Aspiring to Self-Curated Thinking

Let’s assume that you aspire to independent thought. That aspiration is not automatic; it presumes metacognition – thinking about your thought process.  And a willingness to put forth the effort necessary for independent thought in our culture that relentlessly assails you with propaganda and other forms of manipulation.

Among the elements essential for independent thought, I offer two.  First consider your frame of reference.  What is it about you, the topic, and any potential receiver of your information that provide the contexts for your communication?  Among other things, those factors will determine the ideas that come into your mind, the words that you choose, and the conviction and passion with which you entertain and deliver your thoughts.  

Second, what sources and other particulars of objective data guide you?   Have you gathered relevant base rate information?  That is, information which provides as much reasonably valid relevant information about an idividual or group as possible. For instance, if the frame of reference is determined by your putative qualities and/or those of your identity group and contrasted with qualities of a different group, what base rates have guided you? Is it possible that you made absolutely no effort to gather any base rate information?  Perhaps you merely used your intuition, or mindlessly followed information provided to you by someone else.

The importance of frame of reference and base rates, of course, extend far beyond our evaluations of other people.  They also determine how we evaluate ourselves.  Double, K. S., et al. 2024) studied how accurately subjects were able to assess the effectiveness of their own ability to regulate the emotions of other people.  The investigators concluded that the subjects’ beliefs about their regulation efficacy of other people were strongly biased by the average level of emotion expressed by the regulation target. [base rate]. Stated simply, the subjects frequently believed that they helped when they had not helped or even when they had made the other individual worse in part because they did not know how well or poorly the others usually regulated their own emotions.   

REFERENCE

Double, K. S., Pinkus, R. T., Gross, J. J., & MacCann, C. (2024). Emotion regulation efficacy beliefs: The outsized impact of base rates. Emotion, 24(1), 234–240.

Are You Sincere?

 “Are you sincere?” is a question that resonated deeply enough with the American public to have been the title and theme of a song recorded 14 times, and that reached number three on the Billboard chart. The song resonated, I believe, because it portrayed a fundamental. issue in all interpersonal experience. In my Questioning & Answering book, I coupled sincerity with reasonableness to address those essential features of human discourse. There I suggest that in all important discussions wherein we ask a question, are asked a question, provide an answer, or receive an answer, we should consciously consider its sincerity and reasonableness.  Among other considerations, sincerity and reasonableness must be contextualized for time, place, and person [That merely is one aspect of contextualizing for your internal context (body and mind) and your external context (everything outside your body and mind)] 

Evaluate why the questions and answers are being presented now, why they are being presented in this particularsetting, who is presenting them, what your internal context is, and any other relevant contextual elements within and outside of your body and mind.

 

Anytime, anyplace, anyone can question and answer about anything, but the questions and answers that deserve our greatest attention and effort are those that are most reasonable and sincere. 

 

“Sincerity” means that the speaker has no hidden agenda, especially no disingenuous or manipulative one.  Subjective sincerity is the speaker’s honest confidence in that which they say.  Objective sincerity is the sincerity level that the average unbiased observer would attribute to the speaker.  “Reasonableness” means the extent to which the speaker’s comments reflect reality.  Subjective reasonableness is the speaker’s belief in the reasonableness of their position. And objective reasonableness is the extent to which the best available information supports the speaker’s belief. 

 

As is obvious, different questioning and answering environments demand different levels of sincerity and reasonableness from each questioner and answerer. One certainly would hope that a teacher in a classroom is as highly sincere and as highly reasonable in their communications as possible.  On the other hand, one could forgive a friend at a sporting event if they were moderately insincere and unreasonable, especially if they intended to be entertaining rather than informative.

Why Did You Say That ?

I accept your right to your conclusions. But I don’t necessarily accept the PROCESS by which you reach them.  That is the guiding belief that undergirds my discussions with other people. In this blog post I offer only a few of the many reasons for the PROCESS by which I came to my belief.

First and foremost, if we each inform the other of our process, We can more objectively decide the specifics of what we do and do not agree with.  And that knowledge of process can enable us to adjust our opinions of the issue, and/or of each other.  That is, we can understand our extant messages and our extant dyadic relationship variables in ways that increase the chances for rational objective discussions and of mutually satisfying resolutions in the here and now.

Second, we both do well to be aware of and sensitive to the personal identity factors that influence our capacity for rational discourse.  Some of the factors are relatively easy to infer. For instance, given the USA hyperattention and hypersensitivity to all things racial, in black-white discourse even the most well-intention, innocuous comment can be deliberately or inadvertently interpreted as a microaggression and used as an offensive or defensive weapon.

Third, in contemporary discourse, traditional definitions of personal identity are swamped [connotations deliberately implied] by what some social psychologists call "mega-identity," meaning potential features of your identity grafted onto you when you succumb to rules dictated by so-called influencers, such as politicians, actors, sports figures, relatives, or friends.  Accordingly, in conversations, interlocutors never can be sure what social identity forces might complicate and distort the presumed neutral message they had intended to convey.

The final reason for this truncated explanation of the process by which I came to my blog post beliefs is related to the third reason.  To wit, “mimesis” describes my belief that too often individuals reach conclusions primarily due to their conscious or unconscious propensity to imitate other people rather than to their own independent analysis.  This imitative tendency is one more explanation for an interlocutor’s disinclination to engage in objective questioning and answering that can facilitate rational conversation and resolve disputes, since the imitator might have insufficient objective information and/or sense of agency to support what they say and what they refuse to hear from their interlocutor. Those unaware of or unwilling to accept that their statements were not adequately rational and/or agentic, might be too ashamed to recognize and/or admit that their comments were mostly due to mindlessly parroting influencer pronouncements.

Hopefully, my having raised the issue of the processes that underlie your beliefs and communications will prompt you to consider your own personal idiosyncratic belief processes and difficult conversations more carefully and to strive to maximize your rationality and communication agency.  That advice presumes that you have sufficient interest, willingness, and personal identity investment to expend the effort to understand your thought processes and to converse adaptively. Since that attitude often demands courage and effort, you might consciously or unconsciously conclude that it is not worthwhile. In that case, be prepared to accept the natural consequences of your choice.

I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT !

 "I don't want to talk about it!" is an assertion that virtually everyone has delivered and/or received. Thinking about that assertion, I believe, is worth the effort. And, inspired by the ancient Dutch Aphorism, "Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback" I frame this blog post in terms of a trust-discuss nexus. Let's begin with the fact that talk has its evolutionary-physiological roots in a sensation-perception-action complex. The volitional actions of all mobile organisms usually are directed toward perceived life-sustaining targets and away from life-threatening ones. Our primate, non-human ancestors, like all mammals, typically would flee from or attack a perceived approaching dangerous agent; they were limited to such direct actions. But homo-sapiens evolved a language system that enabled them to mentally “decide,” however quickly, slowly, effectively, or ineffectively their response, and when the threatening agent was a language-possessing human, both the threatened and threatener could substitute language action for motor action. Thus, with relative safety, they could determine who and what to trust and distrust. Applying this framework to disputing interlocutors, then, consider what happens when one member emphatically declares, "I don't want to talk about it!". In essence they have excise out from the contentious interaction our unique and critical human advantage. Left is the non-human, mammalian options to flee or attack. Of course, fleeing and attacking come in degrees. For instance, there can be spatial and/or temporal elements, such as literally running away or ceasing the dispute for some time period. When the interlocutors agree with the spatial or time separation, they can resolve to defer their contentious interaction to a more propitious space and/or time. However, when the issue ultimately is not mutually resolved for both participants, they have devolved to a sub-human problem-solving level, at least for their disagreement. I addressed the thorny, ubiquitous problem of refusal to talk in detail in my previous books, so I now limit myself to only one of the ideas: melding metacommunication with the sensation-perception-action complex. When metacommunicating, interlocutors communicate about their communication. In the current case, they would discuss how and why they are not communicating adaptively. So, for example, first, the participants ask about sensation (What literally did you see and hear in my communication?) Then, they ask about perception (How did you interpret what you saw and heard?). Finaly, they inquire about action (What did that do to you and/or What do you think that did to me?). I strongly suspect that you will find that issues of control, and/or power, and/or identity will be critical and must be addressed to surmount your communication impasse. And those complex issues are essential for the relationship trust that left on horseback. And I trust that we can successfully tiptoe, step-by-step through them in my future blog postings.

Can We Talk? Jews, Muslims, Republicans, Democrats, and Others

 Of course, we CAN talk. But how?  And there are other equally important questions: what are the objectives of our talk? Do you primarily seek victory or open, honest dialogue? Or, more precisely, what exactly do YOU, I, and WE want?

 

Such questions are easily asked, but not so easily answered. I wrote two relevant books whose texts I now draw upon: Questioning & Answering: How, Who, When, Where, and Conversation: Striving, Surviving, and Thriving: Searching for Messages and Relationships. But, in the interest of brevity, I cannot in this posting explain sufficiently the details they provide.  So, I collapse all the important, complicated introductory questions into a deliberately simplified, format.

 

THE MODE OF LISTENING - Do you listen only with conscious or unconscious intent to rebut?

 

THE BALANCE OF LISTENING - Do you deliberately strive to keep yours and your interlocutor’s allocation of listening as equal as possible?

 

THE MODE OF TALK - Do you talk as objectively as you can manage?

 

THE BALANCE OF TALK - Do you deliberately strive to keep yours and your interlocutor’s allocation of speaking as equal as possible?  

 

THE EVALUATION PROCESS - Do you continually monitor your emotion and simultaneously try to dampen it during your dialogue?

 

THE EVALUATION CONCLUSION - Do you accept, as accurately as possible, how well you have been able to combat your biases and preconceptions?

 

THE INVITATION TO FURTHER LISTENING - Do you objectively help your interlocutor to listen to your legitimate points and offer to explain your ideas more clearly, such as with more nuance and/or examples, and/or admissions of your ideas' limitations?

 

THE INVITATION TO FURTHER TALKING - Do you ask for further examples and explanations from your interlocutor when they might facilitate your understanding of their positions?

 

Perhaps you broadly agree with the advice, but believe that it is easier said than done.  And, if you do, I totally agree.  The primary impediment, I think, is one’s perception of their interlocutor.  When you do not respect your counterpart, your emotions distort your mentation such that you operate with rigidly biased cognitive “reflexes” focused on self-defense or self-offense rather than on rational reciprocal exchange.  During dialogue, attempt to be aware of any relevant biases that you might have and counter them with as open a mind as you can. Take maximal responsibility for the conversation.  That is, be responsible for your own rational listening and speaking and facilitate, in so far as possible for promoting the rational listening and speaking of your interlocutor.

 

How Can Psychology Promote Social Wellbeing?

 This month I received an invitation to submit an article to the Pennsylvania Psychologist magazine on the theme “Myths in Psychology.” Without hesitation, I knew both what I wanted to write and that the imagined article would never be published.  I would have entitled it “The Myth that Psychology Respects Open Scientific Discussion and Debate.” And before explaining why I chose the topic, I must say that although I believe psychologists have as much right as anyone else to take political positions, they have no right to flood the citizenry with biased or uncontested politically-one-sided propaganda.

The simple truth is that Psychology is at least as interested—I would argue often MORE interested—in politics than in science.  As one example, today, August 29, 2023, I quote “From APA Journals Article Spotlight” (https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/amp):

How psychologists can help achieve equity in health care: Advancing innovative partnerships and models of care delivery.

Public Psychology: Cultivating socially engaged science for the 21st century

Studying societal change: Novel methods and theoretical advances in Psychology

The Psychology of American racism and how to work against it

Rethinking adult development

Fifty years since Stonewall: The science and politics of sexual orientation and gender diversity

American Psychologist special issue on Racial Trauma and Healing

Updating maps for a changing territory: Redefining youth marginalization"

At first glance, the aforecited articles seem extremely important and fully worthy of scientific investigation.  But if you read them and any such investigation promulgated by the American psychological establishment, you will find that they typically proceed from biased assumptions that “science” supports such beliefs as:

Only white people can be racist,

Only white people can enact microaggressions,

Only non-traditional moral and family values should be espoused,

Black-white biracial people legitimately can pretend to be fully black rather than black and white, but not vice versa,

And that an individual, and only that individual can “demand” that they are whatever gender they want to be, and that they can switch back and forth from one gender to another as frequently and as arbitrarily as they desire.   

To my way of thinking, Psychology has nothing special or unique to contribute to any of the above topics, except for the Rethinking adult development one. If anything, most of such topics are more suitable to an Epidemiological or Sociology journal. 

Why not have Psychology give special attention, research, and advocacy to such areas wherein Psychology can make a uniquely substantive, concrete difference, such as to violence prevention, to race-blind acceptance of all human beings, and to facilitating the creation and maintenance of intact two-parent families for all races, and for persons of all socioeconomic strata?  Or, perhaps you would be more open to the recommendations of Critical Psychology Network Connecting Students and Critical Psychology Scholars across Canada” if the recommendations were done in a totally unbiased, purely scientific manner:

"What is the nature of the discipline and profession of psychology?

How are {psychological} questions, methods, and findings interrelated?

What assumptions underpin much of psychological research, theory, and practice?

How does psychology around the world differ?

How do globalization and neo-liberalism impact psychology?

How do cultures, history, language, and power contribute to how we understand ourselves and the world around us?

How can we study human phenomena in ways that maintain human dignity, without turning people into mere ‘objects of study’?

How do DSM categories serve to pathologize distress?

What are the benefits and costs of diagnostic labelling and the Categorization of people into types?

What is the relation between psychology and power?

What is the relation between power and how students are taught psychology (e.g., what topics, what methods)?

What role does power play in the conduct of psychological research?

How do social, cultural, and political factors influence knowledge-making in psychology?

How does power operate through the knowledges produced in psychology?

What assumptions does psychology hold/reinforce about gender, sexuality, dis(ability), race and class?

How are politics, power, and society implicated in people’s ‘private’ experiences of distress?

How can psychologists do research that benefits society, combats injustice, and improves peoples’ lives? "

At the time I completed my doctoral training in psychology, psychology could legitimately claim to be a science in search of truth irrespective of politics. Sadly, that is no longer true.

Viral-Artificial Intelligence-Zombie Information

Viral-Artificial Intelligence-Zombie Information.  Sound frightening? It should.  Let's consider each element of the hyphenated phrase in reverse order, using medical science as only one of many possible exemplars.  Zombie medical information was decried in a recent Nature article (July 2023) entitled "Medicine’s problem with ‘zombie’ trials." The scary suggestion is that "... at least one-quarter, and perhaps up to one-third, of trials contain problematic data".  Equally hair-raising is the authors' contention that such studies "...can be laundered into respectability when they are included in systematic reviews, which assess evidence across many studies and are often the basis for clinical guidelines."  So, that's the Zombie element. 

 

What about the Artificial Intelligence element?  Sticking with Nature, consider the 24 January 2023 paper entitled "Tools such as ChatGPT threaten transparent science; here are our ground rules for their use."  For this posting, the central addressed issue is the fear that “… an Artificial Intelligence large language model (LLM) could produce simplistic results, an incomplete literature review, or unreliable information” -- all very real possibilities. The authors advise: "First, no LLM tool will be accepted as a credited author on a research paper. That is because any attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, and AI tools cannot take such responsibility. Second, researchers using LLM tools should document this use in the methods or acknowledgements sections. If a paper does not include these sections, the introduction or another appropriate section can be used to document the use of the LLM."

 

Left is the viral element, the one that could be the most apocalyptic of the three. We all know first-hand how rapidly fallacious information can metastasize.  Once posted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, et cetera, the bogus “facts” literally can spread around the world and be accepted uncritically.

 

Together, the three elements of the Viral-Artificial Intelligence-Zombie Information triad can mean that invalid, unreliable information might be promulgated in ways that appear to come from highly credible sources.  That is more likely because CHATGPT mines much of its data from whatever cognitive viruses have invaded our medical, educational, and media platforms.  And the more extant that information, the more it is incorporated into the next information search by whatever means the search is conducted, including the next iteration of CHATGPT.

 

Does this mean anything substantive to you?  It will if you or an important someone on whom you depend, such as your physician, have been infected with Viral-Artificial Intelligence-Zombie Information.  I hope you and they are not.

What's Up with "Fuck"?

What the fuck can we learn from the word “fuck”?  Let’s start with the following caveats that I haven’t carefully vetted:  The first English language television use of fuck allegedly was uttered by Kenneth Tynan on November 13, 1965 on a satirical television BBC3, and the first U.S. movie to use fuck was M*A*S*H* released in 1970.  According to Collider.com, of the “15 Most Profane Movies of All Time,” the lowest frequency of fuck is ‘One Day Removals’ (2008) with 320 and the highest, ‘Swearnet: The Movie’ (2014) with 935.

We know that some form of fuck can and is used as virtually any part of speech.  So, when in doubt about what next to say, “fuck it.”  Gratuitously using the word fuck broadcasts that your intellect is as impoverished as is literally using “literally” when “figuratively” is warranted.

But my point extends well beyond the word “fuck.”  Rather, it follows from my previous posting on mega-identity.  Saying fuck is much less about rationally communicating than it is about letting your interlocutor know who you are and your internal attitude toward yourself and the world.  Although I have not done relevant research, I strongly believe that the more gratuitously one says fuck, the lower they are on the “openness” dimension of personality, and are especially closed to and/or incapable of conversing in an agreeable and/or problem-solving manner.

I found little that specifically addressed the issues, but for those who understandably want at least a modicum of “science” to support my opinions, consider the following: “Results revealed that groups exposed to profanity and were permissive of swearing were more likely to demonstrate deviant behavior that spread beyond swearing (i.e., less task focus and less formal language) as compared to groups not exposed to profanity. Furthermore, exposure to swearing decreased the quality of group decisions and increased group polarization.”  So, if for no other reason than concern for our current and future children, maybe you should expand your fuckin vocabulary and ensure that you do not have a profanity-related mega-identity.

 Guadagno, R.E., Muscanell, N.L., Gitter, S. (2023). What the Fork? The Impact of Social Norm Violation on User Behavior. In: Meschtscherjakov, A., Midden, C., Ham, J. (eds) Persuasive Technology. PERSUASIVE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13832. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30933-5_6.

     

 

  

Who Do You Permit to Define You?

Most of us have heard some version of the adage, "Show me your company and I'll tell you who you are" whose elusive roots have been attributed to sources as diverse as the Bible and Vladimir Lenin.  In America, prior to the end of the 20th century the "who you are" mostly concerned one's moral standing.  Interlocutors wanted to know who could and could not be trusted, for instance.  In your great-grandparents' day, average citizens rarely were interested in details regarding minutiae of your sexuality or politics. That did not seem important to most of them.  By default, people passively were accepted as having some complex qualities and preferences that were "nobody else's business."

That attitude promoted cultural norms that encouraged accepting people as they were in the here-and-now.  A new acquaintance need not pass some overarching litmus test that incorporated a host of criteria about irrelevant personal preferences, such as gender beliefs or political affiliation. Individuals were free to isolate their gender and political ideas to the interactions with the few people in the few places where those issues were relevant and timely. Accordingly, Americans were comfortable in the company of persons with whom they chose to interact because they presumed that they did not need to pass a comprehensive, generic personality test in order to be accepted as a “good person.”  You could disclose to others what you wanted to, and keep private that which you did not want to disclose. No one feature of your being defined the totality of you.

Sadly, the freedom to be yourself in all your complexity increasingly has been under assault; no doubt in large part due to the internet in general and to social media in particular.  Few people today are willing and/or able to avoid deliberately or inadvertently revealing aspects of their identity that some powerful person or group will condemn.  The condemnation often is due to one small feature of your being that causes you to be saddled with a negative, global stereotype.

Some social psychologists refer to the problem as the attributing of a negative "mega-identity."  Your mega-identity was not your sole, autonomous creation.  It was crafted by adherence to rules dictated by so-called influencers, such as politicians, actors, or sports figures.  Mega-identity defines you not only by your attitudes toward political parties and gender but also such factors as race, religion, geographic location, and more.  Once you are labeled, some people will condemn or support you, regardless of the totality of your being; “your company” will define you in ways your great-grandparents never could have imagined.

When to Question, When to Answer

 "Don’t ask, don’t tell” was the colloquial term for official U.S. military policy from 1993 to 2011.  What was that all about?  Americans born on or before about 1973 probably remember—it concerned the armed forces approach to what then unapologetically was termed “homosexuality”.  Actually, the entire policy was “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, and don’t harass,” and it was President Bill Clinton’s and the Legislature’s way simultaneously to both address and avoid the issue.

The policy is one obvious example of questioning and answering influences on human psychology and interpersonal relationships.  All people personally are inclined to ask about some issues and to avoid others.  Knowing those inclinations of your own can empower you to make good decisions.  For instance, given the current toxic social environment, most of us have learned to be very circumspect about what formerly would have been casual, harmless political questions and answers.  

Even folk wisdom and popular entertainment have touted the value of the avoidance technique.   For instance, in the Disney cartoon, "Bambi," (first released in 1942) a diminutive, shy bunny, Thumper, quietly advised, "If you can't say somethin nice, don't say nothin at all."

So, what does psychology say about avoidant questioning and answering?  As usual, I will discuss just an idea or two.  First, consider context.  Your status vis-à-vis your conversation partner is, of course, critical.  Can you obviously avoid answering without undue negative repercussions?  Is the topic very serious, marginally so, or light?  What about your interlocutor?  Is it important for you to save face or impress that person?  

Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John (2018) divide questions as occurring within a cooperative context and within a challenging one.  In cooperative situations, the relative risk would be avoiding a correct uncomfortable answer but, in the process, inadvertently providing another one unfavorable to you.  That can happen if you are so relaxed that you do not sufficiently monitor that which you say, and, therefore, say too much.  The excess could be quantitative or qualitative, either by rambling on too long, or by revealing sensitive information.

Answering questions within a challenging context, of course, is more likely to produce negative consequences for you.  Accordingly, Brooks and John recommend, ideally, that you enter such conversations after having already decided what to keep private.  They also want you to be mindful of the importance of maintaining trust, and, therefore, try not to blatantly refuse answering proffered questions. 

Bitterly and Schweitzer (2020) elaborate the basic principles presented above, but they focus on describing five answer avoidance strategies much more than assessing their pros and cons.  The first is simply to decline answering, with its attendant risks.  The second is to blatantly lie and hope to get away with it.  Third, is to palter—provide a truthful answer or partial answer that deliberately avoids revealing information that the questioner clearly wants to know.  Fourth, one could dodge the question, avoiding it by giving an answer sufficiently close to the original question that the questioner readily accepts it.  Fifth, and finally, avoidance can be achieved via deflection.  There are two common approaches to do so.  One can evade answering a direct question by presenting a new one, or by injecting an emotional distraction, such as a joke.  

The aforementioned study offered some advice about question avoidance.  Those who avoided direct questions by deflection were less likely to be regarded as untrustworthy or unlikeable than were those who used the other assessed strategies.  However, with those findings in mind, Bitterly and Schweitzer provided some suggestions to questioners.  They encouraged questioners to anticipate deflection, to have plans to counter it, and to persist in those efforts.  If the deflection simply cannot be remedied, questioners should know how to interpret the deflections, and to factor that information into their judgements about the issue, the deflector, and the deflector’s sensitivities.

Perhaps, in some situations, “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, and don’t harass” policy is good general advice.  Brooks & John and Bitterly & Schweitzer seem to agree.  But neither of their works said one word about my preferred method of avoiding difficult questions.  I would rather metacommunicate - communicate about the communication - to handle the to-be-avoided question. 

The metacommunication strategy allows one to be both honest and empowered.  Why not provide an authentic reason for your reluctance to answer? Ninety-nine percent of the time, your interlocutor will accept your legitimate reason, and agree to defer the question, at least temporarily.  Of course, that strategy will not suffice in some special situations.  But, more often than not, if your conversation partner cannot accept your wish to defer a question, maybe you need to rethink your relationship with them.   

 References

Bitterly, T. B., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2020). The economic and interpersonal consequences of deflecting direct questions.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(5), 945-990. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000200

Brooks, A. W. & John, L. K.  (2018). The surprising power of questions.  Harvard Business Review, May 17.