Pointing fingers

One of the most remarkable aspects of the human experience lies in the fact that we have freedom. I do not pretend even for a minute that we are fully in control all the time (nobody chooses to be hungry or get sweaty palms out of their own choice), but we have certainly many more options than insect and fish, which are almost entirely driven by instinct. And while there is nothing we can do to prevent our physiology to drive our attention to aspects of pure survival, even in those case we can choose not to eat when we an hungry, or we can hold our breath for some time in spite of the desperate needs of our body.

The debate about whether free will can come out of a physical and chemical system as our body (including the brain) is still undecided, but even if this freedom is only apparent, even if our choices are somehow predestined to be, we still have to go through the process of picking one option and discard the rest. Psychologists and neurophysiologists have demonstrated that decision making is a very complex process which includes several distinct steps, from finding the options that are available, predicting (or rather, estimating) the consequences of each option, analyzing the merit of each one and finally deciding what to do, but to today I want to focus on the evaluation part.

Photo: Garry Wilmore

The difficulty in the evaluation of an option is linked to its multi-factorial component. We do not only have to account for the benefits that it might bring to us, but also consider the reception that this decision might have in our different social groups and even the cost of implementing that option. Probably the most common decision in any situation is to just "do nothing" or "follow the flow", where the cost of enacting the option is very low (or actually zero) and the decision making is not very effortful, because we defer the judgment to someone else (our father, our church, the government) and we "choose not to choose" (paraphrasing the great 1989 American movie Dead Poets Society).

Regardless of how the decision is made, there is always a feed-back loop when the situation plays out and we get to see the consequences of our actions: sometimes we predict the outcomes accurately and sometimes not so much, but at any rate all the process will have an effect on us. And although this effect is frequently multi-factorial as well (we are thrill, but also scared; or we have a full belly, but perhaps too much) we tend to create an overall evaluation figure for the record between bad (do not pick this option in the future) and go (do pick it). Unsurprisingly, the same kind of judgment is also passed by all the different groups that are affected by your decision: if your decision damages the standing of your parents or partner they will naturally try to discourage you from doing the same in the future. On the other hand, unless the outcomes are extremely beneficial for them, it is a rather common circumstance that you do not get neither praised nor encouraged for future occasions.

It turns out that this asymmetry in the expression of our judgments is pervasive throughout human societies. A few months ago I mentioned how my kids complained that I was always correcting them on everything they did wrong but never stopped to mention the many things that they did right. But even in pure linguistic terms it is frequently so: there are generally more accurate words to describe the deviations than to describe compliance. In a recent episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast called "Why is U.S. media so negative?", linguist Arika Okrent pointed out that we have words for speeding, robbery and murder, but not so for "not speeding", "not robbing" and "not murdering" even if the latter are way more frequent than the former. This asymmetry can be easily explained precisely by my children's complaint: I do not need to talk about the things they are doing right, because they are right. Bad behaviors, on the other hand, are better clearly identified and discouraged, so that they do not happen again.

In view of all this, I generally try to make a conscious effort not only to reprimand unwanted behaviors but also to praise compliant ones. It is very easy to follow our instincts (!) and not even mention things that do not need fixing, but that makes for a very glum situation. So next time you find something worth pointing your finger at, try to look for something else that you can praise in exchange and, perhaps, get a bit of balance on your karma along the way. Have a nice weekend.