvii).
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Instead of a moral compass, Schwartz (1986) argued that people have been given enormous freedom to construct their own lives and make their own decisions. Although this outcome clearly has had many positive elements, it also has resulted in large numbers of people, at least in America, who are fundamentally unsure when it comes to their philosophy of life. “They don’t seem to know where they belong. They don’t seem to know that they are doing the right things with their lives. They don’t seem to know what the right things are” (Schwartz, 1986, p. 19). If we put this in the context of the above analysis regarding the components that go into justification systems, we see that the scientific worldview is incomplete. What is needed is a way to blend scientific justifications and their emphasis on semantic precision, logical coherence, and evidence with subjective, social, and moral elements into a comprehensive system of justification that can place both sides of the scientific humanistic dialectic into a coherent whole. This is what the unified theory attempts to accomplish.
Valuing the Scientifi and the Humanistic Components of Justificatio Systems In a fascinating text, The Quest for a Unifie Theory of Information, Haefner (1999) makes the point that most comprehensive theories of information now recognize the need for a formulation that includes both an information processor and the data being processed. Said differently, information can only be understood as the interaction or product of the data and the processor. This formulation resonates with my views regarding the nature of knowledge. Specifically, Haefner’s insight suggests that Human Knowledge must be thought of as the product of the Human Knower (processor) and the Human Known (data being processed). This formulation lends itself usefully to the construction of a philosophy that is both scientific and humanistic (Henriques, 2005, 2008) because the two components, the scientific and the humanistic, reflect two different valuations of the human knower. In attempting to construct general laws that objectively describe complexity and change, the scientist works to de-value the influence of the specific human knower in the knower–known interaction. In other words, the task of the basic scientist is to describe “reality” in as knower-independent (AKA objective) terms as possible by factoring out subjective, social, and moral aspects of justification and leaving behind semantically clear, logically coherent, evidence-based descriptions of observed behavior and its underlying causes. Scientific methodology can be thought of as the tools by which this objective knowledge is acquired. Although it is certainly true that some of the developments in modern physics (i.e., quantum mechanics and general relativity) raised enigmatic questions about the relationship between observation, measurement, and knowledge, these developments did not lead to the general conclusion that there is no such thing as objective knowledge. In accordance with the analysis offered by Wilson (1998), I believe that the quest for objective truth (defined here as accurate models of complexity and change) should remain the idealized goal of the institution of science.
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But the analysis does not stop there. First, it must be recognized that de-valuing the knower and striving for knower independent knowledge is a value-laden stance, at one level. At the very least, epistemic values (accuracy, truth, honesty, etc.) are required. In addition, the institution of science is seen as emanating out of but also being constrained by social justification processes. At its most general and abstract level, this constraint is found in acknowledging that there is no view from nowhere and that the knowledge acquired by scientists is created and understood by human minds which inevitably construct worldviews based also on subjective, social, and moral components. That science is constrained by such values is more concretely recognized when one considers ethical constraints and Internal Review Boards that (appropriately) prevent particular avenues of investigation from being pursued. As a researcher on suicidal behavior, I could never experimentally investigate the causes of suicidal behavior by randomly assigning patients to a therapist who tells them they are worthless and their situation is hopeless. Second, we must also recognize the rather obvious point that science is not the only way of knowing. Science is seen as one particular type of justification system, one that is incomplete and that has particular strengths (accuracy) and limitations (amorality). Other justification systems (e.g., religious, legal, political) are explicitly prescriptive with regards to values. This is important because it highlights that science will inevitably interact with other justification systems. This problem is akin to the problem of the double hermeneutic, whereby scientific justification systems about humans feedback on them and influence their very nature (Quackenbush & Henriques, 2008). One does not have to look far to see how this might happen. Consider, for example, the public controversy that surrounds Darwin’s theory of evolution to this day. In the scientific humanistic worldview promoted here, the humanist values the knower and all of her idiosyncratic subjective elements that contribute to the uniqueness of her knower–known interactions. Specifically, in a very Rogerian way, the humanist empathizes with human phenomenology and embraces the subjective, social, and moral elements of justification systems. In the process of valuing the uniqueness of the knower, humanism defines humans as the most valued of subjective objects and, thus, unlike the “cold” formulations of basic science, the humanist side of the equation functions as a prescriptive value system. Yet, the humanist also values scientific knowledge as essential to promoting humanity and is not threatened by the ever-increasing power of scientific explanations. In the end, the scientific and humanistic positions are seen as existing in dialectical tension with one another, and there is the recognition that there is value to be had in both valuing and de-valuing the specific knower. It is clear that, because of its foundationalism, the unified theory is a different kind of justification system than postmodernists generally envision. But how does it compare with the vision of most scientists? After all, most scientists recognize that science is relatively silent on questions of morality and that those questions surely need addressing. For example, Steven Pinker (1997, p. 55) commented, “Like many philosophers, I believe that science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entities in the same world, just as poker and bridge are different
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games played with the same fifty-two card deck.” Scientists are also humanistic in some senses of the word. For example, although humanist and humanistic are the terms used by many in recent times to denote those in the humanities who are concern with human betterment and often have a postmodern bent, it is also the case that the term humanism refers to a philosophy that focuses on human betterment through science without recourse to supernatural explanations (as is defined by the American Humanist Association). Indeed, in this regard, many scientists see themselves as humanists and many conservative Christian commentators refer to them as such. Thus, the question arises: are traditional scientists also already humanistic in the way described here? Although it is my hope and belief that many natural scientists will gravitate toward the vision I am offering here and see it as very compatible with their own, it nevertheless remains the case that the unified theory offers a somewhat different perspective than a purely natural science view offered by some, such as E. O. Wilson. As eloquently articulated by Quackenbush (2005, 2008), with its focus on the problem of justification, the unified theory explicitly raises the problem of value and argues that scholars in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities need to make explicit the values that underlie the justification systems that guide their work. In what follows, I attempt to place scientific knowledge in narrative form and articulate an ultimate justification that can serve as a foundational guide for those embracing a scientific humanistic worldview.
The Story of the Universe As Told by the Unifie Theory In response to the problem of what might be termed ameaningfulness that emerges from a purely natural scientific worldview, several authors have made compelling calls for recasting our scientific knowledge in terms of a narrative in a manner that allows humans to see themselves as part of a greater whole. In The Universe Story, Swimme and Berry (1994, p. 1) cogently argue this point. In the modern period, we are without a comprehensive story of the universe. The historians, even when articulating world history, deal not with the whole but just with the human, as if the human were something [completely] separate from or an addendum to the story of the Earth and of the universe. The scientists have arrived at detailed accounts of the cosmos, but have focused exclusively on the physical dimensions and have ignored the human dimension of the universe. In this context we have fractured our educational system into its scientific and humanistic aspects, as though these were somehow independent of each other. With all our learning and with all our scientific insight, we have not yet attained such a meaningful approach to the universe, and thus we have at the present time a distorted mode of human presence on earth.
I believe that scientific knowledge does have a story to tell about humanity, and it is crucial that we convey such knowledge in the context of a meaningful narrative that explicitly emphasizes a moral component. The ToK System is a picture of the universe story as presently mapped out by scientific inquiry that potentially provides us with a shared origin myth.
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In the beginning there was no space or time or matter, only an Energy Singularity that some call God. Then, 13.7 billion years ago, there was the first cause; a chain reaction in the Energy Singularity that resulted in the primordial flaring forth called the Big Bang. During the very first phases of this chain reaction pure energy quanta froze into elementary particles, giving birth to Matter, the first dimension of complexity. Fermions are the fundamental building blocks of matter, and they ultimately interact to form all the matter in the universe. Space and time also emerged from the primordial event. After several hundred thousand years, the incredibly dense, hot universe expanded to the point at which energy and matter decoupled. The electromagnetic behavior that escaped is called cosmic microwave background radiation, and it now provides us a window to view our earliest beginnings. As the universe continued to expand and cool, matter formed into atomic systems and large collections of gases condensed and formed into stars and galaxies. This variation in energy dispersal created many different types of energy–matter environments, which in turn allowed for the formation of a variety of different types of atoms now represented and categorized by the Periodic Table. The atoms that now make up our bodies were formed in the bellies of stars and then dispersed throughout the universe in magnificent explosions. We are, thus, made from stardust. Atoms link up through the process of covalent bonding and create increasingly complex chemical systems. One particular environment, found on a planet orbiting an average size star in the Milky Way Galaxy, has been especially conducive to the formation of complex chemical systems. The chemical systems on the surface of planet Earth four billion years ago exhibited a wide variety of complex behaviors. One behavior of a particular class of these complex chemical systems was the behavior of self-replication. Through the process of replication, variation, and selection, these self-replicating chemical systems became increasingly complex and sophisticated and eventually formed into huge strands of ribonucleic acid. Over the next several hundred million years these self-replicating chemical machines transformed into primitive cells, then cells with a nucleus, and finally into large-scale, multi-cellular organisms, similar in complexity to modern day plants. The span of time ranging from 4 billion years ago to 700 million years ago saw the emergence of the second dimension of complexity, Life, which evolved via natural selection operating on genetic combinations across the generations. Between approximately 640 and 550 million years ago, a new type of multi-cellular creature emerged that moved around in its environment. The capacity for movement resulted in the evolution of a computational control center that measures the animal’s relationship to its environment and moves it toward beneficial and away from harmful environments. The nervous system represented a fundamental shift in complexity because behavior of animals is not fully restricted to information processed epigenetically. Instead, mental behavior is mediated by the information instantiated in and processed by the nervous system, and animals learn to generate new behavioral outputs in response to novel environmental stimuli. The period from 640 million years ago to five million years ago saw the evolution of the third dimension of complexity, Mind. The period from five million years ago through today saw the emergence of the fourth dimension of complexity, Culture, which occurred for one particular animal, the human animal. Bipedalism freed the hands and created more opportunities for behaviors like tool making, which in turn created selection pressures for increased neuro-cognitive capacities and more complicated social interactions. The evolution of human language is generally thought to have occurred between 500,000 and 50,000 years ago. This period is associated with substantial growth of the cortical structures, as well as changes in throat structures associated with language and is also associated with the emergence of our modern ancestors, Homo sapiens. Between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago, there was an explosion of cultural artifacts, such as carved statues, artwork in caves, and burials with ornamentation. Modern humans
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began to appear in landscapes all over the world. And the pace of change only accelerated. Agriculture appeared approximately 12,000 years ago, setting the stage for large-scale civilizations. Large-scale systems of belief emerged that coordinated the behaviors of huge populations of people. In more recent times, these justification systems have branched into different domains such as religion, law, mathematics, and philosophy. Several hundred years ago a new method for constructing justification systems emerged, called science. Built on the value of objective evidence, the scientific method allowed humans to develop increasingly accurate models of complexity and change, and this has given birth to new, previously unimaginable technologies and allowed humans more self-knowledge and more freedom to determine their destiny than any other creature on Earth. And yet there remains much uncertainty. With technology has come an unprecedented capacity to destroy the planet. Resources are being used up, populations are exploding, and planetary wide changes are occurring in ecologies around the world. And although technology continues to evolve at an astounding pace, it is not clear that humanity’s wisdom has likewise increased. Instead, the divisions between nations, religions, ideologies, and ethnicities seem as rigid and fragmented as ever, and it is not hard to envision how serious disruptions in available resources might lead to wide scale devastation, perhaps even the elimination of the human species.
It has generally been the great religious traditions that have put the understanding of humankind in narrative form. Now is the time for the academy to work deliberately toward the construction of a global justification narrative along the lines above. But if we are to create such a global narrative, how will it mesh with other global narratives?
Religion and Creation Science from the Vantage Point of the Unifie Theory The question of how the unified theory relates to the great religious traditions is, of course, an enormously complicated question with the answer depending on the specific religion, the interpretation of the unified theory, and the individual or group doing the interpreting. I am not a religious scholar and thus would be remiss to articulate detailed analyses of major religious tenets and how they mesh with the vision of the universe and the human condition set forth here. Nonetheless, there are some important points to be made. Let us start with the observation that the unified theory ultimately depicts humans as representing the most recent apex in an accumulating wave of complexity. With this observation, we can ask such questions as these: What has orchestrated this wave of complexity? Is there a guiding hand? Is there an ultimate purpose? Is there a force or entity outside the material universe? The great religious traditions seek answers to these questions. My position is that only an arrogant, scientistic attitude would claim that we know that nothing has orchestrated the grand scheme. Thus at one level of abstraction, it is obviously a possibility that is not directly contradicted by the unified theory or modern science. Consequently, one is in a position to argue that it is not unreasonable or irrational to have faith in the existence of a higher power
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in a way that is a separate magistrate from the domain of science. One can define faith as belief beyond scientific evidence and, as such, faith in a higher power can be grounded in subjective intuition, societal needs, or moral values. Yet, because many problematic things can theoretically be justified via faith, this exemption opens up a potential Pandora’s Box. As such, we should not grant faith the power of the state, and we must recognize that faith is ultimately subjective. This notion is currently one of the founding principles of liberal democracies. The position articulated here is that belief in supernatural entities currently requires a faith component and is legitimized via the subjective, social, or moral elements of justification. To be convincing in a scientific way, those who propound knowledge about God must provide—in a conceptually clear and logically coherent way—evidence for that assertion. And in that regard, such proposals have not fared well, and we do not have good scientific theories of God. It must further be stated that although disproving the existence of God is essentially impossible in principle, imagining circumstances that could prove the existence of a God that defied natural law is not at all difficult. And, indeed, if there were convincing evidence for the existence of God (or gods), then this evidence would have to be incorporated into our scientific models of the world. If, for example, God showed up at a stadium tomorrow for the entire world to see, the naturalistic philosophy that currently guides modern science would no longer be fully tenable. I do not think, however, that this would invalidate all of scientific knowledge. The point here is that, contrary to the opinions of many, I am arguing scientists should not banish a priori any concepts. But they should not accept concepts that cannot be supported with evidence and that fail to fit into the logically coherent connective network of ideas that make up scientific knowledge. Over the years, I have shared the unified theory with many religious students and colleagues, most of whom are Christian. Although some have struggled with both the specificity and the breadth with which the theory characterizes human nature, it is also the case that virtually all have been able to reconcile their religious vision of humanity with the unified theory. One of the biggest supporters of the unified theory, Leigh Shaffer (Shaffer, 2005, 2008), is an Evangelical Christian. We have had many fruitful conversations articulating how these two systems could potentially live in harmony. Although harmony between the unified theory and devoutly religious perspectives is possible, it nevertheless is the case that there are worldviews that definitively cannot be meshed with the version of reality offered by the unified theory.
The Unified Theory and Creationism On November 3, 2006, I engaged in a public debate and took the side of what should have been a slam dunk. My task was simply to argue that science had revealed increasingly accurate maps of the universe and our place in it, and that great scientists like Einstein and Darwin made important discoveries that moved us toward
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the truth. You might think that this would not be very controversial or disputable. In laying out the case, I explained how, with general relativity, Einstein had up-ended Newton’s more commonsensical views of space, time, and matter and how this new formulation has been borne out by almost a century of experimentation such that it now forms one of the bedrocks of modern physics. I also explained how Einstein’s formulation had led directly to a startling conclusion that the universe began as an energy singularity (a conclusion derived by a priest no less!), and scientists had used this formulation to literally take a picture of the early universe and date it to 13.7 billion years ago. These findings were so important and powerful that in 2005 two physicists (John Mather and George Smoot) had won the Noble Prize in Physics for their work on this project. I then laid out Darwin’s insights and explained how, in its broad outlines, natural selection was probably the best confirmed scientific theory proffered to date. I further explained that now that biologists could genetically map the tree of life, there was absolutely no doubt that there had been descent with modification from a common ancestor across billions of years. I then shared the evidence demonstrating the existence in the fossil record of so-called missing links between species and then reviewed evidence in geology regarding plate tectonics and various methods for dating deep time. As a true creation scientist, my opponent believed in both the literal interpretation of the King James Bible and in the general benefits of science. He thus had the enormously difficult task of arguing that the sciences that pointed to an ancient earth and universe (e.g., cosmology, geology, genetics, ecology, etc.) were all fatally flawed. Because he presented himself as a believer in science, he was forced to separate what he believed was “good science” (what he called operations science) from the “bad science” (what he called origins science). After the separation he then argued that while the former group of sciences had many demonstrative truths and had given us many excellent technologies, the latter was driven by misguided philosophies (atheistic humanists) and power-based politics. Finally, he had to argue against all of the empirical data supporting an ancient earth and universe, and that humans represent a branch on the evolutionary tree. Those who have a deep appreciation for science know that such a separation between origins and operations science is specious, to say the least. Moreover, any objective assessment clearly documents that it is not atheism that drives the discovery of an ancient earth, but instead it is a religious fundamentalism that drives the skepticism. About 120 people showed up, and after the debate was finished, we sent out questionnaires on who the audience thought won the debate. About 70 percent of the respondents said my opponent won the debate! They reported believing that the earth was approximately 6,000 years old, that Adam and Eve were the first people, and that “true” science supported this perspective. Actually, I knew prior to engaging in this debate what the outcome would be in terms of those who would support which side. I had not entered the debate to win it in the traditional sense of convincing the audience of the legitimacy of my point of view. I knew too much about the nature of justification systems, and how people become “entrenched” in particular worldviews such that they are unlikely to alter the foundation of their belief systems
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after a half hour talk. Flipping this around, I knew that my opponent was not going to convince me of the legitimacy of his position! So why did I do it? For several reasons. First, I have long been fascinated with Christian Fundamentalist justification systems that advocate for the literal interpretation of the Bible. When I first learned about it, I was amazed that some people actually “didn’t believe” in evolution and instead believed in the literal truth of the Adam and Eve narrative. I had thought such beliefs would only be slightly more common than believing the earth was flat or that Santa Claus was real. Yet when I looked into it I found to my astonishment that the belief is enormously common. For example, Gallup polls have been tracking this issue since 1982 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/108226/Republicans-DemocratsDiffer-Creationism.aspx). Specifically, Gallup has surveyed Americans regarding their beliefs about human origins with the following question: Which comes closest to your views: (1) Humans developed over millions of years, guided by God; (2) Humans developed over millions of years, God had no part, (3) God created humans as is within the last 10,000 years. The results have been remarkably consistent over time. Between 43 and 47% of Americans endorse the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so, whereas between 35 and 40% endorsed the claim that humans evolved over millions of years with God guiding the process, and 9–14% have endorsed the secular evolutionary perspective that humans evolved with no guidance from God.2 I wondered how was it possible that so many people believed in something that science had shown to be false. When I looked into it, I found a fascinating set of justifications attempting to debunk what was labeled origins science (which consisted of geology, cosmology, and most important evolutionary biology) and replace it with what was called creation science (Scott, 2004). Creation science attempted to co-opt the powerful construct science and argue that true and good science did in fact lead to a view of the universe consistent with the literal interpretation of the Bible. For example Henry Morris, who many consider the founder of the modern young earth creation science movement, argued that the Grand Canyon was not caused by a river running through the rocks over the eons, but instead was the result of The Great Flood described in the Bible (Whitcombe & Morris, 1961). He founded the Institute for Creation Research, which attempts to argue that there is scientific support for a young earth. The second reason I engaged in the debate was that the more I looked into it the more I became convinced that Young Earth Creationism (YEC) represented
2 Although this is by far the most common statistic reported for tracking the presence of young earth creationist beliefs, I believe the question is flawed and should not be interpreted as the percentage of individuals who believe in a young earth. The reason is because a person could easily see humans as having souls given by God in recent history, but still believe in a theistically guided evolutionary narrative. A much better question to get at the crux of the age of the earth issue would be something along the lines of the following: True or False Dinosaurs existed millions of years ago. I believe this question would be answered false by a much smaller percentage of the population.
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an enormous socio-cultural problem in America. Consider that prior to my debate I went to one of my opponent’s lectures on creationism. In the question and answer period (which included such questions—asked in earnest—as whether or not Adam and Eve had bellybuttons), the hostility toward the “anti-God” liberal elite was palpable. The narrative that emerged in the room was that evolutionary theory was a religious and political movement sparked by hyper-educated atheists who deemed themselves superior to the common man and too narcissistic to submit to the will of God. It turns out this was not an isolated incident but is a central line of thought underlying American social conservatism. In his book, What is the Matter with Kansas?, Frank (2004) highlights how the culture wars are central to understanding the political divide in America and that the evolution–creationism debate is central to the culture wars. The third reason I engaged in the debate was that the split between science and those who espouse creationist leanings is becoming ever more ingrained in American society, and the academy has not done much about it. For starters, some with postmodern convictions in the academy argue that both creationist and evolutionary views simply represent two different narratives (Levitt, 1999). This is an excellent example of the pernicious conclusions that can be reached from an illguided and extreme postmodern relativism. At an institutional level, there are now entire accredited universities, such as Liberty University, devoted to teaching individuals the veracity of YEC. And there are few systematic efforts by academics to enlighten (for an exception, see Scott, 2004). Mostly, there are strong warnings against engaging the creationists. I learned from fellow academics that creationists were experts at stacking the audience with supporters and using misleading quotations and findings as effective rhetoric, even if the ultimate argument was vacuous. My colleagues informed me that the creationists win by virtue of you showing up. Their goal is to get a hearing, to be seen as legitimate, and by engaging with them, one does just that. Thus what we have is a great and problematic divide, with no effective lines of communication. Recognizing this dynamic and using my knowledge of psychotherapy and how people change, I shifted my goal from attempting to convince the creationists in the audience that they were wrong to demonstrating that people like me were not evil, amoral, or power hungry individuals who sought to control them. I went into the debate with the commitment to show that I wanted to engage with them in their lines of justification and to share with them why I believed what I did. I had seen that many of them were angry at the perception of power-mongering evolutionists, and I wanted to put a gentler face on it. What does YEC have to do with the unified theory? It is an important justification system from the vantage point of the unified theory because the two are antithetical. The unified theory offers a post-postmodern scientific humanistic worldview. In contrast, like most literal fundamentalist religious perspectives, YEC is a premodern, anti-science, anti-humanistic justification system. The unified theory seeks to integrate and assimilate key insights of various perspectives to form a grand background of explanation from which a multitude of diverse, cultural, and individual justification systems can grow. But because it is a foundational system and
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not all systems are ultimately founded on justifiable ideas, there are some major justification systems that simply do not fit, even in a modified form. And YEC is a striking example of a large-scale justification system that cannot be assimilated and integrated. Its defining characteristics are literally and diametrically opposed to the logical structure and evidentiary base of the unified theory. As such, it needs to be eliminated if the vision offered by the unified theory is to be realized. At one level, the claim that YEC—and by extension literal religious fundamentalism in general—should be eliminated may sound to you as somewhat shocking, perhaps even dangerously totalitarian. The elimination of religious beliefs goes directly against foundational humanistic justifications, such as the freedom of people to believe what they want to believe. And in this regard, religious beliefs are especially sacred. They are a category of beliefs that do not and should not have to play by the same rules as other beliefs. Through the construct of religious faith, we should grant the legitimacy in belief beyond the evidence. As such, we absolutely do not want to claim absolutes about what is right and wrong when it comes to religious beliefs. Moreover, history is replete with examples of the incredible danger when systems in power are deciding what beliefs should and should not be eliminated. And yet, ask yourself, what if almost half of the population of the United States believed that the earth was flat? Or that the earth was the center of the solar system? Wouldn’t this be seriously problematic? With science and the scientific method, have we not developed ways to approximate the truth? Or, if you prefer, have we at least developed a system to determine beliefs that are false or inaccurate? And isn’t the elimination of false ideas a sign of genuine progress? It must at least be acknowledged that false ideas have the potential for serious problems. These issues are complicated. In fact, they are at the heart of one of the basic human dilemmas we have not solved, which is how to reconcile an appreciation for multicultural diversity and religious freedom with the academy’s knowledge of how the world and people actually work. The rise of postmodernism has a solution, but unfortunately it is not sufficient as it basically brushes questions of truth under the rug and prevents genuine guidance from emerging. In America the split between creationists and evolutionists has resulted in great cultural divides that are unfortunate because, as with many divides, it readily results in mentalities that pit “us” versus “them.” I felt the vitriol of the creationists when I went to my friend’s lecture and found a seething hostility toward the anti-God intellectual elite. And to be honest, I have recognized my own vitriol as I recalled my concerns about the “ignorant rednecks” we might be surrounded by when we first considered the thought of moving to a rural southern town. Yet after 7 years of living in such a rural town and engaging our family in activities like a Southern Baptist basketball league, I have come to see my prejudicial stereotypes were just that. Christian fundamentalists are good people. They are moral, build strong communities, and attempt to manage the vicissitudes of life very much like any other group. They are just misinformed. Why are they so misinformed? The fault lies in large part with the academy. The ultimate point I want to make here is that the academy would be in a much better
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position to clarify the relationship between science, religion, and politics if it could be guided by a comprehensive scientific humanistic worldview like the one offered here. For starters, when the scientific discoveries are placed in narrative form like The Universe Story, a vision is offered that is much more easily comprehendible for lay persons. We should not overlook the fact that virtually all human societies have developed their philosophies in narrative form. The controversy and confusion that has surrounded the Intelligent Design (ID) movement offers additional evidence that the lack of an effective scientific humanistic worldview sets the stage for upheavals resulting from confusing mixtures of science, religion, and politics. In brief, the ID movement argues that a careful examination of nature reveals evidence of intelligent design. The biologist Michael Behe, for example, argued that the biochemical mechanisms inside cells evidence an irreducible complexity that cannot be accounted for by Darwin’s theory of natural selection and instead points to an outside designer (Behe, 1998). From the vantage point of the unified theory, this is an interesting and fairly radical idea that deserves a hearing, but like all extraordinary claims it would require extraordinary evidence prior to being accepted. And given how little scientific progress has been made on demonstrating irreducible complexity and how many holes have been shot through Behe’s argument, most scientists consider the idea rebuffed. What is most interesting, though, is what happened to ID as a political phenomenon. It became a major point of contention, controversy, and achieved large amounts of public support. The reasons stem from the following: (1) the need of the populace to believe in the possibility of God; (2) the fragmented nature of science and the ineffective way scientific knowledge is presented; (3) the view of some that science by definition deals only with the natural world and thus must exclude any evidence of supernatural powers because of a priori philosophical assumptions; (4) the amoral nature of natural science; and (5) the rise of postmodernism. The combination of these elements allowed politically minded proponents of ID to create a wedge between science and creationist views that could destabilize science’s hold on political power structures. Pennock (2010) detailed how Philip Johnson, the Godfather of the ID movement, was influenced by postmodernism and the negative consequences of scientific naturalism to mastermind “the Wedge,” a strategy designed to unite the ID movement with YEC against the prevailing supposedly atheistic, materialistic, and reductionistic view advocated by natural scientists. The argument was developed to show that a scientific worldview rejected a priori any possibility of supernatural phenomena, and using the deconstructionist approach developed by postmodernists, Johnson argued that natural science was scientism that was held in place by nonempirical philosophical assumptions and political power structures. If the unified theory—or a similar scientific humanistic worldview—were established within the academy and shared effectively with the public, there would have been no wedge with which to gain leverage. The claim of ID would have been framed appropriately as a descriptive claim and placed in the context of a scientific analysis. However, it would have been completely separated from the obviously false claims of biblical literalism. This is why I focus on the age of the earth as the
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central point. YEC makes claims that are diametrically opposed to established scientific knowledge and are known to be false. It is a problem in society that needs to be addressed.
Toward the Fifth Joint Point Whereas there will always be debates on how and why the universe story began, more pressing to me are questions of how the human aspect of the universe story ends. Will the combination of careless stewardship, population explosion, local realities clung to as the truth, and resource degradation and depletion end in global conflict and the destruction of Culture? Or will humankind continue to stumble through its existence, being pulled via the vicissitudes of various civilizations? Or will there be a phase transition, a pathway realized to a higher way of being? As humanity seems to be simultaneously sowing the seeds of its potential destruction and elevation, any of these outcomes appears possible. I am, of course, hoping for the third possibility, and I use the metaphor of the fifth joint point to provide an idealistic, transcendental beacon to guide my behavioral investments and justifications. Over the past several years, I have become more and more concerned with what can be termed ultimate justification . Ultimate justifications provide the foundational structure legitimizing the actions that follow. I used to believe that the truth was my ultimate justification. Following Kant, however, I now realize that the final end is not the accumulation of accurate knowledge because in the end accurate knowledge is not enough (Quackenbush, 2008). Further reflection has made me realize that I did not begin “the noble quest” (Calhoun, 2004) that resulted in the unified theory searching for accurate knowledge but instead I was concerned with questions of human betterment: What is the good life? How do I live it and share in it with my friends and family? And how, as a mental health professional, do I foster it in people who are suffering? I have come to see the value in the unified theory as not being the extent to which it is true but the extent to which it increases the good. Consider that if I believed the unified theory was both true but also that it would lead to widespread destruction and suffering if shared, I would not promote it. These reflections have led me to the deeper questions regarding what it is that I am ultimately attempting to justify. Ultimately, I am attempting to justify the construction of the fifth joint point, a metaphorical passage to MetaCulture, a higher dimension of existence. To achieve this passage, we must merge information technologies with wisdom in a way that allows for the effective blending of the true and the good. A purely scientific worldview is insufficient because analytic truth value is not an end in itself but ultimately must work in the service of moral goals. For Kant, the ultimate goal is happiness with the worthiness to be happy (Quackenbush, 2008). While this resonates with me, I have come to frame it in slightly different terms. My purpose in life—my ultimate justification—is to be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
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Dignity is the state of being valued or respected. I conceive of it here in two senses, one of which is fundamental and the other of which is incremental. Through much cross-cultural dialogue, the United Nations ratified the United Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, and in doing so it was ultimately concluded that human rights were justified on the grounds that all persons had dignity (Kohen, 2007). Although the various cultural and national groups could not agree on why people had dignity, there nevertheless was universal agreement that they did in fact possess a fundamental dignity. It was from this foundational starting point that basic human rights were justified. The second sense of the word, incremental dignity, refers to acts of individuals or groups that are worthy of respect, honor, and admiration (and, by implication, the reverse). Great works of art, noble acts of self-sacrifice such as that of Thich Quang Duc,3 or resilience in the face of major trials and tribulations are all examples of incremental dignity. Thus, while we each have the same level of fundamental dignity at birth, we must nevertheless also judge our actions on the extent to which they enhance or diminish incremental dignity. Well-being refers to the state of health and happiness of individuals and groups at biological, mental, and social levels of existence (cf. The World Health Organization definition of health). It can be considered from the subjective, first person perspective, as well as a more third person or functional perspective. Subjective well-being can be divided into the experiential and justifying dimensions of human existence, with the former referring to the ratio of positive as opposed to negative feeling states (e.g., joy and contentment versus misery and anxiety) and the latter referring to the reflective evaluations made regarding the degree of satisfaction with life. The third person perspective refers to a more objective evaluation of the functioning of the various organic, mental, and social systems, along with the predicted future trajectory, and the impact on the well-being of others. Integrity is the state of being honest, sound, and coherent. Whereas dignity and well-being are decidedly humanistic constructs, integrity includes the epistemic values such as accuracy, truth, and logical consistency and thus is more scientific in essence. For example, speaking personally, although believing in a higher power may well improve well-being and even plausibly be argued to increase human dignity, for me supernatural justifications do not cohere with my sense of intellectual integrity and thus I have not internalized them. Of course, if I were experientially touched by God like so many feel that they have been, such beliefs could then be grounded in the subjective element of justification and held with integrity. I strive to be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity. I have found that whether I am teaching, being with my family, challenging those who do not see the world as I do, working on the unified theory, conducting psychotherapy, 3 When I hear of terrorist attacks involving suicide bombers—an all too frequent occurrence— I often think of the contrast with Thich Quang Duc and consider the remarkably different reactions the two kinds of acts engender and think what a different place the world would be if those who were so committed to addressing the injustices they see would use only the sanctity of their own lives to make the point.
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or even struggling with my own issues, I can use this ultimate justification as a guide. I can even conceive of it in a fairly objective, scientific way. To put it in social engineering terms: Can we construct societies that tend to enhance dignity and well-being with integrity? This hypothetical moral imperative is offered here at the end of the outline of the unified theory to clarify the foundational grounding of my scientific humanistic worldview so that the nature of the fifth joint point as I envision it might be understood.
Chapter 10
Epilogue: The Future of the Discipline
Psychologists reading this last chapter may have noticed something rather peculiar. The audience, which for the rest of the book has generally been psychologists, now becomes “the academy.” In point of fact, the concluding chapter does not even include the word psychology. Instead it grapples with the fundamental tensions between the sciences and the humanities and argues that humanity at large must develop a global worldview grounded in a moral vision that supports the progress of science built on a clear foundation of human values. This raises the following question about the nature of the unified theory: Is the unified theory a new system of thought for psychology or is it a new scientific humanistic worldview for the academy at large? I have come to see it as both. And given that psychology has always lived on the fault lines of human knowledge, perhaps it should not come as a shock that the solution to the problem of psychology opens up a whole new way to view human knowledge and understand the human condition. Implicit in the concluding chapter is the point that the unified theory offers a new vision for the place of psychology in the academy. I am thus ultimately confronting psychologists with a choice. On the one hand, we can continue to remain fragmented and accept our position within the academy as an ill-defined, pre-paradigmatic discipline that exists as one of a multitude of behavioral sciences and health professions. Or we can seize the potential of a coherently defined field grounded in a scientific humanistic worldview and take our place as leading the world into the next global age.
G. Henriques, A New Unifie Theory of Psychology, C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5_10,
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Index
A Anosognosia, 117–118 Adaptive problem of social justification, 114–116, 145 Adaptive representational networks (ARNs), 68, 78, 85, 108 Adler, Alfred, 96–98 Agency, 95–96, 103–104, 111 Aggression, 9, 18, 37, 96, 98, 176–178, 228 Ainsworth, Mary, 100–101 Alien hand syndrome, 132 Ameaningful thought, 30 American Psychological Association, 29, 33, 35, 99, 182, 197 Ancestral inclusive fitness, 51, 54 Anglican Church, 149 Animistic attribution, 135, 149–150 Anthropomorphism, 189 Antony, Martin, 240 Architecture of the human mind, 48, 54, 70–73, 79–80, 87, 99, 121, 151, 189, 212, 235, 237 Aristotle, 159 Assimilative integration, 8, 210 Association for Psychological Science, 35, 182 Attachment styles, 101 Attachment theory, 16, 83, 87, 96, 100–101, 108, 111 Attitudes, implicit and explicit, 131, 139–140 Attributions, 135, 137, 150 Autonomy, 16, 85–87, 90–95, 97, 99, 101, 103–104, 106, 178, 236 B Beck, A. T., 19, 60, 91, 103–104, 178, 200, 201, 203, 217, 219, 237 Behavior, definition of, 8 Behavior therapy, 199, 203, 214–216, 219 Behavioral investment theory
principle of computational control, 16, 53–54, 56, 72, 80, 84, 187, 260 principle of development, 56 principle of energy economics, 48, 50, 56, 60, 68 principle of evolution, 52–53, 56 principle of genetics, 52–53 principle of learning, 66 Behavioral selection, 10, 55, 68, 187, 195 Behavioral shutdown model, 57–63, 216 Behaviorism, 6–7, 10–12, 29, 31–34, 38, 46, 64–67, 71, 80, 182, 185–187, 189, 191, 198 Behe, Michael, 267 Biological context, 232–233, 239, 241 Big five, trait theory, 104, 230–231 Blindsight, 54 Bowlby, John, 100 Bush, George, W., 139 C Carnap, Rudolf, 162 Characteristic adaptations, 231–232 Classical conditioning, 67, 69 Cognitive, definition of, 69 Cognitive dissonance, 128, 131, 133–135, 145, 152, 195, 237 Cognitive psychotherapy, 11, 72, 124, 201, 213, 238, 240 Cognitive science, 8, 16, 63–65, 122, 131, 151, 197, 205 Common factors, 6, 209–210 Communion, 95–96, 103–104, 111 Conceptualization, 63, 104, 146, 216, 227, 229–230, 232–233, 235, 238–243 Consciousness, 114–118, 120–126, 136–137 Context of justification, 21, 126–127, 194, 255 Cosmic evolution, 13, 152, 161, 173, 247 Creation science, 253, 261–268
287
288 Cultural psychology, 12–13 Culture, 145–146, 148–150 D Darwin, Charles, 90, 165, 188, 194, 262 Defensive system, 211–212, 237, 241–242 Depression, conception of, 57–63 Dignity, 199, 268–270 Double hermeneutic, 23, 25, 167, 178, 194, 258 Dual processing model, 122–123 Dysfunctional thought record, 217, 219 E Eclecticism, 6, 209–210 Ecological Systems Theory, 126 Ego development, 90, 123 Einstein, Albert, 21, 153, 262–263 Emergence, 37, 118–120, 125, 145–148, 151, 153, 160–173 Emergent evolution, 160–163, 173 Emotion Focused Therapy, 130, 220–221, 238 Erikson, Eric, 9o, 233 Evolutionary psychology, 11–12, 16–17, 38, 67 ESTs (Empirically Supported Treatments), 200–201, 203, 205 Excuses, 18, 126, 131, 140–142 Existentialism, 11 Experiential consciousness, 121, 130–131, 157 Experiential self, 123, 127, 130–131, 152, 157–158 Experiential system, 122–124, 212, 219, 235–239, 254 Experiential therapy, 220–224 F Fact-value distinctions, 169, 171–172, 174–175 Fifth Joint, the, 247–269 Fixed action patterns, 56, 73, 235 Fragmented pluralism, 26, 250 Frankl, Victor, 11, 237–238 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 22, 31, 41, 51, 97, 121, 183, 191–192, 194–196, 199, 224, 255 Freudian Filter, 127–131 G Genesis, 155 Gestalt theory, 220 Gestalt therapy, 220–221 Gould, Stephen Jay, 120, 166 Graham, Billy, 20
Index H Habit system, 234–235, 238, 242 Hamilton, William, 164–165 Haplodiploidy, 165–166 Horney, Karen, 97–98, 111 Human psychology, 22, 36, 40, 47, 52, 63, 80, 114, 122, 145, 158, 174, 183–184, 190–191, 194–197, 206, 211, 235 Humanistic psychology, 7, 11 Hull, Clark, 29, 51, 66 Humanities, 174–175 I Imaginative thought, 48, 73, 76–78, 151 Inclusive fitness, 51, 54, 164–165 Influence matrix, the autonomy, 90–91 competition and dominance, 87–88 cooperation, affiliation, and altruism, 88–90 dependency, 86–87 dynamic relations between dimensions, 93 emotions, 93–94 hostility and submission, 91–93 self:other quadrants, 94–95 social influence, 86 spheres of influence, 95–96 Integrated pluralism, 26 Integrity, 5, 27, 98, 104, 174, 268–270 Intelligent Design (ID), 267 Interpersonal Circumplex, 96, 98–99, 111 Interpreter function, 131–133, 145 J Jefferson, Thomas, 21 Jenkins, David, 149 Jesus, 21, 149 Johnson, Phillip, 267 Joint points, 15, 24, 153, 162, 173, 182, 247 Jung, Carl, 31, 90, 125, 160 Justification hypothesis, the development of, 17–18 different from beliefs, 17–21 different from rationalizations, 18 nature of, 19–24 Justification systems elements of analytic, 254 evidentiary, 254 moral, 255 semantic, 254 social, 255 subjective, 254–255
Index K Kerry, John, 139 Kin selection, 164 Koch, Sigmund, 29–32 L Large-scale justification systems, 151, 159, 173, 234, 249 Law of Effect, 55 Learning and developmental context, 232–233, 241 Liar (film), 130 Life, 153, 160, 162–163, 170, 178, 182, 187–194, 197 Life History Regulation System (LHRS), 56 Linguistic justification, 48, 73, 77 Lorenz, Konrad, 56, 73, 100 M Major depressive disorder, 58 Malan triangle of conflict, 128 Malan triangle of persons, 225 Maslow, Abraham, 11, 76 Matter, 153, 159–160, 162–163, 173 May, Rollo, 11 Mental behavior, 16, 34, 52, 55, 60, 72, 127, 158, 173, 183–192, 206, 233, 260 Mentalism, 187 Mind, 33–34, 68–73, 247, 249–250, 252, 256, 260 Mirror Self-Recognition (MSR) Task, 117 Modern evolutionary synthesis, 15, 51–52, 153, 163–168, 187 Morgan, Conrad Lloyd, 160–162, 192 Motive to control, 68–70 N Neanderthals, 146 Norms, 146–148, 234 O Operant conditioning, 10, 64, 67, 213, 216 Operant experiential, 48, 73–76, 151, 235 Operations science, 263 Ordinary People (film), 83, 106–111 Origins science, 263–264 P P – M => E equation, 235 Parenting styles, 83, 96, 101–102, 111 Perceptual control theory, 63–66 Pleasure pain parallel fitness principle, 54, 66
289 Postmodernism, 4, 172, 251, 253, 266–267 Powers, William T., 64 Prism, 155–159 Private self-consciousness, 121, 123, 129–130 Problem of psychology, the, 29–42 Professional psychology, 57, 182, 184, 190–191, 197–205 Psychoanalysis criticism of, 9–10, 228 key insights of, 9–13, 212–214 Psychodynamic theory, 8–10, 16–17, 38, 83, 96–98, 122, 127, 131, 151, 227–228 Psychodynamic therapy, 224–229 Psychological behaviorism, 38, 66 Psychological formalism, 36, 174, 183–184, 190–197 Psychology, definition of, 35 Psychotherapy integration assimilative integration, 210 common factors, 209–210 technical eclecticism, 210 theoretical integration, 210 Public self-consciousness, 121, 123 Q Qualitative generalizability, 77 Quang Duc, Thich, 113–114, 269 Quantum gravity, 153, 249 R Radical behaviorism, 7, 10, 187 Reason giving categories of, 142 Reasoning deontic, 143 moral, 144 motivated, 144 Reductionism, 160, 162, 169–174 Relational system, 213, 225, 236, 239, 241 Reverse engineering, 115–116, 118 Rogerian filter, 130–131, 212 Rogers, Carl, 11, 22, 51, 90, 130, 191–192, 198–199, 220, 255 Recipe knowledge, 146 S Saxe, John G., 3, 6 Science, as a justification system, 251–253 Science for the People, 166–167 Science wars, the, 249–251 Scientific humanistic worldview, 248–249, 251, 258–259, 265, 267, 270–271 Second Law of Thermodynamics, 48–50
290 Self-consciousness, 40, 72, 91, 111, 113–118, 120–123, 127, 129, 132–133, 135–136, 138, 145, 151–153, 155–158, 168, 183–184, 190, 237 Self-knowledge, organization of accuracy motive, 137–138 consistency motive, 138–139 enhancement motive, 137 Self-serving bias, 135–136 Seligman, Martin, 20 Sensory-motor, 48, 69, 73–74, 76, 79, 151 Sentience, 72, 122, 157, 193, 235 Singularity, the, 247 Skinner, B. F., 7, 10–11, 22, 25, 31–32, 34, 46, 51, 55, 66, 68, 74, 183, 187–188, 191–193, 195–196, 199, 214, 255 Sociobiology, 12, 57, 89, 163–168, 170, 178, 192 Sociometer theory, 102–103, 111 Sociotropy, 104 Sociocultural context, 216, 231–232, 234, 241 Soft modularity, 69–70, 75, 85 Sokal Alan, 249, 251–252 Split-brain, 132 Staats, Arthur, 35, 38–39, 55, 66–69, 78 Supersisters, 165 T Technology, 126, 145–148, 159, 247–248, 261 Theodices, 149–150 Three function learning theory, 55, 67 Tillman, Pat, 89
Index Tinbergen, Niko, 56–57 Four Questions, 56 Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, 155 Tree of Knowledge System, The, 153–178 different dimensions and levels, 158–162 Tripartite model of human consciousness, 120–122 U Ultimate justifications, 268 Unified approach to conceptualizing, 205 Unified psychotherapy project, 211 United declaration of human rights, 269 Universe Story, 259, 267–268 V Vitalism, 160, 187–188 Vygotsky, 35 W Watson, John B., 31, 33–34, 182, 184, 186, 194, 214 Well-being, 36, 91, 183–184, 198, 206, 268–270 Wilson, Edward O., 51, 90, 150, 153, 162–178, 193, 257, 259 Work effort, 45–47 Wundt, Wilhelm, 21–22, 31, 41, 182–184, 194 Y Young Earth Creationism (YEC), 264–265
