One of my pet peeves is the tendency to read meaning into everything we do. It isn’t that there isn’t a reason behind our behaviours. It’s just that the reasons are either banal (basic instincts and human motivation) or are so prone to both misinterpretation and over-interpretation that most attempts to explain them will be way off base, at best, or so self-justified that they feed our biases and misattributions, at worst.
While the following column is very basic, it does have implications for the way we interpret more important issues. The desire to know and to understand is what drives our society to discover and to make advances. Unfortunately it also opens the door to things like wishful thinking, or the creation of public myths, or the occasional hysteria over the latest “chemical,” to name a few. This also makes us vulnerable to charlatans and pseudo-experts. (Real experts, by the way, have very few answers and use phrases like, “It depends” and “Well, this may be a contributing factor.” These are not the kind of answers that generate a whole lot of headlines.)
If a man has 5% of the answers and an expert has 10% of them, the man will obviously be impressed by the expert. Whenever the man seeks answers he will go ask the expert. The problem is that, just because the expert knows more than the man, it doesn’t mean that he has any more of the missing 90% of the answers. This opens the door to the expert being given too much credit. If the expert is dishonest, or stands to make a lot of money, or is self-deluded into believing he really does know everything, then the man can be easily misled or manipulated.
(see also: Knowing the Limits of Knowledge)
Here is my Métro column from last week:
What does it mean when you like red?
(Source: Pourquoi aime-t-on la couleur rouge? Journal Métro, June 15, 2010)
When I was still at school my neighbour would regularly ask me questions like, “What does it mean when someone likes red?”
My smart-alecky answer was usually something like, “It means you like red.”
One of the irritating things about being a psychologist is that people assume there is some hidden meaning in everything humans do and that we, the so-called experts, have in our possession the secret code that explains all behaviour and thought. They believe that not only do we know why people do things but also how to change them in significant ways.
There is no doubt that there are reasons why people act the way they do. Unfortunately there are so many factors influencing us that rarely is there any great significance to a single act. The range of factors that influence our behaviours can include instinctive drives, the development of habits over time, the influence of cultural beliefs, our inborn temperaments, and the uniqueness of our personal experiences. Complex interactions do not make for simple answers.
This brings me back to the question about liking red. The sarcastic answer I gave is also an accurate one. Sometimes the only significance is the obvious one. If you like red, it simply means that you like red. Trying to go beyond that is likely to point you in all kinds of crazy directions that lead nowhere.
What about a man who likes to walk down the street wearing a panama hat with a large feather sticking out of it? Can we say something about him? Well, if he lived in a society where it was the norm to do so, all it would signify is that he enjoys that look and is happy to conform. If, on the other hand, no one wore such hats it would suggest he had unusual tastes and did not mind sticking out in a crowd. Beyond that, there isn’t much else we can conclude.
Why is this issue so important? Because life is so complex that we are constantly searching for answers. This opens the door to a wide range of quacks ready to take advantage of our desire to know and to tell us how significant all our behaviours are.
Beware of such quacks. They may not always be dressed in red.
Tagged as attributions, behaviour, expert, Journal Métro, myths, Psychologists, quacks.
Posted in Human nature, Random thoughts.
Posted on 22 Jun 2010
On Jun 29th 2010 at 15:07
So true! That’s why I’m trying to solve my own problems on my own.