Cultural Survival Skills

Choices, Decisions and Consequences – I

A dear and very intelligent friend of mine chides me for saying that humans make choices and decisions. He maintains, from a strictly environmental deterministic philosophical position, that all of our behavior is determined by our history of learning. Therefore, and I paraphrase, the individual does not make choices: His or her history of learning exclusively determines the individual’s behavior.

I don’t think that most of you who read this blog will find that to be a very heart-warming point of view. But to a great, though precisely undetermined extent, he is correct.

The behavioral position, which I endorse, is what people think without speaking, writing, or behaving is simply unknown and unknowable. But behavioral science has taught us that our genetics, environmental history, current biological state, and the state of our immediate environment strongly appear to account for both our thoughts and actions.

Never-the-less, something of individual creativity remains. We can learn a language, we learn about history, and we can be taught to think consequentially. Thinking consequentially occurs anytime one thinks about doing something and then considers the probable consequences of doing that thing. This could include consequences to themselves, to those around them and to their society. It could also include immediate consequences, intermediate consequences and long-term consequences in countless contexts.

When you admonish yourself, or others, to “think it through” before making a decision or a choice, between available options, you are illustrating Psychology’s powerful Law of Effect that states  “Consequences Control Behavior”. There are notable exceptions to this rule. But when an individual’s behavior does not come under the control of the consequences of their actions, this generally appears to be a result of a defective teaching/learning environment or some developmental/neurological problem. Some exceptions take the form of readily identifiable mental disorders.

Thinking things through before choosing or deciding what to do does not always yield predictable results, in view of one’s history of learning. Sometimes when we think things through, we can imagine, or actually do old actions  (sometimes without thinking) in circumstances that we have not yet exactly-precisely experienced.  The conditioning and learning scientific term for this sort of cognitive event (behavioral, if we act upon it) is, Stimulus generalization.

In a second cognitive and/or behavioral case, we may inexplicably respond to new or similar conditions with slight or large variations of old behavior patterns. This is called Response Induction.

Finally, humans can well imagine and anticipate consequences that they have never actually experienced..but would be motivated to escape or avoid (electrocution or drowning), or to obtain reinforcers they never sampled (visit places they have never been or have new sexual experiences). Such imaginal consequences can alter ones choices. These examples appear to relate to Modeling and Imitation, Vicarious Learning and Generalization processes.

Behavioral scientists have observed that animals often do actions that they have not directly been taught and that they have not done before.

Humans are animals with language and that makes matters all-the-more complex. Humans can think, and talk about what they think, to others. They can think and talk about what they think to themselves. They can learn to write what they think to themselves and they can then read what they wrote and they can critically evaluate their own writing…and then edit their writing. They can consider what they thought and wrote, based upon their own environmental histories and that of others who they have watched, read about, or those who choose to give them critical feed-back about what they wrote.

All of this is normally called the “creative process” because the thinker/writer/actor sometimes does not know what they will think, write or do, and the outcome of their thoughts or actions is actually a surprise to them.  Much as this writing is a surprise to me today. Of course one can conclude that this is all a result of the four factors that I listed at the beginning of this thesis, but that does not invalidate the unique creative process which still resides with the individual.

To say that people do not make choices or decisions because what they said and did was learned is not a wrong statement. It is just an incomplete and insulting (to a great many) over-simplification of what humans do when they think, behave and generate novel outcomes.

When we tell people that they do not make choices or decisions, the vast majority are immediately alienated from, and hostile to, that message. They therefore become alienated and hostile to our marvelous behavioral laws and principles that they and their socioculture must embrace in order to survive.

People actually do make real choices and decisions. They are based upon learning, and at least the three other factors mentioned previously. These known factors also comprise the basis for human’s projected considerations of actions and consequences within in various physical and temporal contexts in both real and imagined worlds.

Therefore, each individual should be respected and cherished for the unique histories and the unique futures that they bring to us all.

While this is a heart-warming reality, it is countered by another frightening reality.  Our American socioculture retains a great and undeniable responsibility for the quality of the histories and futures of all of its citizens.

In this sacred responsibility, we are failing.  Open your eyes to the declining quality of various behaviors within our population.

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology

Health Services Provider in Psychology

11/26/12