The Deep Source of Our Behaviors

I want to complete a thread I was in the midst of exploring when I went on hiatus in December. In order to do that this post is going to violate my sacred rule of brief postings. I thought of serializing it, but I don't think that would serve.

In a series of posts in November I was exploring transformation design and how the practice of design is on the cusp of a major step change from designing of things to designing of behaviors according to some in the design community.

If design is on the cusp of a major shift from the design of things to the design of behaviors then designers need powerful interpretations of how behaviors are generated. In my post 'Designing behavior' I started a thread exploring several interpretations about how behavior is determined.

To recap ... two of the most common interpretations about how our behaviors are generated: 1) the interpretation that we act to avoid pain and seek pleasure and 2) the interpretation that we are rational creatures who act to satisfy our desires (e.g., we eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, have sex when horny, and so on). I'll call these the behavioral interpretation and the rational interpretation respectively.

I propose we evaluate these interpretations from two angles.

1. What do each of these interpretations say about us as human beings and how closely does that corresponds to our actual experience of ourselves.
2. How well does each interpretation enable designers to design (and deploy) new behaviors.

In other words, how powerful are these interpretations in supporting the major shift in design that is suggested by the RED unit of the Design Council in their paper Transformation Design which I previously discussed.

From the behavioral interpretation, human beings are simple machines that operate by stimulus-response programming. According to this interpretation, the response is tied to the stimulus and is always the same when the same stimulus is applied. For example, we always avoid pain and always seek pleasure.

How well does this correspond to our experience of being human? At first glance, we might be tempted to say it corresponds pretty well. But upon a closer look, the correspondence is pretty shallow. Take for example, conversations. Conversations between people are riddled with stimulus and responses. But how well are we able to predict how someone will respond simply from hearing what we say? Not very well. In fact, we have no idea what they even heard us say, often, until a minute more when we realize that they misunderstood what we said.

Living systems, including humans, are much more complex than the behavioral interpretation allows. For example, there's no room for art, love, creativity, or intuition in the behavioral view. It's a pretty poor interpretation of human behavior.

And yet, that doesn't stop us from trying to use behavioral tactics to get people to improve their performance at work like bonuses and threats of being fired. This explains why the correlation of these approaches to performance is actually quite poor. The behavioral interpretation is an impoverished interpretation that doesn't allow for most of what makes us human beings.

Such an impoverished interpretation of human behavior doesn't yield much for designers trying to design new behaviors save creating new and improved carrots and sticks.

Now, let's look at the rational interpretation which is somewhat less impoverished. From this interpretation, human beings have desires and we behave in order to satisfy our desires. This results in an understanding of ourselves as agents of exchange. I want an iPod with 80G  - a desire. So I go to the store and buy one - that is, I exchange $350 for one. All very rational.

Unlike the behavioral interpretation, the rational interpretation has been used extensively by designers working on building and marketing products. From this interpretation, if you want to get someone to change their behavior, figure out what they want (desire) and offer to satisfy them. And if you are really crafty, you can even manufacture new desires and then offer to satisfy those too.

How well does this correspond to our experience of being human? Well, we all have desires that we want to be satisfied. And most of us rationally organize our life to make sure they get satisfied. Or we feel unhappy, miserable, and worthless that our desires aren't being satisfied. So, in a way, the rational interpretation can account for at least some of our behavior (and our emotions). Certainly, this interpretation seems to correspond to our experience of ourselves more than the behavioral interpretation.

But does this view really account for all our behaviors? Do we ever have desires that we never try to satisfy? Yes. Do we ever have desires that conflict? Yes, and then usually our behavior doesn't satisfy either. Do we ever behave in a way that is unrelated to satisfying desires? Yes.

If we closely observe ourselves in the midst of action we notice that most of our behaviors aren't aimed at satisfying desires. Most of our behaviors simply happen as we cope with the world around us without any intervention whatsoever from a rationality scheming for satisfaction.

We can interpret all of our actions as satisfying a desire of some sort or another. But this isn't the task at hand. We aren't trying to rationalize our behavior post hoc. We want to understand what determines and generates our behavior in the first place because that is where designers need to intervene to generate new and different behaviors.

So what does the rational interpretation buy designers who want to design new behaviors? For example, what if we want to design new behaviors for consumers that result in a more sustainable way of life for everyone on the planet? The rational interpretation suggests perhaps three tactics:

1. We need to make sustainability itself more desirable than desires which result in unsustainable living (in other words, change the reward structure)
2. We need to find sustainable ways to satisfy our current desires
3. We need to find ways to generate sustainable desires and eliminate unsustainable desires

In a way, we've been working these tactics for decades with only marginal success. And yet our sustainability problem grows larger and larger. What's going on here? We have competing and conflicting desires. We love our gas guzzling, CO2 emitting SUVs (just to pick on them for the moment) and, at least for now, they are much more desirable than reversing global warming.

And, what if you want to design new behaviors for yourself - like a New Year's resolution?  I have a desire to loose 20 lbs. The rational interpretation would ask me what I want to exchange in order to loose 20 lbs.  I might need to exchange yummy fattening food and time for exercising in order to achieve my goal. But I don't want to make that exchange because I enjoy food and am way too busy to exercise. As anyone who has ever made a New Year's resolution and failed to keep it will attest, there is more going on with our behaviors than merely satisfying desires.

When we apply the rational interpretation by itself to design new behaviors to achieve new outcomes, we often end up in a morass of competing and conflicting desires. Satisfying our desires is less an approach for transforming our behaviors and more an approach for entrenching behaviors.

There is something missing from both the behavioral and rational interpretations of how our behavior is generated. And this shortfall - whatever it is - has and continues to undermine efforts to design and change behaviors.

It is not so much that these interpretations are wrong - they are narrow, incomplete, and limited in their power to generate new behaviors. Both interpretations are, as Ken Wilber would say, "true but partial." These interpretations have the power to explain some behaviors but they fall to explain many others. Depending upon what we're up to, these interpretations might offer some help. But if we are up to transforming fundamental behaviors, they don't offer much to the designer.

Fortunately, there is another  - much less well-known - interpretation about how we behave in the way that we do. One could say that the behavioral interpretation comes from engineering, the rational interpretation comes from psychology and economics, and this alternative interpretation comes from philosophers (especially phenomenology). Here goes ... [drum roll] ... the phenomenological interpretation of behavior.

We act as our way of being.

First of all, what is a way of being? A way of being is what Heidegger called "being-in-the-world." A way of being is a way of skillfully inhabiting, encountering, and coping with our World. In fact, we act as our way of being with such skill that we are blind to our way of being until it breaks (see my post on breakdown). Our way of being determines how we experience ourselves, others, and our environment in our world and this experience gives rise to a certain responses.

So in order to change our behaviors, we must change our way of being. This is the secret at the heart of all effective coaching. And, this post is already too long, so I'll save that for another time.

Thanks for hanging in with this long post. Take care,

-Steve