The March 2009 issue of Reader’s Digest offers up an interesting look at the Psychology of Fallenness.
======
[Please forgive me, a sinner. This essay may be even less coherent and more in need of editing than usual (quite a feat!). In keeping with the essay’s content, I would like to blame Lent rather than my own shortcomings (which are there, but much less than in others). BTW, that was an attempt at double sarcasm. Read on to see how.]
I am intensely interested in psychology and sociology. While I spent some serious time studying them in graduate school, I’m pretty much just a dilettante now. I don’t have the time or resources to keep up with the latest research but I still try to keep up with the parts that filter out into the general consciousness via the popular media.
[First aside: what is the utility of keeping up with the very latest research on human nature? Has human nature changed somehow? Is there anything “new under the sun”? I’m pretty much convinced that once you have a general understand how things/people work, you learn as much about researchers and the folks who popularize their findings than you do about human nature when you study their work. Incremental improvements in understanding and new ways to frame things are always available, but the “AHA!” moments are rare.]
So I really enjoyed seeing that the most recent edition of Reader’s Digest had a summary of a pop-psychology book, Why We Make Mistakes by journalist, Joseph T. Hallinan. In it, Hallinan describes how our brains let us down in certain situations, then gives suggestions about how to ameliorate the effects. None of the findings he describes are new, but the gift of journalists like him and Malcomb Gladwell is their ability to tell stories that demonstrate the results of serious research (research done by smart people, but people who usually don’t write to be understood; Dr. Robert Cialdini is a notable exception). When I was an intelligence analyst, I read books like Hallinan’s in order to improve my work and to help improve the work of others. I’m out of that line of work now, but this kind of psychology still comes in handy in my role as a pastor and priest because it helps me understand how pervasive the effects of the fall are.
[Second aside: As a priest and amateur theologian, I have to quibble a bit with the title of Hallinan’s book: he does not explain WHY we make mistakes, he explains HOW the mistakes happen. I don’t blame the misleading title on the author: just as the Akallabeth* replaced the “Straight Road” to Valinor with a mundane circumference; so has our ability to sense the deeper meaning in things been replaced with the mundane description. Evolutionary psychologists will try to create new meaning out of their descriptions by matching the quirks in our wetware with their theories about competition and fitness; but this is really just and attempt to provide more detail about “how” things happened. We have bent the world around on itself so that we can pretend that Aman is a myth and that what we see is the full scope of the what there is or should ever be. The question of “Why” has been reduced to one of “what came before” rather than part of the search for purpose and meaning. I understand that this is because society has lost its belief that there is a deeper meaning, but that is precisely the point!]
Let me address each of his findings, in turn. First, I will summarize the point as he presented it, then I will say what he – and anyone without a fully rational mind – misses.** Some of them aren’t all that useful for my purpose, but all of them are interesting. I will present them in the order in which the Reader’s Digest presents them.
We make slips of the tongue: about once a week, most people have a hard time retrieving the exact data they want. This usually involves proper nouns (because run-of-the-mill nouns have lots of synonyms that can be retrieved to replace “stuck” ones). It doesn’t mean the thing being described or its attributes have been forgotten, in fact, the brain offers up a replacement that is similar in some regard.
This one doesn’t shed all that much light on our fallen nature, but it is something I struggle with. If it is going to happen, it will happen as people come up for Communion. In the Orthodox Church, the priest gives the faithful Communion BY NAME. This parish is small, so I know everyone pretty well. This makes it all the more embarrassing when one gets stuck or comes out wrong! As for theologizing this one, just chock it up to how we don’t live up to one of our first callings: name-giver (Genesis 2:19-20a).
We wear rose-colored glasses: we automatically recall our past deeds as being better than reality warrants.
This is huge. It shows us that we are completely hard-wired for PRIDE. And this is before emotions and the like get involved (passions tend to magnify deeply-rooted problems). A related finding that he does not address is that we tend to explain other people’s failings in terms of intent while explaining our own mistakes based on the circumstances. So not only do we refuse to hold ourselves accountable (and thus feel the need for repentance), we judge others! So we aren’t just hardwired for pride, we are hard-wired to excuse it and to condemn others. Do you begin to see why salvation is only possible through the God-man, Jesus Christ?
When we multitask, we get stupid: we have a hard time doing different kind of tasks at the same time. This means that we multitask slowly and poorly. He explains that this is partly because our short-term memory dumps when it changes tasks, so when you switch back you have to refill it.
The multi-tasking thing is interesting, but the best part of the findings he describes point to something even more fundamental: our minds have fixed categories that affect our instinctive judgements. This was brought out most clearly in Gladwell’s excellent book, Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking, and you can get a glimpse at your own categories and their effects at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/ . We can overcome the effects of these instinctive prejudices only through intentional effort. Again, this points to the serious need for some outside assistance! (FWIW, some of the prejudices seem silly; I have an strong automatic preference for the fictional laundry detergent Dorax in the blue bottle over the fictional laundry detergent Korax in the green bottle; this suggests that my preference for soft consonants and colors runs deep and probably affects my decisions).
We see, but we don’t see: we don’t notice things that should be obvious. Because of its implications for research, the work on the psychology of intelligence analysis develops this theme in depth. There is no way of avoiding the fact that we see what we expect to see. This means that we will notice data that confirms our worldview/hypotheses and completely miss (or dispute) data that challenges it. Hallinan describes how this can lead to serious problems (like not noticing a low overpass), but the insidiousness of the problem is what fascintates me.
Scientists see this all the time (at least in others, see point 2!): researchers will bend over backwards to defend their pet theory. This isn’t just because they are proud in the normal sense of the word: they actually live in a world that supports their opinion.To them, your objections look petty and mean-spirited. But this doesn’t just affect the development of science, it causes communication problems everywhere. If we aren’t careful, we will end up constructing a world around ourselves that is not only incompatible with others in our families and communities, it will be incompatible with the real world in which we are fallible and in need of God’s mercy. C.S. Lewis does a good job describing this in his book The Great Divorce.
We notice on a need-to-know basis: we fail to pick up major changes even while paying attention to them.
As with #4, we see what we expect to see. This ruins predictive analysis (WMD, anyone?), but unless you are already a saint it will also ruin your ability to analyze the state of your salvation. It will also cause you to miss changes (for the better and worse) in people/relationships around you. Not good.
We skim when we shouldn’t: We don’t pay attention to everything we see; this causes us to miss errors.
The larger point is that we look for patterns, not details. Taht is wyh yuo cna raed tihs snetnace. It’s useful in some circumstance, but not others. People can tell analysts they need to “connect the dots”, but what if the patterns aren’t real? If you are making up your own plan for salvation/happiness, odds are you are making the wrong patterns and leading yourself into trouble. The scary this is that this way of thinking is automatic within ourselves and that the world encourages it. The Orthodox Way (prayer, worship) is designed to get us to see reality AS IT IS. Without it, your just making stuff up. And that can be very dangerous.
We think we are better than we are: we see ourselves as less biased than we are, and as being consistently above average. In sum, we are overconfident.
Ouch. This is nothing but pride. Not the kind that spends $200 on a haircut, but the automatic kind that deludes people into “knowing” that they have no need for repentance and no need for a Savior. “Thank God, I am not like other men… I do lots of really good things.” We laugh at the pharisee’s pride when he says these and other “senseless words”, but emulate him down to the smallest detail. “Wake up, my sinful soul and repent!” (quote from and summary of the Great Canon of St. Andrew).
We are fallen. Our pride goes very deep. It also separates us from the truth. Secular psychology can describe some of the symptoms of our fallenness, but without a true concept of “normal” and “healthy” it can only go so far in both its diagnosis and its prescription. The definition of “normal” has alluded the mundane world since Adam voluntarily abandoned it. It is found only in Jesus Christ, the “New Adam” and those who have diligently accepted His grace and followed His example. In this fallen world, selfless love is seldom practiced and even less frequently rewarded; in its place we find a deep-rooted selfishness that is often practiced and frequently rewarded (now there’s something more substantial for evolutionary psychologists to gnaw on). Books like Hallinan’s can help us see how our selfishness hurts us even in the fallen world; it can even help ameliorate some of the more obvious effects. But if you want to transcend the fallen world, if you want a true diagnosis and a prescription for perfection, then you have to leave the cave and see yourself in the Light of Truth.
This is Orthodox psychology, and it is practiced at a parish near you.
– fr anthony
* The sinking of Numenor and the bending of the world, as described in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Silmarillion.
** The fully rational person is the one who considers all the evidence and their implications. Those who do not recognize the Truth of the Triune God, of salvation through Christ, of the integration of the spiritual and mundane, and of our fallenness do not have access to all of the evidence. The only rational response to the world is to dedicate ourselves to praising God; to beg and thank Him for His mercy; and to live a life of selfless love (fwiw, this is what the prayers of the Church mean when they call believers “rational”). Unfortunately, I am not as rational as I could/should/want to be, so my presentation is undoubtably flawed. Forgive me.
