REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD7082)

[SDMAIL John Gunkler]

Posted by  "John Gunkler" <johngunkler at comcast.net>

Steve, and List,

I often push for the inclusion of good psychology in our models, so I
appreciate Steve Wehrenberg's attempts to get at root causes of resistance
to change.

I'd like to offer a couple of my insights as well.

1.  There is such a thing as behavioral "inertia."  That is, it is difficult
to change a behavior that has been well established by a past history of
events.  As a colleague once taught me, "Everyone's behavior makes sense to
that person."  No matter what we "objectively" may think about someone
else's behavior, that person must have a history where the behavior
(overall) has provided positive outcomes or they wouldn't be engaging in
that behavior.  

2.  There are really only two ways to change behavior (what follows is
everything I know about "motivation"):  
	a.  Through instilling fear of negative outcomes as a result of
continuing the behavior.
	b.  Through assuring that there are more, and more beneficial,
positive outcomes for changing behavior than for continuing the former
behavior.

3.  Behavioral inertia is understandable, then, because (a) we have a
history of (at least slightly) positive outcomes, so to believe there will
be a change in the future will require some heavy arguments about what's
different now than in the past; and (b) a bird in the hand (our experience
with positive outcomes) is worth two in the bush (someone else's "promise"
that the future will be better with different behavior.)

"Why do people do what they know to be bad for them and not do what they
know to be good for them?"

Before getting into structural explanations, I would have to ask:

1.  What does it mean to say that people "know" that something is bad for
them or good for them?
2.  When we say that someone else "knows" something, how do we know that?
Is it our opinion that they know it, or do we believe that that (somehow)
they should know it -- or do we have actual evidence of their knowledge?
[In which case, please refer to the first question, above.]

What this may boil down to could be this:  Simple "knowledge of" something
is not a very good behavior change agent.

One clue to what happens may be derived from Chris Argyris/Peter Senge's
"Ladder of Inference."  If you're not familiar with it (and if not, shame on
you!), it is a graphic that shows how taking action (i.e., behavior) is
related through a chain of inferences to observable events and experiences.
One implication of the Ladder of Inference, I think, is that behavior will
not change until all of the inferences are made -- that is, until
"knowledge" turns into beliefs which impel actions.  

The trickiest part is the "reflexive loop" that connects beliefs to data --
that is, our beliefs about the world influence how we select "data" to be
considered (from all of the objective input we get from the world), which
influence what we think the meanings of the input are, which influence the
assumptions we make, that allow us to draw conclusions and, therefore, to
adopt beliefs [and we're back into the loop again.]

So, the idea that someone "knows" something may not mean that they have
actually accepted that knowledge (as fundamentally valid data), nor that
they have derived the same "meaning" from it that we do, nor that they make
the same assumptions we think they should, nor draw the "right" conclusions.

There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.


John
Posted by  "John Gunkler" <johngunkler at comcast.net>
posting date  Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:14:23 -0400