Exploring the Complexities of Human Action 0190050438, 9780190050436

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Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Exploring the Complexities of Human Action C AT H E R I N E R A E F F

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Raeff, Catherine, 1964- author. Title: Exploring the complexities of human action / Catherine Raeff. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019053072 (print) | LCCN 2019053073 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190050436 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190050450 (epub) | ISBN 9780190050467 Subjects: LCSH: Psychology. | Social psychology. Classification: LCC BF121 .R24 2020 (print) | LCC BF121 (ebook) | DDC 150—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053072 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053073 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

. . . we live within traditions that may or may not be adequate to the contingencies of today. —​Kenneth J. Gergen (2009a) . . . psychology is fundamentally a theoretical enterprise, as all sciences are. Even the attempt to derive a disciplinary identity from scientific method cannot alter the discipline’s fundamental theoretical nature. —​Brent D. Slife and Richard N. Williams (1997) Of course, changes in conceptual frameworks do not occur overnight, nor do they proceed without controversy. —​Evelyn Fox Keller (2014) Psychologists have tried to stretch their scientific understanding of the material universe to cover human actions that simply cannot be captured in the same terms. —​Joseph F. Rychlak (2003) . . . the relations that exist among the multiple levels of organization make up the substance of human life. —​Richard M. Lerner (1996)

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Some Complexities

ix xi

PA RT I .   SE T T I N G T H E   STAG E 1. Introducing Psychology

3

2. Taking a Theoretical Turn

32

3. Questioning Convention

56

PA RT I I .   C O N C E P T UA L I Z I N G   AC T IO N 4. Systems Theory and Introducing Action

91

5. Constitutive Processes

113

6. Psychological Processes

144

7. Developmental Processes

199

PA RT I I I .   I M P L IC AT IO N S A N D A P P L IC AT IO N S 8. Implications for Understanding Human Functioning Integratively and Actively

225

9. Implications for Thinking about Individuality and Variability

252

10. Implications for Pondering Some Complexities of Causality and Meaning

275

11. Evidence and Research Implications

304

12. Casting a Wide Net

332

13. Complex and Empathic Understanding

374

References Index

399 419

Acknowledgments I have been pondering the issues discussed in this book for a very long time, and even though I finished the book (or stopped working on it), I continue to ponder. Along the way, my pondering has been facilitated, supported, and challenged in varied ways by varied people with whom I have engaged directly, as well as indirectly through reading their work. I am grateful for the intellectual milieu of my childhood where I first began to ponder. I am grateful that in the late 1980s I went to graduate school at Clark University, where discussing and questioning ideas provided a strong foundation for ongoing pondering. I am grateful that in recent years, I have been fortunate to be in contact with Richard M. Lerner, whose generosity and support of my work are invaluable and keep me pondering despite nagging doubts about the point of it all. I thank IUP graduate student Molly Bernoski for diligently proofreading and checking and rechecking references. I am indebted to artist Jen Blalock for her illustrations, which transformed my abstract ideas into lively images of people acting, as well as for her infectious good cheer. Thank you to Abby Gross at Oxford University Press for taking on this project and supporting pondering outside the box. I also thank Katharine Pratt for her hard work and for shepherding this book through the publication process, along with the production team at Oxford University Press. And last, as well as probably most (but why quantify?), I am grateful for long walks with my sister, Anne Raeff. From New York City and the suburbs of northern New Jersey, to San Francisco and its scenic surrounds, our conversations never fail to provoke and inspire continued pondering. Catherine Raeff

Introduction Some Complexities

Human beings are complex creatures who live complex lives amidst complex circumstances in all corners of a complex world. To begin thinking about some human complexities, let us consider the word complex, and what it means with regard to human functioning. According to my trusty Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, complex refers to “a whole made up of complicated or interrelated parts,” as well as to “a complex substance . . . in which the constituents are more intimately associated than in a simple mixture.” These definitions seem quite apt for human functioning, which can be understood in terms of varied parts, from thinking, remembering, and knowing, to feeling and constructing self/​identity, to interacting with others, to cultural and neurological processes, to development. These parts are just the tip of the iceberg, and they do not seem to be simply mixed together. But how can we get at and understand how they are more intimately associated? As an adjective, complex means that a phenomenon is “hard to separate, analyze, or solve.” Synonyms (again, from Webster’s) for complex include “complicated, intricate, involved, knotty” with the “shared meaning element: having confusingly interrelated parts.” Human affairs can be quite intricate and knotty. Certainly, human functioning is hard to analyze, and some of the problems that plague humanity are hard to solve. And aspects of human functioning are also utterly intertwined and hard to separate. Complexity in the sense of hard to analyze is evident in the dynamics, variability, individuality, and development of what people do as they go about their lives in all corners of the world. We are all human beings who act in some common ways, yet we also lead individual lives and act in culturally particular ways. It can sometimes be overwhelmingly confusing to make sense of it all. This book is about what people do as they go about their complex lives in all corners of the world. I wrote this book because I have long been befuddled by the complexities of what people do. It represents my attempt to explore some of those complexities, and my attempt to articulate a theoretical Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

xii Introduction framework for thinking systematically about what people do as they live their complex lives in all corners of the world. It is for anyone who is interested in making sense of what people do. I also wrote this book to raise some constructively critical questions about the field of psychology’s traditional and conventional ways of conceptualizing and investigating human functioning. I see questioning some practices in psychology as a first step toward exploring the complexities of human action, because it provides a basis for identifying some topics and issues that could benefit from conceptual elaboration. Then, one can go on to articulate a theoretical framework that hopefully gets at some of those topics and issues. The theoretical framework that I will be articulating in this book is born not only out of questioning traditional and conventional practices in psychology. I also take this endeavor to be primarily constructive—​that is, I am not gratuitously criticizing psychology. Rather, I am questioning traditional assumptions and practices constructively and constructing a theoretical framework for addressing some complexities of human functioning. In addition, this theoretical framework does not come out of the blue, as I have worked to synthesize and build on varied theoretical and empirical traditions, some of which exist mostly on the fringes of mainstream psychology, such as systems theory, social constructionism, and organismic-​developmental theory. I want to bring some neglected perspectives out of the shadows and use them to advance understanding of the complexities of human action. As a brief preview, the theoretical framework offered here makes the following basic claims. It first holds that much of what people do is act in relation to others, and that such action is made up of multiple and interrelated processes. Throughout their lives, people act in relation to others in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of settings. For example, people eat in different settings; people work in varied settings; people gather to celebrate all kinds of events; people learn in varied settings; people text and tweet; people create art and behold art; people cooperate with, support, and take care of each other; and, alas, people exploit and fight with each other. Second, this approach holds that such action is constituted by simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Third, such action is taken to be made up of multiple and interrelated psychological processes, including but not limited to perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting, and constructing self/​identity. Fourth, this theoretical framework holds that action develops.

Introduction  xiii Of course, human beings the world over have been trying to make sense of human functioning for millennia. People think about themselves and others every day as they go about their complex lives in all corners of the world. And within varied jobs and careers, some people ponder and investigate aspects of human functioning professionally. Artists—​from novelists and poets, to playwrights and film makers, to painters and songwriters—​ponder and illuminate aspects of human functioning. Since the field of psychology emerged in the late 19th century as a distinct science, academic discipline, and profession, it has contributed to our understanding of human functioning in varied important ways. Today, one can detect some restlessness in some corners of psychology that points to the utility of reflecting on the field and considering alternative theoretical frameworks. For example, one indication of restlessness in psychology can be found in discussions about why it is so difficult to replicate research results (Pashler & Wagenmakers, 2012). In addition, psychology has become a vast and fragmented discipline in which psychologists study aspects of human functioning in relative isolation. Within this context, some are calling for collaboration among psychologists who work on disparate topics, as well as between psychology and other disciplines. In 2015, the Association for Psychological Science inaugurated the International Convention of Psychological Science as a forum for “scientific advances that are integrative” (https://​www.psychologicalscience.org/​conventions/​icps/​ about). There are calls for integrative approaches to conceptualize human functioning holistically and to conceptualize the functioning of the whole person (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008; Raeff, 2016, 2017a; Robinson, 2007; Shotter, 1975). The term intersectionality seems to crop up a lot to address how people function at the intersection of varied characteristics, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexuality. In 1989, Crenshaw conceptualized intersectionality to refer to how Black women experience overlapping or intersecting forms of discrimination, that is, racism and sexism. She uses intersectionality to counteract the “tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis” (p. 139). Using the analogy of a four-​way traffic intersection, she explains that when traffic flows into and out of an intersection, an accident can happen there “by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them” (p. 149). It may be difficult to assign blame to one particular driver because more than one contributed to the accident simultaneously.

xiv Introduction Restlessness is not new in psychology. There were debates about how the field of psychology should proceed when it was being established as a distinct and scientific discipline in the late 19th century. Although research in psychology came to be dominated by and identified with quantitative and experimental methods, some psychologists continued to advocate for other research methods. Drawing on those traditions, and in keeping with the social and political movements of the 1960s, critically analyzing psychology gained ground from the 1970s through the 1990s. For example, social constructionist and feminist perspectives were being used to question psychology’s dominant assumptions and methods. To counteract the hegemony of white, middle-​class American values within psychology, there were calls to focus on cultural diversity and indigenous psychologies. In the 1980s and 1990s, questioning truth claims was the wider postmodern order of the day. Critical analyses raised questions about defining psychology in terms of strict adherence to a particular scientific method that originated in the natural sciences. During this time, some classics of critical psychology were published, including Seymour Sarason’s Psychology Misdirected, in 1981; Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, in 1982; Kurt Danziger’s Constructing the Subject, in 1990; and Kenneth Gergen’s The Saturated Self, in 1991. Critical analyses in the 1980s and 1990s also pointed to a need for more elaborate theorizing in psychology. At the time, I was in graduate school at Clark University (from 1988 to 1993), where many psychology department faculty emphasized theory. There was also no shortage of classes that explored and embraced a variety of critical perspectives. There was much arguing over how to define terms and how to conceptualize varied topics in psychology. We talked about how methods are not theory neutral. We talked about how theory and science are historically situated and ideologically infused. We talked about how psychologists study objects that they themselves construct conceptually, as well as through using particular methods. I was hooked by these discussions. (And I  remain particularly indebted to Ina Č. Užgiris, Bernard Kaplan, James V. Wertsch, Nancy Budwig, Michael Bamberg, and Seymour Wapner.) I  began to see that how we understand human functioning depends on the theoretical frameworks we use. I came to understand that different ways of conceptualizing human functioning may demand different methods of empirical validation. Theory comes first, then method. And the method does not necessarily have to be experimental or quantitative. I embraced it all. I left Clark and continued to question psychology’s dominant practices. I became increasingly overwhelmed by the increasing

Introduction  xv fragmentation of psychology. I wanted to put it all together. I continued to think about theoretical issues and tried to figure out how to emphasize theorizing in my own work. I kept reading, and I kept saying, “It’s complex.” I worked on articulating a theoretical framework for exploring the dynamics of human development (Raeff, 2016). In that work, I argued that, to understand development, we need to first conceptualize action as the phenomenon that develops during development. I presented a rather sketchy conceptualization of action and theorized about it in subsequent articles (Raeff, 2017a, 2017b). I am still saying, “It’s complex,” and in this book I extend my previous work to theorize further about the complexities of action. However, emphasizing theory is not what most of psychology is about, and critical psychology continues to hover on the fringes of the field. Historically, psychology was founded and has proceeded on the basis of “two beliefs,” namely, “(a) that a single method for apprehending truth should be used in answering psychological questions, and (b) that the appropriate method for psychological investigation is, in all cases, some variant of the natural scientific method” (Yanchar & Slife, 1997, p.  245). Psychologists may study different topics and aspects of human functioning, but they are united by a commitment to studying human functioning experimentally and statistically. As such, method serves as a paradigm for psychologists. In other words, psychology is paradigmatic in its adherence to some variant of the natural science method (Danziger, 1985). As we will see, this methodological paradigm is based on prior and implicit theoretical premises and conceptions of human functioning. Thus, some shared theory lurks in psychology, and it is embedded in the dominant methodological paradigm. Kuhn (1962/​ 1970) argued that science proceeds when an accepted theoretical paradigm is questioned because it cannot account for anomalous empirical findings. Sometimes, an accepted paradigm is replaced by another paradigm that can account for the anomalous findings. Although there are debates about Kuhn’s claims, I think that they suggest some intriguing possibilities for psychology. That is, one can ask if there are some findings in psychology that are difficult to account for with the dominant methodological paradigm and its foundational theoretical assumptions. If yes, one can go on to think about alternative theoretical and methodological paradigms. For psychology, an alternative paradigm does not necessarily have to fully replace a previous one. Rather, alternative paradigms can be viewed as providing different perspectives on complex human phenomena that cannot be encompassed by one perspective

xvi Introduction alone. I want to make it clear that by offering an alternative theoretical framework here, I am not trying to destroy traditional practices in psychology. The point is to expand how psychologists do psychology. I think that there are indeed some anomalies in psychological research that warrant considering and constructing alternative paradigms. For example, in research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, parenting practices were not consistently predicting children’s outcomes (Užgiris, 1989). Another example comes from research that has not revealed straightforward links from genes to behavior (Simons & Klopack, 2015). These findings (or lack thereof) are anomalous in the context of conceptualizing human functioning in terms of linear causality, whereby single, stable, independent, and antecedent factors directly and predictably cause behavior. Both areas of inquiry have been fruitfully reconceptualized in terms of ongoing dynamic processes and multidirectional influences. That is, child development is conceptualized in terms of bidirectional influences between parents (and others) and active children. With regard to genes and behavior, current epigenetic approaches conceptualize genes and behavior in terms of reciprocal influences, whereby genes not only affect behavior, but can themselves be affected by what a person does. It is also interesting that years of research have not revealed a terrorist “profile” that can be used to predict the likelihood of someone becoming a terrorist. The idea that such a profile is even possible to identify is based on conceptualizing behavior as the straightforward and stable outcome of particular antecedent and stable factors. Reconceptualizing behavior in terms of dynamic, variable, and diverse processes that are played out in individualized ways could provide new insights into how and why some people become engaged in terrorist activities (Borum, 2011a; Horgan, 2008, 2009, 2017). There will be more to say about all of these issues in subsequent chapters. The point here is to start thinking about possible alternative paradigms. Some are moving toward alternative paradigms by using connectionism and systems theory to conceptualize the dynamic complexities of human functioning integratively and holistically. Conducting qualitative research represents moving in alternative directions as well. Taken together, some limitations of conventional psychology’s ways of conceptualizing and investigating human functioning have been and continue to be exposed. It is thus useful to constructively question some of psychology’s long-​standing practices and to articulate alternative theoretical frameworks. And that is what I will do in this book. I want to encourage thinking differently about human functioning, I want to encourage different

Introduction  xvii ways of doing psychology, and I want to ask different questions. I want to provoke discussing how to conceptualize human functioning and experience. I want to tackle some of the ambiguous, fuzzy, and shifting phenomena that comprise human functioning and experience. I want to offer a way of thinking holistically and integratively about human functioning that is relevant to any area of psychology. I also hope to speak to some of the issues of the day. The world seems to be coming apart at the seams. I am writing this book as an American who sees the United States coming apart at the seams. At the same time that separation and divisiveness are rampant, globalization and the internet make us all ever more connected. Thinking about the complexities of human action integratively and holistically in terms of multiple and interrelated processes may provide ways of bringing people together and fostering mutual understanding. I imagine that some readers will agree with my questioning stance, even if they do not agree with some of the details of my approach. At the same time, I know that some will resist what I am doing here. Many will not take kindly to questioning the traditional assumptions and practices that comprise psychology and that are integral to how psychologists define themselves as psychologists. I respectfully ask you, the reader, to please keep reading anyway. Once again, I am not out to destroy mainstream psychology, and I do not mean to offend anyone. In constructing my theoretical framework, I did not spurn traditional psychological research. Rather, I drew on some classic and contemporary research in psychology, as well as other fields, and I have built on ideas with long histories. I also use examples from everyday life to illustrate and support varied claims. I am not anti-​science. The point here is that there are varied ways to do science, as well as varied ways to conceptualize and investigate human functioning. It is further important to be mindful of history, and to remember that “the” scientific method was itself born out of questioning tradition, as well as questioning authority-​based truth claims. Ultimately, thinking outside the box of conventional and traditional practices can lead to new insights into the complexities of human functioning. The book proceeds in three parts. In Part I (Chapters 1–​3), the stage is set for articulating a theoretical framework that addresses the complexities of action, and in Part II (Chapters 4–​7), I articulate that theoretical framework. In Part III (Chapters 8–​13), I consider some its varied applications and implications for exploring the complexities of action and for thinking about varied vexing human issues.

xviii Introduction More specifically, the point of Chapter 1 is to draw attention to some of the complexities of human functioning, as well as to provide a sense of my own questioning stance toward what I refer to as conventional psychology. I briefly summarize psychology’s historical roots in philosophy, and I explain how psychology emerged in the late nineteenth century as the discipline in which human functioning is studied scientifically according to the methods of the natural sciences. The chapter then proceeds to explain some conventional practices in psychology, namely, fragmenting, objectifying, and aggregating, as well as deterministic conceptions of causality. I also begin to consider how these practices are based on prior theoretical assumptions and conceptions of human functioning, which comprise a particular image of humanity that has implications for how we understand and treat people. In doing so, the stage is set for taking a theoretical turn in Chapter 2. Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of the critical necessity of theorizing, and then summarizes some critical analyses which illuminate how theorizing in conventional psychology is derived from and subordinated to its dominant research methods. That is, contemporary conventional psychology privileges theorizing in the form of articulating hypotheses that can be tested experimentally and analyzed statistically. However, there are varied ways to theorize, and I focus on explicating two forms of theorizing, namely, critically analyzing psychology itself and articulating a theoretical approach to human functioning. Explaining these two forms of theorizing permits engaging in them in subsequent chapters. The goal of Chapter 3 is to theorize by questioning some of psychology’s conventional practices and to explain why alternative theoretical frameworks are needed. I question the practice of fragmenting by arguing that although analyzing psychological phenomena separately makes for nice packaging, human functioning is complex and entangled. I  question the practice of objectifying by considering how human beings are not like physical objects. Quantifying practices are questioned on the grounds that much of what people do involves ongoing and dynamic processes that are not easily pinned down and measured quantitatively. I also question aggregating practices on the grounds that they obfuscate individuality and subjectivity in varied ways. The chapter includes questioning conventional psychology’s conceptions of deterministic and mechanistic causality. At the end of Chapter 3, I articulate my goal of constructing a theoretical framework that provides ways to explore the complexities of human action by addressing a set of issues and

Introduction  xix accompanying questions. I  also explain particular criteria for good theorizing that I aspire to meet. The aim of Chapter 4 is to summarize the main points of systems theory, which provides an overarching theoretical basis for the current conceptualization of action. According to systems theory, complex phenomena are made up of multiple and interrelated constituent processes. I further explain how systems involve multiple forms of causality. Chapter 4 ends by introducing the concept of action, which is theorized in more detail in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. The point at the end of Chapter 4 is to provide an orienting overview of action as the book’s central concept that will be used to represent the wider whole or system of what people do. In Chapter 5, I conceptualize action more specifically from a systems perspective in terms of varied and interrelated constitutive processes. I explain that action is taken to be constituted by or to emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Each process is taken to contribute 100% to action, and no process is primary or prior to the others. Considering how these processes are organized enables us to explain what a person is doing, to understand why a person is acting in some particular way, and to discern what someone’s action means. In Chapter  6, I  continue conceptualizing action from an overall systems perspective in terms of psychological processes, which include (but are not limited to) sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting, and constructing self/​identity. In this chapter, I conceptualize psychological processes as active processes that people do, and there are sections on thinking, feeling, constructing self/​identity, sensing and perceiving, and interacting with others. Each of these psychological processes is explained in relation to individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. The point of Chapter 7 is to conceptualize what happens during the development of action and how action develops. Action certainly develops and the psychological processes that comprise action also develop. I use organismic-​ developmental theory to conceptualize what happens during development in terms of changes that involve increasing differentiation and integration of action constituents, as well as progress toward cultural goals of development. To conceptualize how development happens, I  use sociocultural theory, which posits that development happens as individuals participate with others in cultural practices. I further explain how action develops through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

xx Introduction Varied applications and implications of the theoretical framework articulated in Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 are taken up in Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The discussions in Chapters 8, 9, and 10 are organized around the issues and questions articulated in Chapter 3 that the current theoretical framework is supposed to address. Chapter 8 considers how the current theoretical framework enables us to understand human functioning holistically and integratively, as well as in terms of active processes. Toward that end, it addresses the issue of systemic integration of dynamic and active processes, and it also takes up the vexing issue of mind–​body connections by considering how mind and body are inseparable parts of the wider whole of action. Chapter 9 presents some implications of the current theoretical framework for thinking about human action non-​dichotomously. Toward that end, it addresses how human action is simultaneously general and individualized, as well as simultaneously stable and variable. During the course of addressing these issues, Chapter 9 also considers some implications of the current theoretical framework for thinking about prediction, knowing individuals, and personality. Chapter 10 takes up some of the vexing complexities of causality and meaning. With regard to causality, I consider the utility of understanding and explaining action in terms of how it is structured or organized, as well as constrained and enabled by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. With regard to meaning, I explore how the theoretical framework can be used to interpret what people do. Chapter  11 presents some implications of the book’s theoretical framework for conducting research, as well as for making sense of the vast troves of research on human functioning that already exist. In Chapter 12, I cast a wide net to illustrate the applicability of the book’s theoretical framework for thinking systematically about a wide range of complex issues. In particular, I illustrate how the book’s theoretical framework can be applied to eating, freedom, attitudes, extreme action, and art. In the final chapter, Chapter 13, I explain how the book’s theoretical framework imposes complexity on our understanding of human action. I also use the theoretical framework to address some complexities of human action (initially identified in Chapter 1), and I suggest general guidelines for using the theoretical framework to make systematic sense of what people do in varied circumstances. The book ends with some musing about the hopeful, complex, and empathic image of and vision for humanity that I believe the book’s theoretical framework reflects, and that I hope it promotes and promulgates.

PART I

SET T ING T HE  STAG E Before conceptualizing human action, it is necessary to set the stage by providing a wider context for this endeavor. As I  see it, the wider context in which I wrote this book includes American psychology and my experience of American psychology roughly between 1986 and 2019. Although I wrote this book mostly between 2015 and 2018, I have been pondering the issues addressed in this book at least since I took some undergraduate courses in psychology in 1986. It was the spring of my senior year in college, and I had recently decided to go into psychology. As a humanities major, I had taken mostly history and literature courses, and had not yet taken a psychology course. For two years after graduating from college and before going to graduate school, I took some more undergraduate psychology courses and worked in an infant physiology lab. Between 1986 and 2019, American psychology expanded into more and more areas of specialization. More and more professional journals appeared for publishing empirical findings based on experimental methods and statistical analyses. These research practices became increasingly entrenched and comprise what I refer to as “conventional psychology.” Concepts and findings from psychology were increasingly known and used by people beyond academic and professional psychology. Yet during this generally postmodern time, the countervailing winds of critical psychology were gathering on the fringes of conventional psychology. A growing chorus of critical voices was questioning psychology’s conventional practices in varied ways. To set the stage for offering an alternative theoretical framework for thinking about human functioning, the chapters of Part I present an overview of conventional psychology and of some strands in critical psychology. Chapter 1 briefly traces some of the history of psychology and how it came to be defined largely in terms of research methods that are rooted in the natural sciences. Chapter 1 also describes contemporary conventional psychology in

2  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action terms of fragmenting, objectifying, and aggregating practices, as well as deterministic conceptions of causality. Chapter 2 raises varied issues regarding theory and psychology. In Chapter 3, I engage in theorizing by questioning some of psychology’s conventional practices, thereby providing a rationale for offering an alternative theoretical framework.

1 Introducing Psychology As people go about their lives in all corners of the world, complexity rages and reigns. We find complexity in the holism, dynamics, variability, multicausality, and individuality of human functioning. This list is not exhaustive, but it provides a starting point for exploring the complexities of human functioning. An overview of these complexities of human functioning can be found in Box 1.1. As a holistic phenomenon, varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes comprise human functioning as a whole, from perceiving, thinking, and feeling, to social interaction and self/​identity, to cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. These processes are complex phenomena in and of themselves, and figuring out how they occur in relation to each other is daunting. The complexity of holism is further compounded because the varied processes that comprise human functioning are ongoing and dynamic, making them difficult to pin down. As such, they can be played out in varied ways, taking us to the complexities of variability. Human functioning involves variability insofar as people may act differently in different circumstances, and insofar as what people do is played out in culturally and historically particular ways. Change is also part of the variability and dynamics that characterize human functioning. For example, individuals change, relationships change, groups change, cultures change, the planet is changing. Trying to understand why people do what they do is about as vexing and complex as human issues come. Part of the complexity of why people do what they do stems from the multicausality of human action. That is, human action is not easily attributable to one cause, or even one kind of cause. Although we may speak of human functioning and people in general terms because we are all human beings, we are also all distinct individuals who construct experience subjectively. Thus, understanding human functioning involves dealing with the complex interplay between general processes and individuality. One size does not fit all, making it important to discern how general human processes are individualized. Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

4  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 1.1  Some Complexities of Human Functioning











Holism

• Multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes comprise human functioning as a whole.

Dynamics

• Human functioning involves ongoing processes that do not stop in time. • Human functioning involves overlapping processes that are not easily pinned down.

Variability

• Human functioning is characterized by change and relative plasticity. • People act in varied ways in different circumstances. • Human functioning varies as relationships change, as cultures change, and as the planet changes.

Multicausality

• What people do cannot be easily attributed to one cause. • What people do involves multiple kinds of causes.

Individuality

• At the same time that people share some common humanity, everyone is a distinct individual who constructs experience subjectively. • At the same time that human functioning involves general processes, everyone acts in individualized ways.

Making sense of the complexities of human functioning is not straightforward. As pointed out in the Introduction, human beings the world over have been trying to make sense of human functioning and experience for millennia. Psychology is a science, academic discipline, and profession that is directed toward making sense of human functioning and experience. To start very broadly, I take psychology to be the study of what people do. Studying what people do includes:

Introducing Psychology  5 • Defining and analyzing the processes that constitute and comprise what we do • Making sense of why we do what we do • Discerning the development of what we do • Figuring out what our doing means to us individually and to others with whom we interact • Understanding people in general or in terms of common human processes • Understanding people as individuals, including making sense of individuality and subjectivity Toward these ends, psychology can offer theoretical frameworks or ways of conceptualizing what people do. My goal for this book is to offer a theoretical framework or a way of conceptualizing what people do as they go about the flux and flow of their complex lives in all corners of the world. I want to deal with some complex and vexing issues that are of concern within psychology as well as to people beyond academic and professional psychology. I hope that this book will appeal to people beyond psychology and beyond academics, to anyone who is interested in exploring some of the complexities of human experience. As the book proceeds, I will take up varied issues, including causality, culture, self/​identity, variability, and mind–​body connections. Why these issues? Not only have I personally been interested in them for years, but these issues are of concern within psychology as well as to people more generally. With regard to causality, a great deal of research in psychology is designed to identify causes of behavior, and certainly people in general spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out why people do what they do. I am including culture in this discussion because psychologists are increasingly concerned with understanding how behavior is played out in culturally particular ways. Moreover, in our globalized world, culture is at the forefront of many issues that people are dealing with in their lives today. Self/​identity has long been a topic of theory and research in psychology. And at least in the United States today, self/​identity issues are widely discussed and debated. For example, identity issues are prevalent in American political discussions and analyses—​hence the term identity politics. Variability is an important issue to consider, because people are not all the same, individuals act in varied ways, and people change and develop throughout their lives. The issue of mind–​ body connections has certainly vexed people for centuries and continues to

6  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action be a hot topic today. I want to address other issues that I imagine are of wide interest and concern, such as freedom, subjective experience, and development. I also want to conceptualize human functioning in a way that is applicable to psychology as a whole and that can encompass the varied topics that comprise the field of psychology. In other words, I want to conceptualize human functioning integratively and holistically, to be able to think systematically about the functioning of a whole person. Ultimately, I want to offer a way of thinking about human experience that can encompass its dynamic complexity, from the mundane to the sublime, and from the noble to the ignoble. It is a tall order, and I do not presume to be offering an exhaustive paradigm. Rather, my more immediate goal for this book is to begin articulating a theoretical framework for thinking about the complex vicissitudes of human experience that can be applied and fleshed out in varied ways. As a brief preview, the theoretical framework that I will be articulating conceptualizes what people do in terms of acting in relation to others. Figure 1.1 illustrates people acting in relation to others in varied ways—​eating, consoling, driving, and texting. The vertical streamers show

Figure 1.1  An overview of action.

Introducing Psychology  7 how such action is taken to be constituted by interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Action is further taken to be made up of varied interrelated psychological processes, including but not limited to sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting with others, and constructing self/​identity. These psychological process terms are spread horizontally throughout Figure 1.1 to make the point that they comprise varied modes of action. In addition, the current theoretical framework emphasizes that psychological processes, as well as acting in relation to others as a whole, develop. Thus, the word “DEVELOPMENT” is sprawled across the bottom of the scene. Constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes can be played out in varied ways, making for varied ways of acting and being human. Insofar as there are varied ways to understand and study people and what they do, people can and have created varied images of humanity. I think of an image of humanity as a way of characterizing and understanding human beings that has implications for how we treat people. The practices that currently comprise much of conventional or mainstream psychology represent one way of doing psychology. As we will see, they also represent and offer a particular image of humanity. Conventional psychology has certainly produced much useful information. However, some important questions and issues regarding human functioning remain largely unaddressed, overlooked, and even avoided at times. For example, although freedom seems to be very important to people around the world, it is not a major topic in psychology (Raeff, 2017b). Mainstream psychology has not said much about individuality, subjectivity, meaning, and agency. With regard to agency, Martin, Sugarman, and Thompson (2003) argue that “disciplinary psychology has failed to achieve a coherent conception of agency,” and they attribute this failure partly to psychology’s commitment to “a highly deterministic, reductive science in the manner of some branches and approaches to physical science” (pp.  1–​2). Mascolo (2017a) argues that making sense of the meaning of human action and defining what it even means to be a person are undermined by research that focuses on measurement. Issues of individuality and subjectivity tend to be obfuscated as psychologists focus on constructing presumably objective and generalizable knowledge about how people behave (Lamiell, 1981, 2003, 2013; Molenaar, 2004; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Valsiner, 2009). In addition, focusing on behavior in general obfuscates the ways in which human functioning is historically situated and not necessarily generalizable from one historical era to another (Gergen, 1973; Sarason, 1981).

8  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Yet I firmly believe that psychology can contribute to furthering our understanding of human functioning if we throw some conventional caution to the wind. Thus, I approach understanding and investigating what people do in a way that questions and departs from many aspects of conventional practices in contemporary psychology. I  am questioning the status quo of some of psychology’s basic assumptions and practices. But a questioning attitude and an alternative approach need not be viewed with trepidation or as a threat. Rather, questioning conventions and reflecting on what are often automatically invoked traditional practices can be useful and ultimately count as good scientific practice. It can be useful to step back and question the usual ways and to consider multiple perspectives on a situation. It can be very useful to think outside the box. Moreover, I question and reflect in the spirit of advancing our understanding of human functioning. I question in the hopes of building bridges across disparate areas within psychology, as well as between psychology and other disciplines. Today, “critical thinking” is a buzz word in education. We want students to learn how to think critically, and we can engage in some critical thinking about psychology as well. Critical thinking does not simply mean being negative and finding flaws. It involves examining the assumptions on which conventional practices are based, and it involves examining the implications of various claims and perspectives. If critical thinking points to limitations and problems with conventional practices, then we can work to go a step further by constructing alternative perspectives. As explained in the Introduction, I want to make sure it is clear that I am not suggesting that conventional approaches be abandoned wholesale. Instead, my overall goal for this book is to articulate a conceptualization of what people do that enables us to embrace the complex mess in ways that are not readily possible with conventional practices alone. Human beings are messy creatures and human action is messy as well. We defy easy categorization, we change, we develop, we can be inconsistent. There are so many entanglements. There is much complexity as people go about the flux and flow of their messy lives in all corners of the world. I am using the term “flux and flow” here metaphorically to make the point that human functioning involves ongoing processes that fluctuate and change. I came to this term when I was thinking about how the English phrase “ebb and flow” is used to characterize life’s ups and downs. I did not want to refer to human action in terms of ebbing because that suggests increasing and decreasing, and it emphasizes oscillating between positive and negative periods. I settled on “flux and flow” to convey the variability and fluidity of qualitative processes

Introducing Psychology  9 that comprise human functioning (and I also admit to liking the alliteration). To say that human functioning involves flux means that people change, and that their action fluctuates and is variable. To say that human functioning involves flow means that it involves ongoing active and dynamic processes that do not stop, and that cannot be pinned down easily. The perspective that I am articulating in this book does not address all that there is to address about human functioning, and it certainly has its limitations, as does any perspective. It is A way of looking at human functioning that will hopefully lead people to new insights about themselves and others, as well as open up new directions for theory and research in psychology and other disciplines. I am by no means alone in questioning psychology as usual. There has been much soul-​searching in psychology, beginning with its very founding in the late 19th century, and in varied strands of critical psychology during the last 30 or so years. Some classic and recent criticisms of psychology are about particular statistical techniques and methodological issues. Other critical treatments revolve around conceptual or theoretical issues. I will be emphasizing conceptual or theoretical issues in this book, and I draw on classic and contemporary voices. The remainder of this chapter will include a brief historical overview of conventional psychology. Then, I will present some of its currently dominant practices and assumptions that have led me to articulate a theoretical framework for understanding people as they go about the flux and flow of their complex lives in all corners of the world. Some issues regarding conventional psychology practices will be raised again and elaborated in subsequent chapters.

A Little History Contemporary psychology is highly methods and data driven, meaning that when investigating and analyzing psychological phenomena, psychologists tend to jump quickly into what is commonly referred to as “data collection.” And in conventional psychology, data collection typically proceeds according to quantitative and experimental methods that are steeped in the natural sciences. But it was not always this way. Once upon a time, understanding human functioning and experience was the purview of philosophy. And so it was for centuries. Then, as science ascended throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, psychology became the

10  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action discipline in which human functioning was studied scientifically (Danziger, 1990/​1998; Koch, 1985/​1998; Robinson, 2008, 2016). More specifically, some philosophers in Germany began to apply the methods of the natural sciences to philosophical issues by conducting experiments on aspects of human functioning. According to the standard textbook creation story, Wilhelm Wundt is typically credited with establishing the first psychology research laboratory in 1879 in Leipzig, Germany, where he conducted experiments on sensing and perceiving. Also throughout this period, the Western world was experiencing industrialization and the increasing use of machines for production. Science was providing knowledge of mechanics, and contributed to constructing the machines that transformed people’s lives in innumerable and immeasurable ways. However, Wundt was not an exclusive experimentalist, and he argued that certain aspects of human functioning and experience do not lend themselves to experimental analysis (Cole, 1996; Danziger, 1990/​1998; Robinson, 1986; Toulmin & Leary, 1985/​1998). For Wundt, experimental psychology was limited to studying the “more elemental domains” of human functioning (1913/​ 2013, p. 208). He explained further that it is “a false characterization” to equate “all of psychology with experimental psychology . . . because there are areas within the discipline that by the nature of their subject matter are inaccessible through the methods of experimentation” (p. 208). According to Wundt, issues of culture, children, thinking, and “artistic fantasy” (p. 208) are not amenable to experimental investigation, and require continued philosophical consideration. He also argued against relying wholly on experimental methods for fear that psychologists would “regard themselves either as free to ignore those areas of psychology that do not make use of experimental methods, or, what is worse, treat those areas of research experimentally” (p. 208). It is thus not surprising that Wundt’s scholarship includes a lengthy treatise on cultural psychology, and he worked to link psychology to other disciplines, including linguistics, history, and anthropology (Danziger, 1990/​1998). Taken together, Wundt saw psychology as a particular branch of philosophy, and he did not set up his laboratory in order to separate psychology from philosophy (Koch, 1985/​1998). Indeed, he was quite opposed to severing psychology from philosophy (Cole, 1996; Robinson, 1986; Wundt, 1913/​2013). In 1881, Wundt started a journal called Philosophische Studien, or Philosophical Studies, mostly to publish reports of experiments (Billig, 2013). The title of this journal suggests that he considered experimenting to comprise the empirical part of philosophy. Wundt warned that if psychology and philosophy undergo a full-​fledged divorce, “philosophy will lose more

Introducing Psychology  11 than it will gain, but psychology will be damaged the most. Hence, the argument over the question of whether psychology is or is not a philosophical science is for psychology a struggle for its very existence” (Wundt, 1913/​ 2013, p. 197). Without a strong grounding in philosophy, psychology would become superficial and barren because the issues that are key to psychology “are so closely connected with epistemological and metaphysical positions that it is inconceivable that they will at some point disappear from psychology” (p. 206). Given that such issues are central to psychology, Wundt asked, “Should one be content with learning by heart a few numbers and some more or less ambiguous, if not contested, empirical laws?” (p. 206). However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, psychology took off in different directions than Wundt had hoped for and envisioned. As psychologists worked to distinguish psychology from philosophy, the field became more and more experimental and less and less theoretical (Danziger, 1985, 1990/​1998, 1993, 1996; Slife & Williams, 1997; Toulmin & Leary, 1985/​ 1998). In order to be a separate field from philosophy, psychology was established as a science that revolved around using the methods of the natural sciences to investigate human functioning. Thus, “the question of psychology as a field of study became problematized in methodological terms” (Danziger, 1990/​1998, p. 22). By using experimental methods, psychology could generate empirical knowledge about human beings, which would further enable psychologists to identify universal laws or general principles of human behavior. The field became increasingly methods and data based, and psychology as a science was increasingly defined in terms of “the” scientific method. It is argued that, ultimately, “nothing has been more effective in psychology’s disciplinary success than its natural scientific status” (Wertz, 2011, p. 85). As psychology was defined in terms of method, “the ancient tradition of ardent and disciplined speculation about [human] nature and conduct that formed so large a part of the concern of philosophy was now ‘armchair psychology’ ” (Koch, 1985/​1998, p. 8). In addition, other ways of defining psychology and studying human functioning were marginalized, as “the vast reservoirs of psychological knowledge embedded in the history of the humanities, in literature, even within the categories of natural language and the sensibilities of language users, those senses of ‘psychology’ were transported beyond the pale” (p. 8). Not only was psychology increasingly insulated from these other vast reservoirs of knowledge about human beings, some of the non-​experimental methods that were used during psychology’s early days were also increasingly marginalized, such as introspection, case studies, and ethnographic observation (Gergen, Josselson, & Freeman, 2015).

12  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action The divorce from philosophy did not happen overnight, and from the end of the 19th century into the first half of the 20th century, varied theories and schools of thought continued to comprise psychology, such as psychoanalytic theory, functionalism, behaviorism, Gestalt theory, and humanism. These theories are often referred to as “grand” theories because they offer ways of conceptualizing human functioning broadly. With the exception of behaviorism, the grand theories did not easily lend themselves to being articulated in terms of specific hypotheses that could be tested through experimenting. They were thus marginalized as psychology embraced experimenting and as behaviorism came to dominate American psychology. Ultimately, however, behaviorism also fell out of favor in the face of conceptual criticisms that it denies the crucial role of mental processes, and that it cannot account for varied complexities of human behavior (Hunt, 1993). In addition, the results of animal experiments that supported behaviorist principles were not always applicable to human functioning, and researchers were finding that even animals behaved in ways that were at odds with basic behaviorist principles. As grand theorizing waned and experimental methodology waxed, psychologists focused on investigating narrower aspects of human functioning about which specific hypotheses could be articulated and tested experimentally. In the United States, establishing psychology and distinguishing it from philosophy were facilitated by a university structure based on departmental specialization (Billig, 2013; Danziger, 1990/​1998). Establishing psychology in the United States also coincided with the Progressive Era (1890–​1920) when public reform efforts were directed toward addressing societal problems with scientific solutions (Leahey, 2004). In order for psychology to be seen as a useful discipline that could contribute to social control and reform, psychologists had to produce scientific knowledge, thus further solidifying psychology’s identification with natural science methods. In addition, in order to address wider societal issues, such as poverty and crime, as well as public education, useful psychological knowledge had to go beyond individual experience. Toward that end, psychologists increasingly embraced statistics, and useful knowledge about human functioning was increasingly taken to be “statistically constructed knowledge” (Danziger, 1993, p.  38). Very briefly, statistics are used to identify general patterns in quantitative data about samples of people who are taken to represent a larger population. Statistical inference also involves discerning the extent to which some characteristic is distributed within and between groups. In turn, knowing about general group characteristics provides a basis for designing interventions on a wide scale. Such knowledge could be used to address some of the perceived

Introducing Psychology  13 group-​based societal issues of the day, such as how to deal with “the” poor, with criminals, with immigrants, and how to educate vast numbers of children. Statistical inference techniques were elaborated and became central to the methods of psychology, as well as to psychology’s identity as a distinct scientific discipline. During both World Wars, American psychology’s scientific status continued to ascend as psychologists aided the military in recruiting soldiers, job placement, and clinically treating veterans. By the end of World War II, psychology’s “links to its ancient roots in philosophy . . . were irrevocably severed” (Leahey, 2004, p. 489). After World War II, psychology continued to be defined in terms of “the” scientific method as government funding often went to hard science projects (Sarason, 1981). It is also important to point out that psychology’s emergence and ascent as a science coincided with the rise of a capitalist market economy, business expansion, and consumerism (Walsh, Teo, & Baydala, 2014). There was mass production for mass consumption by “the” consumer. Public schools were established to educate the masses. From restaurant chains to supermarket chains to hotel chains, American cultural expectations and experience were being standardized for the masses. To appeal to those masses, it was imperative to understand human behavior in ways that could be generalizable to them. Toward that end, psychology’s experimental approach and embrace of statistics fit the bill. Insofar as statistical analyses are directed toward identifying generalizable patterns, they can be used to identify patterns of behavior that can be generalized to masses of people. The masses also include subgroups, or submasses, such as housewives, children, or millennials. If you want to sell massive numbers of dishwashers to massive numbers of housewives, it helps to proceed from experimental knowledge that can be generalized to the mass of housewives. If you want to educate massive numbers of children, it helps to proceed from experimental knowledge that can be generalized to the mass of children.

Conventional Psychology Today Even this brief historical overview shows that psychological science rests on particular assumptions or premises about how to approach and delineate psychological issues. And these premises continue to permeate how psychology is conducted today. We now turn to considering some of the practices and premises that currently comprise conventional psychology. Please see Box 1.2 for an overview of conventional psychology premises and practices.

Box 1.2  Conventional Psychology Today Fragmenting—​based on the conceptual assumption that human functioning is made up of divisible and independent parts

• Psychology is a vast and fragmented discipline, made up of separate areas of specialization. • Within psychology, human functioning is sliced up into separate domains or fragmented bits of behavior, such as perception, cognition, language, social interaction, motivation, intelligence, and personality. • Within separate domains, behavior is sliced up into further fragmented bits of behavior. Objectifying—​based on the conceptual assumption that human beings and human functioning are like the physical objects of the natural sciences

• Human functioning is taken to consist of quantitatively measurable characteristics. • Human functioning is taken to be relatively consistent or stable over time and across contexts. Aggregating—​ based on the statistical premises that combining individuals’ data yields systematic generalizable information and that individual variability is canceled out by combining data from large numbers of people



• Studying human functioning requires combining individuals’ data to analyze general behavioral patterns. • Studying human functioning requires combining individuals’ data to generalize from samples to populations. Causality—​based on the conceptual assumption that human functioning is deterministically or unavoidably caused by antecedent and independent factors



• Research in psychology is dominated by experimental methods that isolate causes and discern their effects on behavior. • Research in psychology is dominated by experimental methods to predict behavior.

Introducing Psychology  15

Fragmenting Contemporary psychology is a vast academic discipline that is made up of highly fragmented areas of specialization. Some fragmenting and specializing in psychology built on the trend (mentioned earlier) away from grand theorizing toward analyzing specific aspects of behavior experimentally. Billig (2013) argues that psychology’s increasing fragmentation can also be attributed in part to the expansion of higher education after World War II. As more students poured into more institutions of higher learning, more faculty were hired, and more faculty were conducting and publishing more research. Furthermore, “modern universities are businesses with constant competition between institutions, between disciplines and between individuals. In common with managers working in other industries, university managers today see it as their job to extract ever greater productivity” from employees (Billig, 2013, p. 19). Ever greater productivity includes publishing ever more research, which brings prestige and funding to colleges and universities. To fulfill demands for quick and frequent publishing, psychologists are producing more and more research on increasingly narrow topics that fill increasing numbers of specialized journals. For decades now, psychologists have sliced human functioning up into separate domains, including but not limited to perception, cognition, emotion, language, social interaction, motivation, intelligence, self/​ identity, and personality. Studies of these topics tend to be highly specialized and narrow in focus, as these fragmented domains are fragmented into further subdomains. Today, psychologists typically identify themselves in terms of their areas of specialization or specific research topics, such as:

• I’m a cognitive psychologist. • I’m a social psychologist. • I’m a developmental psychologist. • I’m a forensic psychologist. • I study body image. • I study children’s understanding of numbers. • My research looks at whether early attachment predicts teenage delinquency. • I study the neurological bases of self-​regulation. Work within these areas of specialization is carried out in relative isolation, with professional societies and conferences specific to them. According to

16  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action its website, the American Psychological Association currently consists of 54 separate divisions. Back in 1986, Bronfenbrenner remarked that developmental psychology was going in the direction of “looking more and more at less and less” (Bronfenbrenner, Kessel, Kessen, & White, 1986, p. 1219). There is, in other words, a tendency to get bogged down in fragmented minutiae. In this context, it is hard enough to keep up with research in a single area of specialization, let alone read in other areas that are considered peripheral to one’s area of specialization. Ultimately, Finding what we need to read necessarily means overlooking so much else. The more that is published in our discipline, the more there is to ignore. In consequence, the sheer volume of published material will be narrowing, not widening, horizons, containing us within ever smaller, less varied sub-​ worlds. (Billig, 2013, p. 30)

In addition to institutional and professional pressure to publish, there is pressure to present research at conferences. Conferences are also highly specialized and one can spend a career going to conferences just within one’s fragmented area of specialization. In psychology, conferences may consist of some keynote addresses and plenary sessions that take up roughly an hour, during which varied and wide-​ranging issues can be considered. However, so much of conferences is taken up with short paper presentations and posters. Thus, within a specialized conference, topics are further fragmented into subtopic talks that fit into 15-​to 20-​minute presentations, or onto 36 inch × 48 inch or 48 inch × 60 inch poster boards (give or take some inches). In addition to being a byproduct of institutional and professional pressure, such fragmenting reflects the Cartesian assumption that human functioning is made up of divisible and independent parts or domains. As such, human behavior is being conceptualized in terms of isolated or split parts that can be understood separately from one another (Overton, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2015). Such fragmenting is also part of conventional psychology’s experimental attempts to disentangle these domains from each other and to discern their independent contributions to behavior. Accordingly, one can find a wide variety of assessments for specific aspects of functioning, such as verbal reasoning, language comprehension, self-​esteem, grief, attachment, parenting style, anxiety, and political attitudes, and the list could go on and on. Fragmenting is also evident in the conventional practice of investigating how varied factors may have “independent” effects on behavior. There is research

Introducing Psychology  17 that is directed toward disentangling and “partitioning” the effects of varied factors on behavior. Such research is also based on the theoretical premise that human functioning can be divided up into essentially separate parts, and that understanding human functioning proceeds from understanding the independent functioning of its separate parts. However, some psychologists have been and are currently groping for ways to investigate how varied aspects of human functioning are connected, and calls for integrative approaches that provide ways of bringing disparate findings about human behavior into coherence are increasing (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008; Robinson, 2007; Shotter, 1975; Sternberg, 2005). For example, there is research on social and emotional functioning, and there is an area of inquiry known as social cognition. Since the 1980s, addressing cultural issues has been on the rise in psychology, including efforts to incorporate Eastern traditions that emphasize holism and integration. In 2015, the Association for Psychological Science established a biennial international convention that promotes worldwide collaboration and revolves around integrating methods and disciplines. More generally, when you look around the world, connections and wider wholes are everywhere. And thinking about human functioning in terms of connections and wider wholes can help us to deal with varied issues that face the world, from globalization, to climate change, to local and global conflict, to terrorism, to migration.

Objectifying I use the term objectifying here to refer to the practice of treating human beings and human functioning as if they were physical objects, or in terms of attributes that characterize physical objects (Billig, 2013). Within a methodological paradigm that draws on the natural sciences, as well as on a mechanistic worldview, conventional psychology is based on the assumption that one is studying objects that are like the objects of the natural sciences (Billig, 2013; Danziger, 1990/​1998; Gantt, Lindstrom, & Williams, 2017; Gergen, 1973; Kirschner, 2015; Martin et al., 2003; Midgley 2001/​2006; Raeff, 2017a; Richardson & Fowers, 1998; Robinson, 2008, 2016; Sarason, 1981). Such objects are physical objects that can be characterized in terms of quantitatively measurable physical features, as well as in terms of the material substances that constitute them. As I look around my study, I see many physical objects that can be so characterized. One round object is brown with

18  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action green stripes. It is a clay bowl, and I just got up and measured it with a ruler. It is about 5½ inches high, and also about 5½ inches wide. It is a bit heavy on the bottom. I know that throwing it against the wall will directly cause it to break into smithereens. I also see a wooden chair with blue upholstery. Compared to the bowl, it is heavy, and I cannot easily pick it up and throw it across the room. If I tried, I would probably hurt myself rather than damage the chair. Embracing this objectifying paradigm in psychology is reflected in the term data collection, which implies that psychologists are dealing with physical objects that can be collected when they do research. The phrase implies that a researcher can collect data the way people can collect any objects, such as stamps, or paintings, or classic cars. As collectibles, data exist in the world to be found and gathered up by psychologists. As such, the phrase does not suggest that data are created by psychologists through the methods that they use. “Data collection” further reflects a detached and impersonal approach to constructing psychological knowledge that emphasizes disengagement between the researcher and the researched (Danziger, 1990/​1998; Gantt et al., 2017; Gergen, 1982/​1994; Reddy, 2008). The phrase does not imply engaging as a human being with other human beings who subjectively construct, and sometimes struggle mightily through messy and complex lives. If human functioning is considered to be a physical object, then one can assume that it consists of physical characteristics that can be measured quantitatively. Thus, when human beings are viewed as physical objects, research proceeds by quantitatively measuring human functioning. Indeed, one of the first questions a mainstream psychologist might ask about a possible research topic is, “How can we measure that?” During the course of establishing psychology as a distinct discipline, “the commitment of American psychology to quantitative methods was relentless,” in part because they “seemed to mark psychology as one of the exact sciences,” thus further severing it from philosophy (Danziger, 1990/​1998, p. 147). The commitment to quantitative methods remains strong today as psychology revolves around “the quantitative imperative,” which refers to “the view that studying something scientifically means measuring it. Measurement is thought to be a necessary part of science. . . . This imperative is motivated by the idea that all attributes are fundamentally quantitative” (Michell, 2003, pp. 6–​7). To measure behavior quantitatively, an aspect of behavior is defined or “operationalized” in terms of quantitative variables, and analyses are directed toward analyzing human

Introducing Psychology  19 functioning in terms of amounts of variables, as well as quantitative relations between variables. In addition, physical objects are stable and consistent, and they can be understood in terms of universally applicable physical laws. The ceramic bowl and the chair are always in the same place and they never surprise me. Without countervailing forces, an object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest. Water can be counted on to freeze at 32° Fahrenheit or 0° Celsius. The sun always rises in the east and always sets in the west. The earth can be counted on to revolve around the sun. These facts about the natural or physical environment are predictable and replicable. When assumptions about stability and consistency are applied to people, it is assumed that their behavior is relatively consistent over time and across contexts (Danziger, 1990/​1998, 1996; Gergen, 1973, 1982/​1994, 2014a, 2014b; Gergen et al., 2015; Koch, 1985/​1998; Martin et al., 2003; Overton, 2015; Sarason, 1981; Shotter, 1975; Valsiner, 1997, 2009). Hence, the tradition of searching for generalized laws of behavior in psychology. In addition, if behavior is relatively consistent over time and across contexts, it can be viewed as predictable. Indeed, prediction is central to conventional psychology, and studies are often designed to discern if and how certain variables predict other variables. And if behavior is consistent and predictable, then findings from one study should be replicable. Replication is taken to be a scientific gold standard that renders research results valid and credible. Trying to predict behavior and striving to replicate research results further reflect the assumption that the universe, including human functioning, is essentially determined or determinate rather than indeterminate. Philosophical arguments over determinism and indeterminism have raged for centuries, and it is beyond the scope of this book to delve into them in detail. The point here is to point out and recognize that the conventional psychology practice of predicting is steeped in prior theoretical assumptions, as well as long-​standing philosophical traditions about how the universe works. In brief, determinist approaches hold that phenomena are caused or determined by antecedent and independent factors that can be identified, and that operate in consistent ways that can be predicted and replicated. As Berlin (1999) explains, Determinism declares that every event has a cause, from which it unavoidably follows. This is the foundation of the natural sciences: the laws of nature

20  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and all their applications—​the entire body of natural science—​rest upon the notion of an eternal order which the sciences investigate. (pp. 66–​67)

In contrast, indeterminism holds that phenomena are not caused only by predictable independent and antecedent events, and thus phenomena may play out in ways that cannot be known in advance. Within an indeterminate worldview, phenomena can influence each other, but their influences are not taken to be unavoidable or inevitable. When applied to human functioning, determinism holds that what people do is caused by independent and antecedent events that can be identified and that operate in consistent and unavoidable ways. Therefore, it should be possible to predict what people will do. Insofar as the determinants of behavior are consistent, it should also be possible to replicate study results at a later time and with different study participants.

Aggregating Within an overall quantitative approach to human functioning, conventional psychology is well known for relying on statistics. As explained earlier, statistics are used to summarize quantitative data and to identify general patterns of behavior. Statistical analyses further involve aggregating or combining individuals’ data and discerning group trends and differences in amounts of behavior between groups. This practice involves presenting results in terms of group scores (e.g., the average or mean, the median, and the mode), rather than results for individuals. According to Danziger (1990/​1998), the practice of aggregating arose in part during psychology’s early days because people were impressed by the “repeated demonstration of striking regularities in social statistics. . . . The major methodological implication of these highly effective demonstrations was that the inherent lawfulness of human conduct would become apparent only if observations on a large number of individual cases were combined” (p. 76). Aggregating and generalizing are based on the premise that combining data from individuals yields systematic generalizable information about human behavior that cannot be discerned by analyzing individuals alone. Moreover, individual variability is assumed to be canceled out when data from large numbers of people are combined. By aggregating individuals’ data, it is also assumed that the characteristic being measured (e.g., intelligence,

Introducing Psychology  21 personality, attitudes, individualism, collectivism, depression) is played out in the same way for all people, and that people differ primarily in the amount of the characteristic (Danziger, 1985, 1990/​1998; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010). For example, if your data and my data are part of an aggregate study of shyness, you and I, and everyone else in the group, are taken to differ primarily in amounts of shyness, but not in terms of how we express shyness, how we experience shyness, or how others experience our shyness. Danziger (1990/​ 1998) explains that when personality was introduced as a construct for psychology in the early 20th century, “the individual was regarded as a collection of discrete, stable, and general qualities. These qualities were thought of as being identical in kind from one individual to another, varying only in degree” (pp. 157–​158).

Causality Certainly, psychologists are concerned with discerning the causes of behavior, as are people in general. Understanding why people do what they do enables us to understand and engage with each other. Moreover, if you know what causes people to do X, Y, or Z, you can reliably predict whether they will do X, Y, or Z. Experimental methods in psychology revolve around discerning causality, as an experiment is essentially a test of cause and effect. In an experiment, one group (the “treatment” group) experiences some kind of “manipulation” by the researcher, and the other group (the “control” group) does not. If there are statistically significant differences in the behavior of the two groups, then your manipulation worked, and you can attribute the treatment group’s behavior to it. Any differences in how people in the two groups behave can be attributed to that one variable that differed between them. That one variable is known as the “independent variable,” and the hopefully different behavior of the two groups is the “dependent variable.” Of course, there can be more than two groups, more than one independent variable, and more than one dependent variable. The point here is that the goal of an experiment is to isolate causes and to discern their direct and independent effects on behavior. In other words: “In order to separate, to pry apart, the causal influence of many simultaneously occurring events, we must create situations that will never occur in the ordinary world. Scientific experimentation breaks apart the natural correlations in the world to isolate the influence of a single variable” (Stanovich, 2007, p. 97).

22  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Within a deterministic worldview, experimental methods are based on the assumption that a phenomenon is caused by or is the unavoidable effect of some antecedent and independent event(s). In other words, an event (X) occurs that then causes an effect (Y), as in X→Y. According to this conception of causality, X and Y are taken to be physically and spatially separate, as well as temporally distinct. It is certainly possible for Y to also affect X, but that would then occur separately from and after X has affected Y, as in: X→Y —​time elapses —​ Y→X

This conception of causality explains varied physical phenomena, such as how objects move in space. A prototypical example of such causality is the trajectory of a pool ball. A pool ball moves across a pool table upon being hit at a certain angle, with a certain amount of force. The movement of the pool ball is the effect of and is determined by the independent, antecedent, and deterministic cause. I will refer to this deterministic model of causality as the cause→effect model of causality, or cause→effect causality. As mentioned earlier, psychology emerged as industrialization was becoming entrenched in Europe and the United States. After World War II, the machine was ubiquitous and mechanical devices were transforming people’s lives. Within this context, the machine metaphor became entrenched in psychology. Indeed, cause→effect causality represents a mechanistic conception of causality insofar as a machine can be broken down into separate elements that function in the same way in any machine, and whose linear and deterministic relations make it function (Witherington, 2017). In addition, machines that are powered by engines involve creating a force or pressure to transfer energy that sets (and keeps) a machine in motion. As such, a specifiable independent and antecedent event or chain of events occurs and causes the subsequent functioning of the machine. Within a mechanistic causal model, multiple parts of a machine can be combined to cause some aspect of machine functioning, say Z. Within a mechanistic causal model of behavior, X and Y are taken to combine additively to cause an effect Z, as in X + Y → Z. For example, X could be socioeconomic status, Y could be gender, and Z could be aggression. By using experimental procedures to study human behavior, psychologists are embracing prior theoretical assumptions of cause→effect causality and applying them to what people do (Gantt et al., 2017; Gergen, 2009b; Overton, 2015; Valsiner, 1997; Witherington, 2017; Witherington & Heying, 2013). In

Introducing Psychology  23 other words, within the world of experimental variables, human behavior is treated as the dependent variable that is the outcome or effect of an independent causal factor or variable, which can also be a behavioral variable. Research may also be conducted to disentangle the effects of more than one independent variable on a dependent variable. For example, a study might be designed to determine how both socioeconomic status and personality affect some form of behavior by calculating their independent contributions to a dependent behavioral measure. Some might go further to analyze what are known as “interaction effects,” which would involve discerning how socioeconomic status and personality affect behavior when they are added together. In 1974, Stanley Milgram published a book about his now classic obedience studies, which continue to comprise some of psychology’s most famous findings. In the first experiment, 40 men were recruited, ostensibly to participate in a study of learning conducted by a Yale University professor. As subjects in this study, the men had to teach word pairs to a “learner” in another room and whom the men thought was another voluntary research subject. In fact, the learner was a member of the research team who acted according to a script. As subjects in the study, the men were instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing voltage (from 15 to 450 volts) whenever the learner made a mistake. At the 300-​volt increment, Milgram reported, “the laboratory walls resound as [the learner] pounds in protest. After 315 volts, no further answers appear, and the pounding ceases” (p. 32). However, unbeknownst to the “teachers,” the learners were not actually being shocked. In the first experiment, 65% of the subjects obeyed fully by administering shocks of 450 volts, and 35% refused to go on administering shocks at earlier increments (five at 300 volts, four at 315 volts, two at 330 volts, and one each at 345 volts, 360 volts, and 375 volts). Milgram then proceeded to conduct further experiments, in which different variables were manipulated to discern varied causes of obedience. For example, in experiment 2, “vocal protests were introduced,” and in experiment 3, “the victim was placed in the same room as the subject, a few feet from him” (p. 34). In experiments 2 and 3, respectively, 37.5% and 60% of subjects “defied the experimenter” (p. 36). Beginning with the fifth experiment, the research “was moved out of the elegant Yale Interaction Laboratory to more modest quarters to discern “whether the less impressive quarters would lead to a lesser level of obedience” (p. 55). Before experiment 5 was to begin, the learner mentioned “a slight heart condition,” and wondered whether the shocks are dangerous (p. 56). Milgram reported that “neither the less elegant laboratory nor the

24  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action mention of a heart condition leads to greater disobedience” (p. 57). The experimental variations were all designed to assess whether antecedent and independent variables caused the dependent behavioral variable, namely obedience, operationally defined as shocking the learner with ever higher voltages. It is also interesting to consider how Milgram’s work is fully steeped in the mechanistic premises that constitute conceptions of cause→effect causality. For example, he repeatedly writes about the forces that impinge on people to cause their behavior. One such force is a person’s values, but Milgram argues that “values are not the only forces at work in an actual, ongoing situation. They are but one narrow band of causes in the total spectrum of forces impinging on a person” (p. 6). Milgram further points out that many subjects experienced tension or conflict between “the antagonistic vectors” of “the deeply ingrained disposition not to harm others and the equally compelling tendency to obey others who are in authority” (pp. 42–​43). Milgram also uses the discourse of the natural sciences to describe human behavior with analogies from chemistry and physics. For example, he refers to further variations in the experiment as “an altered situational chemistry,” and he posits that the experimental setting consists of “three elements: position, status, and action” (p. 89). He uses a “cybernetic viewpoint” (p. 125) to understand his research findings, and compares human behavior to automata and electric trams. Although obedience can occur somewhat differently in different circumstances, Milgram asserts that “the basic processes remain the same, much as the basic process of combustion is the same for both a burning match and a forest fire” (p. 174).

Toward an Alternative Certainly, conventional psychology has provided useful information about human functioning and experience. For example, I believe it is important and useful to know that, on average, children of gay and lesbian parents score similarly to children of heterosexual parents on various standardized assessments of well-​being (Patterson, 2006). I find it important and useful to know that, on average, people with disabilities report being almost as happy as people without physical disabilities and score only slightly lower on measures of well-​being, (Prilleltensky, 2009/​2013). This kind of information can help to change negative attitudes and can lead to wider societal

Introducing Psychology  25 changes in the form of new and inclusive policies and institutional practices. I also believe that it is important to know if police in the United States arrest more people of some races or ethnicities than others. From voting to educational achievement, it is sometimes quite important to be able to predict people’s behavior. I began writing this paragraph in August 2016, when the US presidential election was in full swing. I paid attention to the polls, which presented average and aggregated data, because I  think it is important to know about how people in general are reacting to candidates. Conventional psychology studies can also “incite public discussion on issues of political and moral significance” (Gergen, 2001, p. 808). I am thus not suggesting that the practices that constitute conventional psychology be wholly abandoned. Rather, the point here is to recognize that conventional psychology’s dominant methods are based on prior theoretical assumptions about human functioning, and they are suitable for addressing certain kinds of issues about human functioning, but not others (Taylor, 1985/​1992). For example, they are based on the view that human functioning can be broken down into separate parts that constitute separate areas of specialization. The dominant methods are directed toward discerning the deterministic effects of some variables on others, group differences, and behavioral trends for populations of people. The dominant methods also emphasize stability over variability, and they are thus not designed to discern how some form of action is time and place specific (Danziger, 1990/​1998; Gergen, 1973, 1982/​1994, 2009b; Lamiell, 1981, 2003, 2013; Lerner, 1996; Molenaar, 2004; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Sarason, 1981; Taylor, 1985/​1992; Valsiner, 2009). As such, there is a focus on being over becoming, or on how behavior is, over how it continuously emerges (Valsiner, 1997). The dominant methods are also not directed toward addressing questions about the subjective meaning of the situation to individual study participants. Going back to Milgram, his research does not systematically address what was going on with the individuals who refused to keep shocking the learner. And he does not systematically analyze how some participants actively resisted and subverted the experimenter’s commands by, for example, administering lower shocks or helping the learner (Jetten & Mols, 2014). It is important to recognize that Milgram did conduct interviews with his study participants, and he also presents some examples of participants who argued with the experimenter, who refused to keep administering shocks, and who showed signs of distress. However, this qualitative information about individual participants is not the focus of his analyses. Along similar lines, one

26  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action can ask about the subjective experience of individual disabled people and individual children of gay and lesbian parents. And, as we now know, the 2016 election polls were woefully off base. What did the survey questions mean to people? Who were the individuals who responded to the surveys, and who were the individuals who did not respond? In July 2016, documentarian Michael Moore cautioned the world not to underestimate Trump, and he even predicted that Trump would win. He seemed to know some American voters in ways that were not assessed by the surveys. By growing up, living among, and talking to Trump supporters in Michigan, perhaps he knew them as individuals. In addition, some of the practices just presented show that conventional psychology is derived from and continues to paint a particular image of humanity that can be questioned and that has its particular limitations. It is an image of humanity that paints or conceptualizes people and human functioning primarily as

• Physical objects • Collections of fragmented and quantitative variables • The rather static and passive effects of deterministic causes • Deindividualized random cogs in sometimes contrived groups

This image is based on theoretical premises that have implications for how people understand and treat each other, as well as for wider societal functioning. For example, if we assume that people behave because of static traits, we may judge them harshly as individuals and not be open to the possibility that they can change. If we think of people as relatively impervious to change, we may incarcerate them without providing opportunities for change. If we assume that the brain and chemical imbalances are deterministic causes of problematic functioning, then we seek medical solutions and pay less attention to a person’s complex entangled life and subjective experience. If we assess aspects of cognitive functioning in isolation and with standardized tests, we may treat or position people with Alzheimer’s disease as defective, rather than as whole people who can still live meaningful lives. If we treat people as members of unidimensional demographic or identity groups, we risk stereotyping them and not treating them as individuals who participate in varied groups and cultural practices. If we think about what people do in terms of quantitative variables, we may lose sight of the ongoing dynamics and variable organization of complex qualitative processes.

Introducing Psychology  27 As pointed out in the Introduction, within the context of conventional psychology’s methodological assumptions and practices, there are some anomalous findings. For example, early research in psychology on parent–​ child interaction was designed in accord with cause→effect conceptions of causality to discern the effects of parents on children. As Užgiris (1989) explains: “The prevalent image was of two separate entities participating in an action-​reaction chain, with the process open to a cause-​effect interpretation” (p. 289). This image also involves fragmenting, in this case, viewing parent and child independently of one another. However, such research yielded only “minimal predictability of child characteristics from parental practices, as well as evidence of variability in one parent’s practices toward different children” (Užgiris, 1989, p. 289). In a nutshell, children seemed to be influencing their parents, at the same time that parents were influencing children. Such simultaneous and bidirectional influence does not make sense when parent–​child relationships are conceptualized according to the theoretical assumptions of conventional psychology. To make sense of these findings, an alternative conceptualization is needed. Thus, “there was a call for a more reciprocal view of parent-​child relations, reflected in studies of child effects on parents” and a “search for a new image to represent the mutuality of mother-​infant interaction ensued” (Užgiris, 1989, pp.  289–​290). Based on conceptualizing a mother and infant as inseparable parts of a wider relationship, the “terms transaction, dialogue, and negotiation have been used in an attempt to convey the understanding that a mother and her infant form a system characterized by mutual regulation and mutual evolution” (Užgiris, 1989, p. 290). Rather than trying to fit the anomalous findings into conventional conceptions, some developmental psychologists constructed alternative conceptions to make sense of the anomalous findings. In addition, the alternative conceptions generated new directions for research that have advanced our understanding of child development, as well as social interaction more generally. Indeed, conceptualizations of mutual regulation are not exclusive to mothers and infants, and can be used to think about human interaction and relationships more generally. This overview of conventional psychology suggests that human functioning could be conceptualized differently. It is certainly possible to paint other images of humanity. That is, human functioning can be conceptualized in terms of different theoretical premises than the ones discussed here that inform the practices of conventional psychology. As well, different

28  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action theoretical premises provide a basis for questioning some of conventional psychology’s traditional practices. For example, questioning how conventional psychology fragments human functioning is based on the premise that human functioning can be conceptualized as an integrative whole in which the parts are organized in relation to each other. Questioning the practice of aggregating individual data is based on the premise that people experience life subjectively and in individualized ways. The analysis thus far shows that even though psychology’s identity as a science is based on a commitment to “the” supposedly objective and value-​ free scientific method, that commitment comes with value-​laden theoretical premises after all. However, just because the vast majority of psychology is steeped in these theoretical premises, it does not mean that it must inevitably be so (Taylor, 1985/​1992). Science is a social activity that people conduct together (Danziger, 1990/​1998, 1997; Gergen, 1978, 1985, 2001, 2014b; Gergen et al., 2015; Kuhn, 1962/​1970; Lewontin, 1991/​1992; Mascolo, 2017a; Sarason, 1981; Shotter, 1975; Valsiner, 1997). As such, scientific practices are agreed upon and legitimated by the people who engage in them. Scientific norms are also agreed upon and legitimated by people who do science in a particular way. As Sarason (1981) puts it: “Psychological methods, in short, derive from a time and place based conception of what people are or can be. They are socially sanctioned” (p. 143). In addition, scientific practices are supported by wider cultural institutions, such as universities where tenure is granted based on number of empirical publications, or granting agencies that fund conventional research on currently hot topics, or journals where publishing decisions maintain conventional practices in psychology. Insofar as conducting science costs money and is used to legitimate dominant values and societal arrangements, science is also shaped by economic and political processes (Lewontin, 1991/​1992). Considering alternatives to conventional psychology’s premises and practices is not tantamount to abandoning science or a scientific understanding of what people do. I am not in any way suggesting that psychology cannot be scientific, and I am not anti-​science. Rather, I am taking up the position that there are varied ways to be scientific (Gergen et  al., 2015). In general, science involves “an unwillingness to accept truth statements simply based on authority and the systematic use of evidence to advance understanding. What counts as systematic and evidence, however, are considerations that must be adapted to the subject matter of the science” (Mascolo, 2017a, p. 42). This broad definition of science enables us to demarcate what

Introducing Psychology  29 counts as scientific activity, but it does not stipulate one particular way of doing science. Even in psychology there are alternative research traditions, but they have been overshadowed by the dominant quantitative and experimental paradigm. For example, there is a tradition in psychology of systematically observing people in their daily-​life settings. Where would we be in our understanding of development without Piaget’s careful naturalistic observations of infants and children? Narrative research traditions have advanced our understanding of self/​identity processes. There will be more to say about research methods as the book proceeds. For now, the point is that science is a social activity that people conduct together, and it can be defined, conducted, and judged in varied specific ways by people who do science. When one is researching and reading about a wide range of topics, one sometimes stumbles upon unknown and useful material. As I  was researching and reading about the philosophy and history of science, I happened upon an article commentary by Stroud, who is someone I had never heard of and about whom I have not been able to find much information. He seems to have published a few commentaries and a short piece on the virtues of behaviorism. Although I do not endorse a behaviorist approach to human functioning, I  was immediately enamored of Stroud’s (1984) broad definition of science, and more specific definition of psychological science: Each individual is indeed unique in his or her behavioral complexity. However, science aspires to formulate abstract and general knowledge through which particulars may be understood. . . . The fundamental task of psychological science is to show how individuals may be understood and appreciated as unique instances of some broader set of classes and relationships. (p. 921)

I find this definition of psychological science very compelling, precisely because it recognizes that all people are distinct individuals and that all people share in some common humanity. In keeping with this definition, a goal of psychological science is to discern how common or general human processes are played out in what individuals do (Allport, 1962; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Valsiner, 1997, 2009; van Geert, 2011). Understanding and analyzing individuals in no way undermines the scientific goal of constructing generalized

30  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action knowledge about human functioning. Rather, analyzing individuals proceeds from the premise that each person is unique in all respects—​genetically, physiologically and psychologically. Moreover, each person follows his/​her own unique path in life in that (s)he matures, develops, learns, adapts, behaves and experiences in idiosyncratic ways. Yet, at the same time, within the range of inter-​ individual and intra-​individual (temporal) variability, generic processes of life organization are in operation. It can be said that these generic processes make the high variability possible. (Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008, p. 23)

Traditionally and conventionally in psychology, “nomothetic” research that focuses on constructing generalizable knowledge is valued, and is often pitted against “idiographic” research, which focuses on constructing knowledge of individuals. However, nomothetic and idiographic knowledge are not mutually exclusive. In his definition of psychological science, Stroud (1984) goes on to point out that the “idiographic-​nomothetic distinction is for the most part a false dichotomy; scientists must approach their subject from both directions simultaneously” (p. 921). Moreover, insofar as general or universal human processes are particularized in individualized ways, uniqueness is not tantamount to “irreducible incommensurability,” because individuals are manifesting general processes (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 825). Thus, even though conventional psychology emphasizes generalizing aggregated data from samples to populations, generalized scientific knowledge can also be constructed by discerning how general or common processes are manifest by individuals (Gantt et al., 2017). Perhaps some biographies and autobiographies are so compelling partly because they provide insight into how general human processes are individualized. For example, the diary of Anne Frank is her individual story, but it became a symbol of the Holocaust more generally. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books are about one girl in one family, but they have provided generations of children with insight into American pioneer life more generally. As the book proceeds, I will be identifying and referring to “general human processes” that are taken to be common to all human beings. At the same time, these processes are taken to be played out in culturally and individually particular ways. I will refer to these processes variably as “general,” “common,” or “universal” processes. As generalizable processes that can be played out in varied ways, the theoretical framework that I am articulating here can provide a basis for achieving

Introducing Psychology  31 the scientific goal of constructing generalizable knowledge through which particulars may be understood. Insofar as understanding and investigating human functioning can be based on varied, often very different, prior theoretical premises, studying what people do scientifically first involves articulating those theoretical premises systematically and explicitly. We must, in other words, start theoretically or conceptually or, dare I say it, philosophically. We must start the process of understanding and investigating what people do with some theoretical framework. We thus now turn to considering some issues regarding theory and psychology.

2 Taking a Theoretical Turn Psychology can be advanced by understanding that “psychology is fundamentally a theoretical enterprise, as all sciences are. Even the attempt to derive a disciplinary identity from scientific method cannot alter the discipline’s fundamental theoretical nature” (Slife & Williams, 1997, p. 122). This claim may seem odd to many readers because psychology is known as an empirical science that emphasizes methods and data. However, insofar as methods are tools for addressing research questions that reflect theoretical perspectives, and insofar as data are interpreted in terms of theoretical perspectives, theorizing is essential to understanding and investigating what people do. My goal for this chapter is to raise and explore some issues regarding theory and to consider what it means to say that psychology is a fundamentally theoretical enterprise. The chapter begins by considering why we need to theorize to understand and investigate human functioning. Next, we turn to considering psychology’s stance toward theorizing, including why conventional psychology practices end up rendering the field rather atheoretical. We then consider how more elaborate theorizing includes analyzing psychology itself, as well as articulating theoretical approaches to human functioning.

The Critical Necessity of Theorizing Theory is critical for understanding and investigating human functioning because without orienting concepts and definitions, there would be no way to understand and think about what people do. Moreover, we cannot dispassionately observe what people do without interpreting it in some way, that is, in terms of some theoretical perspective or interpretive framework. For example, I may observe some event and call it sibling rivalry, whereas someone else might see it as good-​natured teasing. Or maybe you do not know what to call it because it does not seem to fit into any of your interpretive schemes. Have you ever puzzled over how to interpret, or understand, or make sense Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Taking a Theoretical Turn  33 of what someone did? Perhaps you talk to friends about what happened and what they observed. You are all actively constructing what happened. Some interpretations or constructions enable you to better understand what the person did, but some do not seem helpful at all. In these ways, observing is a kind of constructing and interpreting. As Gergen (1991a) explains, raw observations (or sense data) cannot, and do not, determine theoretical positions. Rather, the theorist must approach the world with theoretical positions already in place. For it is only when there are theories at hand that the world can be interpreted as an array of separable and meaningful facts. (p. 14)

Without orienting concepts and definitions, psychologists would not know what to study, nor would we know how to go about studying what people do. In order to know what to study, one must first conceptualize what one is studying in some way. For example, in order to study sibling rivalry, you have to first conceptualize sibling rivalry in some way in order to study the phenomenon (and to distinguish it from good-​natured teasing). In addition, what researchers “find” through empirical investigation depends on what they are looking for. And what they are looking for depends on how they conceptualize the issues at hand. How do you know what to look for without some kind of conceptualization of what to look for? You can revise how you conceptualize in relation to empirical findings, but you are still starting theoretically. Taken together, it becomes very important for psychologists to engage in some explicit theorizing about people and what people do. Once you have conceptualized what to study and articulated some theory-​ based issues to research, figuring out what method to use follows. Research methods—​including the ones favored within conventional psychology—​are tools that we can use for answering questions and addressing issues about human functioning. However, just as not all problems around the house require a hammer, and just as not all food preparation requires a peeler, not all methodological tools are suited for all questions and issues concerning human functioning. It depends on how the questions and issues are conceptualized. For example, if identity is conceptualized as an entity that one has in greater or lesser amounts, then it makes sense to administer quantitative surveys to people. If identity is conceptualized as a narrative or story that one

34  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action tells about oneself (to oneself and others), then it makes sense to interview people and ask them to tell stories about their lives. In order for the empirical tools to fit particular issues and questions, we first need to conceptualize the issues and derive questions based on how we have conceptualized the issues. Once we conceptualize the issues and pose relevant questions, we can figure out which methods would be most suited to investigate the questions. Theory is also necessary for psychological analysis because behavior can be interpreted in different ways. As just pointed out, it could be sibling rivalry or it could be good-​natured teasing. In psychology, different ways of interpreting behavior follow from different theoretical frameworks (Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). For example, perhaps you see a toddler repeatedly taking pebbles out of a red container one by one, inspecting each one by turning it over a few times, dropping it and picking it up, then running a short distance and placing each pebble in a yellow container that his uncle is holding, and finally shouting out a number before running back to the red container. You also note that each time he does so his uncle asks him, “How many did we have last time? How many now?” There are different ways to interpret and understand what this child and his uncle are doing. Attachment theory would suggest that the child is using his uncle as a secure base from which to explore the world independently. Piagetian theory would draw attention to how the child is making sense of each pebble through repeated self-​generated sensorimotor activity. Vygotskians would be interested in how the child is engaging with another person in a culturally particular social routine and developing ways of thinking that are mediated by a cultural number system. These varied interpretations are not necessarily incompatible and each may be true in some way. These interpretations point to how understanding and interpreting human functioning depend on how human functioning is conceptualized or on what theory is used. Moreover, if what a person is doing cannot be easily understood and interpreted based on some essential categories, given perhaps in nature, then the categories have to be constructed by us (Overton, 2006). Danziger (1993) explains that the objects of psychology have to be understood as constructed objects. They are not found lying around in nature. Our experiences and actions do not bear little tags, supplied by nature, that identify them as instances of motivation, a personality trait, or a bit of information. They have to be construed as such. (p. 26)

Taking a Theoretical Turn  35 Thus, the theoretical process of constructing those categories becomes critical. If what people do can be interpreted in different ways and in terms of categories that we construct, then psychology is indeed a theoretical enterprise.

Theory in Psychology In Chapter 1, we traced some of the history of psychology, including how psychology came to be dominated and defined by methodological issues. To quickly recapitulate, psychology was established by distinguishing itself from philosophy as the scientific study of human functioning, and the science of psychology was defined in methodological terms. The word method comes from the Greek word methodos, and hodos means “the way.” Using “the” scientific method was and continues to be viewed as the way to knowledge (Slife, 1998). As Aronson (2004) puts it in the ninth edition of his social psychology textbook: “The scientific method—​regardless of whether it is being applied in physics, chemistry, biology, or social psychology—​is the best way we humans have of satisfying our hunger for knowledge and understanding” (p. 330, italics added). Today, there is indeed some theorizing in psychology, and theorizing is considered to be an important part of the empirical research process. However, much theorizing in psychology is theorizing of a particular kind (Danziger, 1985, 1990/​1998, 1993, 1996; Slife, 1998; Stam, 1991). What is going on is that conventional psychology privileges one particular way of theorizing, namely theorizing that fits the method. It is theorizing that is subordinate to method. For example, consider the following descriptions of theory in scientific research. Theory construction, testing, and revision are critical aspects of scientific advancement. Theory is a cohesive set of interconnected concepts that allow the generation of testable hypotheses. A  good theory (such as evolution) is one that summarizes large amounts of known empirical phenomena, has repeatedly generated testable hypotheses that have been confirmed, and provides a better explanation of the phenomena than alternative explanations. Almost all good theories are causal, in that they specify causal relationships among the key concepts. (Bushman & Anderson, 2015, pp. 1810–​1811)

36  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action And Stanovich (2007) notes: A theory in science is an interrelated set of concepts that is used to explain a body of data and to make predictions about the results of future experiments. Hypotheses are specific predictions that are derived from theories (which are more general and comprehensive). Currently viable theories are those that have had many of their hypotheses confirmed. (p. 21)

In addition, Scientific theories must always be stated in such a way that the predictions derived from them could potentially be shown to be false. (p. 20)

This kind of theorizing makes sense in the context of conventional psychology’s methodological practices. That is, if you are going to do an experiment about causal relationships among variables, then you will theorize by articulating hypotheses about how the variables are causally related. You will hypothesize that the independent variable predicts the dependent variable. As such, this kind of theorizing is subordinate to the experimental method. Or, as Danziger (1993) explains: “If my theory has to justify itself by its ability to explain statistical relationships among measurable variables . . . its statements will have to be cast in a mould determined by this task” (p. 19). In other words, “statistical inference necessarily imposes its own theoretical model on research” (Danziger, 1985, p. 4). In these ways, method comes first and method dictates how psychologists theorize. Method remains the priority. Method-​driven theorizing involves reviewing what is taken to be “the literature” on a particular topic to discern how it has been studied before. It also involves turning concepts and ideas into “operational definitions,” as well as articulating “testable hypotheses.” Readers may be wondering why I just put “the literature” in quotation marks. With a nod to one of my graduate school mentors, the late Bernard Kaplan, referring to “the literature” implies that there is a single identifiable set of readings about the topic at hand that one must read, understand, and know. This phrase also typically refers to the empirical work that has been published in psychology about the topic, especially in the last 10 years. However, important ideas about many (if not all) topics in psychology can be found in other academic disciplines and may have long histories in psychology, as well as in other disciplines. In addition, it can be

Taking a Theoretical Turn  37 useful to go outside the confines of academic discussions of a topic to enhance one’s understanding of it. For example, how is the topic discussed in the news? I find that journalists and documentarians often offer compelling, systematic, and evidence-​based accounts of people dealing with the complexities of their lives. How is the topic treated by novelists and poets, or in literature, rather than in “the literature?” How is the topic treated by painters, or musicians, or in movies? Freeman (2011) argues that poets and novelists seem “more equipped to capture the movement of life in all of its messiness” (p. 390) than psychologists who are steeped in “academic psychology’s rather narrow image of what constitutes (valid, legitimate) science” (p. 389). He thus advocates for a poetic or generally artful approach in psychology in order to fulfill “what is, arguably, the first and most fundamental obligation of scientific endeavor—​namely, to be faithful, to practice fidelity, to the phenomena of concern” (p. 389), which for psychology is “the living, loving, suffering, dying human being” (p. 394). In addition, novels enable us to “know individuals in terms of time, place, tradition, and culture,” thus also “helping us understand how the individual, on the one hand, and time and the social historical characteristics of place, on the other, are inextricably part of each other” (Sarason, 1981, p. 164). Within the context of privileging and starting with a particular method and method-​driven theorizing, more elaborate theorizing is not necessary. Moreover, other kinds of theorizing may even be deemed unacceptable or substandard insofar as a “theory is not good unless it conforms to the dictates of method” (Slife, 1998, p. 212). As particular methodological practices became entrenched in psychology, they “reduced the demands made on psychological theorizing” (Danziger, 1990/​1998, p.  154). Historically, “as the empiricist logic of theory construction and evaluation became pervasive in the field, issues and concerns relevant to psychological theorizing were progressively narrowed” (Gergen, 1991a, p. 14). Insofar as theorizing is prescribed by method, theorizing did not become a major concern or priority in conventional psychology (e.g., Gergen, 1982/​1994, 1991a; Gergen & Zielke, 2006; Gigerenzer, 2010; Lamiell, 2013; Overton, 2006; Slife & Williams, 1997; Toulmin & Leary, 1985/​1998; Valsiner, 2009). Thus, we can say that psychology is rather atheoretical, meaning that psychologists do indeed theorize, but insofar as theorizing is prescribed by method, varied other ways of theorizing are not readily considered. And theorizing itself is not viewed as a particularly thorny or problematic issue worthy of elaborate consideration for its own sake. As such, even though

38  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action psychology can be understood as a theoretical enterprise, current practices in psychology render it rather atheoretical. There is thus a disconnect between the “nature” (à la Slife and Williams) and the practice of psychology. Evidence for not prioritizing theory can be found in the plethora of research articles that follow the methodologically prescribed way of theorizing, as just described. Evidence for not prioritizing theory can be found in the relatively low number of theoretical journals in psychology. In addition, research funding tends to go to empirical projects. I also see evidence for psychology’s atheoretical stance in how psychology programs are organized in the United States, as well as in how colleagues talk about theorizing. For example, courses in theory building or theoretical analysis are not typically required in psychology programs in the United States. Instead, programs may require psychology majors and graduate students to take several methods and statistics courses. A student once lamented that during her first 2 years as a psychology major, her psychology courses were all about numbers and math. Recently, when I  asked students what they think of when they hear “research in psychology,” one student immediately responded “statistics,” and several other students nodded or murmured in assent. I remember once asking a psychologist who was giving a talk about her work, how she conceptualized the issues she was researching and about the theoretical approach she was taking to the issues at hand. She responded that her mentor in graduate school advised students to first find an effect and then conceptualize it. But how do you know if a phenomenon is an effect without some kind of prior conceptualization of it as an effect? It is also important to point out that the line between causes and effects is not always clear-​cut, as sometimes what people do is a cause, and sometimes it is an effect of some identifiable cause. For example, a person’s current ways of acting are a foundation upon which development occurs and thus can be seen as a cause of development. At the same time, that action is also the effect of development. When you are interacting with someone, that someone is a cause of what you do, making their behavior a cause, and your behavior an effect. At the same time, what you do is a cause of the other person’s behavior, which becomes an effect. It is complex and it depends on how you conceptualize the issues at hand. A colleague recently told me that she and another colleague laughed about how I  suggest writing conceptual papers because in their subfield of psychology only people who have been doing experiments for 20 years, and who

Taking a Theoretical Turn  39 thus have standing in the subfield, can publish conceptual papers. Another psychologist once told me that he did not want to “get philosophical” when I responded to his query about age ranges for characterizing adulthood by commenting that conceptions of age and adulthood vary historically and culturally. Emphasizing conceptual or theoretical issues continues to be denigrated as “armchair psychology,” and I  have heard psychologists refer to conceptual papers as “just” thought pieces. By emphasizing theorizing here, I am not suggesting that psychologists become philosophers or that there are no distinctions between psychology and philosophy. The point here is that the boundaries between psychology and philosophy are not so clear-​cut. Moreover, psychology can draw on its roots in philosophy by taking a theoretical turn to think about theorizing in varied ways.

The Theory that Lurks within the Method Taking a theoretical turn includes considering how psychology’s dominant methodological practices are not theoretically neutral. Not only do the dominant methodological practices prescribe a particular way of theorizing, they are based on particular prior theoretical assumptions or premises. They are based on and entail often implicit and unacknowledged theoretical assumptions, as well as ways of conceptualizing people and what people do (Danziger, 1985, 1990/​1998, 1993, 1996; Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2013; Gergen, 1982/​1994, 2009b; Mascolo & Raeff, 2017; Raeff, 2019; Robinson, 2007; Slife, 1998; Slife & Williams, 1997). As such, using certain methods is tantamount to accepting those theoretical assumptions and ways of conceptualizing people and what people do. In other words, “methodologies are not theory neutral but tend to produce results that are fundamentally biased to favour theoretical interpretations of a particular type” (Danziger, 1985, p. 3). This predicament is ironic because “the” scientific method has traditionally been viewed as a theory-​neutral and unbiased way to objective knowledge (Danziger, 1996; Polkinghorne, 1983; Slife, 1998; Slife & Williams, 1997). But, as already suggested, methods, including “the” scientific method, are laden with theoretical assumptions and preconceived notions of what is being studied, which in our case is human functioning. For example, if you use quantitative methods, then you are conceptualizing human functioning as an object with measurable characteristics. Also, using “the methods and explanation of natural, physical science” means that

40  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action you are “equating human action and experience with the inanimate phenomena of physics and the involuntary phenomena of biology” (Martin, Sugarman, & Thompson, 2003, p. 9). You are thus conceptualizing people in ways that are characteristic of inanimate objects, and you are conceptualizing human functioning as largely involuntary. With regard to the history of studying emotion in the social sciences, Lutz (1988) argues that in the 1970s, emotion “came to be virtually synonymous with that which could be physically measured such as facial muscle movements or galvanic skin response. Emotions also tend to be portrayed as discrete or separate entities as a result of the need to measure” (p. 220). In this case, researchers began with the methodological need to measure, which entails conceptualizing emotions as separate entities with measurable characteristics. If you start with experimental methods that test the effects of antecedent and independent causes, you are conceptualizing the causes of human functioning in a particular way. If you start with experimental methods, you are conceptualizing what people do in terms of independent and antecedent factors, and not in terms of inherently inseparable processes that mutually constitute each other at the same time (Overton, 2006, 2013, 2015). With regard to the methodological practice of generalizing from a particular research study, Danziger (1996) asks, “What warrants such generalizations? Traditionally, psychologists have grounded their generalizations on their faith in a constant human nature that operates according to the same principles from one situation to another” (p. 33). In other words, generalizing is based on the prior theoretical assumption that human functioning is basically stable and consistent. There is further irony here. Conventional psychology’s commitment to certain methods and many psychologists’ insistence that psychology is an empirical science, are part of attempts to distance psychology from the theorizing of philosophy. However, using certain methods is very much a theoretical issue. It is a form of theorizing. Insofar as “method is always dependent on a set of theoretical assumptions and arguments . . . then method itself is a theory—​a philosophy. Like any other theory or philosophy, method makes assumptions about the world, and important implications arise from those assumptions” (Slife & Williams, 1997, p. 120). Once again, psychology can be understood as a theoretical enterprise through and through, even though it is rather atheoretical in practice. By privileging a particular method that entails particular theoretical premises, other possible conceptions of human functioning would be preemptively ruled out if they do not conform to the theory that lurks within the method. Such

Taking a Theoretical Turn  41 conceptions would not be “ruled out because they are ‘unsupported by the data’ but because they belong to a different, but not necessarily fallacious, philosophical position” (Slife, 1998, p. 213). Given the theoretical nature of method, it is not surprising that there is an entire academic discipline known as philosophy of science. Philosophers of science analyze the assumptions and implications of varied scientific methods and concepts (e.g., causality, nature, reality), as well as different ways of defining science. They work to discern how theory and empirical data inform each other, and to identify what counts as scientific knowledge, as opposed to other ways that human beings may know the world. There are also historians of science who analyze the history of conceptions of science and ways of doing science. The very existence of these academic disciplines suggests that what is known as “the” scientific method is but one way of doing science that did not always exist. It also suggests that “the” scientific method comes with varied theoretical assumptions about the objects of scientific knowledge, as well as implications for how we construct knowledge of the world. We could thus refer to that way of doing science as “a” scientific method, rather than “the” scientific method. As “a” method, it provides A way of understanding the world that is based on particular theoretical assumptions, and that is useful for addressing particular kinds of questions. If one finds those theoretical assumptions problematic in some ways, then one would be compelled to theorize differently. As with many human activities, there are varied ways to theorize, and theorizing can play varied roles in psychology (Gergen, 1991a; Looren de Jong, 2010; Martin, 2003; Martin, Sugarman, & Slaney, 2015; Slaney, 2015; Slife, 1998; Slife & Williams, 1997). Please see Box 2.1 for an overview of varied ways to theorize in psychology. We now turn to considering two broad categories of theorizing, namely (1) analyzing psychology itself and (2) articulating a theoretical approach to human functioning or some aspect thereof.

Theorizing by Analyzing Psychology Itself One can analyze psychology itself in varied, often overlapping ways. For example, one can delve into the history of varied topics and terms in psychology. One can also discern the varied ways in which particular terms have been and are defined and investigated. In this section, we will consider

42  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 2.1  Varied Ways to Theorize in Psychology

• Analyze the history of topics and terms. • Analyze how terms are defined. • Analyze how metaphors and phrases are used. • Analyze how phenomena are investigated. • Theorize critically by identifying, deconstructing, and questioning taken-​for-​granted assumptions and practices. • Theorize critically by identifying how psychology reflects cultural assumptions and circumstances. • Theorize critically by identifying how concepts and theories serve interests and ideologies. • Think about how empirical findings can be synthesized for an integrative understanding of human functioning. • Construct conceptual categories and theoretical frameworks for understanding human functioning.

two ways of analyzing psychology itself, namely (1) critical theorizing and (2) analyzing some of psychology’s terms, phrases, and metaphors.

Critical Theorizing Critical theorizing generally involves identifying, deconstructing, and questioning taken-​ for-​ granted assumptions and practices in psychology (Slaney, 2015). Although critical theorizing gained ground in psychology in the 1970s and 1980s, it did not come from nothing. When psychology was emerging as a distinct discipline in the late 19th century, critical voices sounded in reaction to defining psychology primarily in terms of natural science methods. But the roots of critical psychology can be found even earlier, in centuries of philosophical arguing about human functioning. As Billig (2008) explains, contemporary cognitive psychology is rooted in Locke’s philosophy of human understanding, which itself builds on philosophical traditions that go back to ancient times. Billig argues further that the roots of critical psychology can be found in early 18th-​century criticisms of Locke, most notably in the mostly forgotten work of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who himself drew on

Taking a Theoretical Turn  43 philosophical traditions that go back to ancient times. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve into that history, but I mention these historical roots here to make the point that contemporary critical theorizing does not come out of some radical or extreme blue. It encompasses ways of thinking whose legitimacy derives in part from long-​standing and venerable intellectual traditions. There is thus a tradition of questioning tradition. The critical psychology movement that gained ground in the 1970s and 1980s focused on detecting and questioning taken-​for-​granted assumptions in psychology’s theories and practices. In general, those decades saw the rise of postmodern, feminist, and social constructionist perspectives, all of which embrace a questioning stance toward conventions, taken-​for-​granted norms, and established routines. Such theorizing generally involves “ideological unmasking” and “shows how presumably value-​free psychological theories serve cultural and political power” (Looren de Jong, 2010, p. 755). Considering how values and ideologies inform research in psychology includes considering whose interests are served and whose are undermined, as well as recognizing and empowering previously silenced groups and individuals (Fox, Prilleltensky, & Austin, 2013; Gergen, 2001; Gilligan, 1982; Looren de Jong, 2010). More specifically, postmodernism refers to the skeptical view that absolute truth and knowledge about an independent reality cannot be discovered objectively because all knowledge, truth claims, and conceptions of reality are embedded in humanly constructed, value-​laden interpretive frameworks or perspectives. Feminist perspectives in psychology draw attention to the role of gender in human functioning, as well as to the role of sociocultural and institutional processes in human functioning. Feminist perspectives additionally draw attention to how issues of power and authority are played out in cultural practices, including science. With regard to psychology, feminist perspectives point to the ways in which psychology is steeped in Western and patriarchal values. Social constructionism “is principally concerned with explicating the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or otherwise account for the world (including themselves) in which they live” (Gergen, 1985, p. 266). From a social constructionist perspective, knowing the world is taken to occur through historically and culturally situated social interaction (Bruner, 1990; Gergen, 1985, 2009a, 2009b). More specifically, social constructionism holds that all knowledge claims issue from socially negotiated assumptions and values within a community. Thus, what we take to be knowledge is not so much a

44  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action reflection of the world as it is as a historical and culturally situated account of the world in terms of the values and needs of a particular community. (Gergen, Josselson, & Freeman, 2015, p. 4)

Insofar as psychology is directed toward knowing the human world, its concepts and research practices are also taken to be socially constructed and culturally particular, rather than value-​free reflections of an independent reality. In other words, psychological knowledge is not independent of the “time, place, social role and niche” of psychologists themselves (Sarason, 1981, p. 155). Critical theorizing also involves identifying some of the ways in which psychology reflects the cultural issues and values of particular times. For example, one can consider how certain research topics go in and out of style in psychology in relation to wider cultural values and issues. In the United States, psychology was established as a credible scientific discipline in part because it was addressing some of the major societal issues of the day, such as how to organize schools that were populated by children from diverse backgrounds, and how to deal with increasing urban crime (Danziger, 1990/​1998). In the 1980s, there was a great deal of research in the United States about the effects of day care on children, and developmental psychology also discovered fathers in the 1970s and 1980s. What was going on then? More and more women were working, and traditional values and assumptions about women’s and men’s roles were being challenged. And today, in the midst of harried rushing around, stress, and sleeplessness, as well as almost constant electronic bombardment, there is research on mindfulness. Psychology also reflects the values and experiences of individual psychologists. For example, in clinical psychology, a clinician’s subjective opinions about normal and abnormal functioning can enter into how they counsel people. In developmental psychology, theories and research are derived from conceptions of ideal developmental goals, as well as from individual developmentalists’ values and assumptions (Burman, 1994; Kaplan, 1983b, 1986). In addition, some psychologists may choose topics to study on the basis of their beliefs and values. Why is this psychologist interested in studying how the police treat people of different races in the United States? Perhaps they study this topic because they value equality and want to contribute to reducing racism in the United States.

Taking a Theoretical Turn  45 Critical theorizing can be liberating because it can lead to new ways of thinking about human functioning, and because it supports ways of being that are “released from the shackles of the taken for granted” (Gergen, 2001, p. 810). In doing so, critical theorizing “is not so much a summation of what is the case about human behavior as a way of emancipating people from stultifying and repressive conceptions of what is the case” (Gergen & Zielke, 2006, p. 302). For example, Gilligan (1982) exposed how dominant conceptions of behavior and development in psychology represent and privilege men’s experience. Conceptualizing differences in men’s and women’s experiences is not a statement about what is the case for all men and all women for all time. Rather, Gilligan’s critical theorizing draws our attention to different human ways of acting that may be particularized by people in varied circumstances, as well as to some of the nuanced ways in which people ponder varied circumstances. By recognizing other ways of being, people can be emancipated from the idea that one particular way of being holds for all people, or is necessarily better than another way of being. Taken together, critical theorizing unveils biases and implicit assumptions in psychology’s traditional practices. The point of such theorizing “is not to annihilate tradition but to give all traditions the right to participate within the unfolding dialogue” (Gergen, 2001, p. 808). As such, critical perspectives advance pluralistic and egalitarian values. In addition, Bruner (1990) argues that they reflect open-​mindedness, which can be understood as a willingness to construe knowledge and values from multiple perspectives without loss of commitment to one’s own values. Open-​mindedness is the keystone of what we call a democratic culture. . . . It demands that we be conscious of how we come to our knowledge and as conscious as we can be about the values that lead us to our perspectives. . . . But it does not insist that there is only one way of constructing meaning, or one right way. (p. 30)

Open-​mindedness, along with recognizing varied ways of being, does not have to result in the extreme relativism of “anything goes.” One can still endorse particular values at the same time that one recognizes others. In addition, one can theorize critically about approaches in psychology by considering “what a given approach illuminates about human beings and what kinds of engagement with the world it facilitates, as well as what it might distort or obscure” (Kirschner, 2015, p. 293).

46  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Analyzing Terms, Phrases, and Metaphors One can also analyze psychology itself by exploring the meanings, premises, and implications that are reflected in particular terms, metaphors, and commonly used phrases. Doing so may reveal biases and assumptions, and thus there can be overlap between critical theorizing and analyzing terms, phrases, and metaphors. That is, analyzing terms, phrases, and metaphors can include analyzing them critically to discern assumptions and biases. With regard to terms and phrases, in the book thus far I  have pointed out some implications of “data collection” and “How do we measure that?” Conducting experiments involves “controlling” and “manipulating” variables, as well as ensuring that a study has enough “power,” all of which are loaded terms when we consider that they are used in reference to a human social situation. Theorizing by considering the meaning of terms and phrases also involves analyzing the history of terms and phrases that are used in psychology to understand human functioning. Danziger (1997) has analyzed how varied psychological topics or objects were invented, understood, and used by psychologists, including intelligence, attitudes, motivation, and personality. Historical analyses show how the meanings of these terms have changed, and how they are constructed by psychologists in relation to varied social, cultural, and institutional processes. When terms that refer to human functioning are understood as dynamic products of human constructing, theorizing is directed toward identifying how terms are chosen and defined. Psychology is strewn with metaphors about human functioning, and analyzing psychology itself includes analyzing its metaphors to discern their assumptions and implications. Using metaphors involves using a term that is understood literally in one domain to enhance understanding in another domain where it is not understood literally. For example, life is not literally a bowl of cherries, and the baby is not literally thrown out with the bath water, and she did not literally take the bull by the horns. Metaphors highlight certain aspects of concepts, but obfuscate others, thereby providing a basis for addressing certain aspects of an issue as opposed to others. Of course, people use metaphors all the time. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) explore the roles of metaphor in human understanding and show how people make sense of life by metaphorically extending physical activity and experience. The point is not to rid psychology of metaphors. I myself am using metaphors here, such as flux and flow, in order to emphasize the ongoing dynamics and variability of human functioning. I am also a big fan of construction metaphors because

Taking a Theoretical Turn  47 they draw attention to how people actively make sense of experience, as well as how people actively contribute to their own behavior and development. Thinking about how people construct experience and behavior stands in contrast to treating human functioning as predetermined, as the passive result of uncontrollable forces, as a gift, or as given in nature. The point of considering some of psychology’s metaphors is to point out that metaphors are indeed used in psychology, and to point out that they are not neutral ways of describing human functioning. They both illuminate and obfuscate. In the following analysis, metaphors will be indicated with italics. Since the beginnings of conventional psychology in the late 19th century, the machine metaphor has certainly been dominant in psychological discourse. There is discussion in psychology of internal or inner psychological mechanisms that underlie a person’s external behavior. The machine metaphor is also evident when human functioning is conceptualized as a computer. We hear about inputs and outputs, and the hardware and software of behavior. When human beings are viewed as computers, human cognition involves processing information. In contrast, from a constructivist perspective, human cognition involves constructing how we understand and interpret the world. Also in contrast to a machine, human functioning can be metaphorically understood as a developing drama that involves people acting in scenes to achieve purposes through varied means (Kaplan, 1983b). When the mind is viewed as a container, it is treated as a physical object that holds other physical objects or things, such as thoughts and memories. Causality tends to be understood linearly, including in terms of linear chains of events, in contrast to conceptions of circular causality, whereby varied processes are taken to simultaneously and mutually affect each other. Self/​identity has been treated metaphorically as an object that a person has at their core, as dialogue, as positioning, as a narrative or story, and as a mirror, to name but a few self/​identity metaphors. Some ways of functioning are taken to be hard-​wired in the brain, while others may be the product of the brain’s plasticity. The last decade or so has seen increased study of executive functioning, which generally refers to higher cognitive processes such as reasoning, planning, problem solving, and controlling attention. The metaphor of executive functioning implies that these processes are separate from other constituents of behavior and that they autonomously exert a kind of control over what a person is doing, as an executive presides over underlings. This metaphor stands in contrast to conceptualizing human functioning in terms of a system of equal and connected constituent processes. Is a child a sponge that absorbs knowledge and cultural

48  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action values, or is a child an active person who constructs knowledge and cultural values? There is also the metaphor of value transmission from one generation to the next. Over the years, development has variously been understood as a staircase, a racetrack, a ladder, a web, and a pathway. Fischer and Bidell (2006) explain that when development is metaphorically understood as a ladder, “the beginning point, sequence of steps, and endpoint of the developmental process are all linear and relatively fixed” (p. 319). However, this view of development does not account for “the role of constructive activity or contextual support,” nor does it account for variability in functioning (p. 319). In contrast, development can be understood metaphorically as a web in which “the strands . . . are not fixed in a determined order but are the joint product of the web builder’s constructive activity and the supportive context in which it is built” (p. 319). In addition, “the strands in a web can start in a number of places, take a variety of directions, and come out at a range of endpoints” (p. 319).

Theorizing by Articulating Theoretical Perspectives Another kind of theorizing in psychology involves articulating a theoretical perspective on human functioning or conceptualizing human functioning. This kind of theorizing does indeed occur in conventional psychology, and I do not mean to suggest that there is no theorizing at all in conventional psychology. Rather, as discussed earlier, there is theorizing in a particular way that is subordinate to method. However, if one does not start with a particular method, then one might be compelled to theorize differently. If one finds the theoretical assumptions of conventional psychology to be problematic in some ways, then one would be compelled to theorize differently. Theorizing differently could include conceptualizing human functioning in terms other than quantitative measures, independent and dependent variables, and statements of testable hypotheses. For example, perhaps you are interested in cognitive, social, and identity development in relation to participating in group organizations, such as Girl Scouts. A researcher might hypothesize that girls who participate in Girl Scouts are more developed than girls who do not participate in Girls Scouts or any other such organization. A researcher could administer standardized quantitative cognitive, social, and identity development assessments or “measures” to girls who belong to these two groups, and statistically assess and “predict” the effects

Taking a Theoretical Turn  49 of Girl Scout membership on their cognitive, social, and/​or identity development. However, one could theorize in terms other than quantifying Girl Scout membership and development, and in terms other than stating testable hypotheses about Girl Scout membership and development. For example, Rogoff and her colleagues conceptualize Girls Scouts as a cultural institution with a history of practices that involve cultural ways of acting that develop (Rogoff, Baker-​Sennett, Lacasa, & Goldsmith, 1995). In addition, according to sociocultural theory, development happens through guided participation, which involves actively participating in cultural practices with others (Rogoff, 1990, 2003). Such theorizing leads to asking questions such as the following: How do varied others guide girls as they sell Girl Scout cookies? What cognitive development occurs in how girls use the cookie-​selling form as they practice selling cookies? What social developmental changes occur for different girls as they engage with different customers? How do Girl Scouts define themselves when telling narratives about their cookie-​selling experiences? What cultural conceptions of achievement and success are evident in their narratives about cookie-​selling experiences? Rogoff et al. asked these kinds of questions, and they answered some of them by observing Girl Scouts as they prepared to sell cookies and as they sold cookies in their neighborhoods. In doing so, they empirically validated conceptualizing development as a process of changing participation with others in historically situated cultural practices. And, thanks to this kind of empirical research, we know a great deal about how cognitive, social, and identity development occur through actively participating in cultural practices. We also know a great deal about the varied ways in which others can guide developing individuals. Theorizing differently could also include articulating integrative theoretical perspectives about multiple aspects of human functioning simultaneously. In psychology today, theorizing mostly involves articulating testable hypotheses about specific aspects of behavior or fragmented bits of behavior (Slife & Williams, 1997). There are oodles of models within psychology’s specialized areas of inquiry, such as perception, cognition, emotion, self/​ identity, motivation, and sociability. Some come with names, such as cognitive dissonance theory, the bystander effect, hierarchy of needs, the fundamental attribution error, the two-​factor theory of emotion, stereotype threat, confirmation bias, and theory of mind. However, I am left wondering how these bits of behavior may be related to human functioning as a wider integrated whole. Robinson (2007) lambasts psychology for creating theoretical

50  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action models that focus on specific data about narrow aspects of functioning. As an alternative, Robinson challenges psychologists to theorize “at the level of global and richly contextualized experience and activity” (p. 192). Elsewhere he argues for “taking ever more seriously the busy world of actual persons, striving to realize in fact what is desired in thought and urged upon them by their stronger sentiments” (Robinson, 2016, pp. 330–​331). Robinson’s calls are compatible with my goal of offering a theoretical framework for understanding human functioning as a whole, as people go about their messy and complex lives in all corners of the world. Such a framework would include global and richly contextualized experience and activity, as well as actual people in their busy worlds. I hereby take up Robinson’s challenge. If varied ways of theorizing are not cast in the discourse of operational definitions and testable hypotheses, some might question whether a theory can be subjected to empirical analysis. Some might question whether it is truly scientific and not mere opinion or dogma. It is useful to recall that, in Chapter 1, science was defined in terms of using systematic evidence, and evidence for theoretical claims can come in varied forms. Not all science has to be directed toward testing hypotheses, and not all science has to be directed toward predicting effects. As just explained, Rogoff et al. (1995) observed Girl Scouts to empirically validate their sociocultural conceptualization of development by discerning the varied ways in which the developmental process of guided participation occurs. Such research comes under the rubric of qualitative research in psychology, and even though qualitative research is overshadowed by conventional quantitative research, there is a long tradition of qualitative research in psychology to draw on. There will be more to say about qualitative research in Chapter 3. Once again, the point for now is that science can be conducted in varied ways, and it is possible to empirically validate theoretical claims in varied ways. Empirical validation includes conducting research to discern the “contexts in which a given theory leads to useful insights and contexts in which it is misleading . . . revealing contexts in which it does and does not hold” (McGuire, 1985/​1998, p. 573). McGuire refers to such research as “empirical confrontation.” Different conceptualizations of a phenomenon can be confronted empirically by discerning how they are played out in different contexts. For example, individualism and collectivism have been conceptualized in at least two contrasting ways. For decades now, social scientists have defined individualism and collectivism as dichotomous and mutually exclusive dimensions of culture and behavior. However, that conceptualization

Taking a Theoretical Turn  51 has been questioned by social scientists who define individualism and collectivism as co-​occurring and mutually constitutive dimensions of human functioning that are understood and played out in culturally particular ways (Killen & Wainryb, 2000; Raeff, 2006a, 2006b). I have long argued against dichotomous conceptions of individualism and collectivism, and I often insist on thinking about how they are interrelated in culturally particular ways. Over the years, however, I have also come to understand that sometimes either individualism or collectivism may indeed dominate in a situation, and that it is sometimes useful to characterize a culture generally in terms of a predominance of one or the other. By thinking about research in terms of empirical confrontation, these two conceptualizations of individualism and collectivism do not have to be seen as complete opposites, only one of which can be right or true (no matter how strongly committed to one or the other one might be). Rather, research can be conducted to discern the different contexts in which the two conceptualizations hold, as well as how they both play out more specifically in different contexts. Earlier, I considered how a scenario about a child with a container of pebbles could be understood from a Piagetian, a Vygotskian, and an attachment perspective. It is difficult to claim that one of these perspectives is “the” right or true one. Each perspective may be right or true in some way and can provide useful insight into what the child is doing. Research can be conducted to discern the contexts in which the different conceptualizations are most relevant, as well as how they play out more specifically in different contexts.

The Pernicious Problem of Polysemy To recapitulate, theorizing is central to psychological inquiry, and one can theorize by analyzing psychology itself, as well as by articulating theoretical perspectives. In turn, each of these modes of theorizing can proceed in varied ways. Such theorizing can be liberating because it frees us from being locked into one way of defining concepts and into one way of investigating them. However, if all theories entail assumptions and implications that can be questioned and deconstructed, and if human functioning can be conceptualized in different ways, it is easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed, even demoralized. What is the point of conceptualizing and investigating human functioning if anything I say can be questioned, or if other conceptualizations of some psychological issue seem quite reasonable? It seems as if anything

52  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action goes. It is all relative. Polysemy reigns: Your conceptualization is as good as mine; your conceptualization is as problematic as mine! All theories can be contested and negotiated. To avoid giving up before we even start to conceptualize what people do, we can identify some criteria by which to evaluate or judge a theory or conceptualization. Of course, people can argue about what criteria to follow, and we are again in danger of becoming mired in the perniciousness of polysemy. Nevertheless, theorists can identify some criteria that will hopefully be recognized by others as valid and thereby guard against complete idiosyncrasy (Looren de Jong, 2010). By identifying criteria for evaluating theorizing, we also have a basis for distinguishing theory from dogma. It seems important at this juncture to reiterate a point made in Chapter 1, that science is a social activity that is conducted in terms of socially agreed upon norms and standards. As such, conducting experiments to test hypotheses and using particular statistical inference techniques involve applying conventional criteria for validating theoretical claims that are constructed by human beings and are subject to consensual agreement by them (Gergen, 2014b; Gergen et al., 2015). One criterion for judging a theoretical perspective is that it present a way of thinking about human functioning holistically and in a way that encompasses the currently fragmented areas of specialization in psychology. Of course, I readily recognize that one cannot identify all aspects of human functioning, let alone study them all at once. Fortunately, a holistic perspective does not entail conceptualizing and studying all domains of functioning at the same time. Overton (2015) explains that the most shopworn and illegitimate criticism of holism, repeated again and again, is the notion that if one accepts holism then one is committed to examine everything simultaneously. This assumption is simply false and it has always been false. What is true is that the context-​free specifications of any object, event, or process—​whether it be a DNA, molecule, cell, neuron, evolution, the architecture of mind, or culture—​is illegitimate within a holistic system. (p. 40)

Thus, one can judge a conceptualization of some aspect of human functioning in terms of whether it includes at least some way of linking the aspect of functioning under scrutiny to a wider whole. Certainly, a major way to evaluate or judge the worthiness of a theoretical framework is to subject it to empirical scrutiny. Does the theorist draw

Taking a Theoretical Turn  53 on evidence during the course of articulating the theory? Is there systematic evidence to support the theory? Does research conducted after the theoretical framework is articulated provide systematic evidence for it? Does a theorist incorporate that evidence to refine and elaborate the theoretical framework? As pointed out already, different methods of empirical validation are tools that follow in part from different conceptualizations or theoretical frameworks. For example, if it is a case of traditional psychological theorizing, then experiments and hypothesis testing would be in order to empirically validate the theory. If theorizing comes in the form of conceptualizing varied processes that simultaneously make up holistic human action, then one can conduct empirical confrontation research to discern how those processes are played out in different contexts. If theorizing comes in the form of defining a psychological phenomenon in different ways, one could conduct empirical confrontation research to discern the circumstances in which those different definitions are and are not evident. Discerning the contexts in which theoretical claims are not evident is a way of refuting the theory and thus guards against dogmatic adherence to a theory. Such research would enable one to change and refine the theoretical definition of the processes, thus making for an ongoing interplay between theory and research. Using research findings to change and refine theoretical claims is yet another way to distinguish theory from dogma. Building on the philosophical tradition of American Pragmatism, some argue that theories should be judged in terms of their pragmatic value (e.g., Fishman & Messer, 2005; Gergen, 2001, 2009b; Gergen & Zielke, 2006; Stetsenko, 2015). That is, what new forms of action does a theory lead to, and does it offer ways of dealing with issues that confront people in their daily lives? As Gergen (2001) explains, “The task is not simply that of describing what currently exists but of creating intelligibilities that may foster worlds to come” (p. 810). As such, theories can also be evaluated in terms of generative capacity, that is, the capacity to challenge the guiding assumptions of the culture, to raise fundamental questions regarding contemporary social life, to foster reconsideration of that which is “taken for granted,” and thereby to generate fresh alternatives for social action. (Gergen, 1982/​1994, p. 109)

Bruner (1990) explains that a pragmatic approach replaces questions about what some concept regarding human functioning “is  .  .  .  by questions of

54  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action how we wish to use the concept in the light of a variety of circumstances—​ political, social, economic, even scientific” (p. 27). For example, rather than asking what intelligence is, we can ask how we can use varied conceptions of intelligence in relation to varied political, social, economic, or scientific circumstances. We can further consider the implications of different conceptions of intelligence for people’s lives that are lived in particular political, social, and economic circumstances. Today, gender is a hot topic, and it seems to me that there are debates about what gender is. People are asking questions such as the following: Are there only two genders or is gender non-​ binary? What is transgender and how does transgender develop? From a pragmatic and open-​minded perspective à la Bruner, rather than trying to definitively define what gender is, we can ask about the implications of using different conceptions of gender for people as they live their complex lives in complex circumstances. In addition, one can ask if a conceptualization leads to action that promotes certain values (Stetsenko, 2015). Along similar lines, Bruner argues that conceptualizations of human functioning can be judged on the basis of whether or not they are in keeping with certain values that one tries to uphold. But wait a minute! A critic might pounce here and say that the whole goal of science is to be objective, which includes being value-​free and not biased by what a researcher subjectively opines and values. It is first important to point out that the concept of objectivity can be defined in varied ways and enjoys a long and storied history. The notion that objectivity can be achieved by suppressing subjectivity is rooted in the Cartesian view that subject and object are separate entities, whereby knowledge of objects can be wholly separated from the interpretive frameworks of a subject who is trying to know them (Mascolo, 2017a; Overton, 2015). Not only can one argue over how to define objectivity, but “being objective” is itself a value-​laden stance. That is, following “the” scientific method is based on the value judgment that objective knowledge is superior to subjective knowledge. Indeed, so much of what has been discussed in this book thus far shows that psychological science IS based on values and assumptions regarding human functioning. We have considered how using “the” scientific method in psychology is based on often unacknowledged assumptions about human functioning. We have also considered how subjective values enter into research. The notion that psychology can be value-​free is problematic given that psychological inquiry is a cultural

Taking a Theoretical Turn  55 practice that is conducted by human beings about human beings. Gergen (1973) explains: As scientists of human interaction, we are engaged in a peculiar duality. On the one hand, we value dispassionate comportment in scientific matters. . . . On the other hand, as socialized human beings, we harbor numerous values about the nature of social relations. . . . In generating knowledge about social interaction, we also communicate our personal values. (p. 311)

We cannot get outside of ourselves to study ourselves, and thus value-​laden subjectivity is inevitable in psychology. Within this value-​laden context, individual psychologists can acknowledge the values that inform their work (Sarason, 1981). Accordingly, one can judge a theory in terms of whether the theorist acknowledges some of the values that it reflects, and in terms of the “forms of life” that it promotes and/​or inhibits (Gergen, 2014b, p. 58). Acknowledging values does not mean that psychology cannot be scientific—​ on the contrary. At the beginning of this book, I stated that I take psychology to be the “study” of human functioning. And I have been suggesting that there can be varied ways of studying human functioning scientifically. The point is that we can be scientific while simultaneously acknowledging subjective values and by recognizing ways that psychology (and science more generally) is not always value-​free (Gergen, 1973, 2014b; Sarason, 1981). Taken together, there are varied ways to theorize. The central goal of this book is to theorize by conceptualizing human action integratively in terms of varied interrelated processes. Articulating this theoretical framework will further involve synthesizing classic and contemporary ideas and research. However, before articulating this theoretical framework, it is necessary to first provide some rationale for it. I suspect that some readers are asking why we even need an alternative way of conceptualizing human functioning. What, more specifically, are some problems with conventional psychology and the practices presented in Chapter  1? I  have already alluded to some of those problems, but it is now time to get more specific. To address these questions, and to explain why I think an alternative theoretical framework is needed, we now turn to theorizing critically by constructively questioning some of conventional psychology’s dominant practices.

3 Questioning Convention In Chapter 1, we considered some of psychology’s history, and we also identified some of conventional psychology’s current dominant practices and assumptions. In Chapter 2, we considered different modes of theorizing, including critical theorizing by questioning psychology’s taken-​for-​granted theoretical assumptions and practices. In both Chapters 1 and 2, I began to raise some questions about conventional psychology’s practices and theoretical assumptions. In this chapter, I theorize critically by questioning some of those practices and theoretical assumptions more specifically. I will question fragmenting, objectifying, quantifying, and aggregating, and I will raise some issues regarding the dominant approach to causality in conventional psychology. Please see Box 3.1 for an overview of questions that can be asked about conventional psychology. The chapter will also include a consideration of qualitative research. Based on this chapter’s critical theorizing, I end it by identifying some issues and questions that I seek to address with the theoretical framework that will be articulated in Part II. I also identify some criteria by which to evaluate theorizing.

Fragmenting Fragmenting refers to the practice of slicing human functioning up into separate parts and investigating them separately. Today, psychology is a vast and fragmented discipline in which a wide range of topics are treated relatively separately, such as perception, cognition, emotion, social interaction, self/​ identity, personality, motivation, intelligence, culture, and development (to name a few). Such fragmenting makes for nice packaging, but human functioning is not so neatly packaged. It is messy and complex. People are messy and complex. We can slice people and what we do into separate pieces, but that does not address how human action consists of varied complex processes occurring at the same time as people go about their complex lives in all corners of the world. In varied situations, we are perceiving, thinking, feeling, Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Questioning Convention  57

Box 3.1  Questioning Conventional Psychology









Fragmenting

• How does human functioning involve multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes?

Objectifying

• What do people do that physical objects do not or cannot do? • How does human action involve qualitative processes? • Are psychological phenomena objects that people “have,” such as memories, thoughts, emotions, or personality? Or are psychological phenomena active processes that people do, such as actively remembering, thinking, feeling, or acting in particular ways? • How is action both stable and variable?

Aggregating

• What happened to the individuals whose data were combined? • What is going on with the individuals who do not follow the average trend? • How are general human processes played out in individualized ways? • Why categorize people in terms of single groups (e.g., gender, education, ethnicity) when people participate in multiple groups simultaneously?

Causality

• How is human action caused by multiple causes? • How does human action emerge through multiple kinds of causes, beyond cause→effect causality? • How is human action shaped by varied aspects of current circumstances? • How is human action future oriented? • Why is it so difficult to predict what someone will do? using language, interacting with others, believing, and valuing—​all at the same time. Our action is also shaped by simultaneously occurring individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. These varied processes can be understood as inseparable constituents of human action, and treating

58  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action them as “partitionable features of mental life is to think that one can pull out of the cup what is hot, then what is sweet, then what is liquid and then what is brown—​all the while accounting for ‘hot chocolate’ ” (Robinson, 2016, p. 331). Sabat (2001) explains that standardized tests of cognitive functioning for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease involve “elements of cognitive function [that] are defined rather arbitrarily and examined separately, one at a time” (p. 11). There are language tests that assess varied linguistic elements, such as naming, repeating, spelling, and writing, as well as tests for memory, attention, and perception. However, “these elements of cognitive function are not engaged separately, independently of one another, in natural everyday life” (Sabat, 2001, p. 11), and this kind of fragmented approach “discloses little of the experiential human reality which confronts the afflicted” (p. 12). Sabat laments not being able “to understand any particular [Alzheimer’s] sufferer in his or her totality as a person living in the world” (p. 10). In other words, we cannot see the forest for the trees, and we get bogged down in disconnected minutiae. We end up dealing with separate elements of a person, rather than figuring out how they go together to comprise the holistic action of whole people (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008; Koch & Leary, 1985/​1998; Overton, 2015; Raeff, 2016, 2017a; Sabat, 2001; Valsiner, 2009). It is very similar to what happens in medicine when a person is poked and prodded by one specialist after another and feels that they are not being treated as an integrated, whole human being. Within this context, some opt for holistic medicine. There is talk of education for the whole child, rather than treating children as primarily cognitive or academic creatures. Back in 1975, Shotter admonished: We cannot be content with merely accumulating in our journals an indefinitely long list of the empirical traits of man. Yet this is just what modern psychology does do . . . and psychology itself fragments almost daily into new specialist disciplines. . . . Compared with past ages, ours is indeed an affluent one. But to possess a wealth of facts is not necessarily to have a richness of understanding. The explosion in our knowledge has resulted in an ever expanding array of disconnected and fragmented data lacking all conceptual unity. . . . Unless we can find a way of connecting all these scattered facts together, we shall remain buried under the debris of our own investigations. (p. 15)

Granted, human functioning is complex, and it is impossible to study all of its parts all at once. Some slicing is thus certainly necessary. However, insofar

Questioning Convention  59 as slices are slices of a wider whole, it is important to conceptualize that wider whole and always keep it in view. Sometimes one aspect of human functioning may seem dominant, but only at first glance. For example, if you are consoling a friend, you consider your friend’s perspective and console in a way that is hopefully effective for them. In this case, perspective-​taking seems salient. However, at the same time, you may also be thinking about what to say and you may also be feeling badly for your friend. You are using language and you are acting in a way that reflects the value of this friendship to you. You may also believe that it is important to help a friend in need. Taken together, these varied aspects of functioning are entangled, but many studies in conventional psychology are explicitly designed to separate and disentangle varied aspects of functioning by discerning their independent contributions to behavior. However, rather than disentangling them, it is important to be able to think systematically about the entanglements. By focusing on entanglement, we do not have to give up analyzing human functioning systematically and coherently. Entangled phenomena are not necessarily hopelessly snarled or unorganized. What is needed is a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about how varied constituents of human functioning are BOTH distinct and inseparable. Taken together, I  want to know more about the whole entangled and complex mess of whole people acting in varied circumstances. Rather than starting with fragments of behavior, a central goal of this book is to offer a holistic and integrative conceptualization of human functioning that is applicable to psychology in general. As such, the conceptualization will not ignore the currently fragmented areas of psychology. Rather, I seek to encompass them and think about how they occur at the same time and in relation to each other when people act.

Objectifying As explained in Chapter  1, objectifying refers to the assumption that psychologists study the same kinds of objects that are studied in the natural sciences. According to Danziger (1990/​1998), experimental psychology is only able to achieve its results by treating human individuals as objects—​ that is, by pretending that our way of knowing other people was not

60  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action fundamentally different from our way of knowing planets and plants. But everybody knows that that is not true in everyday life. We accept other people as having experiences, feelings, and desires, just like ourselves, and this means that their actions are directly meaningful to us. (p. 166)

In other words, “the sciences that psychology wanted to emulate did not have [people] and society as their central subject matter” (Sarason, 1981, p. 149). Insofar as human beings are not like physical objects in fundamental ways, human functioning cannot be explained only in physical terms or only in the terms of the natural sciences (Midgley, 2001/​2006; Robinson, 2008; Sacks, 1970/​1987; Taylor, 1985/​1992). As Rychlak (2003) puts it:  “Psychologists have tried to stretch their scientific understanding of the material universe to cover human actions that simply cannot be captured in the same terms” (p. xi). What can and do we do that objects cannot and do not do? For starters, we can reflect upon ourselves and others (Martin et al., 2003; Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). People often struggle to figure out what to do, what they should do, and who they even are. People not only struggle, they also suffer and experience conflict (Kirschner, 2010, 2015). We explain what we do in terms of reasons and values (Robinson, 1984, 2016; Rychlak, 2003; Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). We orient ourselves toward the future imaginatively and act to pursue goals (Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008; Rychlak, 1980, 2003). People strive to actualize visions of the future and they often struggle to transform their corners of the world (Stetsenko, 2015). As such, human beings not only adapt to the world, they also strive to create worlds in relation to their beliefs and values. In addition, we endow the world with meaning. Indeed, as cultural beings, we live in a world of meanings, as much as we live in a physical world (Geertz, 1973; Polkinghorne, 1983; Shotter, 1975; Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984). What we do is meaningful to ourselves and to others, and we sometimes struggle mightily to understand the meaning of what someone is doing. By constructing meaning, we interpret what people do. We also give meaning to physical objects. That round red object means that I have to stop the car. As Taylor (1985/​1992) puts it, we are “agents” who “are beings for whom things matter” (p. 104). The ceramic bowl and chair that I often look at while I sit at my desk working on this book are not mere physical objects to me. They are objects that matter to me. I endow them with much meaning. The bowl is a bowl that I made. I made it for someone, but I ended up not actually giving it to that person.

Questioning Convention  61 I did pottery for 7 years before I could make that bowl. I also endow the chair with much meaning. It was my father’s chair. He spent hours upon hours reading in that chair. As a child, I often sat in that chair while my father worked at his desk, and I badgered him with questions or idle prattle to which he responded patiently. As far as I can tell, the bowl and chair do not in turn endow me with meaning. And very importantly, unlike such physical objects, people develop. Some might argue immediately that many objects develop. For example, one can trace the development of the car and other modes of transportation. One might even be able to claim that my pottery bowls have developed. No, I would not say that the bowls have developed. I may be able to make better bowls and therefore I have developed, and that development is evident in the bowls that I can produce. That development should also be evident while I am actually making some bowls. But the bowls themselves have not changed, much less developed. Cars and other modes of transportation, as well as chairs, have not developed. Rather, it is people who have developed. People’s ways of understanding and making cars and chairs and bowls have developed. As Billig (2013) points out, psychologists objectify by using a lot of nouns in their research reports to characterize human functioning, as opposed to using verbs to describe what people are doing. For example, the varied specialty areas of psychology are typically identified with nouns, such as cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, personality, and intelligence. Using nouns is also evident in the conventional psychology practice of describing and understanding human functioning in terms of variables. Billig posits that psychologists use nouns as a way to emulate the natural sciences by studying the same kinds of objects that natural scientists study. When human functioning is characterized in terms of nouns, psychological phenomena are turned into physical objects or things that people have, such as personality traits, intelligence, emotions, thoughts, and memories. However, we can question the validity of treating dynamic action processes as things or as objects that people have in varying amounts. Are memories tangible physical objects that we have, the way we have cars or computers or cups or coats? Do we have thoughts or emotions or personality traits, the way we have body parts? Do memories, thoughts, and emotions have height, weight, volume, or other measurable physical characteristics? Do we have an identity or several identities that we can take out of the closet and put on or wear? These human phenomena may have physical dimensions to them, but they are not like physical objects in varied ways.

62  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Some readers might respond that I am making a mountain out of a molehill here by quibbling over words. It is a way of speaking to say that we “have” thoughts, emotions, and identities. It is a way of speaking to use nouns. Of course, thoughts, emotions, and identities are not literally objects that we possess the way we possess cars or computers or books. However, we use language to understand the world and to construct experience. Using nouns is thus a way of understanding and constructing human beings and human functioning as physical objects (Raeff, 2019). Billig (2013) argues that by using nouns, social scientists are “reifying people,” and that “by rolling out the big nouns, social scientists can avoid describing people and their actions” (p. 7). By characterizing human functioning in terms of variables, psychologists end up “depicting a world of interacting variables, rather than a world of interacting people” (p. 186). In addition, the goal of experimental research “is to see the effects of key experimental variables on other variables. The people, taking part in experiments, are ciphers for testing what the variables apparently do to each other” (p. 187). Insofar as human beings are physical creatures, human functioning certainly always involves physical processes. However, that is not the whole story. In contrast to nouns, using verbs can help us to think about human functioning in terms of dynamic action processes. We can think about processes that people DO, rather than objects that people have. For example, rather than referring to the thoughts, feelings, or memories that people have, we can use verbs to refer to how people think, feel, and remember. Rather than having personality traits, we can talk about how people act in some particular or relatively consistent ways. We live lives of activity. You could even say that we act and therefore we are, or that to be is to act. Focusing on what people are doing facilitates using verbs, and I will work to use verb forms as much as possible as the book proceeds. However, as Billig himself points out, using verb forms is not always feasible, and thus you will see some nouns as well. Indeed, as I have already said, a major goal of this book is to articulate a theory of action, and action is certainly a noun. I will use varied other nouns as well, and I will also sometimes use possessives. For example, I will speak of people’s action, or someone’s action, or someone’s ways of acting. The point here is not to completely abandon nouns. Rather, the point is to think about people and what they DO, and to explain what a noun means in terms of people acting. The point here is to attend to active processes (another noun!), and to conceptualize human functioning in terms of the ongoing dynamics of acting in relation to others.

Questioning Convention  63 Physical objects are also rather static and stable, and they “obey” the laws of physics. Certainly, human functioning cannot defy the laws of physics. And certainly, there are ways in which people are consistent, stable, and predictable. If we did not act in some consistent and predictable ways, human life would be infinitely chaotic. In conventional psychology, efforts to predict behavior, to discover universal laws of behavior, and to replicate studies are based on the prior theoretical assumption that human functioning is relatively stable (Gergen, 1973, 2014b; Gergen, Josselson, & Freeman, 2015). However, human behavior and experience can also be variable, ambiguous, uncertain, and inconsistent (Alper, 2013; Gergen, 1973, 1982/​1994, 2014b; Koch, 1985/​1998; Martin et  al., 2003; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015; Overton, 2015; Sarason, 1981; Shotter, 1975; Valsiner, 1997, 2009). These facets of human functioning are not particularly compatible with the goals of predicting behavior and replicating research findings. Have you ever puzzled over how someone sometimes seems so different in different situations? Have you found that it can be difficult to predict the future partly because you sometimes just do not know what someone will do? Have you ever been surprised by how someone acts? Have you ever wondered why the same person acts differently in the apparently same situation, but on different days? People do not seem to be replicating their own behavior! Furthermore, human experience does not stop; it is not static. Rather, human experience is ongoing and thus constantly in flow; it is fluid and fluctuating. People also change and develop. Someone once told me that she did not think her 15-​year-​old son had the personality for a particular career. I wondered if there is a particular personality type for particular careers. Plus, I thought to myself: He’s only 15. There is plasticity. He will change. He will develop. He is not a static physical object. Fortunately, human functioning does not have to be objectified and treated as inherently static, stable, predictable, and replicable. How then can we understand human functioning in a way that enables us to address variability and to embrace plasticity? How can we understand human variability in ways that open up avenues of constructive change for everyone? A goal of the current enterprise is to articulate a conceptualization of human action that can account for both stability and variability. In contrast to a static approach, Lerner has long argued that human functioning is characterized by relative plasticity throughout the lifespan (e.g., Lerner, 1996; Lerner & Hood, 1996). He argues that human functioning is plastic insofar as both individuals and contexts can change, and insofar as relations between individuals and contexts can occur and change in ways

64  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action that are not predetermined. At the same time, however, people are not infinitely malleable, and thus thinking about human functioning in terms of relative plasticity involves considering how both change and continuity play out throughout the lifespan. Another way of putting it is to say that there is an “unfinished quality” to human functioning (Polkinghorne, 1983, p. 260). Are you perhaps an unfinished work in progress? What people do is unfinished. If action is unfinished, it means that people can change and that people can act differently. In addition, insofar as what we do is unfinished, we can revisit what we have done, and although we may not be able to undo what we did, we can try to go in a different direction. For example, maybe you are thinking about how you acted the other day, and you now wish you had not said what you said. You know that you cannot erase or delete what you said, but insofar as action is unfinished, what you said is not necessarily the final word. You can go to the person and talk about the incident. Hopefully, you can make amends, make up, and move on. In addition, insofar as human action is inseparable from dynamic cultural processes, human action can vary historically in relation to cultural change (Gergen, 1973; Rogoff, 2003; Saxe, 2012). For example, what is considered appropriate action for males and females has certainly changed culturally and historically. As another example, we can go back in time and think about how adolescence did not always exist in Western cultures as a distinct life phase during which young people explore identity options. Such exploring was not necessary a few centuries ago because people lived according to tradition and did not have to take time to figure out what they believed or what career to pursue. And today, not only is there adolescence, but emerging adulthood represents a new life phase that occurs in between adolescence and adulthood. As Arnett (2000) explains, emerging adulthood has arisen as a life phase since World War II in cultures where marriage and childbearing are postponed, and where formal schooling continues beyond high school. While some identity exploring begins during adolescence, more intense and focused identity exploring now occurs during emerging adulthood. In general today, we live in times of great uncertainty and rapid change (maybe we always did) that can be difficult to deal with when human functioning is understood in relatively static and deterministic terms. Historical change and cultural uncertainty can also be difficult to deal with if one emphasizes stability, predictability, and replicability (Gergen, 2009b, 2014b; Shotter, 1975). Insofar as “worlds of meaning are in continuous motion—​with modifications, absorptions, clashes, and creations occurring incessantly and

Questioning Convention  65 instantaneously around the globe . . . what is the place of a research tradition that attempts to mirror a stable state of affairs” (Gergen, 2014a, p. 297)? At the same time, however, insofar as human functioning is not infinitely malleable, some common humanity undoubtedly characterizes all people across time and space. Today, we may marvel at how people lived centuries ago, but we still recognize them as human. Literary classics are classics, in part because they encompass timeless human issues. Gergen (1973) advocates thinking about human functioning “in terms of a continuum of historical durability, with phenomena highly susceptible to historical influence at one extreme and the more stable processes at the other” (p. 318). Accordingly, making sense of human functioning involves identifying and conceptualizing general human processes that are culturally and historically particularized. We can thus add to Stroud’s call (discussed in Chapter 1) for identifying general processes that can be individualized, by calling for identifying general processes that can be individualized, culturalized, and historicized. Insofar as “nothing in biology or psychology is static” (Karmiloff-​Smith, 2017, p.  396) even natural scientists are questioning static conceptions of human functioning. For example, within neuroscience, understanding how the brain functions is increasingly understood in terms of neural plasticity rather than hardwiring (Simons & Klopack, 2015). According to “the old view of the brain,” an adult brain is static “in two respects: no new neurons are created (as neurons die there is no replacement), and the fundamental structure of an individual’s brain is dictated by genes and largely immutable” (Simons & Klopack, 2015, p. 575). In addition, the neural pathways that are associated with aspects of behavior, such as memory, sensation, or body movement, were “assumed to be fixed, universal, and immutable” (p. 575). However, research shows that “neurogenesis—​the manufacture of new neurons within the brain—​takes place well into old age” (p. 575). In addition, different parts of the brain can be used to sustain functioning after brain damage. Moreover, “there is now strong evidence that environmental influences can change the network of neuropathways within a person’s brain” (p. 576). Thus, someone may participate in new activities in new environments that support the development of new neuropathways. Taken together, the brain is no longer understood as “a prewired machine where each part serves a particular function” (p. 576). Along similar lines, a shift toward plasticity is underfoot in the natural science of genetics. According to the old view, genes were taken to be predetermined first causes of our physical features, as well as of our behavior

66  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action (Gottlieb, 1999, 2007; Keller, 2014; Lerner & Overton, 2017; Simons & Klopack, 2015). However, this view is being replaced by epigenetics in the wake of research that has “failed to find significant associations between specific genetic variants and virtually any human traits, illnesses, or behaviors” (Simons & Klopack, 2015, p. 574). In addition, plasticity characterizes genetic processes insofar as the same genetic material can be manifest in different ways in different environments (Keller, 2014; Lewontin, 1991/​1992; Meloni, 2014). From an epigenetic perspective, genetic processes are not statically predetermined, because “much of what the genome ‘does’ is to respond to signals from its environment” (Keller, 2014, p. 2428). In other words, we do not have fixed genetic endowments, as our genes function in relation to dynamic environmental and behavioral circumstances. As biologist Lewontin (1991/​1992) explains, the interaction between genes and environment “is indissoluble,” and thus genes may function in a particular way “only in a particular population of organisms at a particular moment with a particular set of specified environments. When an environment changes, all bets are off ” (p. 30).

Quantifying Along with objectifying comes the practice of quantifying what people do in terms of measurable characteristics. Quantifying human behavior is based on the prior theoretical premise that human behavior is like physical objects that can be understood in terms of quantitatively measurable characteristics. However, insofar as much of what people do involves qualitative processes, one can question quantitative practices in psychology (Danziger, 1997; Valsiner, 2009). For example, Piaget teaches us that during cognitive development, infants, children, and adolescents do not simply think more, they think in qualitatively different ways. As such, development involves qualitative changes in behavioral processes that are not captured by measuring changes in amounts of behavior. To use another and very different example, democracy is a process, and a messy one at that. As a process or a confluence of multiple subprocesses, democracy involves people acting in varied complex and dynamic ways, from debating and voting, to campaigning, rallying, and protesting, to promoting a common good, to investigating and holding elected officials accountable, to serving on a jury. Democracy involves ways of acting that reflect and uphold democratic principles, such as respecting and

Questioning Convention  67 including others, as well as treating people equally. There are certainly varied ways to measure democracy, such as counting the number of elections held, the number of political parties and candidates, and the number of people who vote in one or another country. You can measure the number and size of political protests, as well as the number of speech-​squashing incidents. You could discern quantitative correlations between socioeconomic status and voting trends. Such quantitative information may be important, interesting, and useful. But such information does not readily permit understanding of the ongoing and qualitative processes that constitute democracy, as well as how democratic processes are established and maintained by people as they act in relation to each other. What does it mean to treat emotion or feeling, such as sadness, in terms of quantitatively measurable characteristics? What does it mean to treat arguing in terms of quantitatively measurable characteristics? Yes, you can describe an argument in terms of how loudly the people talked, or in terms of increasing heart rates, or in terms of the number of valid points each person made (once you have defined what counts as a valid point). Or, you can ask people to fill out sadness surveys to discern if someone is more or less sad in different situations or at different times of the day. It may be important to discern how often and how much sadness a person claims to experience, as well as to figure out why some people are more or less sad than others. But, there are other important aspects of arguing and of being sad. For example, it would be interesting and important to think about sadness and arguing as ways of acting. One way that we know a person is sad is in terms of how they are acting. To be sad is to act sadly. Arguing is also acting; it is what people do. We could discern how sadness is manifest or reflected in what people do, and we could discern what people do when they argue. We could analyze different individual and cultural ways of being sad, and different individual and cultural ways of arguing. Also, by focusing on measuring and quantifying, one is left wondering about the meaning of what people do (Geertz, 1973; Danziger, 1997; Mascolo, 2017a). What does arguing mean to the individuals involved? What does it mean to a person to be sad? What is this particular person sad about? Are there different cultural ways of understanding arguing and sadness? These points suggest that much is lost when qualitative, meaningful, and value-​laden processes are transformed into quantitative variables. Or, say you are interested in identity or self-​concept. Are they objects that people have in varying amounts? What would you think if someone said: “He has a lot of self-​concept or she has a lot of identity. But his friend

68  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action next door has much less self-​concept and the lady across the street has even less identity.” I personally would be puzzled by such statements. I can understand that people may conceptualize themselves in terms of varied roles or varied attributes, but that is not the same as claiming that someone has more or less identity or self-​concept than someone else. In addition, quantifying self-​concept or identity leaves me wondering about the processes of identity constructing and self-​conceptualizing. That is, what goes on when people think about themselves or express identity in some way? Similar issues arise when thinking about self/​identity development. Is it the amount of self or identity that changes during development, or is development about qualitative changes in how a person thinks about their experience? Perhaps you are more specifically interested in cultural identity, and you are going to investigate American identity (or the identity of any identifiable cultural group). Is American identity a physical object that can be measured quantitatively, and does it exist within Americans in the same way, but to varying degrees? In conventional psychology, a first response to the injunction to measure might be to see if there is a measure of cultural identity “out there” or “in the literature” that one could use. Or, researchers could create a survey for people to fill out, and then quantify American identity in terms of scoring high or low on certain statements that they take to be representative of what it means to be American. Does that then mean that a person who scores high on the survey is “more” American than someone who scores low? What does it mean to say that one person is more or less American than another person? An alternative would be to talk to people and find out what being American means to them. What about talking to undocumented immigrants about what being American means to them? It would also be interesting to talk to naturalized American citizens and ask them to tell you a story about how they came to be Americans. As I raise these issues, I am also wondering, what is identity anyway? Is there an object in nature that IS identity? Is identity a process or a narrative? Is identity how one positions oneself vis-​à-​vis others while interacting with them? Is your identity made up of how others treat, position, and/​or recognize you? Is identity static or does it develop, or both? Is identity a static essence or a continuous process, or both? Is identity a way of being or acting in the world? Identity has been variously treated in these ways in psychology, suggesting that it depends a lot on how you conceptualize identity. In addition, different ways of conceptualizing identity (and other constructs) lead to different research questions and different methods of empirical validation.

Questioning Convention  69

Aggregating Through the practice of aggregating, people are put into groups, and individuals’ data are combined to discern group trends, group differences, and general patterns of behavior. A goal is to generalize findings from samples to the larger populations that they are taken to represent. A goal is to discern what most people do, or what people typically do. Another goal is to discern how some characteristic or variable is distributed among people in general. Means and medians are calculated by combining individual data and are used as “measures of central tendency.” Although means and medians are derived from individual scores, the individual scores are not typically the focus of analysis. Rather, psychologists have come to “view means and medians as hard ‘realities,’ and the variation that permits their calculation as a set of transient and imperfect measurements of this hidden essence” (Gould, 1991/​ 2013, p. 79). When aggregates are prioritized, individuals are assessed and understood in terms of their position relative to the average. For example, a person’s score on a standardized intelligence test will be understood in terms of how much above or below the mean it is. Aggregating to discern general behavioral trends or to discern how most people behave has led to some important knowledge about human functioning. However, when people are lumped together into groups, we may lose sight of their individuality and subjectivity in varied ways (Allport, 1962; Archer, 2003; Billig, 2013; Boker, Molenaar, & Nesselroade, 2009; Danziger, 1985, 1990/​1998, 1997; Kirschner, 2015; Lamiell, 1981, 2003, 2013, 2015; Molenaar, 2004; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Nesselroade & Molenaar, 2010; Robinson, 2007; Sabat, 2001; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Shotter, 2012; Valsiner, 2009; van Geert, 2011). Within the practice of aggregating, understanding some aspect of behavior is “derived from its place in . . . normative distributions rather than from its place in the life story of an individual” (Danziger, 1996, p. 31). In addition, we cannot assume that what holds for a sample of people also holds for individuals (Lamiell, 1981, 2003, 2013, 2015). Although conventional psychology tends to focus on what holds for people in general, the specifics of individual lives are also significant. Bornstein (2017) argues that “as life proceeds, advantages and disadvantages cumulate to heterogeneity—​so much so that variability and therefore specificity are inevitable” (p. 5). With regard to human development, he identifies a specificity principle, whereby “the life-​span development of specific characteristics in specific individuals is affected by specific

70  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action experiences in specific ways at specific times” (p.  5). Bornstein further applies the specificity principle to acculturation and asserts that “specific setting conditions of specific persons at specific times moderate specific domains of acculturation via specific processes” (p. 6). Taken together, it becomes important to consider both general and individually specific aspects of human functioning. When data are aggregated across individuals, we do not know about the individuals who do not follow the mean or average pattern. We thus risk unfairly characterizing individuals who are associated with one group or another. Ironically, large sample sizes are highly sought after in conventional psychology, precisely to ensure that the “individual idiosyncrasies of persons cancel one another out” (Valsiner, 1997, p.  71). Even if individual idiosyncrasies are canceled out statistically, it seems important not to look the other way if not everyone in a group exhibits what is reflected in the group’s mean score (Billig, 2013; Boker et al., 2009; Lamiell, 2013, 2015; Molenaar, 2004; Sabat, 2001; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; van Geert 2011). In addition, even when people respond in the same way to a survey question, they may be interpreting the question differently, or they may understand the issues being surveyed in unique ways. Even though some aspects of people’s behavior in an experiment may look similar, they may understand the experimental situation differently in some ways. Moreover, although aggregating and statistical analyses may enable researchers to generalize from samples to wider populations, aggregating does not enable us to say anything about an individual’s behavior or to predict what any individual will do (Allport, 1962; Alper, 2013; Archer, 2003; Gantt, Lindstrom, & Williams, 2017; Lamiell, 1981, 2003, 2013; Martin, 2015). Indeed, conventional psychologists recognize that their findings represent probabilistic or statistical trends, and not certainties that hold for all individuals (Bushman & Anderson, 2015; Stanovich, 2007). Individuality and idiosyncrasy add spice to life, so why not find out more about the individuals who buck the trend? Smedslund (2015) argues further that it is problematic for clinical psychology when “practical work with unique individuals in unique life-​ situations has to be based on mean values obtained from randomized samples of persons from a given population performing in one fixed set of conditions at a given time” (pp. 366–​367). It is problematic because people come to counseling as “exceedingly complex individuals” (p. 367) to whom aggregate findings about people acting in experimental settings may not

Questioning Convention  71 apply. Therefore, such findings should not “blandly be imputed to everyone” (Archer, 2003, p.  134). With regard to Alzheimer’s disease, Sabat (2001) points out that on standardized cognitive assessments “there is considerable overlap between the scores of dementia sufferers and normal subjects. Therefore, at least some dementia sufferers performed as well as did some normal, healthy subjects” (p.  164). Based on interacting extensively with Alzheimer’s sufferers, as well as analyzing how they use language to converse with others, Sabat argues that “the implications drawn from the tests (that dementia sufferers cannot perceive and attend, for example) are not borne out on the level of each and every individual dementia sufferer in both the clinic and everyday life situations” (p. 165). As individuals, many people with Alzheimer’s disease act in ways that involve varied complex psychological processes, including paying attention, naming, remembering, protecting themselves, deciding rationally, understanding others, helping others, and pursuing goals. In an early treatment of personality, Kluckhon and Murray (1948/​1956) point out that “every man is in certain respects a. like all other men, b. like some other men, and c.  like no other man” (p.  53). This claim leads to asking: a. How is a person like all other people? b. How is a person like some other people? and c. How is a person like no other person? In keeping with the conventional view that a central goal of psychological science is to identify generalizable principles of behavior, much of conventional psychology is geared toward investigating what people are like in general, or how every person is like all other people. As psychologists pay increasing attention to social and cultural aspects of functioning, it is possible to address how any person is more like some others, namely people of the same or similar sociocultural circumstances. In addition, I find it useful to add to Kluckhon’s and Murray’s list by considering who every person is as an individual. Thus, we could also claim that every person is an individual, and research could be directed toward discerning what this person is like. In other words, we can also ask: What is this person like? Although this question seems to address the same issue as question c. in the list just presented (How is a person like no other person?), it is not quite the same. It is not a comparative question that requires thinking about how a person is different from others. Instead, it is a question that requires thinking about who a person is on their own terms without comparing them to others. Pondering how to deal with the individual and the general is certainly not new in psychology. Taking off from Kluckhon’s and Murray’s list, Allport

72  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action (1962) argues that psychology is focused on generalizing at the expense of understanding individuals. He writes that it is certainly true that we often wish to use universal and group norms. We want to know whether Bill, relative to others, is high or low in intelligence, in dominance, in affiliativeness. But although Bill can be compared profitably on many dimensions with the average human being or with his cultural group, still he himself weaves all these attributes into a unique idiomatic system. (p. 410)

Allport laments that psychologists pay so little empirical attention to discerning whether “common dimensions are in reality relevant to Bill’s personality, and if so, how they are patterned together to compose the Billian quality of Bill” (p. 410). It is rather ironic that psychologists typically refer to the people they study as “subjects,” but they do not emphasize those people’s subjectivity in analyses of aggregated data. They are subjects because they are subjected to some kind of treatment by a researcher (Bibace, Clegg, & Valsiner, 2009). At this juncture, I  am reminded of a telephone conversation that I  had with my parents when I was in graduate school years ago. I first spoke to my mother, and we were discussing my progress in “getting subjects” for my dissertation research. My father overheard my mother’s end of the conversation, and when he came to the phone, he greeted me by saying, “Good evening, your majesty.” I was puzzled and asked him why he was suddenly calling me “your majesty.” He replied, “Well, if you have subjects, you must be a monarch.” We laughed, and I still laugh about it today. But his joke points to some implications of referring to people as subjects, including the impersonal treatment of people, not to mention the power of the researcher over the research subject. Individual subjective experience is sometimes even avoided because it is not considered to be objective and is therefore not considered to be scientific. In other words, a person “has to be ‘objectified,’ standardized, and impersonalized in order to be studied scientifically” (Bibace et  al., 2009, p. 69). In addition, it is argued that by focusing on aspects of behavior that can be clearly seen or observed by others, psychology “disavows the importance, value and consequences of singular, felt experience, individual suffering, and emotional conflict” (Kirschner, 2015, p. 297). Along similar lines, Reddy (2008) argues that “if a relation of engagement gives us more

Questioning Convention  73 profoundly personal knowledge about other people, then psychology’s traditional methods of detached observation and experimentation may be giving us very partial—​and biased—​answers to questions about interpersonal knowing” (p. 33). Moreover, such traditional objectivity demands not only eschewing considering the subject’s subjectivity, but the researcher’s as well. At an ideal extreme, there is a “requirement . . . for what one might call ‘brute data’—​to coin a term for it, that is, data which are available without any personal discernment or interpretation on the part of the observer” (Taylor, 1985/​1992, p. 118). Ironically, although conventional psychology has not been much concerned with individuality and subjectivity, it has long been accused of focusing on individuals and on being individualistic (Gergen, 1973, 2009b; Rogoff, 1990; Sarason, 1981; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). A major claim of varied critical analyses is that psychologists typically study individuals as beings unto themselves, and in whom psychological phenomena (e.g., traits, self-​ esteem, well-​being, attachments, parenting styles, intelligence, memories, emotions) are located. As Gergen (2009b) puts it, psychology is steeped in “the tradition of bounded being” (p. 5), whereby people are constructed and treated as “separate entities” (p. xvii) or “bounded units” (p. xxvi). Within an individualistic approach, people are treated as beings who can be understood separately from others, as well as independently of cultural contexts. Within an individualistic approach, the individual and society are often viewed as separate bounded entities that are locked in tension. For example, one may speak of society’s demands on individuals or that individuals have to control themselves in accord with societal expectations. Perhaps partly because of such criticisms, psychologists today are paying increasing attention to cultural issues, and there has certainly long been a plethora of research on how social factors influence behavior. Nevertheless, an individualistic approach remains entrenched insofar as the individual and society are viewed as independent entities, rather than as inseparable and mutually defining dimensions of human experience. Similarly, an individualistic approach lurks when social phenomena are treated as independent variables that cause individual behavior, and when the individual is viewed as the primary locus of psychological phenomena. In an effort to move beyond such individualism, in this book I  am advancing what I see as a non-​individualistic conceptualization of human beings and human functioning that also enables us to deal with human individuality and subjectivity. To put it in positive terms, I am trying to advance

74  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action a relational conceptualization of human beings and human functioning. That is, I will be arguing that anyone’s action is always constituted by simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. As such, what people do is not located wholly in individuals. At the same time, this conceptualization posits that all people are particular individuals who experience life subjectively. As you will see, an implication of the current theoretical framework is that while individuality and subjectivity may be attributed to particular individuals, they are inseparable from social and cultural processes as well. In other words, individuals, individuality, and subjectivity do not have to be conceptualized individualistically. They can be conceptualized relationally. And finally, with regard to aggregating, this conventional practice involves putting people into groups to discern group differences in behavior. Groups may be created for the purposes of research, such as when there is a group who experiences some treatment, and a control group of people who do not experience the treatment. Groups in psychological research also include men and women, different ethnic groups, and different socioeconomic groups, to name a few demographic groups. However, there are varied ways in which identifying people in terms of demographic groups is not straightforward. For example, in the flux and flow of their entangled lives, individuals typically participate in several groups. That person is not only a woman, only African American, only college-​educated, or only employed. That person does not only belong to a book club, only belong to that temple, only sing in a choir, or only serve on the school board. Groups also change historically, and people may participate in different groups at different times in their lives. Moreover, group categories are based on perspective, meaning that they can be understood and used differently by different people for different purposes (Gillespie, Howarth, & Cornish, 2012). For example, is John an illegal immigrant or a political refugee seeking asylum? John might see himself as the latter, whereas some might see him as the former.

Causality As explained in Chapter 1, in keeping with its roots in the natural sciences, a great deal of conventional psychology revolves around deterministic cause→effect causality. Causality is one of psychology’s most vexing issues, and no doubt for people in general as well. How much time and energy do we

Questioning Convention  75 spend trying to figure out why people do what they do? We may puzzle over our own action, as well as other people’s action. People puzzle over stories in the news and wonder why people did what they did. It is often very difficult to identify an antecedent cause. We often find that there is not a simple explanation; there is not one clear cause of someone’s action. There are often multiple causes of action, making it important to be able to think systematically about multiple and interrelated causal processes (Gergen, 1978, 2009b; Midgley, 2001/​2006; Witherington, 2011, 2017). Furthermore, not all of human action can be attributed to the kind of cause→effect causality that works for physical objects, requiring us to consider other ways of understanding and explaining what people do (Robinson, 2008; Witherington, 2011, 2017). Different kinds of causality “may partially explain the action. But none of them invalidates the others; there is room for all of them” (Midgley, 2001/​2006, p. 166). For example, so much of what we do arises in the moment or on the spot. As Gergen (1978) puts it, our action is shaped by “attendant circumstances” (p. 509), rather than or in addition to, for example, antecedent events. Do you sometimes feel as if you are winging it? You improvise. You will see how it goes and figure out what to do in a situation as it happens. What is going on can be influencing what you do without unavoidably determining what you do. Sometimes, what we do can be traced back to some antecedent event or events, and also to what is going on in the moment. What we do at any fleeting moment is also oriented toward the future, and thus the future can play a kind of causal role in what people do (Allport, 1955/​1983; Rychlak, 2003; Shotter, 1975; Stetsenko, 2015; Valsiner, 1997). Because we cannot go back in time, and because time is always marching on, we are propelled into the future. Accordingly, people pursue short-​term and long-​term goals, often expressing great fervor and commitment as well as pain and stress. In doing so, people do not passively “expect or anticipate the future, but rather actively work and struggle to bring this future into reality through their own deeds . . . often against the odds” (Stetsenko, 2015, p. 109). Stetsenko also argues that living in relation to the future means that coping is not only about adapting to the vicissitudes of current circumstances, but involves working to transform them into better future circumstances. Insofar as different ways of acting and being are possible, to “understand what a person is, it is necessary always to refer to what he may be in the future, for every state of the person is pointed in the direction of future possibilities” (Allport, 1955/​1983, p. 12). The importance of the future to current functioning is evident in research which shows that adolescents may be at risk

76  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action for suicide when they do not see a future for themselves (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, & Hallett, 2003). And sometimes, future goals include overcoming the past in some way, again suggesting that the past does not cause action in a straightforward way. By drawing attention to the present and the future, I do not in any way mean to suggest that the past plays no role in what a person is doing at any moment of analysis. History matters! Understanding current circumstances requires knowing about what came before and how current functioning builds on previous functioning. A  long tradition of theory and research shows that defining oneself in relation to both the past and the future is central to human self/​identity construction (Bamberg, 2011; Chandler et  al., 2003; Damon & Hart, 1988; James, 1890/​1983). The point here is that the past is not being understood in terms of discrete variables that can be isolated as mechanistic and deterministic causes of later functioning. The past plays a role in later action, but it does not necessarily neatly determine it. Rather, functioning can be understood in terms of ongoing processes that occur continuously over time. In other words, action “does not come out of nowhere; it emerges from a definite past, through a particular present actuality, and may be directed towards one of a definite set of future possibilities” (Shotter, 1975, p. 113). Human action is thus not fully determined by single causes, including antecedent events. And it is not only the deterministic role of the past that is being questioned here, but deterministic assumptions more generally are at issue. Recognizing the limits of cause→effect conceptions of causality does not mean that human action is totally random or unorganized. Shotter (1975) goes on to argue: To turn away from determinism, and to allow a world in which there is a degree of loose jointedness, in which play can exist in every sense of the word, is not then to turn to a miraculous world of disorderly events. It is simply to turn to a world with a real future, a future of limited but real alternatives which are made possible by what has been done in the past and by what is being done now. (p. 113)

As such, freedom characterizes human action at least some of the time, and human beings can actively construct their futures, rather than react passively to antecedent and independent causes (Raeff, 2017a; Stetsenko, 2015). Human beings are not machines that function “blindly, according

Questioning Convention  77 to predetermined principles,” but people who “can continually modify and adjust [their] own activity” (Shotter, 1975, p. 54). Sometimes, people work hard to overcome the past so that their current behavior is not captive to the past. Moreover, as pointed out earlier, human functioning is plastic and unfinished. Varied other processes are also implicated in shaping how people act. For example, sociocultural approaches to human functioning emphasize the ways in which dynamic social and cultural processes partly constitute what people do (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 2003; Užgiris, 1996; Valsiner, 1997; Wertsch, 1991, 1998). In addition, understanding people as agents draws attention to how people regulate aspects of their own action and contribute to what is going on in any context (Martin et al., 2003). We are thus “both inescapably responsive to happenings within our surroundings as well as being continually active within them” (Shotter, 2012, p. 145). Conceptions of agency further emphasize the point that people act for reasons, for the sake of beliefs and values, as well as in pursuit of goals and visions of the future (Robinson, 2016; Taylor, 1985/​1992). As Robinson (1984) puts it, “Large classes of social action are explicable in terms of the participants’ reasons for acting and are intelligible only in terms of reasons” (p. 921). People act to pursue their interests, as they define them—​from money and power, to health and security, to love and honor, to self-​promotion and revenge. People also act in terms of what a situation means to them and in terms of what matters to them (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Mascolo, 2013; Rychlak, 2003; Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). In addition, varied and venerable traditions in the social sciences have long indicated that what we do is partly shaped by how we think others will react to us. It is important to point out that even the natural sciences are going beyond cause→effect conceptions of causality. For example, in the late 1960s, the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1969/​1998, 1972) articulated general systems theory. Because I am offering a systems conceptualization of human functioning in this book, I will discuss systems theory at greater length in Chapter 4. For now, suffice it to say that a main premise of systems theory is that a system refers to a complex phenomenon that is made up of multiple and interrelated parts. Interrelated here means that the parts of a system are inseparable and do not function independently of one another. Rather, the functioning of any part of the system depends on what the other parts are doing, as well as how they are organized within a wider whole. In other words, the parts of a system mutually affect, constitute, and sustain each

78  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action other. Thus, one part of the system does not necessarily cause wider system functioning independently, unidirectionally, or deterministically. Rather, the system’s functioning depends on all of its parts and how those parts are organized in relation to each other. Today, we can see systemic conceptions of causality in epigenetic science, which I introduced earlier in this chapter during the discussion of plasticity in human functioning. An epigenetic approach to how genes work stands in contrast to a traditional cause→effect conception of how genes work. According to a cause→effect conception of genetics, genes are viewed as primary, antecedent, independent, and deterministic causes of some aspect of a person’s characteristics and functioning, from physical features to behavioral tendencies. In addition, any variation in genes is taken to result from the predetermined and given-​at-​conception sequencing of the DNA that makes up genes (Landecker & Panofsky, 2013). In a nutshell, people are the way they are because of set genetic sequencing, and people are different because of set differences in genetic sequencing. Based on this conceptualization, the goal of the Human Genome Project was to identify the DNA sequence of human genes and to “identify the genes associated with various diseases and disorders” (Simons & Klopack, 2015, p. 574). However as explained earlier, “well over a decade of such research has failed to find significant associations between specific genetic variants and virtually any human traits, illnesses, or behaviors” (Simons & Klopack, 2015, p. 574). In addition, research increasingly showed that genes and experience are inseparable during development. Enter epigenetics. Although epigenetics has been on the rise recently, epigenetic-​based research can be traced back to the 19th century (Gottlieb, Wahlsten, & Lickliter, 1998). An epigenetic conception of causality replaces the linear causal structure that is supposed to take us from genotype to phenotype by one that incorporates both the fundamental circularity (or recursivity) of living systems and their a priori inseparability from the environments in which, and out of which, they take their form. (Keller, 2014, p. 2424)

Epigenetics means that gene expression is neither predetermined nor fixed, but depends on experiential circumstances, from the cellular, to the behavioral, to the societal (Gottlieb, 1999, 2007; Gottlieb et al., 1998; Keller, 2010, 2014; Landecker & Panofsky, 2013; Lester, Conradt, & Marsit, 2016;

Questioning Convention  79 Lewontin, 1991/​1992). In other words, rather than being independent, fixed, and unidirectional causes of functioning, genes themselves can change as genes react to experiential circumstances. Rather than deterministically directing what happens, genes comprise “an exquisitely sensitive and reactive system” that can be played out in different ways (Keller, 2014, p. 2425). Thus, the same genetic profile can be expressed in different ways in relation to different environments. Earlier in this chapter, I quoted Lewontin (1991/​ 1992), who points out that “when an environment changes, all bets are off ” (p.  30). In addition, a person’s action or behavior can change gene functioning (Gottlieb et al., 1998; Lester et al., 2016). Insofar as gene expression can differ and change in different circumstances, one cannot predict future outcomes based on someone’s earlier genetic profile. Taken together, genes, environment, and functioning are systemically interrelated, and causality cannot be attributed to any part of the system independently of the other parts. Embracing a systems approach to causality to navigate the complex dynamics of human functioning could prove fruitful for psychology. Not only is there the potential to enhance our understanding of what people do, but embracing a systems approach to causality would enable psychology to enter into productive contact with epigenetic and systems approaches in the natural sciences. Before moving on, it is also important to recognize that psychologists who conduct research within the cause→effect framework do acknowledge the role of multiple causes, even if they focus on isolating a particular cause of some behavioral outcome. For example, researchers who focus on discerning whether watching violent media increases the likelihood of behaving aggressively and violently certainly recognize that “exposure to violent media is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause aggressive and violent behavior, but it does increase the probability of aggressive and violent behavior” (Bushman & Anderson, 2015, p. 1818). In addition, causes are treated probabilistically, meaning that a causal factor increases the likelihood of some effect but does not guarantee it, in part because it is not the only cause. There is also no guarantee because the relations among independent and dependent variables hold for aggregated data, but not necessarily for individuals. Thus, “when media violence researchers say that ‘Violent media causes aggression,’ they mean that ‘Violent media exposure causes an increase in the likelihood of aggression’ ” (Bushman & Anderson, 2015, p. 1810, italics in original). By recognizing multiple causes and probabilistic trends, conventional psychologists accept the aphorism, “Behavior is multiply determined” (Stanovich, 2007,

80  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action p. 141). The word “determined” here is significant because it places the idea of multiple causes of behavior squarely within the tradition of deterministic conceptions of causality, whereby what a person does is taken to be determined by causal forces. As such, one type of causality is emphasized, and conventional practices remain entrenched.

Qualitative Research Although aggregating, objectifying, quantifying, and discerning cause→effect causality are enveloped in the authority of “the” scientific method, there are other ways of doing science, including psychological science. In psychology today, some are promoting and conducting what is known as qualitative research, which is a general term that encompasses varied specific research practices and methods. As noted earlier, there are traditions of qualitative research in psychology that go back to the days of psychology’s founding in the late 19th century, but they were overshadowed by the rise and eventual dominance of quantitative and experimental methods. Qualitative research in American psychology began to be revived amidst the cultural and political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s, when traditional knowledge and power structures were being questioned and criticized (Gergen et  al., 2015; Wertz, 2011). In addition, the liberation and rights movements of those days gave voice to previously marginalized and disempowered individuals and groups, thereby emphasizing the subjectivity and particularity of individual experience. There was also “increasing demand to honor multiple [cultural] traditions and various indigenous points of view” (Wertz, 2011, p. 83). Qualitative research is pluralistic and can be conducted in varied ways (e.g., ethnographic observation, interviews, discourse analysis, narrative studies). To understand human functioning in ways that respect subjectivity and culturally particular ways of understanding the world, “the common core” of qualitative research in the social sciences “is a commitment to understand the world contextually from the point of view of the acting subject through rich everyday language and a broad range of other expressive vehicles” (Wertz, 2011, p. 81). Qualitative research is also based on the prior theoretical assumption that the world, including human functioning, is “fluid or impermanent” (Gergen, 2014b, p.  53). Some goals of

Questioning Convention  81 qualitative research include “reducing societal alienation, directly effecting social change, exposing conditions of oppression” (Gergen, 2014b, p. 50), as well as to “probe the structure of human meaning, liberate the reader from oppressive conventions [and] give voice to oppressed minorities” (p.  53). Qualitative research may be conducted to promote empathy among people by “understanding the lived experience of others” (Gergen et al., 2015, p. 3). In describing the rise of qualitative psychology in the 1970s and 1980s, Bamberg (2003/​2004) remembers that what stood out most for us at the time was our interest in singular cases and discursive processes that seemed to represent the individuality and subjectivity of experiences of our research participants. . . . In contrast to our traditional endeavors to generalize across individual cases, to discover patterns, laying out “underlying” structures or systems that seemed to govern particular actions or events, possibly even as an attempt to uncover underlying universals, it was the unique that aroused our interest. (p. ix)

Qualitative research is directed toward discerning individuality and subjective experience by standing back and letting people speak for themselves. As such, focusing on subjectivity is a way of being objective, because the researcher is working to not impose their subjective views onto the research participant (Teo, 2015). The researcher is also working to not “manipulate” what the person is doing in a “controlled” experimental situation that is defined and created by the researcher. From a qualitative psychology perspective, “the extent and truth of knowledge” that is created through research in which people serve as research participants “depends on the freedom and significance of their expressivity in that participation” (Wertz, 2011, p. 99). In other words, constructing “true” knowledge of human functioning involves allowing research participants to express themselves as they see fit. Based on the premise that people are “constructors of their experience,” qualitative research takes a giant step away from parsing human experience into predefined “variables” and requires of the researcher an equally major shift in perspective and approach. Rather than forming hypotheses, the researcher frames questions for exploration; in place of measurement are the challenges of deeply listening to others. (Josselson, Lieblich, & McAdams, 2003, p. 3)

82  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Such qualitative research does not have to be viewed in opposition to all quantitative analyses. The point is that qualitative research is not based on the premise that human functioning is best characterized in terms of quantitative variables. Rather than viewing human beings as collections of quantitative variables, human functioning can be conceptualized in terms of ongoing and dynamic qualitative processes. Researchers can certainly analyze whether some action processes are more or less frequent among different people in different circumstances. Nevertheless, the ways in which the processes play out is a focus of qualitative research. In addition, in qualitative studies that are directed toward understanding the complexities of individual experience, individuals’ data are maintained. As first pointed out in Chapter 1, psychological science can be defined in terms of discerning how general processes are particularized by individuals. Toward that end, one can conduct research with individuals in particular contexts and at particular times, to discern how they manifest general processes in individualized ways (Gantt et al., 2017; Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008; Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010; Valsiner, 2009). More specifically:  “Single cases—​analyzed systemically—​are the primary empirical objects for arriving at generalized knowledge” (Molenaar & Valsiner, 2008, p. 25). Allport (1962) suggests that “we should ask, are our generalizations really relevant to the case we are studying? If so, do they need modification? And in what ways is this individual the asymptote of all our general laws?” (p. 407). To answer these questions, we need to first conceptualize general human processes in flexible ways that can be applied to individuals. We can then study individuals to discern how general processes are enacted or particularized by individuals. Research findings from individuals can be used to refine the theoretical conceptualization of general human processes, which in turn can inform further research with individuals, making for an ongoing interplay between the general and the individual, as well as between theory and research. The point is to analyze individuals and to maintain individual data in order to seriously consider the varied ways in which general human processes are particularized by individuals. As Sabat (2001) explains, “what we learn from fine-​grained analysis of individuals may be seen to apply, in possibly a variety of ways, to many others as research continues” (p. 171). Clinical psychologists deal with individual cases, and thus Fishman and Messer (2005) suggest starting

Questioning Convention  83 from the point at which knowledge is ultimately applied. That end point is the single, holistically situated case, because the ultimate purpose of applied psychological knowledge is to improve the condition of actual clients within the complexities of their reality, whether the “client” be an individual, a family, a group, an organization, or a community. (p. 50)

Along similar lines, the neurologist Oliver Sacks has enhanced our understanding of how universal neurological processes may play out individually, by vividly describing individuals in the context of their very individual lives (Sacks, 1970/​1985). When trying to assess a man who was mistaking his wife for a hat, Sacks recalls, “I had to think, to see him again—​and to see him in his own familiar habitat, at home” (1970/​1985, p. 11). Sacks also describes a patient who could remember only approximately the first 20 years of his life and was thus basically stuck in the 1940s. He seemed transformed or “held” by certain activities, such as a “task or puzzle or game or calculation,” but then “would fall apart as soon as they were done, into the abyss of this nothingness, his amnesia” (p. 38). Similarly, “if he was held in emotional and spiritual attention—​in the contemplation of nature or art, in listening to music, in taking part in the Mass in chapel—​the attention, its ‘mood’, its quietude, would persist for a while” (p. 38). Sacks then points out that according to traditional empirical science there was no way for this person “of transcending the incoherence” of his disease (p. 39). He explains further that in “empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being” (p.  39). Despite the “organic damage” and “dissolution” of functioning, “there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit” (p.  39). Although one can question equating personal being with the soul, the point here is that Sacks is going beyond traditional or conventional science practices and supplementing traditional scientific findings by treating any patient as a complex person who constructs individual meaning and who experiences the world subjectively. He is taking a qualitative approach. I also think that Sacks’ patients come alive in his books because he sensitively presents them in relation to social and cultural processes. He additionally relies on varied sources, including literature, music, philosophy, and religion to make sense of patients as human beings who live and subjectively construct complex lives. He recognizes the entanglements, the complexities, the flux, and the flow.

84  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Issues and New Questions This exercise in questioning some of psychology’s conventional practices points to how conventional psychology is based on particular theoretical assumptions and conceptions of human functioning. It also indicates that alternative theoretical assumptions and conceptions are possible and can lead to new insights into human functioning. This overview of conventional practices in psychology suggests that it would be useful to conceptualize what people do integratively or holistically in a way that encompasses varied domains of functioning as well as individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In addition, offering a holistic account of human functioning involves accounting for varied forms of causality. This questioning overview further leads to conceptualizing what people do in terms of dynamic and interrelated qualitative processes that develop. It would also be fruitful to conceptualize human action in terms of individuality and variability, as well as values and meaning. Toward these ends, my goal is to construct a theoretical framework that provides ways to make sense of the complexities of what people do by addressing the main issues that have informed the discussion thus far. Each of these general issues can be considered in terms of more specific questions as follows.





Issue: Systemic Integration of Dynamic Processes • What do people do that encompasses varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes? Another way to put this question is: What is the wider whole of human functioning? • What are the multiple and interrelated processes that constitute and comprise what people do? • How are these processes played out as distinct processes and in relation to each other? • How are these general or universal human processes played out culturally and historically?

Issue: Individuality and Subjectivity • What is this person like as an individual? Another way to put this question is: Who is this person? • How are the general processes that make up the wider whole of human functioning played out in individualized ways? • How does this person subjectively experience what is going on?

Questioning Convention  85

Issue: Stability and Variability • In what ways is human functioning stable? • In what ways is human functioning dynamic and variable?



Issue: Development • What happens during the development of what people do? • How does development happen?



Issue: Causality • Why do people do what they do? • How does human action happen, come about, or emerge? • How does what people do involve multiple forms of causality? • How can we explain human action? • How can we understand human action?

Issue: Meaning • What does a person’s action mean? • How can we interpret what people do? In this chapter, I have already engaged in critical theorizing about these issues by questioning some of conventional psychology’s dominant practices, by laying bare some of conventional psychology’s status quo assumptions, and by beginning to point to other ways of thinking about human functioning. In the next four chapters, I will engage in further theorizing by articulating a theoretical framework that enables us to address the issues and questions just posed. I will also theorize by articulating some assumptions on which the current conceptualization of human functioning is based, as well as by identifying some of the subjective values that inform my thinking. Once the overall theoretical framework is presented, I will continue to theorize by considering some of its major applications and implications for thinking systematically about what people do. I will refer to the theoretical framework being offered here mostly as the current theoretical framework, the current theoretical perspective, and sometimes as the current theoretical approach, the current action perspective, and the current conceptualization. As such, “current” means within this book, and does not refer to what is current in psychology today, or in vogue in either psychology or the wider world today. I refer to what I am constructing here as a theoretical framework or perspective rather than a theory because I am not trying to offer a theory in

86  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action the conventional tradition as discussed in Chapter 2. I do not seek to present a set of testable hypotheses, nor am I trying to predict behavior. Rather, my goal is to offer a way of thinking about or making sense of human functioning. I see the theoretical perspective here as Werner and Kaplan saw the developmental principle of differentiation and integration (to be discussed in Chapter 7), namely “unabashedly . . . as an heuristic concept, serving to order phenomena from the most diverse domains” (Kaplan, 1983a, p. 195). In order to theorize in a systematic way, as well as to guard against being dogmatic, I aspire to meet varied, sometimes overlapping criteria for decent theorizing, by answering the following questions affirmatively. 1. Does the theoretical framework provide ways of linking the topics that psychologists study to a wider whole? In other words, does the theoretical framework provide ways to think integratively and holistically about human functioning? Does it provide ways of considering how varied aspects of human functioning are played out in relation to each other and in relation to a wider whole? 2. Does the theoretical framework identify and conceptualize general human processes in a way that can be individualized? In other words, and going back to the definition of psychological science initially presented in Chapter 1, is the theoretical framework compatible with the position that the goal of psychological science is “to show how individuals may be understood and appreciated as unique instances of some broader set of classes and relationships” (Stroud, 1984, p. 921)? 3. Does the theoretical framework provide alternatives to some problematic assumptions and practices in conventional psychology, such as the ones presented in Chapter 1 and just questioned in this chapter? 4. Can the theoretical framework provide a common language for thinking systematically about a broad range of topics that psychologists study and that may be of concern to people in general? 5. Are starting assumptions or premises as well as subjective values acknowledged? 6. Is the theoretical framework evidence based? More specifically, does the theorist use the evidence of systematic research (from varied disciplines), and/​or real-​life examples to derive and articulate the theoretical framework?

Questioning Convention  87 7. Does the theoretical framework provide a basis for empirical research by enabling researchers to identify particular research issues and goals as well as specific research questions? 8. Does the theoretical framework provide a basis for empirical research by providing concepts and categories that enable researchers to systematically analyze human functioning? 9. Does systematic research provide empirical evidence or validation for the theoretical framework, and does systematic research provide a basis for elaborating and refining the theoretical framework?

PART II

C ONC E PT UA L IZ ING  AC T ION Our task now is to conceptualize what people do in a way that enables us to address the issues and questions posed at the end of Chapter 3. Toward that goal, in Chapter 4, I begin by explicating systems theory, which provides an overarching theoretical starting point for the current conceptualization of human action. Systems theory is my starting point because it is based on integrative and relational assumptions and offers a way of understanding complex phenomena in terms of multiple processes that mutually affect each other. I then go on to conceptualize what people do more specifically in terms of cultural action in relation to others. From a systems perspective, such action is further conceptualized in terms of varied interrelated processes, namely constitutive processes, psychological processes, and developmental processes. Insofar as these action processes occur simultaneously and in relation to each other, and insofar as they are ongoing and dynamic processes, it is difficult to decide where to begin. It is impossible to talk about all of the constituent processes at once, but by beginning with some part of the entangled complexities of action, we run the risk of isolating it from the other constituents. We also run the risk of implicitly prioritizing one process over another by discussing it before or prior to another. Nevertheless, we must jump into the flux and flow, and I find it useful to begin with what I am referring to as the constitutive or organizing constituents of action. Accordingly, in the Chapter 5 presentation of constitutive processes, I conceptualize and raise issues regarding individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In Chapter 6, I turn to conceptualizing psychological processes, in particular thinking, feeling, self/​identity, sensing and perceiving, and interacting with others. I discuss some ways in which each of these psychological processes is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Chapter 6 is rather lengthy because it explores five psychological processes in terms of five constitutive processes. I considered splitting it up into two chapters, but I could not justify a particular way of

90  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action grouping particular psychological processes together. In Chapter 7, we will tackle the developmental processes of what happens during development and how development happens. As this endeavor proceeds, it is important to be prepared for some messiness and ambiguity. We are grappling here with ongoing and dynamic processes that often lack specificity and are difficult to pinpoint. They cannot be pinned down once and for all. Thus, there are varied ways to conceptualize each process, and the upcoming theoretical framework is not meant to be exhaustive, absolute, or final. I may dance around some issues as I emphasize some aspects of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes that I take to be important for making systematic sense of human action. But I do not deny the possibility of other important aspects. The current conceptualization is a theoretical starting point for thinking systematically about the complexities of human action that can, and hopefully will, be refined and elaborated.

4 Systems Theory and Introducing Action To begin addressing the issues and questions identified at the end of Chapter 3, let us go back to the general definition of psychology offered at the outset of this book. I take psychology to be the study of what people do as they go about the entangled flux and flow of their complex lives in all corners of the world. Studying what people do involves defining and analyzing the processes that constitute and comprise what we do, making sense of why we do what we do, discerning the development of what we do, and figuring out what our doing means to us individually and to the others with whom we interact. In addition, a goal of psychological analysis is to enhance our understanding of people in general, as well as of individuals by discerning how general human processes are played out individually. Toward these ends, we can start by identifying some activities that people do. What did you do today or yesterday, and what will you do tomorrow? What about your neighbor? What about someone whom you will never meet on the other side of the world? People eat in different settings, sometimes alone and sometimes with others. People work in all kinds of settings, with some eking out a living, and others making more money than they will ever spend in a lifetime. People tell stories. People gather together to celebrate birthdays and bar mitzvahs, graduations and weddings, as well as to mourn the death of people at funerals. Some people gather in churches, temples, roundhouses, and mosques. Sometimes with others and sometimes alone, people go to concerts, cafés, museums, and sporting events. Some people smoke, some people do not. Some people drink alcohol moderately, some excessively, and some not at all. People visit friends, people visit relatives. People play. People wait in line for varied reasons, in varied places. Some children spend their days going to school, some children spend their days contributing to their families’ subsistence, and some children do both. People text and tweet. People post on Facebook and on Instagram. People joke and fool around. People gossip. People paint, sculpt, make pots out of clay, dance, sing, make music, and write poems, novels, and plays. People look at paintings and sculptures, use clay pots, listen to music, and read poems, novels, and plays. People choose Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

92  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and decide, sometimes rather easily, but sometimes expressing conflict and angst. People puzzle over what to do in a situation. People stress and people cope. People like and love one another, and people dislike and hate one another. People trust and distrust each other, and people respect and disrespect each other. People support each other and people exploit each other. Some people think about their lives and create meaning and purpose. Some people think about their lives and abandon all hope. People greet each other and take leave of each other. People worry, people laugh. People console, support, tease, and criticize each other. People tend to babies and young children, and they take care of the elderly. People cooperate to govern villages, towns, and countries. Some people preside over juries who decide someone’s fate. People help each other out, people turn the other way, and people lash out against others. People argue and fight. I trust that you get the idea here. The list could go on without end. The panels of Figure 4.1 illustrate people acting in some of these ways. Starting

Figure 4.1  Acting in varied ways. Top row, left to right: food truck, grocery store checkout line, looking at a painting, making music. Middle row, left to right: barbershop, courtroom, birthday party, children playing. Bottom row, left to right: bar scene, classroom, telling stories, taking a knee.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  93 with the top row and going from left to right, we first see action at a food truck, then we see people acting in relation to others in varied ways at a grocery store checkout line. We also see an adult and child looking at a painting together, as well as musicians making music. The first panel of the middle row shows people acting in relation to each other in a barbershop. Then, there is a courtroom with a judge presiding while a security officer stands guard and a lawyer addresses the jury. The middle row also shows multiple generations gathered for a birthday party and some children at play. In the bottom row, a bartender tends bar while two people chat amiably and two people get into a fight. Then we see a classroom with students and teachers acting in varied ways, people telling stories around a campfire, and football players taking a knee. These ways of acting are incredibly complex. The aspects of action that comprise varied ways of acting are incredibly complex. What does such action involve, what does it mean, what causes it, how does it develop? Acting in these ways involves varied psychological processes, from perceiving to thinking, to feeling, to interacting with others, to believing and valuing, to constructing self/​identity. Engaging in such action encompasses individual, social, cultural, bodily, and physical environmental processes. These modes of acting develop throughout the lifespan. How do we even begin to think about the complexities of action as people go about their lives in all corners of the world? We need to be able to consider varied processes, but it is easy to become immediately overwhelmed. Sometimes we just cannot see the forest for the trees. There are many possible entrances, and different students of human functioning start with different parts or fragments of action. However, we do not want to begin by fragmenting. We need a way to understand what people do holistically, in terms of both wholes and parts.

Systems Theory Building on Pepper’s (1942/​ 1972) analysis of the root metaphors that philosophers have used to make sense of the world, Overton (2006) posits that research in psychology is typically informed by some kind of metatheory or worldview, which “presents a vision of the nature of the world” (p. 21). A  metatheory provides a wider theoretical context in which particular conceptions about some aspect or aspects of the world are constructed and organized. We have basically spent much of the first three chapters of this

94  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action book exploring some metatheoretical assumptions of conventional psychology. The conventional psychology practices of fragmenting and objectifying point to a split metatheory or worldview with decidedly Cartesian roots, whereby human functioning is taken to be made up of split or fragmented discrete and independent parts (Overton, 2006, 2013, 2015). In addition, a split metatheory is based on the twin principles of foundationalism and atomism. These are the metatheoretical axioms that there is ultimately a rock bottom unchanging nature to reality (the foundation of foundationalism), and that this rock bottom is composed of elements—​pure forms—​(the atoms of atomism) that preserve their identity regardless of context. (Overton, 2006, p. 31)

Within a split metatheory, the parts of the world (or those parts of the world under scrutiny) are taken to be “related either according to their contiguous co-​occurrence in space and time, or according to simple efficient cause-​effect sequences that proceed in a single direction” (p.  31). Also, within a split metatheory, varied phenomena are viewed as opposing or mutually exclusive, such as individualism and collectivism, nature and nurture, normal and abnormal, mind and body, and culture and biology. An alternative to the metatheoretical assumptions of splitting can be found in a process-​relational worldview, which begins by clearing splitting from the field of play and in so doing it moves toward transforming antinomies into co-​ equal, indissociable complementarities. . . . A relational metatheory rejects atomism and replaces it with holism as a fundamental guiding principle. Within this conceptual frame, fixed elements are replaced by contextually defined parts. (Overton, 2006, p. 32)

Within a process-​relational metatheory, a goal of analysis is to consider how the parts of a phenomenon function as connected parts of a wider whole. For example, within a process-​relational metatheory, one would ask the following: How do nature and nurture work together and mutually influence each other during human development? How are people both individualistic and collectivistic at the same time, and how do aspects of their individuality and connectedness inform each other? How are mind and body inseparable parts of integrated action? In addition, a process-​relational worldview

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  95 presents a vision of the world in terms of ongoing and dynamic processes (Overton, 2015). And if a phenomenon is made up of dynamic processes, it can change. Dynamic processes also imply variability, because dynamic processes can be organized in varied ways. I am trying to work out a conceptualization of human functioning that eschews fragmenting or splitting human functioning into isolated parts and that offers a way of making sense of what people do in terms of a wider whole that is made up of multiple and interrelated dynamic processes. To work out such a theoretical framework, I begin by using systems theory, which reflects a process-​relational metatheory, and I draw on some basic claims of systems theory as a vision of the world that includes human functioning. Systems theory provides some basic premises that serve as guidelines to organize the more specific conceptual claims that I will be making in subsequent chapters. Contemporary systems approaches are rooted in centuries of philosophical thinking about holism and ongoing connections among the varied parts that comprise the universe (Billig, 2008; Overton, 2015). In the 20th century, systems theory gained ground as an antidote to mechanistic split assumptions that inhibit understanding the world holistically and in terms of connected phenomena that mutually affect each other (von Bertalanffy, 1969/​1998, 1972). By starting with assumptions of holism and connectedness, systems theory stands in theoretical contrast to the position that complex phenomena are best understood by breaking them down into separate, isolated, or independent component parts. Variations on systems theory differ with regard to some details, and different systems theorists emphasize different aspects of systems functioning. My goal here is to present some main claims of systems theory, and I will use varied examples, including ones that involve human functioning. At this juncture, the examples are illustrative and provide a way to begin thinking systemically about what people do. An overview of some basic systems theory claims can be found in Box 4.1. I will introduce a systems conceptualization of what people do at the end of the chapter. More specific aspects of the current systems conceptualization of what people do will be presented in subsequent chapters. A systems perspective starts by defining a system as a wider whole whose functioning is made up of multiple and interrelated parts or constituents (Ford & Lerner, 1992; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010, 2015; Overton, 2006, 2010, 2013; Polkinghorne, 1983; Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996; van Geert, 2003, 2011; von Bertalanffy, 1969/​1998, 1972; Witherington & Heying, 2013). Systems theory emphasizes the point that distinct system processes occur

96  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 4.1  Overview of Some Main Points of Systems Theory

Multiple and Interrelated Constituents

• Systems are wider wholes that are made up of multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated constituents or parts. As interrelated constituents, they mutually affect each other. The meaning and function of a system’s constituents depend on the whole of which they are parts, and the functioning of the whole depends on the organization of the parts.

Multiple Kinds of Causality or Explanation

• Systems can be understood partly in terms of deterministic cause→effect causality (also known as efficient causality). • Systems can be understood partly in terms of the material substance or substances that comprise them (also known as material causality). • Systems can be understood partly in terms of how their constituents are organized or structured at any given moment of analysis (also known as formal causality). • Systems can be understood partly in terms of their goals or purposes (also known as final causality). • Systems are characterized by circular causality, which refers to simultaneously occurring part–​ part interrelations, part–​ whole connections, and whole–​part connections.







Emergence

• System functioning is dynamic and always emerging or coming into being through ongoing interrelations among constituent processes. Thus, a system’s functioning cannot be attributed or reduced to any single constituent. • The wider systemic whole is characterized by different attributes and modes of functioning than any of its parts. As such, the wider whole is different from the sum of its parts. • A system’s functioning cannot be predicted on the basis of knowledge of its constituents because the constituents can be dynamically organized in unpredictable ways.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  97







Variability and Stability

• System functioning can be stable when system constituents are organized or assembled in similar ways. • System functioning can be unpredictably variable because dynamic system constituents can be organized in different ways.

Equifinality and Multifinality

• Similar modes of system functioning can emerge from different prior conditions. • Similar prior conditions may lead to different or multiple modes of later functioning.

Canalization

• Systemic development may be oriented in certain general directions rather than others. Yet development is not determined or exactly predictable because the dynamic processes through which system functioning and development emerge can be structured and interrelated in varied and unpredictable ways.

simultaneously and are connected reciprocally (Ford & Lerner, 1992; Lerner & Overton, 2017; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010, 2015; Overton, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2015; Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996; van Geert, 2003, 2011; von Bertalanffy, 1969/​1998; Witherington & Heying, 2013). They are inseparable and interrelated. To say that system processes are connected reciprocally, or that they are inseparable, or that they are interrelated, means that they mutually constitute each other and affect each other at the same time, as in A←→B. Bidirectional arrows are used to indicate that the influences go both ways and to show that the parts co-​act and are meaningful in relation to each other. As such, no part is prior or primary, and a system’s functioning cannot be reduced to any single constituent. For example, in a family, varied family members contribute to the family’s functioning, and what a family does cannot be reduced to one family member alone. Even if one family member sometimes seems to dominate, the other family members are acting in some ways that contribute to the family’s overall functioning. Moreover, the family members act in relation to each other. In other words, to understand a system is to discern how its parts are “arranged” (Polkinghorne, 1983, p. 145). The parts of a system may also be understood as systems, and thus some systems can be

98  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action characterized in terms of subsystems, which in turn may be made up of further systems, making for sub-​subsystems, and so on.

Systemic Connections Insofar as a system’s functioning depends on how the constituents are arranged, it is not enough to enumerate and describe the constituents of a system. System constituents are distinct and can be identified in terms of their particular characteristics or functions. But they are also defined in terms of how they function in relation to each other and in relation to a wider whole of which they are parts. A danger of the basic systems premise that the parts of a system are connected is that one may be easily overwhelmed, even paralyzed, by starting to think about how everything is potentially connected to everything else. As Meadows (2008) points out, systems analysts “have a habit of producing diagrams that cover several pages with small print and many arrows connecting everything with everything” (p.  98). To understand system functioning more specifically and, hopefully, coherently (or systematically), we must deal with varied kinds of systemic connections, including part–​part interrelations, part–​whole connections, and whole–​part connections (Witherington, 2007). Part–​part interrelations refer to the ways in which the parts or constituents of a system affect each other or function in relation to each other. For example, one could discern how thinking and feeling are simultaneously occurring and interrelated parts of human functioning. That is, how does thinking affect feeling at the same time that feeling affects thinking? Within a family, different family members may relate to each other in different ways. The ways in which the constituents of a system are interrelated further comprise the wider systemic whole, thus constituting part–​whole connections. Within a family, the ways in which particular family members interact with each other contribute to the functioning of the family as a whole. For example, when the parents are arguing, the family as a whole may function differently than when the parents are not arguing. Thinking, feeling, using language, and perspective taking may be connected to comprise the wider systemic whole of consoling a friend who is down, and sometimes thinking, feeling, using language, and perspective taking are interrelated to comprise the wider systemic whole of arguing with that same friend (or someone else). At the same time, whole–​part connections contribute to a system’s functioning insofar as the

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  99 wider whole promotes the organization of the parts and provides an overarching context for understanding a system’s functioning. As such, to understand what the parts are doing, or how they are functioning, we must know what the parts are part of. In other words, to understand a system constituent is to discern “its role in the system of which it is a part” (Polkinghorne, 1983, p. 166). For example, family members may act as they do because they are the Bradys, and that is how the Bradys act. If A and B are parts of a wider systemic whole, , then the reciprocal connections or interrelations between A  and B comprise the wider functioning of .  Moreover, the organization of the whole, , affects both A and B and how they are interrelated, as in:

Q

Q

Q

[A ←→B] ←→

Q

Again, the parts are meaningful not only in relation to each other, but in terms of the wider whole of which they are parts. In a family, the ways in which individual family members mutually constitute each other affect the functioning of the family as a whole. At the same time, the wider or holistic organization of the family’s functioning partly constitutes how each family member acts and how particular family members relate to each other. In other words, from a holistic vantage point the “whole is not an aggregate of discrete elements, but an organization of parts, each part being defined by its relation to other parts and to the whole” (Overton, 2015, p. 28). For example, it helps to understand what someone is saying if you know that they are trying to console a friend who is down. You might use some of the same phrases when you are arguing with someone as when you are trying to console them. However, the phrases take on different meanings within the wider wholes of arguing and consoling. Thus, the wider whole is constituted by the parts and their connections, which are simultaneously organized by the whole. In other words, system functioning involves circular causality, or ongoing and reciprocal influences between parts and wholes (Witherington, 2011, 2017). Although system functioning is defined in terms of multiple and interrelated parts, as well as multiple kinds of interrelations among parts and wholes, it is fully recognized that one cannot analyze all parts and all interrelations at once. Recall Overton’s (2015) point (raised in Chapter 2) that embracing holism is not equivalent to having to analyze all phenomena at the same time. Rather, conceptualizing any phenomenon from a systems perspective means that one can analyze distinct parts of the system, but that “analysis of parts

100  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action must occur in the context of the parts’ functioning in the whole” (Overton, 2015, p. 40).

Multiple Kinds of Causality These claims about interrelatedness and how the parts of a system are arranged point to a different kind of causality than the cause→effect causality initially presented in Chapter 1. As argued in Chapter 3, although conventional psychology privileges cause→effect causality, it is important to consider other kinds of causality as well. The notion that there are multiple kinds of causality and that they can be occurring at the same time is certainly not new. Many attribute it to Aristotle, who argued that any phenomenon can be understood in terms of multiple causal perspectives. More specifically, he identified four kinds of causality, known as material, efficient, formal, and final. In brief: Explanations that appeal to the material substance or substrate underlying a phenomenon are considered material causes. . . . Efficient causes involve an articulation of the antecedent conditions for a phenomenon, those circumstances both extra-​and intraorganismic that reliably precede an outcome. . . . Formal causes abstract an organization, form, or pattern from a specific, real-​time phenomenon and treat that pattern as an explanation in its own right. . . . Final causes involve an explanation of phenomena in terms of the end or purpose toward which the phenomenon moves, that is, the reason for the phenomenon. (Witherington & Crichton, 2007, pp. 630–​631)

These different kinds of causality can be viewed as different explanatory perspectives on how a system functions. That is, they provide different ways of explaining and understanding system functioning (Overton, 2015; Witherington, 2017). In conventional psychology, efficient causality dominates conceptions of causality, as analyses are directed toward discerning antecedent, independent, and deterministic causes of behavioral effects. As explained in Chapter 1, experiments are designed to assess efficient causality in terms of independent and dependent variables. Material causality is also privileged in contemporary conventional psychology, as can be seen in the zeal to attribute

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  101 so much of human functioning to the brain. However, although efficient and material causality may help to explain some aspects of human systemic functioning, they are not the whole story. Formal causality involves explaining a phenomenon in terms of the ongoing and dynamic patterning, or organization, or structuring of its constituent processes. This kind of causality is in keeping with the systems theory claim that part processes and interrelations among them comprise the functioning of the system as a whole. From the perspective of formal causality, understanding a system’s functioning involves discerning the form (or organization, or patterning, or structuring, or arrangement) of its multiple and interrelated parts. For example, as a whole, a family may be functioning cohesively or divisively at some moment of analysis. Analyzing formal causality involves discerning how different ways of structuring or arranging system constituents comprise different patterns of a system’s wider functioning. For example, to discern why a family is functioning cohesively or divisively, one would analyze what each family member is doing as a distinct individual and what they are doing in relation to each other. In addition, as explained earlier, systems are also organized as wider wholes, and the functioning of the constituents depends on the wider whole that they are part of at some analytic moment. From the perspective of formal causality, understanding and explaining a system’s functioning requires discerning its holistic or wider organization, patterning, structuring, or form. With regard to human functioning, formal causality also involves abstracting out an overall patterning or organization to a person’s action that transcends particular contexts, as well as the moment-​to-​moment dynamics of how the parts of action are arranged (Witherington, 2017; Witherington & Heying, 2013). The analytic goal is discern how system constituents are organized in terms of an overall abstract pattern or form. For example, the four stages of cognitive development that Piaget identified (sensorimotor, pre-​operational, concrete operational, formal operational) can be understood as different abstract patterns or forms of thinking that characterize a person’s action in varied contexts. The four stages represent different ways or forms of thinking in general and can be used to formally explain someone’s thinking. Final causality refers to the purpose(s) or goal(s) of a system’s functioning. Purposes and goals do not have to be consciously pursued by a system, although they can be, depending on the system. Not all living systems pursue goals consciously, but some (such as human beings) certainly do, at least sometimes. Final causality encompasses the point or purpose of a system’s

102  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action functioning. Indeed, to refer to what systems do with the term functioning implies that what the system is doing serves some sort of purpose or function. What does it mean to say that a system is functional or dysfunctional? It means that the system is or is not able to achieve some goal, or purpose, or function. In living systems, a goal or function of what the creature does is to maintain and regulate its own functioning, or in other words, to stay alive. From the perspective of final causality, human action can be understood in terms of goals, purposes, and reasons that go beyond staying alive and sometimes may even jeopardize a person’s life. As pointed out in Chapter 3 with regard to the futurity of human action, some goals are relatively short term, while some are relatively long term and may even extend beyond a person’s own lifetime. When we ask why someone did what they did, we may be quite satisfied to find out that they acted in order to achieve some goal or purpose. He quit that job in order to spend more time with his family. Or, they walked across that bridge to protest against racial discrimination. Or she walked in the rain in order to buy some coffee, and she bought the coffee because she wanted to be able to stay up and practice the piano all night, and she wanted to practice all night in order to do well at the piano competition, in order to get a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music. People sometimes act because of how they think others will react to them. Thus, someone might act in the hope that someone else will hold them in high regard. Also, when it comes to human action, final causality encompasses how people act for the sake of beliefs and values that are personally significant or meaningful (Rychlak, 2003). Indeed, we can understand why someone is fasting when we know that they are acting in accord with religious beliefs, or that a person is fasting to take a stand against some political policy.

Emergence Insofar as systems are made up of dynamic and ongoing processes, they are characterized by flux and flow. They are not static, unless there is a major problem with the system. What would it mean if the process of acting stopped, or if a person stopped acting? It would probably mean that the person is dead. If a child’s functioning is static, we might worry that the child is not developing. As suggested earlier, human action involves varied constituent processes, such as thinking, feeling, using language, interacting, and constructing self/​identity. These processes are ongoing and can be

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  103 characterized as fluctuating and flowing. For example, sometimes a person is thinking quite rationally, but other times how they are thinking may seem utterly incoherent. A family’s functioning is not static. Sometimes families function harmoniously, and then they erupt into bitter divisiveness, and then they start to make up, and then they are functioning harmoniously for a while, and then. . . . In the midst of such ongoing flux and flow, system functioning is taken to emerge. Within systems theory, the concept of emergence is used in several overlapping ways. One meaning of emergence is that a system’s functioning is ongoing and always in the process of becoming. In addition, emergence encompasses the systems theory point that a system’s functioning cannot be attributed or reduced to any single constituent but to the ways in which its varied constituents are functioning in relation to each other (Lerner, 1996; Overton, 2015). In other words, the functioning of the wider system emerges through the ongoing functioning of multiple and interrelated constituent processes, all of which contribute 100% to system functioning. This conception of emergence also means that a system’s functioning is not the result of adding its constituent processes together. Rather, as explained earlier, system functioning emerges through ongoing and reciprocal interrelations among constituent processes. Insofar as this conception of emergence addresses how system functioning comes about, it encompasses issues of causality. However, rather than saying that X, Y, and Z each caused a system to function in terms of cause→effect causality, emergence here means that systemic functioning is taken to emerge through the dynamic structuring or organization of X, Y, and Z. To understand how systemic functioning emerges, a major analytic goal would be to discern how a system’s constituent processes are structured, including how they are interrelated. In turn, discerning how system functioning emerges through the dynamic structuring of constituent processes is a way of understanding system functioning in terms of formal causality. Within systems theory, the concept of emergence is also sometimes used to convey the point that a wider systemic whole is characterized by different properties, or attributes, or patterns of functioning than any of its constituents. That is, the organization of the whole “has systemic features that are not features of any part. Thus, the whole is not greater than, it is different from, the sum of its parts” (Overton, 2015, p. 28). As such, the wider whole is characterized by emergent properties that are different from the properties of its parts. For example, varied culinary delights are made up of their parts, but are also characterized differently than any of their parts. Therefore,

104  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action delicious brownies, or light and fluffy brownies, are different than the bits of unsweetened chocolate, flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking powder that comprise them. Different ways of acting are made up of their parts, but they are also characterized differently than any of their parts. For example, if you say that someone greeted you warmly, that characteristic of their action is not located in any of its constituents (e.g., thinking, feeling, using language, perspective taking) but emerges in the wider whole of greeting in a particular way. The same can be claimed for greeting someone coldly, or indifferently, or perfunctorily. A person may be described as being moody, meaning that he seems to go quickly from being happy to sad, to mad, to despondent, to surly. Being moody emerges as an attribute that characterizes the person’s action as a wider whole that is not located in any of the distinct emotions that comprise being moody. What is a political demonstration or a dinner party? Each is a wider whole that is not located in any of its distinct constituents but emerges through the structuring of the interrelated constituents. Even if a particular person or speech is viewed as the symbol of a political demonstration or movement, the person IS not the demonstration or movement, and the demonstration or movement cannot be reduced to that one person. Even if someone is the life of the party, the party can be described the next day in terms that do not belong to that person alone. These varied examples show once again that the organization of the wider whole “has systemic features that are not features of any part. Thus, the whole is not greater than, it is different from, the sum of its parts” (Overton, 2015, p. 28).

Variability and Stability During the course of a system’s ongoing and continuously emerging functioning, system constituents can be organized in varied ways. As pointed out earlier, they can come together to form different patterns of functioning. Systems theorists like to say technically that system constituents can “assemble” into different patterns or ways of functioning. More specifically, if a system can be organized or assembled in varied ways, then that system’s functioning is taken to be “softly assembled.” For example, you may follow the same basic routine just about every day, but it is not exactly the same. Sometimes you have breakfast earlier than on other days, sometimes you eat breakfast alone, and sometimes you eat breakfast with your family. Sometimes breakfast with the family is pleasant, and sometimes it is not.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  105 Sometimes eating alone is just what you need, but sometimes you miss your family. You may exercise regularly and sometimes your workout goes very smoothly, but sometimes you feel as though you can hardly move. In other words, you cannot step into the same river twice. Thelen uses the term soft assembly in contrast to hardwired and preprogrammed to emphasize the point that human behavior and development are not rigidly set or predetermined by the brain or genetic processes (Thelen & Smith, 2006). As pointed out in Chapter 3, plasticity is part of the flux and flow of human functioning. Insofar as system functioning is softly assembled, or insofar as system constituents can be organized in varied ways to comprise varied modes of functioning, systems theory emphasizes variability in system functioning (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Fischer, Yan, & Stewart, 2003; Fogel, 2011; Howe & Lewis, 2005; Lerner, 1996; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010, 2015; Overton, 2015; Spencer, Clearfield, Corbetta, Ulrich, Buchanan, & Schöner, 2006; Thelen & Smith, 2006; van Geert, 2011; van Geert & Fischer, 2009; van Geert & Steenbeek, 2005; Yan & Fischer, 2002, 2007). When it comes to human functioning, there can clearly be differences or variability between people, within and across cultures, as well as historically. An individual’s functioning can also vary, in varied ways and in relation to varied processes. For example, a person may act differently in relation to different people, in different cultural practices, in relation to historical changes, for different purposes, or in relation to stress, hunger, and fatigue. In a nutshell, variability is taken to be “pervasive rather than abnormal or exceptional. The complexity of activity varies widely and systematically from moment to moment within and across contexts” (Yan & Fischer, 2002, p. 144). This approach to variability points to the importance of explicitly conceptualizing and investigating patterns of variability in human functioning, for individuals as well as between individuals. Insofar as there is variability in system functioning, a system’s functioning can sometimes be difficult to predict, even when one knows a lot about its constituents. Accordingly, another meaning of emergence is that the functioning of the wider system cannot be predicted on the basis of knowledge of the constituents. In other words, you cannot predict exactly what will happen during the ongoing process of coming into being. You may be able to anticipate some possible future modes of functioning based on knowledge of system parts, but the future remains open-​ended and emergent (Bandura, 1982; Gottlieb, 1991, 2007; Lewis, 1997). Systems theory posits that even though a system’s development may be canalized or oriented in

106  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action some directions rather than others, specific developmental pathways cannot be predicted in advance (e.g., Gottlieb, 2001; Valsiner, 1997). In addition, systems theory posits the principle of equifinality, whereby similar modes of functioning can emerge from different prior conditions, and the principle of multifinality, whereby similar prior conditions may lead to different later modes of functioning (Ford & Lerner, 1992; Gottlieb, 2001; Valsiner, 1997; von Bertalanffy, 1969/​1998). For some systems, variability also includes engaging in wholly new forms of functioning, as well as developmental transformations in the organization of functioning. In particular, such variability is possible for what are referred to as open systems. Drawing on systems theory’s roots in biology, open systems are ones that exchange energy and matter with their environments (von Bertalanffy, 1969/​1998; Valsiner, 1997; Witherington, 2017). Living creatures are open systems whose functioning can change through exchange relations with environments, and some of those changes can be developmental changes. For some living creatures, such as human beings, the environment includes other people, as well as dynamic cultural settings. People can thus be understood as open and plastic living systems who change and develop as they interact with varied other people in varied cultural practices. We thus get to the complex issue of human development, but at this juncture we will postpone conceptualizing development more specifically. Insofar as development is taken to be central to what people do, it will be conceptualized more specifically in Chapter 7. Although system functioning is softly assembled, it can still be stable, because some assemblies or arrangements may be more likely than others in certain contexts or under certain conditions (Fogel, 2011; Howe & Lewis, 2005; Thelen & Smith, 2006; van Geert & Steenbeek, 2005). Going back to the point that wider systemic organization shapes how a system’s parts function, the organization of the wider whole can be stable across contexts even in the face of some local variability in how system parts are assembled (Witherington, 2007, 2011, 2017; Witherington & Heying, 2013). For example, a person may be generally cooperative across contexts, but not in the same way in all situations, and in some situations the person might not be cooperative at all. As such, systemic functioning is characterized by “dynamic stability” (Fogel, 2006, p. 9), as well as “global regularities” and “local variability” (Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996, p. xviii). Before moving on, let us briefly recapitulate some major points of systems theory. A system is a phenomenon whose functioning emerges through

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  107 multiple and interrelated constituents. As such, system constituents mutually constitute each other and are meaningful in relation to each other and in terms of a wider whole. Connections among system constituents include the circular causality of part–​part interrelations, part–​whole connections, and whole–​part connections. Systems can be understood in terms of multiple kinds of causality, including efficient, material, formal, and final causality. System functioning emerges through the ongoing and dynamic assembly of its constituents and is characterized by both stability and variability. And some systems vary by developing new modes of functioning.

Introducing Action Our task now is to conceptualize what people do more specifically according to these basic systems premises or starting points. Conceptualizing human functioning as a system or from a systems perspective begins by considering what a person does in terms of a wider whole that is made up of multiple and interrelated processes. A  more specific systems conceptualization of what people do will be articulated in the next three chapters. For now, I want to provide an orienting overview of action as the concept that will be used to represent the wider whole or system of what people do. I also want to introduce some of the constituent processes of action that will be conceptualized more specifically. Readers may refer back to Figure 1.1, which illustrates the main claims of the current approach to action. As pointed out in Chapters 1 and 2, analyses of human functioning proceed from often unacknowledged assumptions and premises that serve as theoretical axioms or givens. However, a point of this entire enterprise is to acknowledge basic assumptions or premises. Thus, allow me to begin by stating some basic assumptions that comprise my starting point for conceptualizing human functioning, thereby satisfying criterion #5 (from the list of criteria for theorizing in Chapter 3), that a decent theory acknowledges starting assumptions. I  start from the systems premise that human functioning is a system that is made up of multiple and interrelated parts. To conceptualize those parts, I  start from the premise that all human beings are separate individuals, as well as connected to others. In addition, human beings are always functioning in cultural contexts. Taken together, much of what a person does involves acting as an individual in relation to others in cultural contexts. Readers can go back to the activities listed at the outset

108  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action of this chapter and start thinking about how they involve acting in relation to others in cultural contexts. As we now start to think about action, it is important to point out that it is not always so easy to delineate modes of action. For example, you may be chatting congenially with your sister, and then you suddenly realize that you are arguing. Moreover, you might think you are arguing, but your sister insists that she is “just discussing.” We cannot avoid some fuzzy boundaries, which are part of the entangled and complex flux and flow of human functioning. Nevertheless, we can at least begin with some relatively clear cases. And if the theoretical framework offered here proves useful for understanding some modes of action, then it can be elaborated on to provide ways of distinguishing among modes of action, as well as discerning how they are interrelated. To start conceptualizing action as a wider systemic whole, we can consider how action emerges through multiple and interrelated processes. Insofar as action refers to acting in relation to others, social processes are clearly involved, because the person is dealing with other people. For example, if a person is greeting someone, consoling someone, arguing with someone, or eating dinner with other people, social processes are clearly involved because the person is dealing with other people. A person might greet, console, argue, and/​or eat somewhat differently in relation to different people. When greeting, consoling, arguing, and eating, individual processes are involved because the person, as well as the people in relation to whom the person is acting, are all distinct, identifiable individuals. Cultural processes are involved, as greeting, consoling, arguing, and eating can be played out in culturally particular ways in relation to cultural values, beliefs, and standards. As biological creatures, human action is embodied, and human action also always occurs in some physical environmental setting. Taken together, I start from the premise that action or acting in relation to others is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. I  further start from the systems premise that individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are inseparable and interrelated constituents of action. In previous work, I have referred to individual, social, and cultural processes as “causal constituents” of action, but I was and still am not terribly satisfied with that term (Raeff, 2016, 2017a). I referred to these processes as causal constituents because action is taken to be constituted by them and to emerge through them, and thus there is a way in which the processes can be said to cause action. For example, people act in some different ways across

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  109 cultures, and thus we can say that cultural processes cause people to act differently in different cultures. Or, part of what a person does is influenced by other people, and thus we can say that social processes cause people to act as they do. Causality also addresses “why” questions about what people do, as in: why did he do that, or why is she doing that? Knowing how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are organized helps us to understand and explain why someone acted as they acted. We might even answer “why” questions by claiming that someone did what they did beCAUSE of some individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. However, as discussed earlier, systems are characterized by varied kinds of causality, and thus different kinds of causality provide different perspectives for understanding and explaining action. As already pointed out, cause→effect causality dominates conventional psychology, and it is also perhaps most widely invoked by people in general when trying to figure out what caused some phenomenon. Thus, when readers see “causal constituents,” there is a danger that they might immediately think of efficient causality and neglect the other kinds of causality presented earlier in this chapter, especially formal and final causality. Some even argue that the terms cause and causality be eliminated from scientific discourse in the context of a process-​ relational metatheory (Overton, 2015). However, the terms are so entrenched in psychology, as well as in everyday discourse, that I doubt they will be abandoned any time soon. Nevertheless, I  want to avoid the danger of immediately invoking cause→effect causality, and I want to emphasize the point that individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are not being conceptualized primarily as independent and antecedent events that affect action in a deterministic way. They are also not taken to be independent of each other, but rather to constitute action as they occur in relation to each other. To understand how societal circumstances affect human biological processes and conditions, Krieger (2005) explains that “we, like any living organism, literally incorporate, biologically, the world in which we live, including our societal and ecological circumstances” (p. 351). For example, we literally incorporate the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink, and traces of that air, food, and water can be found in our blood and body parts. The stresses of poverty or racism may be literally incorporated or expressed biologically as ill health. When I read Krieger’s article, I was immediately taken by the phrase “literally incorporated” because it conveys what I am trying to get at here. That is, I am using the term constitutive processes

110  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action to make the point that individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are part of human action. They are literally incorporated within action. In this way, I am not thinking of them in cause→effect terms as independent variables that impinge upon people and make them act in one way or another. They are not mechanistic forces or deterministic determinants that impinge upon people. Rather, they are the processes through which action emerges. Thus, I am thinking of them as inherent parts of action. To use another metaphor, action is infused with individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. As such, they constitute action. They constitute action rather than cause action. Accordingly, I will refer to individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes mostly as “constitutive processes.” I will sometimes refer to them as “organizing processes” of action. As just pointed out, consoling, arguing, and eating are all taken to be constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Or, we can say that consoling, arguing, and eating are organized individually, socially, culturally, bodily, and environmentally. We can also say that these different modes of action emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In addition to constitutive processes, acting in relation to others in cultural practices involves varied domains of functioning, including but not limited to sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, using language, perspective taking, believing, valuing, and constructing self/​identity. As discussed in Part I, these domains of functioning represent some of the fragmented areas of conventional psychology. From a systems perspective, these domains of functioning are taken to occur simultaneously and to mutually affect each other. In other words, they are being conceptualized as interrelated systemic processes that comprise wider modes of action. For example, consoling a friend may involve (but is not necessarily limited to) thinking, feeling, using language, interacting, perspective taking, and viewing oneself as a caring friend. In previous work, I  referred to these constituents of action as “action constituents,” which is actually shorthand for “developmental constituents of action” (Raeff, 2016, 2017a). However, I am no longer satisfied with that term, either. Here, I refer to these aspects of action as “psychological processes.” A psychological process can be defined generally as a subsystemic constituent of acting in relation to others. When these psychological processes are organized in different ways, different wider modes of action or ways of acting may emerge, such as greeting, consoling, arguing, and eating. As subsystemic constituents of action, psychological processes are

Systems Theory and Introducing Action  111 constituted by the individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes that constitute action in general. For example, much research now focuses on the neurological aspects of cognition or thinking. Sociocultural approaches draw attention to how thinking is organized culturally. And there are analyses of how thinking is a social process that occurs between people, such as when people collaborate to solve a problem. Taken together, what do people do? They act in relation to others. Such action is being conceptualized here as a system that is made up of multiple and interrelated constituent processes and subprocesses, namely constitutive processes and psychological processes. The constitutive processes are interrelated, yet distinct and made up of their own subsystemic processes. The psychological processes are also interrelated, yet distinct and made up of their own subsystemic processes. Although the constituent processes can be distinguished for analytic purposes, they are conceptualized as ongoing and dynamic, and they are taken to be interrelated constituents of a single integrated wider whole, namely a person acting in relation to others. In addition, such action develops. Not only do wider modes of action develop, but the psychological processes that comprise wider modes of action also develop. That is, greeting, consoling, arguing, and calming a distressed child are all modes of action that develop. And the cognitive, emotional, social, perceptual, perspectival, linguistic, and identity processes that comprise those modes of action develop. Thus, action also consists of developmental processes, which include the process of what happens during development and the process of how development happens (Raeff, 2011, 2016). Before moving on to conceptualizing the action system more specifically, a few more words about terminology are in order. The phrase “a person acting in relation to others” explicitly encompasses individual and social processes. Such action is also always taken to occur within cultural contexts and within a physical environment. And a person is also always a biological creature with peculiarly human biological and bodily characteristics. Accordingly, I will use “action” and “acting” throughout the book as shorthand for all of that. I will also use “action/​acting in relation to others” and “action/​acting in relation to others in cultural practices.” Once in a while I will write about “behavior” and “behaving,” especially when referring to others’ work and conventional psychological approaches to the issues at hand. Personally, I think that behavior and action can be used interchangeably. As such, I would say that people behave in relation to others in cultural practices. However, behavior comes with the theoretical baggage of behaviorism and mechanistic/​

112  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action deterministic causality and does not readily encompass how human functioning involves individual agency and cultural meanings (Berlin, 1999; Bruner, 1990; Mistry, 2013; Polkinghorne, 1983). Thus, I  will stick with action. And also before moving on to theorizing by conceptualizing action more specifically, I will first acknowledge some of the values that I endorse and that I am using to inform how I am thinking about action. In doing so, I am satisfying part of the fifth criterion in the Chapter 3 list of criteria for decent theorizing, namely acknowledging some subjective values. In general, I come to this endeavor valuing equality, diversity, inclusion, and pluralism. I believe that there are many ways to be and act in this world, and that it is important to question static and status quo conceptions of human functioning. Thus, I tend to balk and bristle when I hear someone say that some way of being is “natural,” or when someone says that it is “human nature” to do X, Y, or Z, or when someone says that there is an “innate” human tendency to do A, B, or C. I want to conceptualize human functioning in a way that is open to the possibility of change and progress, fully understanding that what counts as progress is debatable. I also tend to balk at dichotomies and either/​or ways of thinking about varied phenomena. In keeping with these beliefs and values, I want to offer an image of human functioning that reflects complexity, thereby eschewing simplistic, reductionist, and unidimensional ways of dealing with human issues and problems. I believe that a complex image of humanity is a holistic one, in which aspects of human functioning are viewed as parts that are connected within a wider systemic whole. I seek to offer an image of humanity that embraces dynamism, ambiguity, and variability. I value independence and individual agency and thus want to understand people as active interpreters and constructors of experience. At the same time, I want to conceptualize human action in a way that emphasizes connection and relatedness. I am trying to conceptualize human functioning in a way that I believe reflects respect for the individuality of all people, as well as respect for our common humanity. I seek to offer a respectful and tolerant, as well as empathic and compassionate, conceptualization of people and what people do that enables us to understand individuality and cultural specificity. I want to conceptualize human action in a way that can promote empathy and connections among people and that has the potential to help us overcome some of the divisiveness that is evident among people around the world today.

5 Constitutive Processes As explained at the end of Chapter  4, the current theoretical perspective posits that action is constituted by or emerges through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Thinking systematically about these processes enables us to make sense of what people are doing and of how they are acting. Considering constitutive processes enables us to understand and explain what a person is doing and why a person is acting in some way, as well as to figure out what someone’s action means. It also provides a basis for discerning how action is both enabled and constrained in varied ways. Again, we immediately face the issue of where to begin. On the one hand, individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are taken to be distinct and thus need to be conceptualized one by one. At the same time, they are also interrelated and mutually constitutive processes that do not occur separately from one another while a person is acting. As such, no process is primary, and no process is prior to any other process. They are all “completely involved” (Lerner, 1986, p. 84), and they all contribute 100% to action. Indeed, as I define each process more specifically, it will sometimes be impossible to avoid at least mentioning some of the other processes. Insofar as they occur simultaneously and in relation to each other to constitute action, we can enter the complex fray anywhere. Please see Box 5.1 for an overview of constitutive processes.

Social Processes Insofar as we are dealing with acting in relation to others, social processes are obviously constitutive of action. To say that social processes constitute action means that people contribute to and influence each other’s action and that action is co-​constructed between people. Social processes encompass how anyone’s action is made up of other people and how relating to others can enable and constrain action. Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Box 5.1  Overview of Constitutive Processes

Action Is Constituted By

Individual processes—​what an individual does to contribute to their own action • Self-​ reflecting and constructing experience from a subjective perspective • Regulating aspects of one’s own action • Acting for the sake of goals, interests, beliefs, and values • Positioning and repositioning oneself in relation to others • Individualized ways of acting Social processes—​what others do to contribute to someone’s action

• What others do during direct social interaction • How others position and reposition someone • How others recognize someone • Dialogicality • Orienting to others when alone Cultural processes—​how action reflects and is shaped by historically dynamic traditions of being



• Common and contested meanings, including beliefs, values, and guidelines for action • Wider societal processes, including globalization, economics, and political processes • Structuring of power and authority • Tools that mediate action, from language, to numbers, to computers, to social media Bodily processes—​how action is embodied



• Using body parts to act • Bodily processes (e.g., biological, chemical, genetic, neurological) Environmental processes—​how the physical environment is incorporated in action



• Aspects of the natural environment (e.g., air, water, temperature, terrain, and natural resources) • Aspects of the humanly built environment (e.g., lighting, space arrangements, temperature control)

Constitutive Processes  115

What Others Do People generally contribute to each other’s action as they engage with each other in varied situations, and a person may act differently partly because of the particular other people who populate those varied situations. Thus, a person may engage in some of the same general modes of action but in a different way in relation to different people, partly because of what those different people are doing. For example, you may console, greet, or argue with many people, but in somewhat different ways in relation to those different people. Or, you may know someone at work who quietly goes about her job and then be rather surprised to see that person yelling at and ordering her spouse and children around at home one evening. People are embedded in varied relationships, in which different ways of acting are constructed between people over time and which also reflect the histories of how they act in relation to each other. In addition, different ways of acting in different situations emerge as people enact varied social roles, such as spouse, parent, child, friend, employer, or employee. Thus, a person’s action for each role is partly constituted by the other in the reciprocal and mutually constitutive role. In addition, social roles are enacted in culturally particular ways, and they can be enacted in individualized ways as well. Thus, even though here we are conceptualizing social processes, it is impossible to avoid the other processes that co-​constitute action. People contribute to each other’s action more specifically in varied ways, including by reacting and responding to each other. That is, the ways in which Isaac responds and reacts to Leo partly constitute what Leo does. It gets entangled because what Isaac is doing is partly socially constituted by what Leo is doing. There is ongoing and mutual social influence. Thus, rather than viewing social processes only in terms of what one person does as occurring first and what another person does as occurring second and as caused by what occurred first, we are working to understand how people are co-​constituting how they act at the same time. Ongoing and dynamic mutual social influence is also complex because people sometimes respond and react to each other in unexpected ways. If we do not know how others will respond and react to us, our action becomes characterized by open-​endedness and unpredictability because it is inseparable from what other people do. For example, you may have thought long and hard about what you are going to say to someone, and you may have even rehearsed what you will say. As you pondered, you may also have considered how the other person would react.

116  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Then, when you actually start talking to the person face-​to-​face, he acts in a way that catches you off guard and you end up making claims that you did not remotely consider in advance. It can sometimes be quite difficult to navigate the flux and flow of ongoing mutual influence. Physically absent others may also be part of what someone is doing when a person invokes them in some way while engaged with someone else. Certainly, people can spend a lot of time talking about someone who is not physically with them at the time. A person may be texting pictures of the current scene to someone who is not physically present as a way of including them in what is going on. And the other person or people who are physically present may find that annoying, or they may happily include themselves in the selfies being sent. In these cases, a physically absent person is co-​constituting what the physically present people are doing. And the physically present people are also co-​constituting each other’s action. It does get complex and entangled!

Dialogicality The claim that one person’s action is constituted in part by other people is central to dialogical approaches to human functioning (e.g., Gergen, 1991b; Hermans, 2003; Watkins, 2000/​2005; Wertsch, 1991). Dialogical approaches hold that human action is inherently grounded in dialogue with others. According to Shotter (2012), “this is where all the strangeness of the dialogical begins” (p. 142). By viewing a person’s action in terms of a dialogue (as opposed to a monologue), a dialogical perspective involves focusing on how a person’s action is permeated by, inseparable from, and continuous with other people’s voices. Sometimes we literally quote other people and use their voices as our own, and sometimes we may paraphrase to incorporate someone else’s voice into our own action. For example, although a political speech may be delivered by a particular person, she may incorporate what others have said directly or she may generally allude to what others have said. I may be the single author of this book, but it is made up of the voices of many others, both living and dead—​from friends and relatives, to colleagues and students, to scholars from varied disciplines, many of whom I know only through their written work. Not only have I incorporated others’ voices into this book, but I am also engaging with them and potential readers as I write. I am so taken by Shotter’s phrase “strangeness of the dialogical” and find that

Constitutive Processes  117 the word strangeness aptly suits so much of what we are grappling with here that I will use “strangeness” to characterize varied phenomena as we proceed. By building on how Shotter uses the word strangeness, I am dialogically incorporating his voice into what I am doing.

Positioning and Recognizing Social processes further constitute action through positioning and recognizing, which can be played out in different ways as people act in relation to others. One form of positioning involves being “positioned by others in the relationship” (Gergen, 2009b, p. 155). Within the current theoretical framework, we can say that people position each other as they act in relation to others. To be positioned by another means that you are being defined partly by the other person and that the way the other person defines and treats you becomes part of how you act in relation to that person, and potentially in relation to others as well. For example, traditional gendered ways of acting emerge in part through men positioning women as weak and meek. This example also illustrates how positioning involves enacting power and authority as a person or group positions another person or group into subordinate positions. It further illustrates how social positioning is inseparable from cultural processes insofar as it reflects cultural conceptions of male and female action. Sabat’s (2001) work focuses on how people with Alzheimer’s disease are often positioned by others as impaired and irrational, rather than as people who are still capable of constructing meaning and of acting competently in relation to others. As a social process, the ways others position a person are being conceptualized dynamically, not statically. Thus, others can change how they position someone; they can REposition someone. Herbert (2014) argues that corporate downsizing in the 1980s occurred partly because “workers came to be seen less and less as valuable, functioning human beings contributing to the success of an enterprise and more and more as impediments to profits” (p. 51). By changing how they are positioned, people’s ways of acting in relation to each other can potentially change. If you stop treating someone like a child, perhaps they will stop acting like a child. Repositioning can occur in varied ways and for varied reasons. For example, someone may start to engage more directly with a person whom she positions in one way or another and then realize that that positioning is inappropriate. Or, a person can

118  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action act to counter-​position himself in relation to others, who then may or may not change how they position him. Counter-​positioning further shows that a person can position and reposition himself in relation to others. Thus, positioning can be done by others to a person, as well as by a person in relation to others. Positioning and counter-​positioning oneself in relation to others point to how social processes and individual processes are interrelated. Most of the positioning that we have been considering here involves how others position someone. And, as just suggested, such positioning may or may not be in keeping with how a person wants to be treated or viewed by another person. Say you enter a doctor’s office where everyone is positioned as a cardiac patient. However, these cardiac patients are not just cardiac patients. They are whole people who may want to be recognized by the doctor as unique individuals. Or, in addition to positioning students as students, a teacher might recognize and try to get to know each student as a whole person or as a distinct individual. What I am suggesting here is that social processes also include how a person is recognized by others as they act in relation to each other. Recognizing someone connotes acting in relation to them as a distinct individual. It means that action is partly socially constituted in terms of how people engage with each other as particular individuals who construct their particular life stories, ways of acting, and subjective experiences. In keeping with this claim, Reddy (2008) argues for a second-​person approach to engaging with and knowing others. She explains that “we know the term second person from grammar: it is the voice that is used when talking directly to someone, speaking to them as someone who can respond and understand and who deserves recognition as a person” (p. 27). In addition, recognizing the other as a person “simultaneously allows us to come to know the other as a person” (p. 28). Of course, what it means to be a person is quite the vexing issue (Mascolo & Raeff, 2017). Moreover, recognizing and positioning are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Again, the point here is that acting in relation to others is constituted in part by how others treat someone, and such treatment includes the ways in which others recognize and/​or do not recognize a person.

Alone with Others Another aspect of the strangeness of the social organization of action is that even when a person is alone, action is partly socially constituted in varied

Constitutive Processes  119 ways. One way in which action is socially constituted when a person is alone is when someone is thinking about someone else or trying to understand someone else. According to dialogical perspectives, another way in which others constitute our action when we are alone is through engaging in imaginary or private dialogues with others (Watkins, 2000/​2005). Social processes are also involved when a person is alone, but doing for someone or reacting to someone in some way. For example, a person might be running around town trying to find the perfect birthday present for someone, or someone might be grocery shopping for a sick friend. Sometimes, a person may be alone but still acting in a context that involves other people. Examples of solitary action in relation to others abound. You can go to a restaurant alone, but at the restaurant you will order food from a server, think about how much to tip the server (in cultures where tipping is customary), and perhaps say “Excuse me” to other customers as you walk between tables on your way out. You may have gone out to eat alone, but you are still acting in relation to others, and your action is partly constituted by others. From painters to poets, artists who work alone are expressing themselves to others indirectly and directly and may be doing so by considering how others might react to their work. I once went to a talk in which a psychologist was describing an experiment that was designed to be “non-​social” by requiring people to engage in an arithmetic task by themselves. I thought to myself that it is probably impossible to remove social dimensions from a setting, including an experiment, because an experiment is a social situation in which other people contribute to what a research participant is doing. Indeed, according to good experimental practices, a research participant’s behavior is being “manipulated” by the experimenter. Plus, doing arithmetic involves using a socially shared numerical system, and knowing how to do arithmetic typically develops through social interaction.

Cultural Processes Culture is about as vexing and strange as human phenomena can be, and it has certainly been defined in varied ways. I have been puzzling over culture for decades, and I am still confused about it. Jahoda (2012) advises that insofar as all facets of culture cannot be considered at once, the best way to proceed is to articulate what facets of culture one is considering at a particular time. Here, we will consider how some cultural processes contribute to,

120  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action constitute, or organize human action. Before getting to how cultural processes constitute action, I think it is useful to distinguish among three kinds of cultural phenomena: • A culture or specific cultures • Cultural practices • Cultural processes that constitute action

Some Complex Issues Referring to “cultures,” “a” culture, or “a” cultural group implies that it is possible to identify specific cultures. It is certainly commonplace to talk about this or that culture, such as American culture or Japanese culture. Or we might say, “in this culture” people do X, Y, or Z, whereas “in that culture” people do A, B, or C. However, the implication that it is possible to identify specific cultures is problematic, and for varied reasons it is sometimes very difficult to identify “a” culture. Cultures cannot be easily equated with countries because cultures existed long before countries or nation states were established. In addition, some countries are culturally heterogeneous or diverse, meaning that they are populated by people of varied cultural traditions. The United States is an obvious example of cultural diversity, and thus one can question if there is “an” American culture. Another reason that it is difficult to identify “a” culture is that cultures have mingled and combined in varied and changing ways throughout history and continue to do so unabated today. Nevertheless, we can speak of “a” culture or of particular cultures in terms of some typical ways of acting that reflect historical traditions and some common meanings. Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) use the term “cultural community” to refer to a “coordinated group of people with some traditions and understandings in common, extending across several generations, with varied roles and practices and continual change among participants as well as transformation in the community’s practices” (p. 21). Some people may participate in several cultural communities that are made up of different cultural practices and different modes of action that reflect sometimes different cultural meanings. As the book proceeds, I will use the terms culture, a culture, and cultural community interchangeably. This usage of the term culture is culture with a small c.

Constitutive Processes  121 Within the current conceptualization, I  use the term cultural practice to refer to a kind of intermediate realm between culture with a small c and modes of action. The term cultural setting can also be used interchangeably with cultural practice. People in varied cultures engage in varied modes of action, such as the ones listed at the beginning of Chapter 4. Those modes of action may be organized or structured in terms of some wider goals within a cultural practice or cultural setting. Within cultures, cultural practices provide some relatively consistent parameters and overarching goals for how to act (Raeff, 2016). I say “relatively” because cultural practice parameters are not set in stone, and action within cultural practices can still play out in varied ways. Cultural practices provide opportunities to engage in modes of action and can both enable and constrain what people do. We may fairly easily identify work, home, and school settings or practices in which people engage in varied modes of action that are structured in particular cultural ways. Going to restaurants, rock concerts, operas, sporting events, and political rallies may be viewed as cultural practices in which action is organized in particular ways and to achieve particular goals in culturally particular ways. Work, home, and school practices, as well as restaurants, concerts, sporting events, and political events, are rather general ways of identifying cultural practices. These practices can be made up of varied subpractices. For example, at home people may act within the context of hygiene practices, eating practices, being-​together-​as-​a-​family practices, and maintaining-​the-​home-​practices. At school, students act within practices during math class, history class, lunch, and recess. Even if people engage in some of the same modes of action in varied cultural practices, those modes of action may be structured somewhat differently across cultural practices. For example, consoling may be structured in different ways not only across cultures but also across cultural practices within a culture. People may console others in somewhat varied ways in varied cultural practices, such as consoling a friend at a funeral, consoling a friend who is upset about his son over drinks at home, consoling someone you see every other week or so at the gym, or consoling a student who has failed an exam. In a nutshell, it helps to understand someone’s action if you know not only what culture or cultural community they are from, but also whether they are at a funeral or at a birthday party, having dinner at home, or eating a business lunch. Sometimes, cultural practices can be distinguished in terms of physical location. For example, when someone says she is leaving work to go home, we

122  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action know that she is leaving one physical space and going to another. However, that is not the whole story. Insofar as home and work practices are realized through varied modes of action, going from work to home is not simply a matter of leaving one physical location and going to another. It is also a matter of acting in different ways or at least in some different ways. Moreover, sometimes different practices can be carried out in the same physical location. For example, some people work at home. Some people live in one-​room dwellings where they participate and act in varied cultural practices. Sometimes cultural practices overlap, and it is not always straightforward to identify strict boundaries between them. For example, eating dinner at home (or anywhere) and being together as a family can occur at the same time. Sometimes it may even be difficult to identify a cultural practice. Also, as part of the entangled flux and flow of human functioning, it may not always be possible to draw strict lines between cultural practices and modes of action. For example, constructing identity can sometimes be viewed as a cultural practice and sometimes as a mode of action. Constructing identity in the form of “finding oneself ” can be viewed as a cultural practice that involves varied subpractices and modes of action, such as driving across the country or trekking in Tibet, trying out different jobs, and seeking guidance from different people. Constructing identity in the form of writing a personal statement for a job or college application can be viewed as a mode of action within the cultural practices of working and going to college. When writing a personal statement, one is acting in relation to whomever will read the statement, and one might also be acting in relation to someone who is helping to write the personal statement. In these two cases, we are using “constructing identity” to refer to interrelated but distinct phenomena. Rather than using “constructing identity” to refer to a cultural practice and to a mode of action, we can use different labels to refer to the distinct phenomena. In these cases, “finding oneself ” is a cultural-​practice label and “writing a personal statement” is a mode-​of-​action label. Perhaps more important than the particular label, to avoid confusion, we can always take care to specify if we are talking about cultural practices or modes of action and why an action phenomenon is being treated as a cultural practice or mode of action at any fleeting moment of analysis. Taken together thus far, we can say that people live and act within cultures or cultural communities and that within cultures, action occurs within cultural practices. In addition, within cultures and cultural practices, people engage in varied modes of action. And modes of action are constituted by

Constitutive Processes  123 cultural processes. This conceptualization of the cultural dimensions of action can be used as a way to begin thinking systematically about the varied ways in which human functioning is cultural. Our task now is to more specifically conceptualize the cultural processes that constitute action, within cultural practices, within cultural communities. The cultural processes that constitute action can be understood as Culture with a capital C, because we are dealing now with culture as a dimension of all human action, rather than with a particular cultural community. It seems relatively straightforward to illustrate how cultural processes constitute action with examples of clearly different cultural ways of acting. In Namibia people do X, but in Slovakia people do Y.  However, cultures do not always differ, and Namibians and Slovakians may act in some similar ways. Sometimes conventional studies show that there are no statistically significant differences between cultures, meaning that there are no average differences in some aspect of behavior for people in at least two specifiable cultures. However, that does not mean that culture plays no role in their behavior. Human action is always constituted, organized, or structured culturally. Culture always matters; culture is always significant. We now turn to considering how acting in relation to others is constituted by cultural processes, or Culture with a capital C, in varied ways. I cannot fathom articulating all the cultural processes that constitute action. Instead, the upcoming discussion of cultural processes that constitute action focuses on cultural meanings, wider societal processes, and cultural tools.

Cultural Meanings Within cultures and cultural practices, action is constituted by cultural processes that include cultural meanings, or how action is “invested with normative expectations and with meanings or significances that go beyond the immediate goals of the action” (Miller & Goodnow, 1995, p. 7). As such, action is symbolic and reflects or expresses cultural meanings, including cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. As dimensions of cultural meanings, guidelines for action encompass cultural rules or norms for how to act. As such, guidelines can serve as reasons for why people do what they do by “giving them an adaptive and discursive reason to organize their activity in certain ways” (Harré & Gillett, 1994, p. 120). For example, when Mr. Smith leaves a meeting, he explains that he has to leave early to take his daughter to soccer practice. Or, the butcher cuts meat in this way to keep

124  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action kosher. The term guidelines for action suggests that even though people may typically follow them, they are not set in stone. Cultural meanings further include concepts, categories, images, and metaphors for making sense of the world which provide a “background of common understandings” (Shotter, 2012, p. 141) for people as they act in relation to each other. Cultural meanings also include what matters to people, what questions they ask, and how they answer them (Berlin, 1999). Cultural meanings may be expressed implicitly as well as explicitly. That is, we can reflect upon cultural meanings explicitly. But often, cultural meanings, including guidelines for action, are implicit and elusive and are played out in the “manner of action” or the structuring of action that “may contribute to our feeling of ‘fittedness’ ” about how to act (Užgiris, 1996, p. 33). From waving one’s hand up and down to greet someone, to playing games, to meeting with colleagues, to eating, action is fraught with meaning or significance that goes beyond immediate goals. For example, eating is not only about ingesting food to sustain life. Eating also reflects cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. Who is served first—​the man and head of the household, the children, or the guests? What are those people discussing at dinner, and would that topic be considered appropriate for dinner conversation in your household? If you are eating in a restaurant with another person or people, who pays and why? Eating can be and has been used politically to advance certain values, such as fasting to promote a political cause. At the same time that cultural meanings and ways of constructing the world in terms of cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for action may be common to a group of people, they can also be contested and debated by people within a culture (Gjerde, 2004; Rychlak, 2003; Turiel, 2003, 2008; Turiel & Perkins, 2004; Turiel & Wainryb, 2000). For example, within a culture, people may espouse different ideas about what counts as appropriate behavior for children, as well as goals of development for people more generally throughout the lifespan. One can question culturally dominant conceptions of ideal weight. Or, take freedom for example. Sure, Americans value freedom, but do they always agree about how to define and enact freedom? For a long time in the United States, freedom was the purview of White men. Some say that women should be free to make their own reproductive choices, and others say that such decisions are not a matter of free personal choice. We are talking about highly contested issues here, and we cannot avoid individual and social processes. In addition, debates and discussions about cultural meanings can be a source of cultural change over extended periods of time. Around the world,

Constitutive Processes  125 cultures are dynamic and have undergone varied changes throughout history, and those changes are evident in changing modes of action that reflect changing cultural meanings. An obvious example of cultural change and action can be found in how gender roles, and what counts as appropriate male and female behavior, have changed in many cultures around the world. And today, the very definition of gender is undergoing cultural change.

Wider Societal Processes The complex dynamics of how action is constituted by cultural processes further involve what can be referred to as wider societal processes. In this section we consider how action is constituted, in part by contact among people from cultures around the world, as well as by political and economic processes. The current theoretical framework posits that human action is constituted in part by global and local voices (Gergen, 1991b; Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007). As noted earlier, the peoples of the world have always been on the go, and cultures have mingled and combined in varied ways for centuries. However, cultural contact has intensified during the last few decades with increases in the amount and speed of contact among people that are possible through globalization and internet technology. Within the current theoretical approach to action, globalization can be viewed as a wider societal process that contributes to the structuring of action. As I write today, globalization refers to the increasing international economic, environmental, political, and military connections that have been forged around the world, especially since World War II. Already in 1991, Gergen argued that owing to the technological achievements of the 20th century, “we are exposed to an enormous barrage of social stimulation. Small and enduring communities, with a limited cast of significant others, are being replaced by a vast and ever-​ expanding array of relationships” (Gergen, 1991b, p. xi.). This statement still holds as I write these words in 2017–​2018, and perhaps more so in this globalized age of the internet and social media that facilitate increased contact among people of different cultural circumstances. Some may experience such open contact with other ways of being that reflect varied and sometimes conflicting cultural meanings as exhilarating and enlightening, whereas some may experience such contact as overwhelming and threatening. Yet others may experience such contact as both attractive and threatening. Such contact can provide fertile ground for increased

126  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action understanding among people around the world, as well as increased tension among people around the world. With regard to the latter, Gergen (1991b) argues that there is an “increasing cacophony of competing voices” (p. 140) and that being “caught in often contradictory or incoherent activities, one grows anguished over the violation of one’s sense of identity” (p. 17). One way of countering the anguish and uncertainty that come for some as they try to navigate contradictory cultural meanings occurs through a turn to localizing, which refers to “the tendency to withdraw into local niches” where one cultural voice dominates (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007, p.  39). Localizing efforts can be seen in Brexit as well as in anti-​immigration rhetoric and policies in the United States. While social media provide opportunities for enhancing global connections and understanding, they also provide means for strengthening local niches. People can engage with others around the world who espouse the same values, and they can easily eschew contact with other voices. Taken together, action can reflect cultural meanings in terms of both global and local processes in varied ways. In addition to globalization, other wider societal processes contribute to the cultural organization or structuring of action, such as interrelated political, economic, and educational processes. In general, the economic structuring of action includes job opportunities, wage and benefit policies, income distribution, and cost of living. Political processes include how human action is organized in terms of codified rules and laws. And educational processes include the structuring of formal education, which is inseparable from political and economic processes. Individuals and groups may be positioned in varied ways within economic, legal, educational, and political institutions and practices. For example, within some state and federal institutions in the United States, a person may be positioned as someone who is “on welfare,” as “homeless,” or as “a senior citizen.” Within some legal systems, individuals are positioned as plaintiffs, defendants, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses. Insofar as these wider societal processes constitute action, people of different political, economic, or educational circumstances may act in some different ways that reflect different cultural meanings. For example, Kohn’s (1969/​ 1977) classic research showed that lower socioeconomic parents tended to encourage children to conform and be obedient, whereas middle-​class parents favored fostering children’s initiative and self-​direction. Kohn argued that these different values and ways of acting were occurring in relation to the parents’ different working circumstances and concomitant working expectations for their children. That is, in contrast to working-​class

Constitutive Processes  127 jobs, professional jobs involve initiative and self-​direction. Taken together, Sarason (1981) argues that understanding what people do involves knowing about a person’s place in the “social order,” which encompasses what I am referring to here as wider societal processes. Wider societal processes further include how power and authority are structured and particularized as people engage together in varied cultural practices (Sarason, 1981). For example, issues of power and authority can be played out in terms of the political positioning of individuals and groups based on varied characteristics, including ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality. Power and authority are also evident in the ways in which different modes of acting are more or less privileged in a cultural community (Wertsch, 1998). For example, Heath’s (1983/​1992, 1986/​1992) classic research shows how particular ways with words and particular literacy practices were privileged over others in a poor African-​American community, a poor European-​ American community, and a middle-​class European-​American community. In addition, the middle-​ class European-​ American practices were commensurate with the literacy practices that were privileged in formal school settings. Wider societal processes may be relatively stable over some periods of time, but they, too, are dynamic human phenomena that change historically. And sometimes people act in order to achieve societal change, as was the case during the American Revolution, the civil and women’s rights movements in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, and the Arab spring movements in the early 2010s, to name but a very few. A goal of such movements is to change cultural opportunities for people to participate in varied cultural practices by changing the wider societal processes and institutions that organize them. Some societal movements can also be seen as efforts to change how people are positioned politically. In addition to political repositioning, another goal of such movements is to be politically recognized as people who can act capably and responsibly (Berlin, 1958/​1969). According to Berlin, when individuals and groups demand liberation from oppression, part of what they are seeking is “recognition (of their class or nation, or colour or race) as an independent source of human activity” (p. 156). This analysis suggests that politically positioning and recognizing someone as a person can partly constitute action. For example, voting can be understood as action that is constituted at least partly in terms of people’s position in a social order, including how people are positioned and recognized

128  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action through political institutions and policies. In 2017, the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, almost won the French presidential election. In an opinion piece in the New  York Times, writer Édouard Louis (2017) explained that he thought his father (and others like him) would mostly likely vote for Le Pen: “My father understood, long before I did, that in the minds of the bourgeoisie . . . our existence didn’t count and wasn’t real.” Moreover, “voting, for him, was a desperate attempt to exist in the eyes of others.” Some analyses of American politics suggest that White working-​class and rural voters who voted for Trump did so partly because they felt left behind and unrecognized by the political powers that be. As one New York Times op-​ed contributor put it: “Rural conservatives feel that their world is under siege, and that Democrats are an enemy to be feared and loathed” (Leonard, 2017). Of course, many other reasons, issues, and processes contributed to the 2016 presidential election in the United States. The point here is that supporting any political candidate can be seen as action that can be understood partly in terms of how people are positioned and recognized through political institutions and policies. During the controversial confirmation process for US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in the fall of 2018, survivors of sexual assault and their supporters spoke out in increasing numbers. Two women even cornered a US Senator in the elevator, demanding that he look at and listen to them. From the vantage point of the current theoretical framework, we can understand what they were doing as acting in relation to the Senator. Their action involved resisting then-​current ways of positioning women politically as well as seeking to be recognized by the Senator as individual human beings who are affected by political policies.

Cultural Tools Cultural processes that contribute to the structuring of action include the means or tools that we use to act, or the means through which action is carried out (Bruner, 1983, 1990; Cole, 1994, 1996; Gallagher, 2005/​2006; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009; Rogoff, 2003; Valsiner, 1997, 2011; Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984; Wertsch, 1998). These means are sometimes referred to as “mediational means” or as “tools that mediate action” (Wertsch, 1998). Language is the key means through which human action is carried out, and the varied examples of modes of action used herein certainly involve language, such as arguing and consoling. As such, human action is symbolic

Constitutive Processes  129 action (Kaplan, 1983b). In addition, it is with language that we construct concepts, categories, and metaphors for making sense of the world and our experience. Cultural meanings, including beliefs, values, and guidelines for action, are also constituted through language. In these ways, we use language not only to represent the world and experience but also to construct them (Budwig, 2000, 2003a, 2003b). Human action is mediated by other cultural means or tools, from hammers and nails, to books and computers, to maps and GPS, to baseball bats and pole vaults, to cars, to iPads, the internet and social media, to musical instruments, numbers, paintbrushes, and pens—​the list could go on and on. Wertsch (1998) explains that the means or tools that mediate human action should not be viewed as determining action in some kind of static, mechanistic way. Indeed, in and of themselves, cultural tools such as poles in pole vaulting and the forms of syntax used in solving multiplication problems are powerless to do anything. They can have their impact only when an agent uses them. (p. 30)

Sometimes individuals use cultural tools in ways that deviate from their ostensible purpose, such as using a pole vault to help someone get out of a river. This example shows how cultural means for action are inseparable from social and individual processes as well as environmental processes. As with the other cultural subprocesses discussed thus far, cultural tools also change historically. The varied means or tools that we use to act are all material or physical in some way, as is clear in the case of baseball bats, iPads, and pens. As physical objects, they “can be touched and manipulated. Furthermore, they can continue to exist across time and space, and they can continue to exist as physical objects even when not incorporated into the flow of action” (Wertsch, 1998, p. 30). The materiality or physicality of spoken language is less clear, but it is an attribute of language nonetheless. Wertsch explains: Unlike written language, the materiality of spoken language seems to evaporate after a moment’s existence except for those rare instances when the speech is recorded. However, materiality is a property of any mediational means. The fact that the acoustic “sign vehicles” in spoken language appear only momentarily may make the material dimension of this cultural tool more difficult to grasp, but it is no less real for that. (p. 31)

130  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Language is also material or physical because it requires the body to be instantiated, and thus we cannot avoid mentioning bodily processes at this juncture. Even though what someone says evaporates quickly, we hear what is said with our ears and auditory processes. At the same time, however, language transcends these material or physical processes by enabling us to symbolically construct and express abstract meaning.

Individual Processes A person is not a passive pawn of social and cultural processes, but an active and distinct individual to whom action can be attributed. It was Victoria who was working late last night, not Josephine. You can just tell from across the room that a painting is a Vermeer and that another one is a Picasso. We are trying to understand a particular individual, acting in particular ways. Thus, individual processes also constitute action. Individual processes encompass how a person contributes to their own action, or how a person is a source of what they are doing. Another way of putting it is to say that individuals are agents. Conceptualizing action in terms of agency means that people are taken to be active agents or doers who can reflect upon themselves and who can regulate aspects of their own action (Berlin, 1999; Martin, Sugarman, & Thompson, 2003; Shotter, 1975). As active agents, people choose and decide how to act. As agents, people subjectively construct experience, and they act in terms of what circumstances mean to them personally or subjectively (Harré, 2002; Mascolo, 2013; Rychlak, 2003; Taylor, 1985/​1992). As agents, people act in terms of dynamic and changing goals and interests, from power and glory, to fame and fortune, to greed and revenge, to love and honor. As agents, people act for the sake of reasons, values, and beliefs. For example, during World War II, Europeans of varying circumstances helped, hid, and rescued Jews at great risk to themselves and their families for varied reasons and as “an expression of . . . values and beliefs” (Fogelman, 1994/​1995, p. xviii). With regard to goals, people may act to achieve social goals, such as to impress someone, to annoy someone, or to save face. A person may act out of love, respect, consideration, and/​or admiration for someone. Sometimes people act out of hatred, or contempt, or indifference toward others. Agentive individual processes also include positioning oneself in relation to others in varied ways. And, as pointed out earlier in this chapter, people may strive to

Constitutive Processes  131 reposition themselves in relation to others. There is some strangeness here insofar as some (if not all) of the aspects of individual processes discussed in this paragraph can also be seen as modes of action. For example, reflecting upon oneself can be seen as an individual process that contributes to a person’s action, as well as a mode of action in and of itself that is constituted by the other constitutive processes. When we get to Chapter 6, we will see that reflecting upon oneself can be conceptualized as a psychological process too. Once again, we encounter fuzzy boundaries and dynamic processes that can serve varied functions as people go about the complex flux and flow of their lives. Individual agentive processes further involve how a person constructs cultural meanings and uses cultural tools to act in individualized ways, which is part of how cultural meanings are contested and debated. It is also another example of how constitutive processes are interrelated. More specifically, such agency means that individuals do not blindly or passively use and accept cultural meanings or cultural tools in uniform ways (Archer, 2003; Lawrence & Valsiner, 2003; Wertsch, 1998). For example, individuals may question cultural conceptions of varied issues, from success, to marriage, to gender, to weight, to race. Individuals may resist dominant cultural conceptions of varied issues, from success, to marriage, to gender, to weight, to race. The ways that individuals interpret cultural meanings are also tied to issues of power and authority. For example, people in subordinate positions sometimes defy and subvert dominant cultural ideologies (Turiel, 2003, 2008; Turiel & Perkins, 2004; Turiel & Wainryb, 2000). With regard to cultural tools, as explained earlier, cultural tools “are powerless to do anything. They can have their impact only when an agent uses them” (Wertsch, 1998, p.  30). In addition, individual processes include how a person expresses him-​or herself by using cultural tools (from language to paint brushes) in particular ways. Individual processes also include how a particular person acts, and thus we can say, “That’s Bob for you” or “That’s just how she is.” The way a particular person acts refers to what they typically do, as well as how their action is organized developmentally. A person’s typical and developmentally organized ways of acting additionally include the ways in which the varied psychological processes that comprise wider modes of action are organized for that person. As a system, a person’s action can be organized in some similar ways across varied contexts, even if it is always softly assembled. As agents, people sometimes change their typical ways of acting, partly by choosing to change,

132  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and by striving to change in particular ways. In doing so, they may construct new typical ways of acting. Individual processes also involve what we can refer to as the tone or quality of how a particular person is acting. The tone or quality of how a person is acting can be described with adjectives and adverbs. For example, Alan may greet someone joyfully, while Arthur may greet someone angrily. Paul may console someone sadly and compassionately, while Joe consoles that person perfunctorily. People can act in ways that can be described as relaxed, nervous, rational, irrational, or silly. People can act seriously, conscientiously, or frantically. The list of adjectives and adverbs can go on and on. The point here is that we may attribute a particular quality or qualities to how a particular individual is acting at a particular time.

Bodily Processes Action is embodied, and bodily processes encompass the varied ways in which our bodies contribute to or co-​constitute our action, from biological and chemical processes, to neurological and genetic processes, to using particular body parts and moving physically. Ultimately, the whole body is involved when we act, and it can constrain and enable action in a myriad of ways. For example, in different cultures, greeting someone may involve moving toward the person, and then may involve shaking hands, rubbing noses, hugging, and/​or kissing (sometimes on one cheek, sometimes on both cheeks, and sometimes three times). In some cultures, if you do not use your hands or nose or arms or lips in one or another of these ways, others may view your action as inappropriate or improper. People may smile or frown or cry when they greet each other. People greet each other through language and that involves using the mouth, tongue, vocal chords, and ears. Deaf and mute people can act linguistically with their hands and eyes, and blind, deaf, and mute people speak with their hands as well (although differently than those who use visual sign language). While arguing, a person might emphasize a point by pounding her fist on the table. The hand is certainly central to human functioning (Wilson, 1998). Of course, the brain also contributes to or co-​constitutes our action. In psychology today, as well as in everyday and popular discussions of human functioning, the brain is often the fragmented cause of choice for explaining

Constitutive Processes  133 why people do what they do (Beck, 2010; Bennett & Hacker, 2003; Lux & van Ommen, 2016). In a New York Times op-​ed, Markowitz (2016) opined that there may even be “too much neuroscience” in clinical psychology, as the National Institute of Mental Health favors funding research on the brain over clinical research. According to Martin’s (2010) ethnographic research in the United States on conceptions of mental illness, the brain is “simply taken for granted. The belief that the brain and its genetic determinants lie behind mental disorders, like manic depression, was flatly assumed by most of the people in my fieldwork, inside and outside medical settings” (p. 367). However, the current zeal to locate neurological sources of psychopathology may be shortsighted, because it “radically misunderstands not only the social [and cultural] role of classification” but also the social and cultural dimensions of human psychological distress (Rose, 2013, p. 20). In addition, it is argued that “complex sociocultural phenomena such as adolescence and aging seem to become equated and reduced to related neural circuit activation, thereby contributing to contemporary neuro-​hype” (Lux & van Ommen, 2016, p. 562). However, adolescence is a relatively new cultural phenomenon in the grand scheme of history, and in Western industrialized cultures, cultural conceptions of aging today are not what they used to be. Thus, both adolescence and aging are also constituted by cultural processes. It is not even clear that there are qualitative differences between adolescent and adult brains (Moshman, 2013). Until relatively recently in the grand scheme of history, young people whom we would now refer to as adolescents “worked, married, had children, ran households and participated in the social and cultural life of the community” (Moshman, 2013, p. 158). And in some cultures today, young people still act in these ways. If some contemporary adolescents are not able to act in mature ways, perhaps it is because they are not participating in cultural practices that provide opportunities for engaging in those ways of acting. With regard to Alzheimer’s disease, Sabat (2001) summarized studies of computerized tomography (CT) scans and electroencephalograms (EEGs), which showed that “there is considerable overlap between the characteristics of the brains of those diagnosed as being ‘demented’ and those of the normal control group” (p. 8). The brains of some people with dementia apparently did not show brain damage or pathological change. Taken together, “the brain-​state of some people who had been diagnosed as having been demented was well within the range of age-​matched normal subjects, a fact that adds serious complications to a strictly neurophysiological understanding of [Alzheimer’s] and its symptoms” (p. 9).

134  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Advances in neuroimaging, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have certainly provided important information about brain functioning. While important, such information is not equivalent to being able to attribute ultimate causality to the brain (Bennett & Hacker, 2003; Gergen, 2009b, 2010; Kagan, 2008; Kirschner, 2015; Martin, 2010; Robinson, 2008, 2016; Witherington & Heying, 2013). That is, fMRI does not measure neural activity directly—​it measures a correlate of neural activity, the proportion of deoxygenated hemoglobin relative to oxygenated hemoglobin in the blood. Because deoxygenated and oxygenated blood are present throughout the brain, in order to determine whether a region is ‘active,’ one must look for an increase in oxygenated blood in a particular region as a function of time, and, more specifically, as a function of conditions that change over time. (Beck, 2010, p. 763)

In other words, fMRI currently enables us to know about the changes in blood flow that occur in different parts of the brain when a person engages in different tasks. However, that does not mean that those parts of the brain cause a person to do the tasks. Indeed, perhaps it is because the person is doing different tasks that blood flows differently. From a systems perspective, the brain is one of many bodily processes that constitute action, and it also functions in relation to individual, social, cultural, and environmental processes. As such, the brain functions as an egalitarian partner in the democracy of systemic action. By pointing to other processes here, I am not suggesting that they play more of a role in human functioning than the brain does. The point here is that human action is a complex whole and involves the simultaneous and interrelated contributions of multiple processes.

Environmental Processes We are always acting in some physical context which partly constitutes what we are doing. Environmental processes include the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, temperature, altitude, terrain, natural resources, availability of food, and geographic distance from other people. So essential are some of these aspects of the environment to human functioning that wars have been waged over them throughout history. They remain a major source of strife in the world today, and people who control resources such as water

Constitutive Processes  135 and oil (and other sources of energy) amass great fortunes and wield great power. And just as other constitutive processes change historically, the historically changing physical environment is shaping human action in dynamic ways. Global climate change is constituting action in varied ways, from obliterating ways of acting on island cultures that are literally being washed away by rising water levels, to cooperating in order to combat global climate change, to fighting over resources. Analyses point to how the current civil war in Syria is “the result of complex interrelated factors, including religious and sociopolitical tensions, the erosion of the economic health of the country, and a wave of political reform sweeping over the Middle East and North Africa” (Gleick, 2014, p. 331). In addition, “water and climatic conditions are also relevant because of the role they have played in the deterioration of Syria’s economic conditions” (p.  331). We now proceed to thinking about how environmental conditions constitute action and provide opportunities to engage in varied kinds of cultural practices and modes of action. Toward that end, I find it instructive to consider how some cultural practices and modes of action emerged historically in relation to environmental conditions. There was a time when all people were hunter-​gatherers. There is evidence that some plant domesticating was occurring in Southwest Asia around 8500 b.c., and subsequent centuries saw the rise of agriculture in varied parts of the world (Diamond, 1997/​1999). Clearly, hunting and gathering depend on what is available in a particular physical environment. Similarly, the initial development of agriculture depended on the plants and soil that were available in particular physical locations. Beyond the specific methods of accessing food, farmers and hunter-​gatherers lived different lives, and thus cultural practices and ways of acting in farming environments differed in some respects from the cultural practices and ways of acting among nomadic peoples. One difference is that farming requires different and often more complex technology than hunting and gathering. Diamond (1997/​ 1999) explains that the Moriori of the Chatham Islands evolved as hunter-​ gatherers who hunted “seals, shellfish, nesting seabirds, and fish that could be captured by hand or with clubs and required no more elaborate technology” (p.  55). In addition, hunter-​gatherers move around in search of food, whereas farmers typically stay in one place so that they can tend their fields. Population density remained lower in hunter-​gatherer communities because moving around is difficult if you have to carry more than one child who cannot walk.

136  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action The rise of farming in some areas of the world was also related to the kinds of animals that populated those environments. Big mammals that can be domesticated are particularly important because they can be sources of fertilizer for fields, as well as additional sources of food for people. Furthermore, big animals can pull plows, and when hooked up to carts, they can haul goods over long distances. Big animals also provide work for crafts people in producing wool and leather goods from animal hides. Farming enables people to produce surplus food that requires storage and remains available beyond harvest time. Surplus food can sustain more people, leading to increased population density for sedentary farming communities. Stored food can feed armies as well. Armies involve action by a lot of people and are further supported when metals are readily available in the environment to produce weapons. And soldiers can ride horses to greater military effect than foot soldiers. When there are more people and surplus food, not everyone has to be involved in producing food all of the time. Thus, there is room for other occupations to emerge, such as designing and creating the technology required for producing food, designing and building dwellings, as well as designing and constructing food storage containers, all of which require environmentally available raw materials. In addition, a landowning elite can thrive, and “once food can be stockpiled, a political elite can gain control of food produced by others, assert the right of taxation, escape the need to feed itself, and engage full-​time in political activities” (Diamond, 1997/​1999, p. 90). Furthermore, if you can produce surplus food on your farm, you may decide to sell it, and selling any kind of commodity involves acting in relation to others in varied ways. For better or worse, when people go beyond producing food for subsistence to making and selling goods, different modes of action may be established within the context of different cultural practices. For example, people exchange goods, cooperate to make goods, support others’ developing abilities to make goods, compete to sell goods, and fight over the resources required to make goods. Producing goods for sale may involve action among people who occupy different positions and statuses in a stratified social order. Establishing occupations beyond producing food also shapes action, as people may confront different identities, think to solve different problems, and interact in different ways when engaging in those different occupations. Around the world today, people access food in varied ways, including hunting and gathering, farming, going to the local grocery store to buy food,

Constitutive Processes  137 and going to restaurants. Stores and restaurants are thus now part of the physical environment for many people around the world, and they partly constitute how we act in relation to others. For example, at the grocery store, you might engage in some chit-​chat with the checkout person or lament the length of the checkout line with the person in front of you. Around the world today, human beings also fabricate a great deal of their physical spaces, from grocery stores and restaurants, to homes and offices, to recreational and urban areas. These physical spaces, or the humanly built environment, may be constructed in part to provide opportunities for particular cultural practices and modes of action. For example, a park may be built to provide people in a city with opportunities to be and gather outdoors. An office may be designed to promote collaborating among workers. Teachers and school administrators may discuss how to arrange the physical environment for optimal learning in formal school settings. To build these physical environments today, it does not much matter which particular materials are immediately available in a particular physical setting. Indeed, the materials that make up parts of our humanly built physical environments may come from very distant lands, and they may also be constructed by people in yet other distant lands. Nevertheless, physical environmental processes are necessarily constitutive of what we do, including acting in relation to each other to design and build aspects of our physical environments.

Systemic Connections We have focused here on how action is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, or on how the wider whole of action emerges through these processes. From a systems perspective, explicating how these processes co-​constitute action provides a basis for discerning part–​whole connections, with individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes representing the parts, and action representing the whole. However, action is strange and involves flux and flow, because varied kinds of systemic interrelations are occurring simultaneously. That is, part–​ part interrelations between and among the constitutive processes are also occurring at the same time that the constitutive processes are shaping action. In addition, action as a whole shapes the constitutive processes at the same time that the constitutive processes are shaping action, making for whole–​ part connections.

138  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Within the current theoretical landscape, constitutive processes are considered to be ongoing and dynamic and without clear-​cut boundaries. In conceptualizing these constitutive processes, I have sometimes mentioned other processes while focusing on defining each one as a distinct process. In other words, it is not really possible to fully disentangle the constitutive processes because they occur simultaneously and in relation to each other. Insofar as system interrelations include part–​part interrelations, it is important to consider some of the ways in which these constitutive processes are interrelated. For example, when people act for the sake of beliefs and values and in terms of guidelines for action, cultural processes are partly shaping individual processes. At the same time, individual processes are also shaping cultural processes. As pointed out in the section on individual processes, a person appropriates or uses cultural metaphors and categories as well as cultural beliefs and values in individualized ways. Appropriating can involve accepting varied cultural meanings, as well as resisting, rejecting, and defying them. In doing so, individuals “return the [cultural] messages in social talk . . . in new forms they have been constructing” (Lawrence & Valsiner, 2003, p. 729). Constructing new cultural forms in social talk thus involves interrelations among individual, social, and cultural processes. In the section on wider societal processes, we considered how political institutions and policies include positioning individuals and groups, but that individuals and groups sometimes reject such positioning, which can lead to political change. Claiming that wider societal processes are partly shaped by individual and social processes and that they are realized in action does not mean that wider societal processes are not distinct. This claim does not mean that wider societal processes are not “out there” in some ways and independent of a person’s control. For example, the reality of American healthcare policies really hits you in an emergency. Or, factory workers face the reality of wider economic circumstances when they are laid off. Archer (2003) explains that people are initially placed involuntarily in relation to varied cultural processes that exist prior to and independently of them, such as resource distribution, conceptions of race and gender, and institutional practices. The point here is that the varied processes we are discussing are being conceptualized as both distinct and interrelated. Thus, Archer (2003) further posits and shows how the cultural constitution of a person’s action is not linear or direct, but is mediated by “reflexive deliberation,” whereby people actively think about societal issues and structures. Within the current

Constitutive Processes  139 action perspective, reflexive deliberation can be understood as part of individual processes. Through reflecting upon cultural processes, a person can act in ways that may conserve cultural circumstances as well as change them. Acting in these ways is thus constituted by distinct, yet interrelated individual and cultural processes (along with social, bodily, and environmental processes). Further part–​part interrelations occur among the varied constitutive processes. For example, individuals express and position themselves partly through their bodies. Certainly, dancers express themselves through their bodies. As people act in relation to others, individual agentic processes are inseparable from bodily processes, as individuals can get up and walk toward or away from others. The body also changes and, in some cases, individual agency may be constrained in relation to some bodily changes. The body and bodily changes are also inseparable from cultural meanings and standards. As such, they are criteria for social status, as well as for how others treat a person (Scholnick & Miller, 2008). Bodies have been and are politicized and subject to economic exploitation, and thus bodily processes can be inseparable from cultural and social processes in varied ways (Rose, 2013). Even the brain does not function independently of other constitutive processes. As Bruner (1990) explains, “the devout Jew’s commitment to fasting on Yom Kippur or the devout Muslim’s commitment to Ramadan is not captured by a recital of the physiology of hunger” (pp.  21–​22). Although these commitments are made by human beings with human brains, these commitments also require social and cultural processes. One could even say that “our brain and nervous system are our most cultured organs” (Downey & Lende, 2012, p. 23), meaning that the brain’s functioning is shaped by cultural processes. At the same time, it is people with brains who construct cultural processes, making for ongoing interrelations between bodily and cultural processes. It is argued that “neurology can tell us much about a blink of the eye, but nothing about a wink” (Gergen, 2009b, p. 120). A wink is a blink endowed with cultural meaning, and winking occurs while a person is acting in relation to others in particular physical settings. As such, winking can be understood in terms of simultaneously occurring neurological, cultural, social, individual, and environmental processes. Also from a systems perspective, we need to think about whole–​part connections, because it is not only that the parts constitute the whole, but the

140  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action whole also constitutes the parts. That is, modes of action, such as greeting, consoling, or arguing, shape the structuring of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental part processes. Thus, it is through acting that the parts are partly constituted. Another way of putting it is to say that these part processes are played out in particular ways, and they take on particular meanings and roles within wider modes of action, of which they are fleetingly parts. For example, we may use different cultural metaphors and categories when we console someone than when we are arguing with someone. Or, bodily processes are played out differently when we console, greet, and argue. A person may pat someone tenderly on the back while consoling, but not while arguing, because consoling and arguing are wider wholes that demand different ways of structuring bodily processes. You might pat someone on the back to praise the person, but this patting expresses a different meaning than patting during consoling because it is part of a different wider mode of action. In these cases, it is the wider wholes of consoling and praising that partly constitute the part processes (cultural and bodily in these examples), at the same time that the part processes constitute the wider wholes of consoling and praising. Action is strange and entangled and involves flux and flow because these varied kinds of circular systemic interrelations are occurring simultaneously. That is, action as a whole shapes constitutive processes at the same time that the constitutive processes are shaping action, and at the same time that part–​ part interrelations among the constitutive processes are occurring. For example, with regard to simultaneously occurring whole–​part and part–​whole connections, let us consider action and cultural processes. Cultural processes certainly constitute action. As such, there are part–​whole connections between cultural processes (part) and action (whole). At the same time, a systems perspective also leads to thinking about whole–​part connections, in this case, how action (whole) constitutes cultural processes (part). In a nutshell, it is part of the strangeness and flux and flow of cultural processes (or Culture with a capital C) and action that they do not exist independently of one another. Where do cultural meanings, wider societal processes, and cultural tools come from? They are created by human beings as they act in relation to each other. Thus, cultural processes both constitute and are constituted by action, and action both constitutes and is constituted by cultural processes. I am reminded of a conversation that I had with a 4-​year-​old years ago when I  was visiting him and his parents, and I  decided that I  wanted to

Constitutive Processes  141 change into different clothes for dinner. I don’t remember our exact words, but we engaged in roughly the following conversation: CR: Now I am going to change my clothes for dinner. Seth: Why? CR: Because these clothes are not dinner clothes. Seth: Why? CR: Because I have been wearing them all day and they are getting dirty. Seth: So? CR: Sometimes it’s good to wear clean and different clothes for dinner. Seth: Why? CR: Because I think it’s nice. Seth: Why? CR: Because it’s more proper this way. Seth: Why? CR: Because it’s just nicer. Seth: Why? CR: Because society says so. Seth: Is society a lady? Well, yes, society is a lady in some ways, or more precisely, society is many people acting in relation to each other. According to the current perspective, cultural processes—​including wider societal processes—​do not exist separately from human action, but rather are constituted through action. Thus, people acting in relation to each other is the whole that shapes cultural processes as the part. In other words, we the people constitute cultural processes through particular ways of acting in relation to each other. As we act in relation to each other, we construct beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. As we act in relation to each other, we construct political and economic processes, globalization, and patterns of power and authority. As we act in relation to each other, we construct cultural tools. And, at the same time, these cultural processes as the parts are shaping our action as the whole. In addition, cultural processes can change through action, and action can change through changing cultural processes. For example, changes in how people act and changing cultural conceptions of gender are systemically interrelated. In other words, changing cultural conceptions of gender constitute changes in how people act, and changes in how people act can lead to changing cultural conceptions of gender. In these ways, cultural processes

142  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action constitute action, and action constitutes cultural processes, making for an ongoing and simultaneous interplay between parts and wholes, and wholes and parts. In other words: cultural processes ←→action or action ←→cultural processes

In this paragraph, we are focusing on the part–​whole connections of cultural processes and action, and on the simultaneous whole–​part connections of action and cultural processes. Yet, at the same time, part–​part interrelations are also occurring. That is, action is also being constituted by interrelations among individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Although the focus of this paragraph is on cultural processes and action, let us remember that individual, social, bodily, and environmental processes are also constituting action and that these processes are also shaped by action, making for further part–​whole and whole–​part connections. We have considered varied vexing and strange issues in this chapter. To briefly recapitulate, according to the current theoretical perspective, acting in relation to others is a wider systemic whole that is taken to be constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In accord with systems theory, these processes are taken to occur simultaneously and in relation to each other. As system constituents, all of the processes are necessary for human action and all contribute 100%. None is primary and none is prior to the others. It is not like a mixed drink that may be one part Campari, two parts vodka, and three parts who knows what else. Rather, action is all parts individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Thus, action cannot be explained or understood in terms of any one of these processes alone or in terms of varying amounts of these processes. Certainly, there are times when one or another process may seem dominant. From the current perspective, any dominant process would be an analytic starting point from which to consider how it contributes to the wider whole of action, along with the other processes. As such, the processes do not have to compete with each other for control over what people do. Instead, they can be viewed as collaborating to make human action possible. In addition, these constitutive processes function in relation to each other, meaning that they mutually affect each other. Also, all of these processes are ongoing and dynamic. They change, and thus they do not necessarily co-​constitute action in the same ways during any person’s lifetime, much less over longer stretches

Constitutive Processes  143 of historical time. They are general processes that can be, have been, and are played out or structured in varied ways. As noted at the outset of this chapter, considering these constitutive processes helps us to understand and explain what people are doing, why people are doing what they are doing, and what a person’s action means. There will be more to say about issues of causality and meaning later on in Chapter 10. For now, it may be useful to think about a time when you puzzled over what you or someone else did. Why did she do that? Think about what she did in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Or think about an event in the news in terms of these processes. Or think about a study that you read recently, and how it reports on some aspect of behavior that can be understood in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Or think about how what you do (including at this very moment) involves individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

6 Psychological Processes Our task now is to continue conceptualizing action from an overall systems perspective in terms of yet more multiple and interrelated constituent processes. According to the current theoretical perspective, action is taken to consist of varied interrelated psychological processes, including but not limited to sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting, and self/​identity constructing. Psychological processes generally refer to action subconstituents that emerge and develop through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Different modes of action may emerge when psychological processes are organized in different ways. For example, consoling, greeting, arguing, and chatting amiably are all ways of acting that involve multiple and interrelated psychological processes. But, they are different ways of acting, and the conceptual claim here is that they are different ways of acting in part because they involve different ways of structuring varied psychological processes. And different ways of structuring psychological processes emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. It is not a coincidence that psychological processes are taken to emerge through the same processes through which wider modes of action are taken to emerge. It is conceptually coherent insofar as individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes constitute action, and action involves psychological processes. As subconstituents of action, psychological processes are constituted by the same processes that constitute action as a wider systemic whole. The current theoretical approach enables us to think about how psychological processes are systemic parts of a wider systemic whole, namely action. Thus we can think about how they are distinct, as well as how they play out in relation to each other. It also provides ways of thinking about psychological processes as active processes. That is, we will conceptualize psychological processes as dynamic phenomena that people DO. We once again find ourselves in trouble from the get-​go. Amidst the flux and flow of human action, it is not always straightforward to identify Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Psychological Processes  145 psychological processes. We are once again dealing with dynamic processes that are often difficult to specify or pin down. Although psychological processes are taken to be distinct and thus need to be defined one by one, they are also interrelated processes that do not occur separately from one another while a person is acting. Once again, we encounter entanglement and fuzzy boundaries. For example, when you are consoling a friend, cognition or thinking is involved as you consider different ways to console your friend and remember what worked in the past with this friend or with someone else. Feeling or emotion is involved as you recognize that your friend is sad, and because you feel badly yourself. Even though we can identify some distinct aspects of thinking and feeling, and even though we can abstract these different processes for analytic purposes, they are occurring simultaneously. It thus becomes problematic to try to discern when or where one process ends and the other begins. We are also in trouble here because what counts as a psychological process may be different in different cultures (Danziger, 1997). In conventional Western psychology, and among Westerners more generally, people may take it for granted that human functioning consists of varied processes, such as perception, cognition, emotion, learning, attitudes, social interaction, motivation, and self/​identity. These processes are the slices of functioning that dominate psychology journals, books, and textbooks, and popular discussions of them abound as well. However, as Danziger (1997) explains, what seem like obvious ways to slice up human functioning in one culture may seem very strange to someone in another culture. He tells a story of teaching at a university in Indonesia where his psychology course was one of two psychology courses being offered. He realized that he was teaching Western psychology, whereas his Indonesian colleague was teaching a form of Eastern psychology “based on an extensive local literature that had roots in Hindu philosophy with Javanese additions and reinterpretations” (p. 1). He suggested to his new colleague that they co-​teach a course about their different approaches to “the same set of psychological topics” (p. 1). Danziger writes: [We] sat down to discuss the topics we would cover in such a seminar. That is where the problems began. There seemed to be virtually no topics that were identified as such both in his and in my psychology. For instance, I wanted to discuss the topic of motivation and was interested in hearing what theories my colleague might offer about how motives

146  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action operated and developed. But he said that would be quite difficult for him, because from his point of view motivation was not really a topic. The phenomena that I  quite spontaneously grouped together as “motivational” seemed to him to be no more than a heterogeneous collection of things that had nothing interesting in common. (p. 1)

Insofar as human functioning is understood in culturally particular ways, there are efforts to advance indigenous approaches in psychology. Indigenous psychology encompasses “attempts by researchers in mostly non-​Western societies and cultures to develop a psychological science that more closely reflects their own social and cultural premises” (Allwood & Berry, 2006, p. 244). From an indigenous psychology approach, conventional psychology reflects Western (especially American) social and cultural premises and thus represents one indigenous psychology among many. This view is in keeping with the point made in Chapter 1, that psychology’s methods “derive from a time and place based conception of what people are or can be” (Sarason, 1981, p. 143). Not only are there different ways to define psychological processes, but within the flux and flow, it is also sometimes difficult to distinguish between psychological processes and modes of action and cultural practices. In Chapter 5, we used self/​identity constructing as an example of the sometimes fuzzy boundaries between cultural practices and modes of action. And now, the term self/​identity constructing or constructing self/​identity is also being used to refer to a psychological process that comprises modes of action (along with other psychological processes) within cultural practices. Going back to the example of consoling, constructing self/​identity by positioning oneself as a friend can be viewed as a psychological process that partly comprises consoling. Again, a way out of the confusion is to specifically state when one is talking about a cultural practice, mode of action, or psychological process and to use distinct descriptive labels in each case. The issue of fuzzy boundaries can potentially arise with regard to any of the psychological processes we will be talking about in this chapter. Imagine an American parent knocking on her son Gabriel’s bedroom door. She enters to find him lying on the bed, apparently staring at the ceiling. The following conversation ensues. Mother: What are you doing? Gabriel: Nothing.

Psychological Processes  147 Mother: Nothing? It looks like you’re staring at the ceiling. Gabriel: Yeah. Mother: Okay, so what do you see? Gabriel: I’m thinking. Mother: What are you thinking about? Gabriel: I’m thinking about where to go to college. Mother: Okay, well, what do you like and dislike about each one we have visited? They continue to discuss the merits and flaws of each school. They also write down some pros and cons, they check some college websites, and they consult the notes they have taken throughout the application process. In this case, is thinking a cultural practice, a mode of action, or a psychological process? It depends on how we conceptualize these dynamic and amorphous phenomena. In other words, thinking is not a single static entity or physical object that exists in the world for us to find. Rather, we can refer to different phenomena with the word thinking, but the main issue is to conceptualize the phenomena more specifically. In this case, it certainly helps to know that Gabriel is thinking about a particular issue, namely where to go to college. Thinking about this issue can be seen as part of the American cultural practice of going to college, and also the subpractice of applying to college. Deciding what college to go to by pondering alone and by talking to one’s mother can be viewed as modes of action that involve varied psychological processes, including thinking, feeling, interacting, and self/​identity constructing. Analyzing what a person is doing in terms of cultural practices, modes of action, and psychological processes requires considering particular concrete cases of people acting in relation to others. In this chapter, we are concerned with thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving, constructing self/​ identity, and interacting as psychological processes that partly comprise action within cultural practices within cultures, and with how they are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Taken together, psychological processes and distinctions among them are not being conceptualized as given in pure forms in nature (Danziger, 1993). Rather, human beings do the distinguishing and construct the categories for different analytic and explanatory purposes. We are the ones who slice up the pie or the wider whole that is human action. It is part of our theorizing about human functioning. Even identifying acting in relation to others as the pie or wider whole is to construct a category and is part of my theorizing about

148  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action human functioning. In addition, as we slice up the pie, we can conceptualize varied processes in varied ways, and the upcoming conceptualizations of psychological processes are not meant to be exhaustive, absolute, or final. Psychological processes have been the subject of innumerable theoretical and empirical treatments spanning disciplines, cultures, and centuries. I am more familiar with some topics than others. However, it is not necessary here to know it all in order to conceptualize psychological processes in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, and to illustrate some major points about human action by considering thinking, feeling, self/​identity, sensing and perceiving, and interacting. Before proceeding, some words about terminology are in order. For the most part in the discussion thus far, I have referred to various psychological processes with verb forms, such as thinking, feeling, and interacting, because I am conceptualizing them as active processes that people DO. In other words, these processes are accomplished through action, or appear in action. I used noun forms earlier (e.g., cognition, emotion) because I was referring to how conventional psychology treats these processes. As discussed in Chapter 3, it is commonplace in conventional psychology to use nouns, such as cognition, emotion, interaction, sensation, perception, and self/​identity. Using nouns to refer to psychological processes transforms them into static objects that people have in varying amounts, rather than activities that people DO. For some of the processes, verb forms are readily available (at least in English), such as to think for cognition, to perceive for perception, and to feel for emotion. However, for some of the processes, verb forms just seem downright strange. Maybe using “to identify” or “identifying oneself ” instead of “identity” or “identity construction” works, but readers might balk if I  started using “to self ” or “selfing.” Actually, McAdams (1997) uses “selfing” and “to self,” which he defines as follows: “to apprehend and appropriate experience as a subject, to grasp phenomenal experience as one’s own, as belonging ‘to me’. . . selfing is responsible for human feelings of agency, the sense that one is potentially a causal agent in the world” (p. 56).) In this chapter and throughout the rest of the book, I will use verb forms as much as possible, but sometimes I will use nouns. Noun or verb, the point is to conceptualize these processes as processes that people DO or as activities that partly comprise what people do. Of course, processes and activities are nouns . . .  But perhaps you are a bit confused. Thus far, I have been using the term action/​acting/​act to refer to what people do and as shorthand for acting in relation to others in cultural practices. And now I seem to be saying that varied

Psychological Processes  149 psychological processes are kinds of action as well. It is all part of the complexity of human functioning that we have to navigate, and it is very difficult to arrive at felicitous terms for the interrelated and active processes we are dealing with. To do so, let us go back to the point that action is the wider systemic whole that we are conceptualizing, and we have identified and considered varied modes of action. We can also use the terms forms of action and ways of acting. I am now working to conceptualize psychological processes as active subconstituents of modes of action. Accordingly, we can say that psychological processes are submodes or subforms of action/​acting. Thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving, interacting, and self/​identity constructing will be labeled technically as submodes of action/​acting. To avoid expository repetitiveness, I will mostly refer to them as “psychological processes,” and also as “active processes that people do,” “activities that people do,” and “part of what people do.” We can now proceed to conceptualizing some submodes of action more specifically and to considering how they are active processes that people do, as well as how they are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Insofar as varied submodes of action are taken to be completely involved when a person is acting, with none prior to the others, we can, as always, jump into the flux and flow anywhere. The order of the psychological processes is not meant to be any kind of statement about the relative significance or importance of one process or another.

Thinking Thinking is part of what people do and it is evident when we act (Cole, 1996; Gallagher, 2013; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009; Gergen, 2009b; Harré & Gillet, 1994; Piaget, 1953; Rogoff, 1990, 2003; Sabat, 2001; Sabat & Gladstone, 2010; Scribner, 1985/​1997; Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984; Wertsch, 1998; Witherington & Heying, 2013). As a submode of acting, thinking can be conceptualized as an active dynamic process that people do as they act in relation to others in cultural practices. From a systems perspective, thinking can also be viewed as a submode of acting that consists of its own subconstituent processes that people do, including but not limited to remembering, reasoning, categorizing, connecting concepts and ideas, planning, deciding, pondering, knowing, and understanding. Of course, each of these subconstituents of thinking is a complex phenomenon that can be understood in terms of

150  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action its own multiple and interrelated systemic processes. A person may be engaging in some of these systemic subprocesses simultaneously and they can be linked in varied ways. We are thus considering “cognition in dynamic terms of enactive cognitive processes and activities, e.g., problem solving, interpreting, judging, rather than in terms of mental states or static contents” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 5). In addition, an action perspective “leads away from an obsession with measuring ‘cognitive abilities in general’ to an analysis of how particular abilities are brought into play in particular tasks” (Scribner, 1975/​1997, p. 81). My goal here is to conceptualize thinking—​and by extension thinking’s further systemic subconstituents—​as a process that people do that is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Toward that end, I am explicitly eschewing the noun cognition as much as possible. An overview of the current conceptualization of thinking can be found in Box 6.1.

Box 6.1  Conceptualizing Thinking













• People actively think while acting in relation to others. • Thinking develops. • Thinking is constituted by –​ Individual processes—​ particular individuals think and ponder experience in particular and developmentally organized ways; a person may agentively choose or decide how to think (e.g., how to remember an event). –​ Social processes—​ people think about people; others shape what someone is thinking (e.g., by questioning, challenging, reminding); thinking is co-​constructed between people. –​ Cultural processes—​ thinking is mediated by cultural tools; thinking reflects culturally valued ways of thinking. –​ Bodily processes—​thinking is embodied or mediated by the whole body; abstract thinking involves metaphorically extending bodily experience. –​ Environmental processes—​the structuring of thinking may be different in different environmental circumstances (e.g., temperature, noise); people think about different issues and problems in different environmental circumstances; toxins and pollutants can affect thinking.

Psychological Processes  151 According to the current action perspective, when we think, we are thinking about issues that we confront as we act in relation to others. For example, we remember an event or a book as we act in relation to others in varied ways. A person decides to do X, Y, or Z as part of acting in relation to others. For example, a person may be deciding if someone is guilty or innocent while acting in relation to others on a jury. We categorize as we act in relation to others. Say you have decided to go food shopping with your sister, and you begin by discussing what to buy. You make a list, and as you make the list, you categorize what you need to buy. You may categorize according to different criteria, such as what you need for each meal of the week, aisles in particular stores, or food categories (e.g., fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy). In school, children are thinking about varied issues while acting in relation to varied others (Lee, 2017; McKinney de Royston & Nasir, 2017). They may be thinking about some academic content, as well as how to navigate the flux and flow of recess or lunch in the cafeteria. People plan, decide, remember, categorize, and calculate as they work in milk processing plants and as they sell Girl Scout cookies (Rogoff, Baker-​Sennett, Lacasa, & Goldsmith, 1995; Scribner, 1985/​1997). Or, consider Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by varied kinds of cognitive impairment, including problems with remembering. It is usually diagnosed on the basis of how people perform on standardized assessments. Some research shows that in daily life situations, people who are so diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease may function quite well, including remembering people and details about their lives, as well as considering others’ perspectives to reason about what they are doing. The discrepancy between assessment scores and daily life situations may occur because standardized assessments do not “sample cognitive abilities as they are deployed in everyday life situations” (Sabat & Gladstone, 2010, p. 63). In the parlance of the current theoretical framework, thinking is doing, and thinking is enacted as people act in relation to others. With regard to assessing cognitive functioning, Sabat and Gladstone (2010) point out that “it is often assumed that the testing situation, precisely because it is devoid of so much socially meaningful, contextual, information, allows for the assessment of the ‘pure’ cognitive function” (p. 73). However, they question the notion of a pure cognitive function that exists separately from a person’s actual functioning in actual situations with actual people. I, too, question the notion of a pure cognitive function that exists independently of a person thinking about what is going on as they act. The current theoretical framework provides a

152  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action way of conceptualizing how people think about particular issues as they act in relation to others. Cognition or thinking also includes knowing and understanding how to act in different ways, such as greeting and consoling someone, or arguing cogently, or calming a distressed baby. Knowing and understanding how to act include effectively using some cultural means or tools that may be involved in acting in some cultural practice (Wertsch, 1998). For example, knowing how to act involves using varied means or tools, such as dribbling a basketball while playing basketball, or using language and PowerPoint on a computer while explaining a concept during a professional presentation. Knowing and understanding are thus enacted or particularized in acting, and knowledge refers to knowing how to do X, Y, or Z (Wertsch, 1998). In turn, what you know and what you understand depend partly on the cultural practices and modes of action you engage in (Scribner, 1987/​1997). In addition, as Bruner (1990) explains, knowledge is not just in one’s own head, in “person solo,” but in the notes that one has put into accessible notebooks, in the books with underlined passages on one’s shelves, in the handbooks one has learned how to consult, in the information sources one has hitched up to the computer, in the friends one can call up to get a reference . . . and so on almost endlessly. (p. 106)

Taken together, this brief introduction to thinking-​as-​doing indicates that thinking involves cultural, individual, and social processes. We now turn to thinking about thinking in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

Cultural Processes Cultural processes involve how we think with cultural tools or means, including but not limited to language (Bruner, 1990; Rogoff, 1990, 2003; Wertsch, 1998). Right now, I am writing this book on a computer, and I am pondering and puzzling over issues and concepts while I am writing. I am categorizing terms and concepts, and I am deciding what to write while I write on the computer. Clearly, language is involved in this process. In addition,

Psychological Processes  153 the computer is a tool that partly constitutes my thinking. Before going to the computer to write, I scribbled some notes with a pen on paper. I was categorizing and connecting some issues about action while I scribbled, and thus the pen and paper were part of what made it possible for me to categorize and connect issues. I often scribble outlines and lists of ideas in longhand. I also print out what I have written on the computer, and use pens to mark up the pages with edits and notes. People may use all kinds of tools to aid memory, from markers carved into trees with knives, to pen and paper, to iPhones. To know, understand, and remember just about any phenomenon under the sun, we have information at our fingertips on varied electronic devices that provide access to the internet. Thinking also reflects cultural conceptions about how to think or culturally valued ways of thinking (Rogoff, 2003; Wertsch, 1998). For example, research has long shown that there are varied culturally particular ways to sort and categorize objects. Luria’s (1976) now classic research in Central Asia was conducted in the 1920s, as the Soviet Union was undergoing collectivization and as formal schooling was being introduced there. It vividly illustrates how categorizing occurs in relation to people’s daily life cultural practices. Luria showed villagers pictures of varied objects (e.g., hammer, saw, log, hatchet) and asked them “to group objects that were ‘similar,’ had common characteristics” (p. 79). The villagers who had started to go to school put objects of the same abstract category together. That is, they grouped them categorically, according to an abstract characteristic or principle that was common to all the objects (e.g., tool). In contrast, the illiterate villagers grouped the objects functionally, according to how they use the objects, or in terms of their own practical experiences with the objects. When Luria suggested grouping the objects differently or told them that some people had grouped them categorically, the illiterate villagers remained unconvinced. They countered that a person who grouped the objects in that way was “stupid,” “did not understand anything.” Only in rare instances did they concede the possibility of employing such means of classification, doing so reluctantly, convinced it was not “important.” Only classifications based on practical schema struck them as “important,” or “right.” (pp. 54–​55)

I think it is worth including an extended quotation of a conversation excerpt about the hammer, saw, log, and hatchet that ensued among Luria and

154  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action three illiterate villagers aged 25, 32, and 26 and identified as I, II, and III, respectively. I. They’re all alike. The saw will saw the log and the hatchet will chop it into small pieces. If one of these things has to go, I’d throw out the hatchet. It doesn’t do as good a job as a saw. II. I also think they’re all alike. You can saw the log with the saw, chop it with the hatchet, and if it doesn’t split, you can beat on the hatchet with the hammer. . . . I. It’s the hammer that doesn’t fit! You can always work with a saw, but a hammer doesn’t always suit the job, there’s only a little you can do with it. II. You can throw out the hammer, because when you saw a log, you have to drive a wedge into it. Luria: Yet one fellow threw out the log. He said the hammer, saw, and hatchet were all alike in some way, but the log is different. III. If he wants to make planks, he won’t need the log. I. If we’re getting firewood for the stove, we could get rid of the hammer, but if it’s planks we’re fixing, we can do without the hatchet. (pp. 60–​62)

In school, students routinely participate in cultural practices that involve conceptualizing objects and issues by abstracting out characteristics and that involve thinking about phenomena beyond one’s immediate experience. In contrast, this kind of thinking is not part of practices that the villagers engaged in, and thus they had no opportunities to develop this mode of thinking. They thought about the objects in ways that were fully suited to their daily life cultural practices and in ways that might be unknown to many schooled people. Not only is remembering particularized in acting, but remembering is also organized in culturally particular ways. In conventional psychology, memory is often assessed with free recall tasks, which require a person to remember as many words as possible from a list of decontextualized words. Although children and adults in cultures where there is little or no formal schooling do not do so well on such tasks, researchers have consistently observed that people in these cultures think in complex ways in their daily life practices (Cole, 1996; Rogoff, 1990). They certainly can remember. Cole (1996) describes how he and his colleagues tried out different ways of assessing memory among Kpelle rice farmers in Liberia who did poorly on free recall tasks. For example, the researchers paid the participants for each word that they

Psychological Processes  155 remembered. In turn, the participants “said a lot more words at recall time, but their recall did not improve” (Cole, 1996, p. 64). The researchers then created a memory task that was relevant to how the Kpelle actually remember as they act in relation to others in cultural practices. When they were asked to remember words that were part of a culturally relevant story, they did quite well. Culturally valued ways of thinking further involve privileging some ways of thinking over others in the context of different cultural practices and institutional settings (e.g., Gallagher, 2013; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009; Heath, 1983/​1992, 1986/​1992; Lareau, 2003; Rogoff, 2003; Wertsch, 1998). For example, as pointed out earlier (in Chapter 5), literacy practices in American school settings are well aligned with how middle-​class parents typically read to and with their children, even before children go to school (Heath, 1986/​1992). That is, middle-​class parents typically ask questions about story characters’ attributes, about what is going on in the story, about how story parts are connected, and about how the story may be related to the child’s personal experience. In contrast, children from a rural African-​American community engaged in very different storytelling practices and often could not answer teachers’ questions about a text (Heath, 1983/​1992). However, at home, their storytelling involved telling oral stories from about the age of 2 years, and they became adept at telling creative stories with complex plots and multiple characters (Heath, 1986/​1992). Also with regard to privileging ways of thinking in relation to cultural institutions, Gallagher argues that deciding is structured in particular ways within the context of American legal institutions, and thus such deciding occurs primarily in that institutional setting (Gallagher, 2013; Gallagher & Crisafi, 2009). American legal deciding involves following certain rules about evidence, objectivity, precedent, and reasonable doubt. In these ways, cultural institutions partly constitute not only what a person is thinking about but the very structuring of their thinking.

Bodily Processes It is commonplace in psychology today to speak of embodied cognition. Certainly human thinking occurs with the brain. However, bodily aspects of thinking are not limited to the brain, because the whole body is involved in acting, including its cognitive subconstituents (Gallagher, 2005/​2006;

156  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Johnson, 1987/​1990, 2006, 2007). As noted earlier, I am thinking while I write on the computer and while I scribble notes with pen and paper. Such thinking could not occur without my hand, which is attached to my arm, which is attached to my shoulder, and so on. Of course, people who are missing hands or other limbs can think. The point here is that thinking extends beyond the brain to other bodily parts and processes. It is thus fitting that in varied countries around the world, there are government-​funded school meal programs to ensure that hunger does not prevent children from learning. Of course, for any person at any age, having enough food is not only a cognitive issue. It is relevant to action in general, as well as to the varied psychological processes that comprise action. Again, the point here is that thinking is constituted by varied bodily processes. As Piaget (1953) teaches us, thinking is embodied in self-​generated sensorimotor activity from the get-​go, enabling infants and young children to start making sense of the world and their experiences. Babies certainly move in all kinds of ways, from blinking their eyes and sticking out their tongues, to opening and closing their mouths, to kicking their legs and arching their backs, to banging and flapping their arms (Adolph & Berger, 2005). Such sensorimotor activity enables babies to “engage with the world not in a rigid manner, but in a dynamic way, that is open to modification through the continual interplay of assimilation and accommodation” (Užgiris, 1996, p. 20), or through use, feedback, and adjustment. Once they can hold objects with their hands, you might see children turning something over and over, looking at it intently, shaking it and listening intently to the sounds it makes, as well as throwing it on the floor and across the room and watching and listening to what happens to it. In doing so, young children are not thinking in the sense of reflecting abstractly or conceptually, but they are thinking by using their bodies to make sense of the world. They may not understand cups and juice as abstract concepts, but children can understand and know a cup and juice by grasping a cup, turning it upside down, watching the juice spill out of it, feeling the sticky wet juice as it spills, and tasting the sweet juice as they lick their fingers. Clearly, the hand is central to this kind of thinking, as are other body parts and processes. While the importance of the hand cannot be overstated, it is important to recognize that someone without hands can obviously still think. Even babies who are born without hands or other limbs can still develop cognitively, as can people with varied kinds of physical conditions. The point here is that they are thinking about the world through the sensorimotor processes that their bodies enable.

Psychological Processes  157 Body-​based constituents of thinking remain part of and co-​constitute our thinking throughout the lifespan, even as abstract thinking develops (Johnson, 1987/​1990, 2006, 2007; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969; Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984). For example, Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that bodily experience co-​constitutes logical and abstract reasoning through the use of metaphor. That is, metaphor is a kind of activity that involves figuratively extending bodily experience to structure abstract understanding of the world. According to Johnson (1987/​1990), “this figurative extension and elaboration typically takes the form of metaphorical projection from the realm of physical bodily interactions onto so-​called rational processes, such as reflection and the drawing of inferences from premises” (p. xx). As such, abstract thinking and logical reasoning “depend on schemata derived from our bodily experience and problem-​solving” (p. xx). By thinking metaphorically, we understand abstract concepts through “preconceptual structures that are meaningful to us in a bodily way” (p. 15). For example, understanding abstract phenomena such as psychological balance, a balanced argument, legal balance, and moral balance is based on and incorporates “the bodily experience of balance as an activity” (p. 74). Physical or bodily balancing is an activity we learn with our bodies and not by grasping a set of rules or concepts. First and foremost, balancing is something we do. The baby stands, wobbles, and drops to the floor. It tries again, and again, and again, until a new world opens up—​the world of the balanced erect posture. . . . Balancing is a preconceptual bodily activity that cannot be described propositionally by rules . . . you cannot tell another what steps to take to achieve the balanced riding of a bicycle. (p. 74)

I am reminded of Andy, whom I babysat years ago. When he was learning to drive a stick shift, I  explained (as my father had explained to me) that achieving “equilibrium” or balance between the gas and clutch is essential. But I could not give very specific instructions for achieving that equilibrium. It is felt through the body and it is understood through sensorimotor processes, including raising and lowering one’s feet and legs. In addition, Johnson explains that we understand the notion of systemic balance in the most immediate, pre-​ conceptual fashion through our bodily experience. There is too much acid

158  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action in the stomach, the hands are too cold, the head is too hot, the bladder is distended, the sinuses are swollen, the mouth is dry. . . . Things are felt as “out of balance.” There is “too much” or “not enough” so that the normal, healthy organization of forces, processes, and elements is upset. (p. 75)

Engaging in balancing activity and experiencing bodily balance and imbalance can then be extended metaphorically to think about abstract forms of balance, as well as to engage in logical thinking. For example, Johnson (1987/​ 1990) explains that to achieve a balanced and hence logical argument that will sway others, “I pile up evidence, amass facts, and build up a weighty argument. Ideally, anyone who listens to my argument will weigh its merits. . . . If we are successful, we feel the balance tip in our favor, as we add to our argument” (p. 89). The italicized words indicate how logical thinking is informed by or partly constituted by preconceptual bodily balancing activities. Swaying others in an argument is also a body-​based metaphor.

Social Processes Social processes are involved in varied ways when we think as we act in relation to others (Gergen, 2009b; Rogoff, 2003; Wertsch, 1998). People think about people when they are alone and when they are interacting with others directly. Insofar as knowing involves knowing how to do X, Y, or Z, knowing includes knowing how to act in relation to others in particular contexts. In addition, what and how a person thinks may be shaped by other people and thus can be said to occur between people, rather than within an individual. For example, a person may refine what she thinks about some issue (including how to define varied complex concepts) through discussing the issue with others or as they try to answer each other’s questions. The Socratic method refers to asking people questions so that they can construct and scrutinize their own and others’ ideas as they respond. A person may also call upon others to help think about an issue. Calling upon others to help think is an example of how individual and social processes may be interrelated to constitute thinking. Various sub-​subconstituents of thinking are also constituted by social processes and thus are taken to occur between people. For example, with regard to remembering, someone may ask you where you last had your keys or if you looked in this or that place for them. Also with regard to remembering,

Psychological Processes  159 we may recall an event differently as we discuss it with someone who fills in certain details, or who remembers some parts of the event differently, or who asks us questions about the situation. In addition, the event you are remembering may involve other people, and thus you are socially remembering a social event, and you may be co-​constructing a mutually acceptable account of the event (Gergen, 2009b). Discussions of distributed cognition point to how thinking occurs between people, rather than being a primarily individual process. Efforts to promote collaborative learning in educational settings are based on the premise that students can learn effectively together as well as develop cognitively together. Piaget (1932/​1950) argued that cognitive development can occur through peer relationships because they are relatively egalitarian, allowing peers to express their individual perspectives and to cooperate symmetrically. In a nutshell, some might say that two heads are better than one. I personally find this phrase to be both useful and problematic. It is useful and relevant right now because it makes the point that thinking is not constituted merely by individual processes and it draws attention to how people think together. However, I find the phrase problematic because of the word “heads,” which equates thinking with the brain. Also, sometimes others can hinder a person’s ability to think about some issue. These problems notwithstanding, the point here is that thinking is partly constituted by social processes.

Individual Processes With regard to individual processes, it is particular individuals who think by remembering, categorizing, planning, deciding, choosing, and calculating. It is individuals who understand and know how to act in particular ways and in ways that are organized developmentally. It is individuals who actively ponder experience, in their particular and developmentally organized ways. Part of pondering in one’s own particular ways includes using cultural concepts and categories in individualized ways. Agency is involved in thinking as individuals choose and decide how to act. In addition, people can choose and regulate how to think about varied situations. And sometimes people agentively decide how to remember an event. A person may decide to put a positive spin on what happened or try to see the event as an important life lesson. Someone else may choose to downplay a portion of what happened and emphasize another part of the episode.

160  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Environmental Processes Thinking is part of acting, and we act in physical environments. It thus follows that the physical environment partly constitutes thinking. Perhaps you find it difficult to concentrate or attend to what you are doing when it is noisy or if it is too hot or too cold for you. In different physical environments, such as a desert or a rainforest, people are confronted with different issues to think about, different problems to solve, different phenomena to categorize, and different contingencies to plan for. Environmental toxins and pollutants can affect children’s cognitive development. Let us go back to the point that knowing and understanding refer to knowing and understanding how to engage in some cultural practices and modes of action, such as driving. Knowing how to drive in sunny California is different than knowing how to drive through the ice and snow in Minnesota. Driving in these different physical environments involves different ways of knowing, and thus knowing is partly constituted by the physical environment. As pointed out in Chapter  5, environmental processes include the physical environments that human beings create to support modes of action. Some of the physical environments that we build may be specifically designed to support particular ways of thinking. For example, classrooms may be built and arranged to enable students to concentrate and think together to solve problems. Scribner’s (1985/​1997) research with dairy workers shows how “the experience of thousands of people in the dairy business has produced an environment and instruments that support intelligent organization of work” (p. 313). For example, the intelligent physical layout of a dairy products warehouse included storing the dairy products strategically to enable assembly workers to pick them out and load them efficiently. Cognitively, the warehouse’s physical layout constituted the assembly workers’ thinking as they grouped items to be fetched on a list and as they remembered how much of each item to fetch. When I make my weekly shopping list, I think about items and categorize them according to the store’s physical layout and where the items are in the store so that I can go from one end of the store to the other without backtracking. Some years ago, the store managers changed the physical layout, and it took me several weeks to rearrange how I think about my shopping list.

Psychological Processes  161

Feeling Acting in relation to others certainly involves emotion or feeling. When you greet someone, you may feel happy to see them, and you may feel sad when you part. You may be angry when you are arguing with someone, as well as sometimes excited in a positive way depending on what you are arguing about and with whom. When you console a friend you may feel compassion for their sadness. But sometimes when you are consoling someone, you might feel annoyed or even angry at the person for wallowing in their predicament. In the upcoming discussion, I will mostly use the verb form “to feel” and the gerund “feeling” as part of my overall goal of focusing on what people DO. Sometimes “emotion” as a noun will creep into the discussion. An overview of the current conceptualization of feeling can be found in Box 6.2. As always, we are in trouble right away. Conceptualizing feeling is troublesome because feeling is a complex and messy phenomenon that has long defied clear-​cut defining (Hepburn & Jackson, 2009/​2013; Lutz, 1988; Nussbaum, 2001/​2003). We are also in trouble here because not only may

Box 6.2  Conceptualizing Feeling













• People actively feel while acting in relation to others. • Feeling develops. • Feeling is constituted by –​ Individual processes—​ people construct and experience feeling subjectively; people may agentively decide how to judge a situation; people judge situations in relation to personal goals and values; people express how they feel in particular and developmentally organized ways. –​ Social processes—​what others do can be a source of feeling; feeling is co-​regulated and co-​constructed with others. –​ Cultural processes—​ways of feeling are defined and expressed in culturally particular ways. –​ Bodily processes—​feeling is expressed bodily; there are biochemical and neurological correlates of feeling; understanding and experiencing feeling involve body-​based metaphors. –​ Environmental processes—​people may feel and express feeling differently in different environmental circumstances.

162  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action emotions be identified differently in different cultures, but the very notion of what even counts as appropriate emotion or feeling is culturally particular (Lutz, 1988; Mascolo, Fischer, & Li, 2003; Nussbaum, 2001/​2003). For example, in contrast to Americans, who are proud of their accomplishments, the Chinese discourage pride in favor of self-​effacement (Mascolo et  al., 2003). Lutz (1988) explains that in Western cultures, emotions tend to be viewed as “antithetical to reason or rationality” (p. 59) and “as something wild and uncontrollable” (p. 62). Also in the West, as well as in conventional psychology, emotions are often treated as primarily physical phenomena that arise from bodily processes. Moreover, emotions tend to be understood as “features of individuals” (Lutz, 1988, p. 56) and are therefore treated as individual states. In contrast, research on Ifaluk, a West Caroline atoll in the Pacific Ocean, shows that emotion is understood primarily as a social phenomenon or as a characteristic of relationships. As such, emotions tend to be defined dyadically, rather than individually. For example, Lutz (1988) explains, “One person’s anger (song) entails another’s fear (metagu); someone’s experiencing grief and frustration (tang) creates compassion/​ love/​sadness (fago) in others” (p. 82). These cultural contrasts do not mean that social and cultural aspects of emotion are denied among Westerners, nor is anyone arguing that non-​Westerners do not experience emotion individually. The point is that we need a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about how emotion is constituted by multiple processes. In the upcoming discussion, I will raise some general issues about feeling, and then we will get into how feeling is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. We can enter the messy morass of emotion with our basic conceptual premise that people act and that emotion or feeling is part of what people do. As such, we are led to thinking about feeling as a submode of action that can be played out in varied ways, such as grieving, loving, and empathizing, or being happy, sad, proud, angry, repulsed, joyous, ashamed, compassionate, and afraid. These active processes can be further distinguished in terms of their own systemic processes. For example, there may be varied ways of being afraid or fearing, such as fearing a bear in the woods or fearing losing one’s job. To understand emotion as part of action, we can ask: What do we DO when we are happy, sad, angry, grieving, fearing, or empathizing? One way of answering this question is that feeling or emoting involves making sense of the world with a self-​referencing judgmental or evaluative twist, in contrast to standing by and dispassionately assessing a situation (Johnson, 2007; Mascolo, 2013; Nussbaum, 2001/​2003).

Psychological Processes  163 More specifically, according to Nussbaum (2001/​2003), emotion can be defined as constructing “the world from the point of view of my own scheme of goals and projects, the things to which I attach value in a conception of what it is for me to live well” (p. 49). Feeling further involves appraising “the relations between events and a person’s motives” (Mascolo, 2013, p.  193). Along similar lines, Lutz (1988) argues that “emotion words may be used to theorize about events, to moralize about or to judge them, and to advance one’s interests by defining the situation in a particular way” (p. 10). Taken together, feeling is part of acting in relation to others, and feeling includes engaging with others in ways that reflect how a person is judging or evaluating what is going on. Feeling refers to judging and evaluating situations from a personal perspective and in relation to one’s goals, interests, and conceptions of the good. However, it would be very cumbersome to always refer to feeling in this way. Therefore, I  will use the verbs “to judge” and “to evaluate” as shorthand terms and interchangeably as we proceed. I will mostly use some variant of “judging a situation” or “judging what is going on” to refer to what people do when they feel. When feeling is generally defined in terms of judging what is going on, specific feelings or emotions refer to particular ways of judging what is going on. As Nussbaum (2001/​2003) explains: What distinguishes fear from hope, fear from grief, love from hate—​is not so much the identity of the object, which might not change, but the way in which the object is seen. In fear, one sees oneself or what one loves as seriously threatened. In hope, one sees oneself or what one loves as in some uncertainty but with a good chance for a good outcome. In grief, one sees an important object or person as lost; in love, as invested with a special sort of radiance. (p. 28)

These different ways of judging can be enacted in different ways. For example, depending on how you judge what is going on, you may console someone angrily or compassionately. Anger may appear in action through facial expressions, yelling, and/​or hitting. Or, you may be angry about what is going on, meaning that you believe that some standard has been violated. And that anger may show up in how you act in relation to someone who is there, or later on in relation to someone who may not have been involved in the incident at all. You may snap at people and end up arguing with them. In addition, the dynamics of feeling include experiencing multiple, sometimes conflicting emotions at the same time. That is, people may judge a situation in multiple emotional ways simultaneously.

164  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Feeling can be played out in varied ways or along varied interrelated dimensions, including (a)  global–​ articulated, (b)  background general–​ situation specific, and (c) conscious–​non-​conscious (Johnson, 2007; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010; Nussbaum, 2001/​2003). With regard to the background general–​situation specific dimension, Nussbaum (2001/​2003) argues that it is useful to distinguish “between evaluative judgments that persist through situations of numerous kinds, and judgments that arise in the context of some particular situation” (p. 69). Background general feelings tend to endure over time, and they tend to remain “unnoticed unless a circumstance calls them into view” (p. 70). As such, background general feeling may be generally present as people go about their lives and may be enacted more specifically in particular situations. For example, “One loves one’s parents, children, spouse, friends continuously over time, even when no specific incident gives rise to an awareness of the love” (Nussbaum, 2001/​2003, p. 70). Or, a person may be “angry over time at a persisting wrong—​as, for example, many women live in a state of continuous anger at domestic injustice that is part of their daily lives; and yet the anger will surface only in certain circumstances” (p. 70). Situation specific anger may dissipate, yet the background general anger at social injustice endures. Nussbaum also points out that background general feeling can be expressed as a different emotion in specific situations. For example, “we might find that background love gets transformed by a situation not (or not only) into situational love, but into an episode of grief ” (p. 73). Background general and situation specific feeling can change as well. Regarding situation specific feeling, have you, or someone you know, ever changed how you evaluate a situation, including your own action or someone else’s action? For example, you may be quite angry at someone for wronging you in some way, but then you judge him compassionately as you consider the mitigating circumstances in which he did what he did. Lutz (1988) describes how on Ifaluk, initially one teenage boy said he was afraid (metagu) to go back to high school on Ulithi because he would be labeled “dumb” there. Several days later, he was saying instead that he would not go because he had fago [love/​ compassion/​sadness] for his needy family, who required his help. (p. 129)

Changing the way one judges or feels may occur in relation to varied processes, such as pondering on your own, talking to others, and/​or interacting with the person or people who are part of the situation you are judging.

Psychological Processes  165 With regard to the global–​articulated dimension, sometimes a person might judge a situation rather globally, and sometimes a person might judge a situation in terms of a relatively articulated emotion. For example, if you ask someone about a situation, they might respond globally or in rather undifferentiated terms, as in “I had an uneasy feeling about it” or “I have a good feeling about it.” A relatively articulated response would be “I am angry because it is so unfair that he is making millions of dollars off the backs of migrant workers” or “I felt sorry for her because she had no place to go after the fire.” In other words, sometimes we feel or judge in vague, undifferentiated, and dimly apprehended ways, and sometimes we feel or judge in clear and articulated ways. Conceptualizing feeling along this dimension further enables us to get at some of the dynamic complexities of feeling. Inevitably, there is flux and flow. That is, emotional experience can change, and people do not necessarily stick to one way of judging or evaluating a situation. We may begin by judging a situation rather globally and move toward judging it more specifically during the course of acting. Or vice versa. That is, we may initially judge a predicament quite specifically but then start to realize that we are not so sure about what is going on. In addition, feeling partakes of both conscious and non-​conscious processes (Mascolo & Fischer, 2010). Sometimes, we may very explicitly ponder how to judge a situation and regulate how we feel about it. From a Vygotskian perspective, we can use language to regulate feeling, by for example, telling ourselves to “calm down” or “cheer up” (Vygotsky, 1986/​ 1987). However, sometimes we make snap judgments. According to Johnson (2007) (and in keeping with Nussbaum’s ideas about background general emotion), pre-​reflective or non-​conscious feeling occurs continuously and provides a basis for ongoing sense-​making and emotional self-​ regulating. He points out that our world (our situation) stands forth meaningfully to us at every waking instant, due primarily to processes of emotion and feeling over which we have little control. And yet the situation is meaningful to us in the most important, primordial, and basic way that it can be meaningful—​it shapes the basic contours of our experience. (p. 66)

Feeling may be partly non-​conscious because our ways of judging become habitual through practice, and also because our values and conceptions of the good are not always explicit. Insofar as aspects of judging are non-​conscious,

166  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action we may sometimes be caught off guard by our own emotional reactions, or we may find it difficult to control how we feel (Nussbaum, 2001/​2003). The discussion of feeling thus far points to varied processes that constitute feeling. For example, we have mentioned culture, facial expression, and social interaction, which indicate that feeling is co-​constituted by cultural, bodily, and social processes. Insofar as feeling is a systemic part of what people do as they act in relation to others, feeling is taken to be constituted through simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

Individual Processes With regard to individual processes, feeling or judging is part of subjectively constructing experience and acting in terms of what circumstances mean to individuals. That is, individuals judge and evaluate situations in relation to their personal goals and conceptions of the good. As Nussbaum (2001/​2003) puts it, emotions have “urgency and heat” (p. 22) because they involve evaluating and judging in relation to one’s own goals and conceptions of the good. In addition, it is an individual who subjectively experiences emotion as they judge a situation. What it means to subjectively experience or feel an emotion is another vexing issue in the study of emotion, in part because it is often difficult for people to explain or describe how they feel (Mascolo, 2013; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010). How an emotion feels subjectively to a person may be metaphorically associated with bodily sensation, such as feeling like you will explode in anger, or burst for joy, or experiencing dread as a sinking feeling in your gut. Thus, as discussed earlier with regard to thinking, emotional experience occurs through metaphorically extending body-​based activity and experience. Individual processes are further involved insofar as a person may not only judge and experience what is going on in individualized ways, but they may also express emotion in individualized ways as they act in relation to others. For example, different particular people may express anger by withdrawing quietly, by stomping off and slamming the door, by yelling, by explaining why they are angry, by crying, by hitting, or varied combinations thereof. Aspects of agency also characterize feeling insofar as people sometimes explicitly try to change how they feel about a situation or how they judge a situation. As agents, people may try to control how they react emotionally, perhaps especially in cultures where emotion is viewed as a characteristic of

Psychological Processes  167 individuals. Such emotional control is, of course, not so easy. According to Nussbaum (2001/​2003), some typical ways of judging situations, as well as some goals and conceptions of the good, are steeped in a person’s life history and experience in sometimes dimly apprehended or non-​conscious ways. This historical aspect of feeling may be part of why “the emotions of the adult life sometimes feel as if they flood up out of nowhere, in ways that don’t match our present view of our objects or their value” (p. 230). She posits further that the experience of passivity in emotion is well explained by the fact that the objects of emotion are things and people whose activities and well-​being we do not ourselves control, and in whom we have invested a good measure of our own well-​being. They are our hostages to fortune. In emotion we recognize our own passivity before the ungoverned events of life. (p. 78)

Insofar as the ungoverned events of life often involve others, social processes are fully implicated in emotion or feeling.

Social Processes Social processes constitute emotion or feeling in varied ways. As already noted, when we judge what is going on, we are often judging and reacting to what other people are doing. Indeed, other people may be sources of our greatest joy and despair, as well as our most overwhelming anger and compassion. Lutz (1988) explains that on Ifaluk, responsibility for someone’s emotion is often taken to lie with other people. For example, the person who leaves valuable possessions out in view of visitors is to blame when someone becomes “excited/​jealous” (bosu) as an inevitable result. The host in such a case would be criticized by saying that he or she was “showing off ” (gabosu), or literally, “causing excitement/​jealousy.” (p. 103)

Thus, other people form or constitute part of the very fabric of feeling because without them, what and how we are judging would be different. In addition, feeling may change during the course of acting in relation to others and can be shaped by the history of how we relate to particular others (Boiger & Mesquita, 2015). As such, emotion does not spring forth from individuals alone, but is regulated between and among people. In

168  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action other words, feeling is co-​regulated (Mascolo, 2013). Classic research with middle-​class Americans shows how caregiver–​infant interacting involves co-​regulating feeling as caregivers “regulate the infant’s level of arousal and excitation within a tolerable range” by modulating facial expressivity, gazing, vocalizing, and moving physically (Stern, 1985, p. 74). Infants contribute to emotional co-​regulating through looking at and away from others, as well as through facial expressivity. Co-​regulating feeling also occurs when people negotiate the meaning of events to arrive at a common judgment of what is going on. These examples illustrate rather harmonious co-​regulating, which may further include validating how someone judges what is going on. However, harmonious co-​regulating is not inevitable, as sometimes others resist, repudiate, or ignore how someone is judging a situation.

Bodily Processes Bodily processes certainly co-​constitute feeling in varied ways. For example, research has long focused on facial expression and emotion (Ekman, 1993). However, particular facial expressions or other bodily expressions of emotion are not necessarily required for experiencing or expressing some emotion (Nussbaum, 2001/​2003). For example, just because you do not smile, it does not mean that you are not happy, and you may be sad without crying. In addition to the face, some people may gesticulate vigorously with their hands or clench their fists to express anger. People may slump in sadness or grief, stand tall when proud, and turn away or avert their eyes in shame. Of course, any particular bodily movement is not necessarily exclusive to particular emotions. We may clench our fists in pride, as well as in fear. As just pointed out, infants and adults modulate feeling while interacting in bodily ways, by, for example, looking at or away from each other, or through changing facial expression. Modulating and expressing feeling in bodily ways are not exclusive to parents and infants and may occur while anyone is acting in relation to varied others. Bodily processes also include the biochemical changes that occur in relation to some emotions, such as increased heart rate when we are angry or afraid, or when a particular loved one appears in our midst. And of course the brain is involved in feeling. In general, “the amygdala, hypothalamus, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex tend to be implicated as the usual suspects over and over again in explanations of emotions” (Johnson, 2007, p.  62). However, specific emotions have not been linked to specific

Psychological Processes  169 areas of the brain, and similar neurological activity may occur when people experience different emotions (Lindquist, Wager, Kober, Bliss-​Moreau, & Barrett, 2012). It is important to note that Lindquist et al.’s analysis (2012) occurs within a discussion of “how the brain creates emotions” (p. 121). They also posit that “the brain makes an initial prediction about the meaning” of some “sensory input from the body and from the world” (p. 123). Within the theoretical framework that I am advancing in this book, claiming that the “brain creates” emotion or any constituent of action is problematic because it reduces the phenomenon to the brain. In addition, it is problematic to claim that the brain, rather than a person, predicts (Bennett & Hacker, 2003). Nevertheless, I believe that their neurological analyses provide compelling evidence for the more general claim that particular emotional experiences are not located in particular parts of the brain. As pointed out earlier, our ways of understanding and experiencing emotion often involve body-​based metaphors. For example, we may say that we felt afraid in our gut or that a grieving person is wearing his heart on his sleeve. Or perhaps you are a bit hot under the collar about what is going on. Someone else may tell you about being ready to explode from all the anger that is bottled up inside. It is interesting that “to feel” refers to emotion as well as to the sense of touch. There is tactile feeling and there is emotional feeling. If I say, “She touched me,” it could mean that she physically touched me and I sensed it tactilely, or it could mean that she affected me emotionally in some way—​or both. The same goes for “to move.” A person can move physically and a person can be moved emotionally. Perhaps not coincidentally, the word emotion comes from the Latin emovere, which means “to move out.” These two ways of using “to feel” and “to move” indicate how feeling or emotion involves metaphorically extending bodily activity and experience.

Environmental Processes Speaking of metaphors, varied emotions may be associated with temperature, such as the heat of anger or the coldness of detachment. These metaphors draw on experiences of body temperature, but temperature is also an attribute of the physical environment that can contribute to feeling. For example, tempers may flare when it is hot. Some research points to a correlation between heat and violent crime, with overall aggression and violent crime rates rising when it gets hotter (Anderson, 2001). Some people suffer

170  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action from seasonal affective disorder, which refers to being depressed during certain seasons of the year, usually winter. It is also argued that cultural ways of understanding, expressing, and experiencing emotion are systematically related to particular physical environments. For example, hostility and some forms of anger may be discouraged on Ifaluk in part because it is a small, isolated, and densely populated atoll where “a severe typhoon can result in the near total devastation of the food supply” (Lutz, 1988, p. 22). It is interesting that in this physical environment, what is referred to as justifiable anger, or song in the Ifaluk language, is viewed as an acceptable form of anger. People judge situations in terms of song when “some aspect of the widely shared Ifaluk value system” is violated (p. 157). Lutz explains further that “by identifying song in oneself or in others, the speaker advertises him-​or herself as someone with a finely tuned and mature sense of island values” (p. 157). The person who is the object of someone’s justifiable anger “reacts in fear to that anger” (p. 157) and is then supposed to right the wrong. Emphasizing this kind of anger, along with the fear it entails, is conducive to maintaining harmonious relationships in a dangerous and confined physical environment. In contrast, it is argued that when there are wide open spaces, people can afford to harbor anger, hostility, and resentment against people whom they can easily avoid (Nussbaum, 2001/​2003).

Cultural Processes Certainly, feeling is partly culturally constituted, and cultural issues have been raised several times in the discussion thus far. Cultural processes are clearly involved in feeling because goals and conceptions of the good are partly culturally constituted. That is, they reflect common and contested as well as traditional and changing cultural meanings. In addition, feeling is particularized as people act in varied cultural practices that are viewed in part as cultural venues for expressing and discussing emotion, such as therapy, talk shows, support groups, and now social media. The use of social media points to how feeling is particularized through varied cultural tools and technologies. Someone recently told me about someone else who was “emoting all over the internet.” Feeling also comes into being or is constituted partly through cultural ways of constructing feeling with language (Taylor, 1985/​1992). In addition, we can transform how we feel about what is going on partly through speaking about it in different ways.

Psychological Processes  171 As pointed out at the outset of this discussion of feeling, there may be cultural variation in how the general concept of emotion is understood. In addition, specific emotions are understood and enacted in culturally particular ways that reveal both cross-​cultural similarities and differences. Indeed, there are many empirical accounts of how particular emotions are understood and particularized in varied cultures. In the discussion thus far, fago and song on Ifaluk have been mentioned (Lutz, 1988). Lutz explains that fago cannot be easily translated into one English emotion word because it synthesizes what English-​speaking people would understand as varied emotions, namely compassion, love, and sadness. Lutz argues that understanding the meaning of an emotion word in a particular culture involves being “able to envisage (and perhaps find oneself able to participate in) a complicated scene with actors, actions, interpersonal relationships in a particular state of repair, moral points of view, facial expressions, personal and social goals, and sequences of events” (p. 10). These varied components of understanding emotion are compatible with the current action perspective, whereby emotion is viewed as part of the wider whole of acting in relation to others. In addition, Lutz argues that the physical environmental conditions of Ifaluk “give people extensive opportunities of observing the suffering of others—​the condition which is central to the experience of fago” (p. 150). This analysis also points to how emotion may be constituted through interrelated cultural and environmental processes. As defined in Chapter  5, cultural processes include political processes. That is, action and the psychological processes that comprise ways of acting are taken to emerge partly through political processes and circumstances. With regard to feeling and political processes, one may immediately think of how people often get angry over political issues as they act in relation to others. People may get angry as they discuss politics, and people may be angry as they protest some political policies, or as they vote for one candidate or another. In her analysis of politics and emotion, Nussbaum (2001/​2003) emphasizes compassion, which she defines as “a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune” (p. 301). She argues for public policies that are born out of and promote compassion for others. Public policies can promote compassion among citizens by shaping how people judge varied politically relevant issues, from the seriousness of varied circumstances, to fairness, to what people do and do not deserve. In the United States for example, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act makes it possible for children with varied disabilities to attend mainstream

172  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action schools. In turn, the other children have opportunities to engage with them as individuals and to encounter a wider range of human functioning. By “redefining the landscape of children with whom ‘normal’ children make contact in everyday life,” they may be “less likely to demonize these children as disgusting outcastes” (p. 422). Instead, they have opportunities to develop ways of acting compassionately. The same can be said for any equal protection laws, from voting rights to gay marriage. At the same time, it is important to point out that compassion-​constituting public policies do not come out of nowhere. In contexts of government for the people, by the people, and of the people, it is people who create, maintain, and change public policies that do or do not reflect and promote compassion. Arguably, people who feel compassionately toward a wide range of others may be more likely to support public policies that reflect and promote acting compassionately. Insofar as political institutions and policies are imperfect and fallible, “we must . . . rely on compassionate individuals to keep essential political insights alive and before our eyes” (Nussbaum, 2001/​2003, p.  404). In other words, people acting compassionately and political processes are reciprocally interrelated. In terms of the current theoretical framework, we are encountering systemic interrelations between psychological processes (feeling) and constitutive processes (political processes), as well as between individual, social, and cultural processes in the constitution of feeling.

Self/​Identity Self/​identity is very strange and vexing, and it has certainly been the subject of innumerable books and articles. Definitions abound. There is not even consensus about what term to use, and that is why I have been using both self and identity. Whatever term is used, the current theoretical approach guides us toward thinking systematically about how self/​identity is enacted, or how self/​identity processes are evident as people act in relation to others (Raeff, 2010). We can then go on to conceptualize some of the ways in which self/​ identity is constituted through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. I will use the terms self, identity, and self/​identity interchangeably. An overview of the current conceptualization of self/​identity can be found in Box 6.3. The terms self and identity generally refer to how people construct, define, and present themselves while acting in relation to others. The term

Psychological Processes  173

Box 6.3  Conceptualizing Self/​Identity













• People actively construct self/​identity, or who they are, while acting in relation to others. • Self/​Identity constructing develops. • Self/​Identity constructing is constituted by –​ Individual processes—​individuals construct who they are in particular and developmentally organized ways; individuals may agentively choose and decide how to construct themselves. –​ Social processes—​ people identify themselves in terms of relationships and social roles; people construct who they are in terms of how others position and recognize them; people tell narratives about themselves to and in reaction to others. –​ Cultural processes—​ self/​ identity reflects dynamic cultural meanings; people construct who they are in relation to wider societal processes (e.g., globalization, economic circumstances, political circumstances). –​ Bodily processes—​self/​identity is expressed bodily (e.g., dancing, manual work, tattoos). –​ Environmental processes—​identifying with land; physical environments afford different opportunities for constructing who one is.

self-​concept implies an active process whereby someone is conceptualizing their experience. The term identity formation similarly implies an active process of someone identifying or figuring out who they are. In other words, self/​identity processes encompass how a person actively ponders and answers the question, Who am I? (Bamberg, 2011). As noted earlier in this chapter, it is difficult to refer to self/​identity with verb forms, at least in English. Some terms that work are “to identify,” as well as “constructing oneself ” or “constructing self/​identity,” and “self/​identity constructing.” The point here is that human beings actively construct conceptions, ideas, or perspectives about themselves (Raeff, 2010). Again we are stuck with some nouns, but we are still dealing with people actively constructing or identifying who they are. For example, someone might define herself as a parent, partner, and hard worker, or as independent, caring, and unorganized. Narrative perspectives point to how people tell narratives or stories

174  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action about their lives and experiences to construct, reconstruct, and make sense of who they are (Bamberg, 2011, 2012; Bruner, 1990, 2002; Josselson & Hopkins, 2015; McAdams, 1993). As Bruner puts it, “self-​making is a narrative art” (2002, p. 65). In addition, human beings construct or identify who they are by presenting, positioning, and expressing themselves as they act. For example, when consoling someone, a person can be positioning himself as a caring friend. When arguing, a person may be positioning herself as an expert on some topic in general and/​or specifically in relation to the other person or people with whom she is arguing. Planning and regularly going on overseas trips can be a way of defining, expressing, and presenting oneself as a world traveler, and as someone who is interested in different cultures. As this section proceeds, self/​identity will be discussed in terms of variations on constructing, defining, understanding, expressing, and identifying who one is. Taken together, people DO self/​ identity in varied ways. At least since William James (1890/​1983) took up self/​identity issues in a chapter on “the consciousness of self ” in his book, The Principles of Psychology, self/​identity has been understood as multifaceted and dynamic. Take a moment now and think about who you are, or how you would describe yourself. You may be thinking of yourself in terms of personal characteristics, values, beliefs, social roles, relationships, groups, ethnicity, race, country, gender, occupation, typical activities, life events and experiences, as well as projects and purposes. The list of self/​identity constituents could go on further. Elaborating on James, to systematically organize such varied self/​ identity constituents, Damon and Hart (1988) posit that people understand themselves in terms of physical, social, active, and psychological characteristics. Also building on James, identifying or constructing oneself is taken to involve three kinds of subjective experience, namely (a) experiencing oneself as both continuous and changing over time, (b) experiencing oneself as both distinct from other people and like other people, and (c) experiencing oneself as someone who both agentively acts upon the world and is acted upon or affected by the world (Bamberg, 2011; Damon & Hart, 1988). For varied reasons, some ways of defining oneself may dominate, or may be more important to a person than other ways, at different times in a person’s life. Or a particular story about oneself may dominate how a person constructs him-​ or herself. According to James (1890/​1983), self-​esteem, or how one judges oneself, hinges on self/​identity constituents that are particularly important to a person and appear to dominate for that person.

Psychological Processes  175 In addition, people may construct who they are in rather global or undifferentiated terms, as well as in relatively articulated or differentiated terms. That is, some self-​characteristics may be rather vague and dimly apprehended, whereas others are specific and clearly apprehended. For example, a person might say he is someone who values freedom but be at a loss to define freedom more specifically. When asked to describe themselves, young children are known to do so in terms of varied distinct characteristics, including physical characteristics, typical activities, and social relationships (Damon & Hart, 1988; Harter, 2012). However, when asked to elaborate on what those characteristics mean to them, they often respond vaguely that they do not know, or they explain in global terms that they just are that way. They do not typically articulate further details about themselves, and they also do not integrate or make connections among the self-​characteristics that they list. Constructing who one is can be part of action in different ways. For example, an obvious way of constructing who one is while acting would be when a person makes specific comments about him-​or herself. The specific comments could be in response to someone else who asks the person a question about their experience, or it could be in reaction to someone else’s comments about an issue. Or, a person might tell a narrative or story about him-​or herself at some social gathering. People may also write self-​ statements or narratives for varied and sundry reasons, from job applications to memoirs. From a narrative perspective, Bamberg distinguishes between small and big stories (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). He posits that people tell “small” stories about themselves to others as they go about their daily lives. Sometimes people write “big” stories or autobiographies, and people may tell “big” autobiographical stories about themselves when asked to do so by researchers. Identifying who one is can also occur in relatively subtle ways that do not involve clear claims about oneself. For example, imagine that someone goes to help a friend in need. The person helps the friend in part because they care about the friend. At the same time, helping a friend in need can be a way of identifying or defining oneself as a friend, as well as a way of expressing one’s values. Such self/​identity constructing may occur quite non-​consciously, but sometimes a person might think: “I am Marc’s friend. I value my friendship with Marc. Being a good friend means helping him. It is important to help people, one’s friends and others too.” Or, imagine that someone is emailing a friend, and after going on about her issues she writes, “How are you, what are

176  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action you up to? How is that sticky situation at work going? I was thinking about your predicament, and maybe you could try. . . .” Asking these questions and offering suggestions is a way of constructing and presenting herSELF as a caring friend to the other. This brief overview points to some complexities of how people go about actively constructing who they are as they act in relation to others. Thinking systematically about self/​identity constructing can be facilitated by conceptualizing it as a submode of action that is constituted by multiple and interrelated processes. More specifically, our task now is to conceptualize some of the ways in which self/​identity constructing involves individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

Individual Processes Clearly, individual processes are involved in self/​identity constructing because we are dealing with how an individual constructs and subjectively experiences him-​or herself. Individual processes include one’s self-​directed reflecting and ways of judging oneself in relation to values and goals. As such, self/​identity constructing is inseparable from thinking and feeling. In addition, part of a person’s subjective experience involves experiencing and constructing oneself in terms of continuity and change over time, distinctness and similarity to others, as well as agency and being acted upon. Agentive individual processes also constitute self/​identity as a person explicitly ponders and actively chooses ways of constructing who they are. For example, a person may actively set and pursue goals and life projects, or explicitly think about what she believes and values. In many cultures, adolescence and emerging adulthood are life phases in which young people engage in some explicit identity constructing by experimenting with and evaluating varied identity options, especially with respect to work, relationships, and worldview (Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1959/​1980). Self/​identity constructing is also constituted by individual processes as a person positions him-​or herself in particular ways while acting in relation to others (Bamberg, 2004a, 2004b; Korobov & Bamberg, 2004; Raggatt, 2007). In the example given earlier, a person is engaging in identity constructing by positioning himself as Marc’s friend. Narrative research on “small stories” points to how individuals position themselves by making claims about themselves through stories while engaging with others in varied circumstances

Psychological Processes  177 (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). From a dialogical perspective, self/​ identity constructing is understood as a partly individual process of engaging in private or imaginal dialogues from different self/​identity positions (Hermans, Kempen, & van Loon, 1992; Watkins, 2000/​2005). That is, one can take up different self/​identity positions and engage them in dialogue. For example, if someone is caught between different family roles, she can privately construct a dialogue between herself as sister and herself as daughter. In addition, by engaging in such dialogical self/​identity positioning, a person “can agree [with], disagree [with], understand, misunderstand, oppose, contradict, question, and even ridicule” varied self/​identity positions (Hermans et  al., 1992, p.  29). As a person takes up different self/​identity positions, imaginal dialogues can include one’s own voice, as well as others. Including others’ voices points to how individual processes are inseparable from social processes.

Social Processes Varied classic and contemporary approaches focus on how self/​identity constructing is socially constituted. Again, we can start with James (1890/​ 1983), who posited a social self and argued that “a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind” (pp. 281–​282). In addition and as noted earlier, people define themselves in terms of varied social constituents, such as social roles (e.g., partner, parent, sibling, professional), group participation (e.g., I  pick the books for my book club, I am on Team X), different specific relationships (e.g., I am friends with Emily, I get along well with Xavier), or relatively general social characteristics (e.g., I am shy, I tell people what I think). Also, social processes are involved insofar as what other people do can affect how one presents or positions oneself while acting in relation to them. Social processes further include constructing who one is in terms of considering others’ reactions to oneself. From a narrative perspective, people’s identity stories are not only populated by other people, they are constructed and told “with and among others” (Josselson & Hopkins, 2015, p. 223). Within the philosophical school of American Pragmatism (which includes William James), there is a long tradition of conceptualizing self/​identity as a social phenomenon. For example, George Herbert Mead (1934/​1962) conceptualized the self as an activity or process that involves taking the attitudes

178  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action of others and turning them on oneself. In doing so, a person can construct him-​or herself in terms of others’ perspectives. According to Mead, during development, children generalize the attitudes of specific others and come to construct who they are in terms of generalized or wider group attitudes. Self-​ consciousness or being conscious of oneself involves using others’ attitudes to think about oneself and thus emerges through and requires interacting with other people. Along similar lines, Charles Horton Cooley (1902) posited that others serve as mirrors through which one can see oneself as one imagines others do. These ways of constructing who one is involve interacting with other people directly, at least initially. However, they indicate that social processes are involved even when a person is figuring out who he or she is while alone and thinking about him-​or herself. That is, a person may be alone and thinking about what other people think of them. Earlier, we used the example of positioning oneself as a friend when consoling someone. Such positioning involves social processes because a person is positioning him-​or herself in relation to someone else whose action is contributing to what the person is doing. Social processes can also be involved in self/​identity constructing as a person is positioned by others. The ways in which others define someone through positioning can be accepted, resisted, and/​or rejected as a person constructs who they are, thus pointing to interrelations between social and individual processes. Examples of individuals who resist and subvert identity positioning by others abound throughout history and around the world, and they also illustrate some of the dynamics of the structuring of power and authority (Kirschner, 2015; Turiel, 2003). For example, in an Arab Druze community, adolescent and adult females acknowledge but criticize the dominant cultural view that women are subordinate to autonomous men (Turiel, 2003). People with Alzheimer’s disease may resent and reject being positioned by others as irrational or incoherent (Sabat, 2001). Interview research conducted in Belgium shows how disabled employees may accept some dominant cultural values about productivity while simultaneously resisting being positioned as less productive than able-​bodied employees (Jammaers, Zanoni, & Hardonk, 2016). Some employees constructed themselves through repositioning “by generating alternative meanings of productivity and projecting an identity of more productive workers” (p. 1376). In doing so, “disability is here highlighted, yet its negative evaluation is reversed into a positive one. Echoing the business case for diversity, speakers infuse disability with economic value and thus as a valuable asset for the organization” (p. 1376). For example, one study participant

Psychological Processes  179 explained that being hearing impaired enabled him to focus more effectively on his work because he is not distracted by noise, including ringing phones. Insofar as individuals are resisting culturally dominant identity positioning in these examples, as well as resisting how they are positioned by others, these examples illustrate interrelated social, individual, and cultural processes.

Cultural Processes So much of what has gone into the discussion of self/​identity constructing thus far involves cultural issues, including beliefs and values, language, social roles and wider group attitudes, and the structuring of power and authority. We now consider some of the many possible ways in which cultural processes constitute self/​identity constructing. Cultural meanings partly constitute self/​identity constructing insofar as self/​identity constructing includes defining who one is in terms of cultural beliefs and values, as well as positioning oneself in ways that reflect cultural beliefs and values. In addition, people define who they are in terms of goals and projects that reflect cultural meanings. What count as appropriate ways to construct oneself can vary across cultures, as well as within cultures. In some cultures, the very notion of pondering who one is may not be much of an issue if people identify who they are in terms of traditional values and practices and if they do not see alternatives or even know about alternatives. As cultures change, new opportunities for identity constructing may arise. For example, when cultural change occurs in relation to establishing formal schooling or introducing a cash economy, there will be opportunities to define oneself in terms of new social roles and ways of acting. These new ways of defining oneself may not emerge straightforwardly, as some may feel caught between old and new ways. It is not only the case that cultural change begets identity change, but identity change can also beget cultural change. In other words, cultural change and identity change are reciprocally related. For example, changing cultural conceptions of gender, race, and/​or sexuality may occur as people define themselves in terms of these issues in new ways. And people may define themselves in new ways as cultural conceptions of gender, race, and/​or sexuality change. As people define who they are in relation to dynamic cultural meanings, they may do so by accepting some wider cultural values and/​or by rejecting them. Either way, the point is that self/​identity construction does not occur

180  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action separately from cultural meanings. In addition, insofar as social roles and relationships are structured in culturally particular ways, social self/​identity constituents are partly culturally constituted. Some research also indicates that there are culturally particular ways of constructing oneself as continuous over time in the midst of ongoing personal change. For example, European-​ origin adolescents in Canada are likely to say that they are the same person over time because of some essential self-​characteristic(s) that remains permanent over time. In contrast, First Nation adolescents in Canada are likely to construct personal persistence through narratives in which “the various time-​slices that make up a biography are somehow stitched together by the fact that they are meaningful and understandable parts of a common chronology or personal narrative” (Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol, & Hallett, 2003, p. 37). Within cultures, people construct who they are in part through participating in cultural practices that provide opportunities for certain identities rather than others. Erikson (1959/​1980) argues that in order for adolescents to make their own identity choices, they have to be able to engage in “free role experimentation” (p.  120). For example, part of constructing oneself as a doctor or lawyer involves participating in medical practices or legal practices, such as going to medical school or law school. However, within particular cultures, not everyone necessarily experiences the same access to varied practices. Thus, there are both wider societal opportunities for and constraints on self/​identity constructing. The cultural organization of self/​identity constructing, including cultural opportunities for self/​identity constructing, can also be considered in terms of globalizing and localizing processes. With globalization, people around the world can come into contact with varied identity options. For some people, the variety of identity possibilities that comes with globalization can be exciting and personally enriching. But as discussed in Chapter 5, for some it can be a “cacophony of competing voices” (Gergen, 1991b, p.  140) that become sources of anguish and uncertainty (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007). Different people may deal with self/​identity anguish and uncertainty in different ways. Localizing processes provide one way of forging a coherent view of oneself in the midst of competing possibilities (Hermans & Dimaggio, 2007). That is, a person may take up one voice, associated with one cultural community and a particular way of being, to define who they are. In some cases, one localized way of defining oneself may be so dominant that other identity options are radically foreclosed.

Psychological Processes  181 Self/​identity constructing is partly culturally constituted through political institutions and practices whereby people are identified and positioned in particular ways. For example, claiming “Black lives matter” in the United States today represents a way of drawing attention to, as well as protesting and resisting, the ways in which African Americans are negatively identified and positioned within institutional practices, such as the criminal justice system. In August 2016, an American football player, Colin Kaepernick, refused to stand when the national anthem was played, as is the custom at American sporting events. Instead, he knelt on bended knee. In an interview with NFL Media, he explained: I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder. (Hauser, 2016)

By not standing, Kaepernick was resisting the identity positioning of dominant American institutional practices, especially police violence. But some saw what he did differently, and there has been much debate over whether not standing for the national anthem is a legitimate way of protesting problematic police policies. I am compelled to state that I support “taking a knee.” My personal opinion notwithstanding, the point here is that this kneeling illustrates how individuals can defy and resist a cultural and institutional history of identity positioning, as well as assert a different identity. As such, it also illustrates how individual and cultural processes are interrelated. And, bodily processes are clearly required for taking a knee, making for interrelations among individual, cultural, and bodily processes. Cultural tools and means also contribute to the structuring of self/​identity. Certainly, language is central to self/​identity constructing, as people make verbal claims about themselves and use language to express who they are. Identifying with a group can be achieved and expressed by wearing a shirt or cap with the group’s logo on it. Ethnic or national identity may be expressed through clothing, as well as by displaying visual symbols (e.g., flags), or through music. Other aspects of identity may also be expressed through clothing and music. Today, a great deal of self/​identity constructing occurs on the internet as people express and construct who they are on varied social media. As identity tools, social media also provide opportunities

182  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action for constructing who one is in relation to others who espouse particular perspectives on varied issues. Social media groups make it possible to create localized identity groups made up of people from around the world, pointing to a complex interplay between globalizing technology and localized self/​ identity constructing.

Bodily Processes With regard to some of the ways in which self/​identity constructing is embodied, it is instructive to think about infants. Clearly, infants do not ponder who they are, or tell stories about themselves, or position themselves in ways that express beliefs and values when acting in relation to others. Nevertheless, bodily processes are part of what allows some kind of self/​ identity constructing to get going from the get-​go (Butterworth, 1990; Pipp, 1990; Stern, 1985). For example, infants can be aware of themselves physically insofar as they can move in ways that provide sensory feedback, such as moving their arms and legs, as well as touching their heads and faces. When someone else touches a baby, the baby experiences a different kind of sensory feedback. Thus, babies can begin distinguishing themselves from others as well as experience themselves in relation to others. Beyond infancy, self/​identity constructing may be embodied in varied ways, from body piercing, to hair styling, to ashes on the forehead. A dancer constructs and expresses identity bodily, as do athletes, as do musicians. These forms of bodily self/​identity constructing are inseparable from cultural and social processes insofar as they reflect cultural meanings and are shared with others. Also beyond infancy, language plays a central role in human self/​ identity constructing, and as we have already discussed, language involves the body. Wilson (1998) argues that the hand is particularly crucial for defining who one is because our hands make so much of what we do possible. Based on interviews with people engaged in varied kinds of manual work, including musicians, jugglers, mechanics, and surgeons, he explains that “self-​definition . . . is not a passive process. Both literally and figuratively, it must be a hands-​on and hands-​in affair” (p. 14). Moreover, it is with their hands that people can construct and express themselves as distinct individuals by working creatively and in a unique way. For example, some painters are credited with creating new styles, and a surgeon might sew sutures in a

Psychological Processes  183 unique way. People express who they are as group members in varied bodily ways that include the hand, from secret handshakes to saluting. At one time in Germany, raising and stretching out one’s right arm at a 45-​degree angle was a way of expressing a particular cultural and political identity. Of course, some may have saluted in this way even if they did not identify with Nazism, to avoid trouble, and some may have saluted so as not to betray how they were resisting Nazism. These varied examples further point to how bodily processes are inseparable from individual, social, and cultural processes.

Environmental Processes For some, identity may be tied to land, thus taking us to environmental processes. Throughout history, people have identified with particular land areas and have fought battles to maintain residence on particular land areas that they view as important to defining who they are. And even after long periods of displacement, individuals and groups may try to reclaim land. Also with regard to environmental processes and identity, it is not surprising that many a good skier has come from parts of the world where there is snow, and perhaps you took to surfing because you live near the ocean. Of course, not everyone in California surfs or identifies as a surfer, and not all Austrians define themselves as skiers, and there is a Jamaican bobsled team. The point here is that physical environments differentially afford opportunities for action that constrain and enable different pathways of self/​identity constructing. Sometimes, wide open spaces may facilitate constructing oneself as a rugged individualist. It depends, of course, on the other constituent processes, and how they are interrelated for particular people as they go about their lives in all corners of the world. It is also important to consider that we make some aspects of the physical environments that co-​constitute self/​identity constructing. For example, people with varied physical challenges, including some forms of paralysis, may construct themselves as independent in specially designed physical environments.

Sensing and Perceiving Let us begin by identifying sensing and perceiving as active psychological processes that people DO and by using verbs to represent these processes,

184  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action as in to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, and to smell. In psychology, it is customary to distinguish between sensation and perception, or sensing and perceiving. Sensing refers to the physical processes that occur when we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell some object. Perceiving refers to the meaning that we give to some phenomenon that we sense. Thus, we perceive by, for example, identifying an object that we physically see, hear, touch, smell, and/​or taste as a ceramic bowl, a chair, a Beatles’ song, a Mozart concerto, a Picasso sculpture, a dessert, or a person whom we know. As we identify phenomena and engage with them, we may endow them with further meaning, such as a ceramic bowl that I worked really hard to make, my father’s chair, one of the few Beatles’ songs I do not like, someone’s favorite Mozart concerto, a Picasso sculpture that you saw and enjoyed with a friend at a museum, an Austrian chocolate delicacy that a family had when they were in Vienna, or a person whom you adore or revile. Sensing and perceiving are not only about physically apprehending objects; they are also about acting in relation to others. For example, acting in relation to others may involve looking at them or away from them. One can attentively look at and listen to someone, or vaguely listen to someone while looking at something else. That touch that you felt was the gentle touch of consoling, or the bear hug of greeting, and what you saw was the knowing look of shared understanding. An overview of the current conceptualization of sensing and perceiving can be found in Box 6.4.

Bodily Processes and Environmental Processes Clearly, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling involve bodily processes because they simply cannot occur without certain body parts. Touch certainly involves the body. In addition, there is a plethora of research on the physiological and neurological processes associated with seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. The frequencies of light and sound that we can see and hear are both enabled and constrained by human anatomy, neurology, and physiology. But that is not the whole story. Sensing and perceiving also clearly involve environmental processes insofar as people sense and perceive varied aspects of the physical environment. That sound you hear is the song of birds at dawn, or the pitter-​patter of rain on the roof, or the crashing of ocean waves. You see the birds taking flight on a crisp fall day, you see the rain accumulating in your fields, and you watch the ocean tides ebb and flow. You smell freshly cut grass, desert wild flowers,

Psychological Processes  185

Box 6.4  Conceptualizing Sensing and Perceiving













• People actively sense and perceive while acting in relation to others. • Sensing and perceiving develop. • Sensing and perceiving are constituted by –​ Individual processes—​individuals sense and perceive in particular and developmentally organized ways; people sense and perceive subjectively; people may agentively choose and decide how to perceive; people may sometimes agentively choose what to sense (e.g., I can avert my eyes, I can use earplugs). –​ Social processes—​people sense and perceive others in relation to whom they are acting; what others do may shape how someone senses and perceives. –​ Cultural processes—​what and how people sense and perceive reflect cultural meanings; sensing and perceiving may be defined differently in different cultures; sensing and perceiving are politically and economically organized (e.g., public policies about touching; noise ordinances); sensing and perceiving reflect the structuring of power and authority (e.g., using clothing colors and/​or styles to mark status). –​ Bodily processes—​without body parts and bodily processes sensing and perceiving would simply not be possible (e.g., you cannot see without eyes or visual processes). –​ Environmental processes—​people sense and perceive the physical environment.

or the exhaust of trucks on the highway. You feel the snow and cold on your hands, and you taste and feel the sweet berries that you are picking in the woods. Someone who knows his way around a forest may perceive danger at the sight of a fallen tree, but dismisses a howl in the distance as harmless. However, considering sensing and perceiving in relation to bodily and environmental processes is also not the whole story. According to the current theoretical approach, sensing and perceiving are taken to be constituted by the varied processes that are taken to constitute all psychological processes, as well as the wider whole of action. We now turn to considering how sensing and perceiving are constituted by individual, social, and cultural processes.

186  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Individual Processes Individual processes are involved in sensing and perceiving because individuals subjectively sense and perceive. When I look at an object, I know that I am the one who is looking, and I am the one shifting gaze and focusing on the object. I identify an object as blue or red, as large or small. And I know that I perceive that object as my father’s chair. Even a baby who does not know in this way is subjectively sensing and perceiving as they shift gaze and focus on objects. In addition, insofar as people endow the world with personal meaning, perceiving is partly an individualized affair. Perhaps a sound that is terribly onerous to me would not bother you. It might even be music to your ears. I have already explained what the bowl and chair that I see while I am working at my desk mean to me. For some people, certain sights, sounds, and smells—​from small French pastries to freshly cut grass—​may immediately remind them of past events or people, as well as how they feel about them. This example further points to interrelations among psychological processes, in this case, sensing, perceiving, thinking, and feeling. On the news recently, I listened to a 9/​11 first responder explain that he was unable to tolerate the smell of barbecue for several years after 9/​11 because it immediately reminded him of the burning smells from that day. Individual processes are further involved in perceiving because, as agents, people may try to change how they perceive varied aspects of the world. For example, someone might explicitly try to appreciate atonal music, despite years of disparaging it. In addition, a person can decide to shift gaze so as not to see something. It may be more difficult to individually regulate what one hears or smells, but it is possible to some extent in some circumstances. People can also explicitly decide and state who should or should not touch them, and where. Someone else may not respect such agency, but the point is that individual agentive processes are involved.

Social Processes Social processes are certainly involved in sensing and perceiving, because a person is sensing and perceiving other people while acting in relation to others. Thus, other people partly constitute what we sense and perceive. If we are not sure how to interpret what we are sensing, we may discuss it with

Psychological Processes  187 others to identify it as a bird, or a plane, or Superman. Discussing what is being sensed with others can also enable someone to perceive some aspect of the world differently. Maybe you hear country music differently now because of discussing it with a particular person after a concert you went to together.

Cultural Processes If perceiving is defined as the meaning that we give to phenomena that we apprehend physically, then cultural processes are most certainly involved in sensing and perceiving, because meaning is so very cultural and so integral to cultural processes. The goal now is to consider some of the ways in which people see, hear, smell, taste, and touch in culturally constituted ways. What and how people see, hear, taste, and touch reflect cultural values, standards, and guidelines for action in varied ways, including what people consider to be appropriate to see, hear, taste, and touch. The ways in which people look, listen, and touch also reflect cultural values, standards, and guidelines for action. For example, in some cultures, eye contact is central to social interaction and may be considered a sign of respect and honesty. However, in some cultures, people are not supposed to look each other in the eye. For example, traditionally among the Navajo Indians, not looking someone in the eye was a way of expressing respect for individual autonomy (Chisholm, 1996). Classic research on human development indicates that engaging with babies and young children visually may be quite typical among Western middle-​class parents. However, among the Gusii of Kenya, in the 1970s and 1980s, mothers rarely engaged babies in face-​to-​face interaction, preferring to hold them and to respond to them through touch (Dixon, Tronick, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1981; LeVine, 2004; LeVine et al., 1994/​1998). With regard to what people consider to be appropriate to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, one can ask, how much of the body should be covered up or exposed? Should women be more covered than men? Within and across cultures, are there different ideas about what counts as scantily clad? Should children be seen and not heard, and what should children themselves see and hear? Research suggests that these last two questions would be answered differently in different cultures insofar as there are cultural differences in children’s access to and participation in adult activities (Rogoff, 2003). Who can touch whom and where are also culturally constituted. In addition, ideas about these issues have changed historically around the world, pointing

188  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action to how sensing and perceiving are dynamic and historically situated processes. Taken together, even though there may be some common or universal aspects of human sensing and perceiving, they are not necessarily particularized in action in the same way for all people for all time. In addition to being organized in relation to dynamic cultural meanings, what even counts as sensing and perceiving may be different in different cultures, as well as different within cultures over time (Geurts, 2002; Howes & Classen, 2014). Defining sensing and perceiving in terms of “the” five distinct and separate senses that we have been discussing in this section thus far is common among Westerners today, but it does not necessarily adequately characterize how people understood sensing and perceiving in the past. One historical difference is that what are taken to be separate senses in some cultures today were treated holistically in the past, and various objects that would be treated mostly visually in some cultures today were valued for varied sensory qualities. For example, before industrialization, the artist was a craftsman (or woman) and craftwork was appreciated by how it felt, as well as by how it looked. The intricately carved wood-​and stonework of the Middle Ages speaks of this emphasis on tactile values. Paintings, as visually-​oriented as they seem to us today, also partook of this hands-​on culture. In fact, many paintings decorated objects that were meant to be handled, such as books and chests. . . . Furthermore, in an era in which colours were attributed healing properties and in which brightly-​ dyed cloths were often expensive and rare, the rich colouring of paintings had a strong tactile appeal. People wanted hands-​on contact with luxurious and powerful hues. Touching religious images—​which constituted a large part of premodern art—​seemed to provide physical contact with the divine. (Howes & Classen, 2014, pp. 17–​18)

Even though we may separate the senses to analyze them, they co-​occur as people go about their lives in all corners of the world. Maybe you have a favorite mug. What makes it your favorite? It probably holds the amount of whatever beverage you want to drink, but maybe it is appealing to look at, and maybe it feels just right in your hand. In addition, varied objects can serve varied functions, including varied sensory ones. For example, someone might display bowls and vases even when they are not being used to contain

Psychological Processes  189 soup or flowers because they are pleasing to look at or to touch. You can also listen to them if you tap them in various places. You thus see, feel, and listen to them simultaneously. I  recently watched a cooking show on television in which a judge was very excited about how the crunchiness of one dish sounded. He claimed that the sound enhanced the eating experience, and he wished there was a microphone in his mouth so that the television audience could hear what he was hearing while he was eating. Food not only tastes good and smells good; it can sound good, too. And some people find some food textures more or less appealing. Eating thus engages varied senses simultaneously. Treating ways of sensing as connected processes was quite the norm in varied cultures in the past and continues to be culturally valued in varied cultures today. For example, sound–​smell and color–​smell associations are typical in some cultures. In some cultural communities in Papua New Guinea “one speaks of ‘hearing an odour’ ” (Howes & Classen, 2014, p. 167). Howes and Classen posit that this association may be derived from the concrete experience of hearing and smelling people during social interaction, and because “odoriferous substances (e.g., anointing the body with aromatic oil, chewing ginger) are used to augment the power of a person’s presence and words” (Howes & Classen, 2014, pp. 167–​168). The cultural structuring of sensing and perceiving further encompasses issues of power and authority, as well as political processes. As Howes and Classen (2014) point out, clothes of different colors and styles are visual “ways of marking group distinctions such as gender, class, ethnicity, and occupation. Such systems of sensory classification are fundamental to upholding social divisions and hierarchies” (p. 66). Such sensory classification, as well as ways of sensing and perceiving have included maintaining inequitable social divisions. For example, in Nazi Germany, Jews were identified visually with a yellow Star of David. Smells and sounds may be associated with different groups of people and may also serve as a way to deem some groups acceptable or unacceptable. In the United States, under Jim Crow, a Black man looking at a White woman could have serious repercussions. Examples abound. The point here is that sensing and perceiving have been used in the cultural structuring of power and authority. Sensing and perceiving have also been politically organized, including in problematic ways that perpetuate social inequities.

190  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Sensing and perceiving are also inseparable from economic processes as products are advertised and marketed in ways that are taken to be perceptually appealing. In doing so, certain visual images are often immediately associated with certain products, as are catchy tunes. It is interesting to note that sometimes advertisers make use of connections among the senses. For example, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies can be recognized by how they look and taste, as well as by how they sound: Snap, crackle, pop! Economically, it is in the interest of the multibillion-​dollar cosmetics industry to continuously promulgate the claim that women look better with makeup than without it. Of course, individuals can resist and counter this claim, pointing to interrelations between individual and cultural processes in constituting sensing and perceiving. Sensing and perceiving are also inseparable from ideas about beauty, which are culturally organized. Not only is beauty in the eye of the beholder, it is in the eye of the culture. We could also say that beauty is in the eye, ear, palate, and nose of the culture. As such, a good smell in one culture may be malodorous in another. What makes some string of sounds beautiful music and not terrible noise? What makes some spots of paint on a canvas art? Can women look good without makeup? The answers to such questions are multifaceted and compounded by historically changing cultural conceptions of beauty. Indeed, many an artist who was reviled during their lifetime may be highly regarded posthumously or vice versa. And the standards of visual beauty reflected in the voluptuous female figures that populate Baroque paintings have been replaced by the supermodel standards of today.

Interacting with Others Clearly action, which is shorthand for acting in relation to others, involves interacting with others. Some readers may even be wondering if acting in relation to others is just a fancy way of saying interacting with others. Maybe some are even questioning the utility of the action construct when interacting seems to suffice. To address these concerns, I start by going back to the point that it depends on how varied aspects of human functioning are conceptualized and how varied terms are conceptualized.

Psychological Processes  191 Thus, to think systematically about varied complex constituents of what people do, I am using different terms and conceptualizing them in ways that hopefully enable us to distinguish among them in useful ways. Also, to address these concerns, it is important to reiterate that human functioning is fluid and fluctuating, and that we are dealing with dynamic and entangled processes that do not always have clear boundaries. The current conceptualization involves conceptualizing what people do by accounting for some of the ways in which action constituents are distinct as well as utterly interrelated. More specifically, action or acting in relation to others is currently being conceptualized as a wider whole that encompasses interacting with others, but it is not equivalent to interacting with others because action involves other psychological processes as well. In this chapter thus far, we have conceptualized thinking, feeling, self/​identity, and sensing and perceiving as psychological processes that comprise the wider whole of action (along with other psychological processes, too numerous to consider in one chapter). In addition, acting and interacting are not conceptually equivalent because different modes of acting may involve different ways of interacting with particular others. For example, both consoling and arguing involve interacting with other people, but the structuring of interacting is taken to be different for these different modes of action, and interacting may be connected to other psychological processes in different ways for these modes of action. Moreover, one can interact in different specific ways to achieve consoling and arguing. In addition, acting in relation to others and interacting are not equivalent because (as pointed out in Chapter 5) acting does not always involve interacting directly with others. That is, even when a person is alone, they may be acting in relation to others, but not actually interacting with the others. Our task once again is to conceptualize interacting with others in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. By now, I trust that readers get the point and can conceptualize any psychological process as a submode of action and in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. To avoid belaboring the point, the upcoming discussion of interacting will be relatively brief. An overview of the current conceptualization of interacting with others can be found in Box 6.5.

192  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 6.5  Conceptualizing Interacting with Others













• People actively interact with others while acting in relation to others. • Interacting with others develops. • Interacting with others is constituted by –​ Individual processes—​individuals interact in particular and developmentally organized ways; people may agentively decide and choose how to interact. –​ Social processes—​how someone interacts with others depends on what those others are doing. –​ Cultural processes—​ interacting reflects dynamic cultural meanings; interacting reflects and expresses wider societal processes; interacting reflects the structuring of power and authority. –​ Bodily processes—​interacting is embodied (e.g., moving toward and away from others; facial expression; eye contact). –​ Environmental processes—​interacting is particularized in particular physical environmental circumstances (e.g., temperature, noise, climate change).

Social Processes Interacting with others obviously involves social processes insofar as how someone interacts with others depends in part on what those others are doing. For example, others may be challenging or encouraging you, teasing or shaming you, chastising or questioning you, staring at you intently or turning away from you. Clearly, what others are doing can occur in too many varied ways to possibly list here. The ways in which people contribute to each other’s ways of interacting can be difficult to pinpoint because what each person is doing toward the other is quick, ongoing, and simultaneous. Sometimes we may describe what people are doing toward each other in mechanistic stimulus-​then-​response terms, as in “He accused her of X. And that made her mad, so she said Y. And then he tried to go back on what he said.” However, she may have been getting mad while he was talking, by frowning, shaking her head, and saying, “But, wait. No.” And while she was doing that, he used a softer tone and acknowledged that maybe she was having a rough day. Of course, sometimes what someone does seems to set someone else off. The person is set off and responds in anger, and the first person responds

Psychological Processes  193 to that, and how they are interacting seems to go on in a tit-​for-​tat way. Indeed, when people take turns, conversing seems to proceed in a mechanistic stimulus-​then-​response kind of way. However, that is not the whole story. Based on analyses of mothers and infants interacting, Stern (1977) argues that understanding interacting in terms of a “stimulus-​response chain” (p. 85) is one way of thinking about how people interact and influence each other that sometimes and partly enables us to understand what people are doing. However, it does not always illuminate what people are doing, because “events as we find them are not so orderly” (Stern, 1977, p. 85). For example, often “during an episode of engagement, mother and infant behaviors overlap” (Stern, 1977, p. 85). Even when taking turns in a conversation, all the people are still acting, even when someone else has the floor. In other words: At any one time, the acts of partner A cannot be taken as the stimuli for the subsequent acts of partner B because there is continuous anticipation on the part of both, continuous adjustment on the part of both, and continuous integration of the many aspects of both of their activities. (Užgiris, 1989, p. 297)

As such, how they are interacting is “continuously mutually constructed” (Užgiris, 1989, p. 290). The people are interacting at the same time, and each person is contributing to how the other is interacting at the same time.

Individual Processes Interacting also includes individual processes, such as the specific content of what someone says, tone of voice, and the way the person is physically oriented toward the other, all of which can occur both consciously and non-​consciously. For example, sometimes we agentively regulate how we interact with others by carefully choosing our words, and sometimes we wonder how or why in the world some words came out of our mouths. Pointing to interrelations between interacting and feeling, a person may regulate how they are expressing emotion while interacting with others by, for example, not lashing out in anger. Individual processes are also implicated in interacting insofar as a person may engage with others in some typical ways. As people interact, we may describe and understand what each person is doing toward the other with different adjectives and adverbs. For example, this person treated the other brusquely

194  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and impolitely, while another person was friendly and forthcoming, and yet someone else was reticent and guarded. Using such adjectives to characterize how someone is interacting is a way of identifying what individuals do to contribute to the structuring of how they are interacting with others.

Cultural Processes Insofar as interacting with others includes what people say, how they take turns, and how they address each other, cultural processes are involved because these and other aspects of interacting reflect cultural values, standards, and guidelines for action. For example, while boundaries between formal and informal interacting may be rather vague in some cultures, clearly distinguishing between formal and informal interacting is standard in other cultures. In Japan, people distinguish between outer or public and inner or private contexts (Bachnik, 1992/​1995; Doi, 1985/​1988; Hendry, 1986; Rosenberger, 2001; Tobin, 1992/​1995). School and work contexts are outer/​ public contexts where people tend to communicate formally and indirectly, to avoid overt conflict. In private/​inner contexts, at home and among friends, people tend to express themselves directly with informal language. These different interacting patterns also co-​occur. Tobin (1992/​1995) explains that people learn to alternate between inner and outer ways of interacting even in the course of a single conversation, or indeed, even in the midst of a single phrase, as a slight wink of an eye or a change in the level of politeness of a verb ending suddenly signals a slight but crucial warming up or cooling down of relations (p. 24).

As noted in the earlier section on sensing and perceiving, eye contact while interacting is structured in culturally particular ways and reflects cultural values. Interacting with others also involves a wide range of cultural tools, notably language, both oral and written. Today, interacting with others is mediated by ever-​changing electronic and internet technologies, from email, to social media, to texting. Interacting with others is further constituted by wider societal processes. For example, people of varying socioeconomic circumstances may interact in some different ways. Also with regard to wider societal processes, the ways in which people interact is partly constituted by the structuring of power and authority. For example, a person in power may yell at a subordinate who

Psychological Processes  195 looks down and quietly apologizes. Sometimes, a subordinate may try to resist this arrangement of power and authority, pointing to interrelations between cultural and individual processes. Social processes are involved here as well insofar as each person is partly constituting what the other does. In addition, looking down takes us to bodily processes.

Bodily Processes Bodily processes are involved in interacting in innumerable ways. Again, language plays a central role, and we have already considered how language involves the body. As just pointed out, eye contact is important to interacting in some cultures but avoided in others. A person’s heart rate might go up when they are interacting with particular other people. Interacting with others also involves facial expression. We can move toward and away from people when we interact. From handshaking to hugging, and from smiling to frowning, we use our bodies in varied ways when we interact.

Environmental Processes And, finally, environmental processes also partly constitute how people interact. For example, as noted earlier, tempers may flare when it is hot, and, on average, incidents of aggression and violence tend to rise as temperatures rise. Clearly, aggression and violence refer to action that involves interacting with others in particular ways. In the harsh physical environment of Ifaluk, people cooperate consistently, yet at the same time on the small island it may be difficult to avoid interpersonal conflict (Lutz, 1988). Interacting with others in noisy environments may also be contrasted to the structuring of interpersonal interacting when it is quiet. Particular patterns of interacting with others may emerge during natural disasters, as well as during the course of ongoing climate change, as people cooperate toward common goals and as they engage in conflict over resources.

Systemic Connections In this chapter, we have conceptualized action in terms of psychological processes that are constituted by simultaneously occurring and interrelated

196  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. To reiterate, psychological processes refer to interrelated submodes of action that comprise or make up wider modes of action. It is not so much that they occur and affect action, but that together they are action. As an analogy, we can say that brownies are not so much affected by chocolate, but that they are chocolate (and some other ingredients as well). At the same time, however, the wider whole of action is different from each of the psychological processes that comprise action. Insofar as psychological processes are subconstituents of acting, they, too, are constituted by interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. By conceptualizing psychological processes in these ways, we have theoretical tools that enable us to think systematically about distinct and interrelated processes. As system constituents, ongoing psychological processes are taken to be interrelated in varied ways. Due to such part–​part interrelations, it has been impossible to conceptualize psychological processes in total isolation, and some possible connections among some psychological processes were mentioned. In addition, although varied psychological processes have been conceptualized rather generically here, the way they are organized more specifically enables different modes of action to emerge. As such, there are part–​whole connections as the psychological processes comprise wider modes of action. Moreover, as a person is acting, the structuring of psychological processes depends in part on the mode of action they are temporarily comprising. In other words, there are also whole–​part connections insofar as the wider mode of action shapes the way psychological processes are structured. For example, thinking, feeling, and interacting may be structured differently when you are consoling someone than when you are arguing with someone. As was the case when we discussed constitutive processes, we are dealing here with circular causality, or ongoing and reciprocal influences between parts and wholes (Witherington, 2011, 2017). As always, there is some strangeness here in the form of fuzzy boundaries and overlapping roles in action. Right now, I am particularly vexed by some strangeness regarding bodily processes. Thus far, I have mostly been thinking about bodily processes as constitutive processes. That is, bodily processes are being conceptualized as one of several processes that constitute the wider whole of action, as well as the varied psychological processes that comprise action. However, within the flux and flow of action, bodily processes also comprise action, just as what I am referring to as psychological processes do. In addition, some bodily processes also develop, as psychological processes

Psychological Processes  197 do. For example, walking partly comprises action insofar as people walk toward and away from each other. And walking develops. In this chapter, we have also mentioned dancing and playing sports, which clearly involve moving physically and which develop. The question thus arises: Is moving physically part of bodily processes or is it a psychological process? It can be both. When considering particular instances of someone acting, we can take care to specify the ways in which bodily processes may be both constituting and comprising action. From a systems perspective, psychological processes are being conceptualized as co-​occurring constituents of action, and action is not located in any one process alone. It is also important to reiterate that the psychological processes discussed here are not taken to be the only psychological processes that comprise action. I cannot even fathom coming up with an exhaustive list of psychological processes because they are dynamic processes that can be difficult to pin down. They can also be identified, sliced, and defined in varied ways. In addition, not all possible psychological processes are necessarily involved in all modes of action all the time. For example, as explained earlier, acting in relation to others does not always involve interacting directly with others. We can also recognize that as people act within the flux and flow of complex lives, one or a few psychological processes may seem dominant. At times, it might seem quite adequate to describe and explain how a person is acting in terms of one or another psychological process. For example, perhaps you know someone who seems to be constructing herself in terms of one relationship, and that seems to be dominating all that she does. Or, let us go back to Gabriel who, at the beginning of this chapter was staring up at the ceiling. Sensing and perceiving the ceiling do not seem so central to what he was doing, but thinking in the form of comparing and contrasting colleges does. Nevertheless, according to the current theoretical framework, other psychological processes may be lurking, and are part of what the person is doing, as a wider whole. The idea of background general emotion is compatible with this point because it indicates how feeling is involved even when a person is not feeling particularly emotional or is not clearly expressing an identifiable emotion. The analytic goal would be to discern how varied psychological processes are structured and organized as distinct processes, as well as in relation to each other. Conceptualizing action processes as interrelated leads to focusing on how they mutually influence each other, rather than how much they contribute.

198  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action When we analyze action, or try to make sense of what someone is doing, we cannot help but isolate a moment of action. And in that moment, one or another process may seem dominant or salient, and for some purposes it may be useful to focus on one or another process. But action is ongoing, and the current theoretical approach leads to also thinking about a moment of action within a wider flowing and fluctuating whole. Along similar lines, sometimes we want to address a particular aspect of a person’s action. Focusing on emotion, we might ask, Why did he get so angry? or What did she do to regulate how she was feeling? Or, using the identity example just mentioned, you might describe what someone did in terms of an identity constituent that seems to characterize so much of what the person does. Nevertheless, from a systems perspective, we are also led to thinking about how varied processes are structured in different ways as constituents of different wider modes of action in different circumstances. Thus, we can always ask: What else is going on? More specifically, what was the wider action whole in which he got angry, what is the wider action whole in which she defines herself in this way? What other psychological processes are involved? How are they constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes? The same goes for any psychological process. What is the wider action whole in which any psychological process is being played out? What other psychological processes are involved? How are they constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes?

7 Developmental Processes Human beings are not born able to engage in the complex modes of action listed at the beginning of Chapter 4 or discussed anywhere else in this book. Action certainly develops, as do the psychological processes that comprise it. Human development is complex and messy, and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve into great detail about development. I have done so previously (Raeff, 2011, 2016), and as noted in the Introduction, this book elaborates the notion of action that I began articulating in an earlier book on development. My goal now is to provide an overview of some basic developmental processes that are applicable to action in general and that are relevant to varied topics in psychology. Basic developmental processes include the process of what happens during development and the process of how development happens.

What Happens during Development? To conceptualize what happens during development, we once again start with action from a systems perspective. As noted toward the end of Chapter 4, open living systems can undergo development when new forms of system functioning emerge through reorganizing system parts. In other words, development involves new modes of functioning that reflect changes in how system constituents are structured. When applied to action, a systems conceptualization of development means that the development of action involves the emergence of new modes of action, and new modes of action emerge when system constituents are structured in different ways. Although we are now using the terminology of systems theory to begin conceptualizing development, it all still seems rather vague and I am left wondering if all new modes of action count as development. Is it development when someone shows signs of Alzheimer’s disease? Is it development when an adolescent joins a gang? Is it development when a child masters the ABCs? Is Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

200  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action it development when people get married and then divorced? Is it development when someone makes a new friend? Is it development when somebody changes how they judge a situation? Is it development when a person retires? I  suspect that you answered “yes” to some questions, “no” to others, and “maybe” to some as well. Perhaps the term development should be limited to certain kinds of changes that occur as people go about the flux and flow of their lives in all corners of the world. In what new or different ways, more specifically, are system constituents structured during development? To deal with these issues, I  turn to organismic-​developmental theory, which is based on process-​ relational metatheoretical assumptions. It provides theoretical criteria for identifying developmental change that are more specific than any change over time or any new form of functioning (Kaplan, 1967, 1983a, 1983b, 1986; Werner, 1940/​1980; Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984). Yet, they are also flexible and applicable to a wide range of phenomena, including human action. According to organismic-​developmental theory, development refers to changes that involve differentiation and integration. When applied to action, development involves the emergence of new ways of acting that are increasingly differentiated and integrated relative to previous action. Organismic-​developmental theory also emphasizes the point that development occurs in relation to cultural goals, standards, and expectations. As Kaplan (1986) explains: Different sociocultural groups may have different notions as to what constitutes ideal human development. . . . It is human beings who introduce teloi and values and construe development in terms of such teloi and values. . . Now if teloi are “culture relative” or “culture bound,” and claims about the development of some aspect of human functioning or human functioning itself depend on the teloi, then it makes no sense to speak of development tout court or to assume a priori that human development is everywhere the same. Any change in the telos, or the order of value of the teloi, will entail different developmental sequences and different interpretations and evaluations of what human beings are doing. (pp. 92–​93)

From an organismic-​developmental perspective, development encompasses common processes that can be individualized, as well as played out in culturally and historically particular ways. Before getting into differentiation and integration, let us take up issues of developmental goals, standards, and expectations.

Developmental Processes  201

Developmental Goals, Standards, and Expectations Cultural meanings include cultural conceptions of and expectations for human development. Perhaps you answered “no” to some of the questions just posed about whether some changes are developmental changes, because they do not seem to be changes for the better, and they are not in keeping with some cultural expectations for development. For example, I  imagine that many readers would agree that showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease is problematic and not a change for the better. However, even dementia is constructed in relation to cultural meanings, and in India “the forgetful aged are far less likely [than Westerners] to attract a diagnosis of dementia” (Hashmi, 2009, p.  210). In the United States, it is perfectly acceptable for adolescents to join and participate in all kinds of groups, but joining a gang is fraught with problems. Yet, for some youth, gangs offer social connectedness, financial resources, status, and protection. Although change for the better is not always straightforward to discern, the word development implies that some kind of progress is occurring, thus providing a starting point for distinguishing between development and any change that may occur as a person gets older. Conceptions of development and developmental goals are understood here as part of the cultural meanings that constitute action (which are part of cultural processes, as discussed in Chapter 5). In Chapter 6, we encountered fago, the Ifaluk emotion that combines compassion, love, and sadness. Lutz (1988) explains that for the Ifaluk, being able to experience fago is seen as one of the central characteristics of the mature person. The paramount importance of the concept of fago to Ifaluk life and culture is reflected in the fact that it is perhaps the ultimate quality of good people and competent adults. (p. 140)

In Chapter 6, we also encountered the Japanese distinction between outer/​ public and inner/​private contexts. In Japanese, “omote-​muki refers to that which is public, open, official; ura-​muki suggests something private, closed, personal” (Doi, 1985/​1988, p. 23). In terms of cultural goals of lifespan development, “to be Japanese is to be aware of the fact that things have an omote and an ura, and a person is not considered to be an adult until he or she has grasped this distinction” (Doi, 1985/​1988, p. 33). These examples of cultural goals of development indicate that development is neither predetermined

202  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action nor innate. They also show that development does not involve only developing toward universal goals of development, given in nature for all people for all time. In addition, as with any cultural meanings, developmental goals can be stated explicitly and pursued consciously, but they also often go unstated and are implicit in how people act. Not only may goals of development differ across cultures, they may differ within cultures as well. Indeed, as is the case with any cultural meanings, they are highly contested phenomena. There can be within-​culture disagreement about goals of development, in part because they are also individual phenomena or partly constituted by individual processes. For example, individuals can resist and reject cultural expectations. In addition, goals of development include individual conceptions of and expectations for development, and one person’s developmental aspirations can be another person’s worst nightmare. For some people, retirement is bleak and they are at a loss, but for others, retiring is wonderful. People do not typically get married in order to experience divorce, and thus divorce is not typically viewed as a change for the better. However, it is not so simple. People get divorced for all kinds of reasons, including to improve their lives in some way. Individual conceptions of developmental goals may sometimes be vague, unarticulated, and dimly apprehended, but sometimes people very explicitly or consciously set developmental goals for themselves and strive to achieve them. Conceptualizing development in terms of individual goals is another way in which development is not being conceptualized here as naturally or universally predetermined.

Differentiation and Integration As already pointed out, not all changes are necessarily developmental changes, and therefore it is useful to conceptualize development in terms of more specific criteria. Conceptualizing development in terms of progress toward goals of development is a step in that direction, but it is still rather vague regarding the types of changes that count as developmental changes. According to what is known within organismic-​developmental theory as the orthogenetic principle, development involves changing “from a state of relative globality and undifferentiatedness towards states of increasing differentiation and hierarchic integration” (Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984, p. 7). When applied to action, development involves increasing differentiation and

Developmental Processes  203 integration within and across action constituents, such as the psychological processes that comprise wider modes of action. If action constituents are differentiated, it means that they are becoming increasingly distinct and refined. If action constituents are integrated, it means that they are becoming increasingly coordinated with each other. Hierarchic integration also means that earlier ways of acting do not necessarily disappear during development but are integrated as constituents of new ways of acting. The development of varied action processes can be understood in terms of differentiation and integration. According to Piaget, cognitive development proceeds through four stages during infancy, childhood, and adolescence, namely the sensorimotor, pre-​operational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. Piaget (1954/​1986) pointed out that the “global transformations” of cognitive development “gradually denote the existence of a sort of law of evolution which can be phrased as follows: assimilation and accommodation proceed from a state of chaotic undifferentiation to a state of differentiation with correlative coordination” (p. 397). For example, during the sensorimotor stage, infants differentiate objects from their own sensorimotor activity, and both differentiate and integrate varied means for solving problems. In addition, schemes for engaging with physical objects and human beings are differentiated, as well as integrated in ways that enable infants to interact with others about a common topic. As children progress from the pre-​operational stage to the concrete operational stage, they increasingly differentiate among and integrate varied dimensions of a situation, and also increasingly differentiate among and integrate their own and others’ perspectives. Throughout cognitive development, earlier modes of thinking do not disappear but are integrated with modes of thinking that develop later. For example, sensorimotor thinking remains wholly part of later abstract and logical thinking (the formal operational stage in Piaget’s theory). Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 6, abstract thinking is metaphorically grounded in sensorimotor activity. With increasing differentiation and integration, action also tends to be relatively articulated, stable, and flexible, in comparison to less developed action that is relatively global, labile, and rigid (Werner, 1940/​1980). For example, consoling another person involves differentiating one’s own perspective from the other person’s perspective, as well as differentiating and integrating varied possible means to console the other person. Effective consoling also involves differentiating among and integrating means to console differentiated people based on their differing perspectives and in relation

204  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action to their particular circumstances. Developed consoling would also include being able to use varied means flexibly to console a particular person as well as different people. Around the world, people greet and take leave of each other in culturally particular ways that develop. Although specific pathways of development will vary culturally and individually, the development of greeting may involve differentiating ways of greeting in relatively formal and informal contexts, as well as flexibly differentiating articulated ways of greeting people with whom one has different relationships. In different contexts, you might even greet the same person differently. Greeting also involves differentiating and integrating varied means to accomplish greeting, such as smiling, saying particular words, handshaking, hugging, kissing, and/​or backslapping. The development of leave-​taking can also be understood developmentally in terms of differentiation and integration. In her detailed observations of her grandson’s development, Shatz (1994) describes a scene in which the family was leaving a restaurant. Her 17–​18-​month-​old grandson stopped at each table and said goodbye to the other customers. In this case, he approached leave-​taking globally and had yet to differentiate among people and leave-​ taking contexts, in a culture where one does not typically interact with other restaurant customers whom one does not know.

Developmental Variability Another key claim of organismic-​developmental theory is that action and development are dynamic and can be characterized in terms of variability (Werner & Kaplan, 1956/​1978). Developmental variability means that a person’s action can be organized in more or less developed ways at the same time but in different contexts that are populated by different people, as well as in relation to different conditions, such as hunger or fatigue. Along similar lines, Vygotsky (1978) posited a zone of proximal development, which refers to ways of acting that a person can achieve with support and guidance from someone else, in contrast to how the person acts on their own in the zone of actual development. There is thus developmental variability as a person sometimes engages in less developed modes of action than they may be capable of (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Mascolo & Fischer, 2010, 2015; van Geert & Fischer, 2009; Yan & Fischer, 2002, 2007). In a nutshell, we are not always at our best. Classic research shows that preschool children in the United States and England reason and compromise “more frequently in disputes with their

Developmental Processes  205 friends than they do with their siblings, or with children about whom they do not much care” (Dunn, 2004, p. 37). Variability is also evident during development because development does not always occur linearly from one stage to the next. In other words, there is variability during development because a person’s functioning sometimes deteriorates or regresses before progress occurs (Fischer, & Bidell, 2006; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015; Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996; van Geert & van Dijk, 2002; Yan & Fischer, 2002, 2007). Such variability is not unusual insofar as differentiation and integration involve reorganizing action. The sometimes difficult dynamic process of reorganizing can include dismantling ways of acting before action constituents can be differentiated and integrated into new ways of acting (Kaplan, Josephs, & Bhatia, 2005; Wapner & Demick, 2005; Werner, 1957).

Macrodevelopment and Microdevelopment Development is further complicated because it occurs both macro­ developmentally and microdevelopmentally. Microdevelopment refers to development within specific contexts over relatively short periods of time (e.g., minutes, hours, days), and macrodevelopment refers to the development of generalized abilities across contexts over longer periods of time (e.g., months, years) (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). A  classic example of macrodevelopment can be found in the four stages of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Those four stages span infancy, childhood, and adolescence and are understood as ways of understanding the world that are generalizable across contexts. However, it is important to point out that Piaget also conducted microdevelopmental analyses of cognitive development. For example, his ideas about sensorimotor development are based on incredibly detailed minute-​by-​minute observations of his own three children when they were infants that continue to serve as rich examples of microdevelopment. In earlier sections of this book, there are examples of action that can develop in specific contexts and over short periods of time. For example, in the Chapter 6 discussion of feeling, we considered that initially, a person may judge a situation rather globally, and then begin to judge the situation more specifically, or vice versa. In some situations, changing how one judges what is going on may take place over the course of minutes, hours, or a few days.

206  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action In addition, if the change is from global to specific, it suggests that feeling is undergoing differentiation and also becoming more articulated. Insofar as one can judge a situation in terms of varied emotions simultaneously, it is possible that a person can differentiate among and integrate varied ways of judging what is going on. There may also be microdevelopmental variability as a person oscillates between more and less developed ways of judging a situation. Of course, not everyone necessarily always undergoes this kind of developmental process when judging what is going on. The point here is that the current conceptualization of development provides theoretical tools for thinking about microdevelopmental changes. In the Chapter 6 section on thinking, legal decision-​making was mentioned as an example of how cultural institutional processes constitute thinking. Over the course of hours and days, a juror’s legal thinking can undergo microdevelopment as the person increasingly differentiates among and integrates different types and sources of evidence. A person can also increasingly differentiate among and integrate different parts of an alleged crime. Insofar as such thinking occurs as the person is acting in relation to others on a jury, acting in relation to others could also be analyzed microdevelopmentally. That is, do people’s ways of acting in relation to other jurors develop over the course of a few hours or days of jury duty? People may experience microdevelopment as they cope with any kind of crisis situation, as well as with critical life transitions (Wapner, 2000; Wapner & Demick, 2005). Of course, some crises and transitions extend over longer periods of time, suggesting that people can undergo both microdevelopment and macrodevelopment and that there can be an interplay between microdevelopment and macrodevelopment (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). Part of what makes some crisis situations crises is that they present a person with unfamiliar or even wholly unknown problems to resolve. Dealing with such crises may thus involve figuring out new ways of acting in order to resolve the problems, as well as to transform the context in which the problems initially arose (Stetsenko, 2015). And figuring out new ways of acting develops, or at least can potentially develop. For example, a person may initially react to a crisis globally and subsequently develop ways of flexibly differentiating among and integrating varied means and solutions to cope effectively with the crisis. Insofar as a person’s current ways of acting do not meet the demands of the new situation, they may have to be dismantled before action can be reorganized into new ways of acting that enable the person to cope with the crisis. The current conceptualization of development thus provides

Developmental Processes  207 theoretical tools for discerning if, and in what ways, people develop as they cope with crises and transitions.

How Does Action Develop? Thinking systematically about the development of action also involves addressing the issue of how action develops. What makes differentiation and integration happen? How do new modes of differentiated and integrated action emerge? Insofar as development refers to a particular kind of action emergence, it is theoretically coherent to conceptualize how development happens in terms of the same processes through which action is generally taken to emerge. The current conceptualization synthesizes organismic-​developmental theory and sociocultural theory to make sense of how development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration happens through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. That is, the current theoretical framework holds that action develops through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as individuals actively engage with others in cultural practices. As systemic processes, individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are conceptualized as distinct processes that occur simultaneously and in relation to each other.

Cultural Processes The current conceptualization of development entails cultural processes by defining development in terms of changes that reflect cultural meanings, including developmental expectations, standards, and goals. Thus, cultural processes contribute to how development happens because people are developing in relation to cultural goals, standards, and expectations for development, as some of the examples discussed earlier illustrate. To use another example, research suggests that there may be different cultural pathways of development for storytelling that occur in relation to different cultural conceptions of a good story, as well as different cultural expectations for development more generally. In a comparative study of middle-​class European-​ American and Taiwanese families, the American families engaged young children in storytelling that protected and fostered their self-​esteem, whereas the Taiwanese families’ storytelling revolved around the children’s misdeeds

208  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action (Miller, Fung, Lin, Chen, & Boldt, 2012). In addition, insofar as ways of acting are organized culturally, participating in cultural practices enables people to develop culturally particular ways of acting. More specifically, the current theoretical framework posits that action undergoes culturally particular pathways of differentiation and integration for culturally particular ways of acting. For example, the current conceptualization leads to discerning pathways of differentiation and integration for engaging in outer/​public and inner/​private modes of action in Japan. Or, we could analyze development-​ as-​differentiation-​and-​integration for modes of action characterized by fago and song on Ifaluk. In order to develop cultural ways of acting, people have to engage in those ways of acting. Thus, cultural processes that shape development also include the ways in which opportunities to participate in cultural practices are structured. Within and across cultures, not everyone enjoys the same opportunities for participating in varied cultural practices, partly due to wider societal processes that reflect the structuring of power and authority in relation to varied issues, including gender, race, and social class. Within cultures, there can be developmental similarity and variability among people as they participate in some similar cultural practices as well as some different cultural practices. For example, as explained earlier, socioeconomic differences in language practices in the United States may shape different pathways of literacy development. Even when people participate in what seem like the same or similar cultural practices, they may involve different ways of structuring action and thus can be sources of both developmental similarity and variability within a culture. For example, in American culture, participating in sports is common for children of varying socioeconomic circumstances. However, Lareau’s (2003) observational research indicates that their sports experiences are structured differently and thus provide children of varying socioeconomic circumstances with opportunities to develop some different cultural ways of acting in relation to others. That is, the children of higher socioeconomic circumstances are more likely to participate in organized sports that include arranged competitions with other teams and that sometimes take place in other towns. The parents also arrange and are involved in the children’s sports activities. In contrast, the children of lower socioeconomic circumstances are more likely to play pick-​up sports and games with siblings, cousins, and neighborhood children and without parental supervision. By participating in organized sports, the middle-​class children develop ways of acting in relation to authority figures (e.g., coaches,

Developmental Processes  209 car pool drivers). They also “learn to perform. They learn to present themselves” (p. 242). The working-​class and poor children “learned to entertain themselves. They played outside, creating their own games. . . . They did not complain of being bored” (p. 242). In addition, “family ties were very strong, particularly among siblings [and they] also developed very close ties with their cousins and other extended family members” (p. 242). In discussing this research, I am not suggesting that all socioeconomic differences in development are due to different cultural ways of structuring sports participation. The point here is that what seem at first glance to be similar cultural practices may be structured differently, thereby possibly providing different opportunities for action development. Cultural processes also contribute to how development happens through the inevitability of cultural change, which is reflected in changing conceptions of developmental goals and expectations as well as changing ways of acting. For example, some goals of development and ways of acting have changed historically for males and females in many cultures around the world. Developmental goals and pathways of development may also change in relation to technological changes in the tools that mediate action, from wheels and weapons, to paper and printing presses, to cars and computers, to torches and touch-​screen devices. When I was waiting on line at a store last week, I watched a little girl who was happily and eagerly bopping around the store and looking at various greeting card displays, laughing and talking almost non-​stop. She was probably 3 or 4 years old, and her mother told her several times not to touch anything. When her mother was not looking, the little girl quickly tapped one of the birthday cards with her index finger and then stood back and looked at it. Nothing happened and she tapped another card. She stood back and again, nothing happened. She tapped yet a third card. When nothing happened, she gave up on the whole display case and ran to another area of the store. I suspect she was developing some touch-​screen technology abilities. Just 15 or so years ago, such tapping and stepping back would have been unusual. People would probably have wondered why a child would tap a card and wait expectantly to see what would happen.

Individual Processes In order to develop through participating with others in cultural practices, individual processes are also required. Very simply, in order to develop some

210  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action ways of acting, an individual has to act or engage in those ways of acting. It is unlikely that you will develop into a pianist unless you actually strike some piano keys. In order to console people effectively, you have to actually do some consoling. In order to develop as a juror, one has to actually act on a jury. In keeping with the current conceptualization of how individual processes constitute action in general, individual processes encompass what a developing individual does that contributes to their own development. Earlier, we recognized that people sometimes set and pursue their own developmental goals, which can be in keeping with and/​or at odds with some cultural goals of development. Setting one’s own developmental goals is a way in which development occurs through individual processes. A person may also choose to participate in some cultural practices rather than others, based on individual interests and subjective experience. A person may choose to interact with some people rather than others. In these ways, the person is shaping their own development. In addition, and to more specifically discern how development happens through individual processes, we can ask, what does a person do that can promote differentiation and integration? There are varied possibilities. For example, to promote differentiation, a person can focus on one part of a task and practice it repeatedly. A person can shift attention to different aspects of a situation. A  person can also work on combining parts of a task or constituents of a mode of action in ways that promote integration. For example, if someone is developing as a debater, he has to actually participate in some debates. In addition, to prepare for a debate, a person could analyze an issue in terms of varied distinct or differentiated topics, as well as work on identifying some ways in which those topics are connected to each other or integrated. The person could also link or integrate those topics with other issues that may come up in a debate. The person could practice particular debating techniques and rhetorical moves, and also practice integrating them. The debating example implies that the individual is contributing to their own development rather consciously, but individuals do not always consciously contribute to their own development. Even if a person does not explicitly set out to develop in some way or is not consciously practicing some way of acting, individual processes are still involved as long as the person is acting in ways that contribute to differentiation and integration. For example, although babies may not consciously set out to understand object permanence during the fourth substage of the sensorimotor stage, their individual action contributes to differentiation and integration during the sensorimotor

Developmental Processes  211 stage. Imagine a child who repeatedly puts an object inside of a container, lets go, takes his hand out of the container, looks at it, looks in the container, puts his hand back in, and fumbles to take the object out. In doing so, this child has the opportunity to differentiate the object from his own sensorimotor activity. The child may also differentiate among and integrate different ways of manipulating objects. Or, a child might repeatedly watch an older sibling go off to school in the morning, and then eagerly look out the window for her to return in the afternoon when their grandparents say that it is almost time for big sister to come home. Although the child is not consciously trying to understand object permanence, what he is doing can contribute to the development of understanding that people continue to exist even when they are not immediately present. In other words, if he himself could not actively experience objects and people disappearing and reappearing, how would he come to understand that they exist even when they are not accessible to direct physical activity?

Social Processes People do not develop alone, and thus social processes also necessarily contribute to development. In general, as people go about the flux and flow of their lives and act in relation to others in varied ways, they may encounter opportunities to differentiate among people and to differentiate and integrate means for interacting with them. What others do can provide opportunities to construct oneself in relation to others in differentiated ways, as well as to differentiate between and integrate one’s own perspective and others’ perspectives. Engaging with others can also shape the development of action in varied more specific ways by providing opportunities for differentiation and integration to occur. The upcoming discussion is hardly exhaustive. The goal is to consider a few ways in which development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​ integration occurs through social processes. Sociocultural theory has long pointed to the importance of social processes for human development. As Vygotsky (1978) famously explained: An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice:  first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This

212  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals. (p. 57)

Today, sociocultural theory emphasizes the role of guidance in development. That is, people develop as they participate in cultural practices with others who guide them. Guiding can occur in varied ways depending on the guide, the developing person, and their relationship, as well as on the culture, the cultural practice, and the modes of action that are developing. Development through guidance can occur throughout the lifespan, and guides can be older than, younger than, or the same age as developing people. A guide may set out to guide quite consciously, but sometimes guiding occurs quite unwittingly. Moreover, guides themselves are developing individuals who may develop through guiding someone else. As Rogoff (2003) explains, understanding development in terms of what she refers to as guided participation provides a perspective to help us focus on the varied ways that children learn as they participate in and are guided by the values and practices of their cultural communities. It is not a particular method of support for learning. For example, one form of guided participation is explanation; another is teasing and shaming, when adults and peers point out children’s foibles and missteps by holding their behavior up to social evaluation. . . . The term “guided” in the concept guided participation is thus meant broadly, to include but go beyond interactions that are intended as instructional. In addition to instructional interactions, guided participation focuses on the side-​by-​side or distal arrangements in which children participate in the values, skills, and practices of their communities. (pp. 283–​284)

Insofar as development occurs throughout the lifespan, we can substitute people for children in this quotation. The point is that guiding can be organized and played out in varied ways. The current theoretical framework leads to discerning how guiding provides opportunities for development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration. For example, scaffolding involves breaking a task down into simpler chunks so that the developing person does not have to face the task as one global or undifferentiated behemoth (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). Thus, the developing person can focus on differentiated parts of the task, and the guide can also help the person to integrate the parts into the wider action

Developmental Processes  213 whole of which they are parts. In addition to scaffolding, as well as during the course of scaffolding, guides can demonstrate, instruct, explain, suggest, physically guide, and provide feedback in ways that facilitate differentiating and integrating. For example, a guide can suggest what to do in ways that enable the developing person to integrate distinct action constituents. Research in varied cultures indicates that caregivers often ask children questions, and questioning can provide opportunities for differentiating and integrating. For example (and as pointed out in Chapter 6), when reading storybooks with their children, middle-​class American parents typically ask questions about the pictures (e.g., What’s this, What’s that?), as well as questions about events in the story (e.g., Where is the rabbit going?) (Heath, 1986/​1992). They also ask questions about how different parts of the story are connected, as well as questions about how the story may be connected to the child’s own experience (e.g., Do you think we’ll see a bunny tomorrow morning?). Across the world in Taipei, middle-​class caregivers ask children questions during the course of personal storytelling that enable children to differentiate among events and deeds that are consequential to others. Such questioning also enables children to differentiate themselves from others and to coordinate with others in culturally particular ways (Miller et al., 2012). Classic ethnographic research among the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic shows how adults “frequently and repetitively” (Briggs, 1998, p. 5) asked children questions within the context of dramatic routines in order for children to think about their own characteristics, as well as their roles in relation to others. In doing so, children experience opportunities to differentiate themselves from others, as well as to coordinate or integrate with others. Development can also occur as people act in relation to peers who are not necessarily more competent guides. A great deal of research focuses on children interacting with peers, but interacting with peers can shape development at any time during the lifespan. The particular ways in which interacting with peers shapes development depend on a wide range of processes, including the relationship between the peers, as well as the culture, cultural practice, and modes of action involved. Without getting bogged down in great detail, the main point here is that the current conceptualization of action and development provides theoretical tools for discerning how development can occur through interacting with peers by positing that interacting with peers can provide opportunities for differentiation and integration. For example, during pretend play, children talk about what they and their pretend characters want, feel, and intend to do. Such talk can promote

214  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action differentiating among and integrating individual perspectives (Dunn, 2008). Mead (1934/​1962) posited that children develop through playing organized games with rules because they require each player to both differentiate his or her own role from the other roles, as well as integrate what she or he is doing with what the other players are doing. During play, children can also differentiate among and integrate varied means to accomplish play goals. Beyond play and throughout the lifespan, peers can contribute to each other’s development by providing feedback, directing attention, instructing, explaining, and asking questions in ways that promote differentiation and integration. This discussion of how development happens through social processes is very rosy and has focused on harmonious social processes. However, development can and does sometimes occur through interacting marked by conflict. Although conflict can be defined and played out in varied ways, it obviously connotes a negative or problematic state of affairs between people. I am in no way suggesting that people should fight with each other in order to develop, and I am not saying that conflict marked by coercing, dominating, abusing, or being aggressive is good for development. Rather, it is instructive to consider how mild conflict between people can contribute to development. By mild conflict I am thinking of disagreeing and expressing different perspectives in ways that do not involve coercing, dominating, abusing, or being aggressive. Such conflict can provide opportunities for differentiating between and integrating one’s own and someone else’s perspective. Arguing with someone can also provide opportunities to differentiate among and integrate means for resolving differences. From a Piagetian perspective, conflict is central to how development happens because it can create disequilibrium between a person’s current ways of acting and the world. Development then occurs when acting is adjusted or accommodated to resolve the conflict in ways that permit more complex ways of acting. More complex action would be action that is relatively more differentiated and integrated. For example, Mascolo (2017b) describes how a White supremacist underwent development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration when he experienced conflict between his racist attitudes and being attracted to a Black woman. Or consider our recurring example of consoling. Say Sebastian is used to consoling one of his friends in a particular way, but one day he encounters someone who remains disconsolate. The conflict between his ways of consoling and acting in relation to this person throws Sebastian off. He is disequilibrated, but he persists in trying to console his new friend. He

Developmental Processes  215 begins to differentiate this person’s perspective from his other friend’s perspective, and he also differentiates and integrates new means for consoling.

Environmental Processes Insofar as people engage in modes of action in particular physical environments, those environments contribute to the development of action and to the development of the psychological processes that comprise action. For example, increasing scientific attention and political attention are being paid to how toxins and pollutants (e.g., lead, asbestos, pesticides) affect development, especially during childhood. Children who are exposed to such contaminants may struggle cognitively and may exhibit behavioral problems (Hubbs-​Tait, Nation, Krebs, & Bellinger, 2005; Trentacosta, Davis-​Kean, Mitchell, Hyde, & Dolinoy, 2016). Varied environmental contaminants may affect the brain, which suggests unidirectional causal links from environment to brain to action. However, that is not the whole story, because thinking and action may still develop for children who are harmed by toxins, and they develop as children participate with others in cultural practices. Furthermore, in some parts of the world, aspects of the physical environment are subject to public regulation, making exposure to environmental toxins very much a political issue. Economic processes are also involved. For example, in the United States, lead exposure is sometimes higher in poor communities than affluent ones, as poor people are more likely to live in houses that still have deteriorating lead paint, to “live in urban neighborhoods with greater soil and dust lead concentrations from traffic and industrial activities, and to have nutritional deficiencies that increase lead absorption” (Bellinger, 2016, p. 1102). Moreover, questions have been raised about differentially regulating environmental conditions in Black and White communities (e.g., Eligon, 2016). Of course, how to regulate the environment is a contested political issue within and across cultures, and publicly regulating aspects of the environment can be played out in varied and changing ways. The point here is that development happens through varied and interrelated processes as people participate with others in cultural practices. Even though the heading of this section is “Environmental Processes,” we cannot avoid thinking about how development happens through multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes.

216  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action In addition, physical environments may provide opportunities for engaging in particular cultural practices and modes of action. For example, the availability of snow (natural or synthetic) provides opportunities to develop skiing abilities, whereas the availability of oceans, lakes, and swimming pools provides opportunities to develop swimming abilities. As pointed out in Chapter  6, it is argued that living on the enclosed and typhoon-​prone environment of Ifaluk is part of why the people of Ifaluk develop modes of action that are marked by cooperating and avoiding some forms of anger (Lutz, 1988). The developmental role of environmental processes is vividly illustrated and explained in Thelen’s classic series of experiments on the development of walking during infancy (Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996). At birth, human infants are known to step when held upright, but this so-​called stepping reflex is known to disappear at about 2 months. Newborns also kick their legs when lying down, and continue to do so during the first year of life, when “supine, prone, or sitting” (p.  11). Developmentalists have long puzzled over why stepping appears to disappear during early infancy. Thelen also observes that this transition is quite “labile,” meaning that stepping does not simply fully disappear and then reappear toward the end of the first year when babies start to walk. Rather, stepping “rate and strength were directly correlated with general level of arousal. Infants who were stepping little when alert and happy began stepping movements when fussy” (p. 11). In addition, the “decline in step rate between 2 and 6 weeks was most rapid in infants who had the highest rate of weight gain” (p. 11). Thus, babies stepped less because they could not physically support their heavier bodies in an upright position. However, when “infants were held upright in torso-​deep warm water, stepping movements increased in both number and vigor” (p. 12). In other words, stepping had not disappeared, and infants were stepping in relation to particular environmental circumstances. Bodily changes also contribute, pointing to a way in which bodily and environmental processes are linked. Even more dramatically, “7-​month-​old infants, who normally did not step, performed highly coordinated, alternating steps when they were supported with their feet on the slowly moving belts of a small, motorized treadmill” (p. 12). In this case, babies were not only stepping, but they “performed [the] smooth, alternating movements” (p. 96) of mature walking. Moreover, the babies adapted how they stepped on the treadmill in “a functionally specific way. That is, infants maintained an alternating gait pattern when faced with speed changes and even when their legs were

Developmental Processes  217 moving at different speeds” (p. 13). Thus, a feature of the physical environment was enabling walking to develop in infants who did not walk in their typical environments.

Bodily Processes When it comes to conceptualizing how bodily processes shape development, it is virtually obligatory to consider the role of genes. Genes refer to biochemical processes that occur within our cells. More specifically, a gene is “a sequence of DNA nucleotides that codes for a protein” (Keller, 2010, p. 6). The biochemical processes involved in producing proteins do not occur on their own, but occur in relation to a cellular environment. As such, and as pointed out in the Chapter 3 discussion of epigenetics, genetic processes are systemic through and through. As Keller (2010) puts it, “absent environmental factors, genes have no more power to shape the development of an individual than do environmental factors in the absence of genes” (p. 6). Keller explains further: DNA is an inert molecule. What we think of as its causal powers are in fact provided by the cellular complex in which it finds itself. It is this complex that is responsible for both the code that enables a sequence of nucleotides to be translated into a sequence of amino acids, for the replication of DNA, and for the intergenerational fidelity of replication; it is the cellular complex that makes possible all the chemical reactions on which these processes depend. By themselves the entities we call genes do not act; they do not have agency. Strictly speaking, the very notion of a gene as an autonomous element, as an entity that exists in its own right, is a fiction. (p. 6)

In other words, not only do both genes and environments contribute 100% to development, but genetic processes and environmental processes occur in relation to each other (Ehrlich, 2000; Goldhaber, 2012; Gottlieb, 1991, 2003, 2007; Gottlieb, Wahlsten, & Lickliter, 1998; Ho, 2013; Johnston & Lickliter, 2009; Lerner & Overton, 2017; Lewontin, 2000; Overton, 2011; Oyama, 2000; Richardson & Norgate, 2006). Insofar as genetic processes are inseparable from environmental processes, genes can function differently in different environmental circumstances, and also at different times in a person’s life (Krimsky, 2013; Meaney, 2010). Thus, the same genetic profile or genotype can be expressed in different ways in relation to different environmental

218  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action circumstances and experiences. For example, a particular genotype for height does not guarantee being tall in a poor nutritional environment. Moore and Shenk (2017) point out that “because food is not equally plentiful in North and South Korea, South Koreans are, on average, nearly five inches taller than North Koreans, even though their gene pools do not substantially differ” (p. 5). Extrapolating to action, the same genotype may be expressed in different ways of acting in relation to different environmental circumstances and experiences (Lester, Conradt, & Marsit, 2016). Genes thus function systemically and epigenetically, meaning that their contributions to development are not fixed or preprogrammed, but are inseparable from environmental processes. In addition, I think it is important to repeat the point that genetic processes are biochemical processes. This point is significant in the wider discussion of how development happens because there is still a long way to go from cellular biochemistry to the differentiation and integration of complex modes of action in cultural practices. Insofar as genes function biochemically, they do not directly produce action because action involves more than biochemical processes (Goldhaber, 2012; Wahlsten, 2003). Even with genetic contributions to action, modes of action do not appear full-​fledged, because action still has to develop through participating with others in cultural practices. In a nutshell, genes do not contribute to development independently of the other processes that shape development. For example, even if there is a genetic predisposition for being athletic, or artistic, or for acting in certain ways, athletic and artistic abilities as well as certain ways of acting still develop. And just because no one in someone’s family is athletic, or artistic, or acts in certain ways, it does not mean that a person cannot develop varied abilities and ways of acting through guided participation. And just because someone’s parents are athletic, or artistic, or act in certain ways, it does not mean that the person will be athletic, or artistic, or act in those ways as well. We still have to consider the other processes that are involved in making development happen, as well as how they are interrelated during the development of psychological processes and of action. The current theoretical framework posits that even if debating runs in a family, every debating family member still develops through participating in debating with others who guide them. Indeed, I would not be surprised if families in whom certain modes of action are prevalent spend a great deal of time actually engaged in practices that involve those ways of acting, from debating, to sports, to art, to reading.

Developmental Processes  219 To look at the issue another way, consider Down syndrome, which is a known genetic condition (an extra 21st chromosome) that is characterized by particular physical features and cognitive impairment. According to the National Association for Down Syndrome website (2019), “during the first half of the twentieth century in the United States, the majority of children with Down syndrome were placed in institutions—​frequently soon after birth.” However, through years of advocating by and for families with Down syndrome children, as well as changing cultural attitudes and political policies (e.g., the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), we now know that people with Down syndrome can and do develop by participating with others in cultural practices. Although they may follow different specific pathways of development than people without Down syndrome, many develop in ways that were unimaginable in the past. Thus, not only do genes not fully determine development, but the ways in which genetic conditions are expressed can change in relation to social and cultural processes. Undoubtedly, the brain is involved in development, but in what ways? It is complex and strange, because the brain not only contributes to the development of action, but the brain itself develops. Moreover, the brain is part of what is developing during the development of action, and the developing brain also provides a basis for action to develop further. If a person is developing some way of acting, that development includes the development of neural connections in the brain. As the person’s action is increasingly differentiated and integrated, we can posit that neural connections are differentiating and integrating as well. In this way, the brain certainly develops, but not separately from the development of action. Indeed, it is through acting that the brain is developing. If you want neural connections associated with piano playing, pitching baseballs, consoling people, or debating to develop, you have to actually play the piano, throw some baseballs, console someone, and do some debating. Thus, the brain is not independently causing a person to develop. The current systems conceptualization posits that the brain and action develop together and in relation to each other. And the development of action, including its neural attributes, occurs through participating with others in cultural practices. I  remember once hearing someone say that a child would develop impulse control when her frontal lobes developed. I thought to myself, how will the frontal lobes develop? The current conceptualization of action and development posits that people develop cultural ways of controlling themselves by participating with others in cultural practices that provide opportunities to engage in controlling oneself.

220  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action And the development of self-​control will include, but not be determined by, neural connections in the frontal lobes.

Some General Remarks The advantages of conceptualizing human development in terms of differentiation and integration and in relation to cultural goals of development are manifold (see Box 7.1 for an overview). This conceptualization of development enables us to make sense of some of the complexities of human development by providing criteria for developmental change that go beyond equating development with age or with any change that might occur over time. A great advantage of organismic-​developmental theory is that it enables us to understand and investigate development in terms of systematic criteria that are independent of age and life phase. It provides a basis for discerning if development occurs as people get older, and it permits discerning development for any mode of action and over varied time frames. As Kaplan (1983a) explains, by distinguishing “the meaning of development from the actualities of life” the orthogenetic principle “freed us from the specious supposition that changes with age were necessarily or intrinsically developmental” (p. 195). In addition, defining development in terms of differentiation and integration, as well as in terms of goals of development, is flexibly

Box 7.1  Advantages of Conceptualizing Human Development in Terms of Differentiation and Integration and in Relation to Cultural Meanings • Provides systematic criteria for understanding and analyzing developmental change • Provides a systematic conceptual basis for distinguishing among different kinds of change (e.g., development, regression, deterioration) • Does not equate development with age or the passage of time • Links development to cultural processes • Provides a common language for comparing and contrasting development across individuals, cultures, and history • Provides ways of thinking about action that are applicable to all of psychology

Developmental Processes  221 applicable across individuals, cultural communities, cultural practices, and historical time spans. We thus have a common language for comparing and contrasting development across individuals, cultures, and historical periods. Synthesizing organismic-​developmental theory and sociocultural theory further provides ways to consider how development happens as people actively participate with others in cultural practices at any time during the lifespan. By conceptualizing development as a particular kind of change, the current conceptualization also provides a basis for distinguishing among different kinds of change, as well as discerning connections among them. For example, the criteria of differentiation and integration enable us to distinguish among development, regression, and deterioration. Regressing may be viewed as going back to a previous way of acting, characterized by decreasing differentiation and integration, as well as by moving away from developmental goals. Deteriorating may be viewed as a new mode of functioning that involves decreasing differentiation and integration, as well as moving away from developmental goals. Once different kinds of change are identified according to the common criteria of differentiation and integration, one can analyze how they are related to each other. With regard to how development happens, the current conceptualization posits that development happens through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as people participate with others in cultural practices. As always, even though we have mostly considered these processes in terms of their distinct contributions to development, they are utterly inseparable and interrelated during development. For example, guided participation is structured in culturally particular ways in relation to culturally particular meanings, making for interrelations between cultural and social processes. Individual processes and social processes are interrelated insofar as guides adjust how they guide in relation to a developing individual’s current ways of acting and insofar as individuals seek out others for guidance. Given that all human action develops, development is an issue for all of psychology. Development is also relevant to psychology as a whole because a person’s action is always organized developmentally. That is, what a person does is constituted in part by cultural conceptions of development, and a person’s ways of acting can also be understood in terms of psychological processes that manifest differentiation and integration in some way. For example, say you are observing someone acting in relation to varied others in varied situations, such as at work, the grocery store on the way home from

222  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action work, and at home. How the person acts can always be understood in terms of differentiation and integration. Analyses may show that this person acts in more and less developed ways in different settings. It is not only a matter of more and less developed ways of acting, but also that action processes may be differentiated and integrated in different ways as a person acts within and across settings. Using developmental criteria to characterize people’s action provides all students of human action with new insights into the dynamic structuring of varied modes of action, as well as particular psychological processes.

PART III

IMPL IC AT ION S A ND A PPL IC AT IONS We have just traversed a great deal of rugged terrain. Where are we now? We now have what I consider to be a theoretical framework for thinking systematically about what people do. To recapitulate in a nutshell, I start from the premise that all human beings are distinct individuals, as well as connected to others, and that all human functioning is culturally organized. As such, much of what people do is act in relation to others in culturally particular ways. Thus, “action” or “acting” is the wider whole of human functioning, and action is being conceptualized as a system that is made up of multiple and interrelated processes. Action is taken to be constituted by or to emerge through systemically interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Action is further taken to be made up of varied systemically interrelated psychological processes, including but not limited to sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting, and self/​identity constructing. The current theoretical framework also holds that action and the psychological processes that comprise action develop. So now what? What do we do with this theoretical framework or action perspective? What does it buy us? What are some of its implications for understanding and thinking systematically about human functioning? How can it be applied to people as they go about their complex lives in all corners of the world? At the end of Chapter 3, I posed some general questions to be addressed by the current theoretical framework, based on issues that were raised while questioning conventional psychology. I also set some criteria by which to evaluate any theoretical framework, including this one. The issues and questions provide a good starting point for thinking about some implications and applications of the conceptualization of action presented in previous chapters. Accordingly, the first three chapters of Part III will be organized around these interrelated issues and questions. Some

224  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action developmental issues will also be considered, but I will not include a particular section on development in Part III because the two questions about development identified in Chapter 3 (What happens during development? How does development happen?) are answered in Chapter 7. As we address varied issues and questions in these chapters, I will indicate how the current theoretical framework meets varied criteria for decent theorizing. Chapter 8 addresses the issue of systemic integration of dynamic processes, and it also takes up the vexing issue of mind–​body connections. Chapter  9 presents some implications of the current theoretical framework for thinking about human action non-​dichotomously by addressing how human action is simultaneously general and individualized, as well as simultaneously stable and variable. Chapter  10 addresses some of the complexities of causality and meaning. Chapter  11 addresses research issues, including suggesting directions for future research based on the current theoretical framework, suggesting ways of using the theoretical framework to make some systematic sense of disparate findings about human functioning, and suggesting ways to analyze research critically. In Chapter 12, I cast a wide net to consider how the current theoretical framework can be applied and used to think about eating, freedom, attitudes, extreme action, and art. In Chapter 13, I use the current theoretical framework to address some complexities of action, and I suggest ways to use the theoretical framework to think systematically about action in varied circumstances. I end the book by considering the image of and vision for humanity that I believe the current conceptualization of action reflects, and that I hope it will promote and promulgate. Because we are dealing with overlapping and interrelated issues, these chapters could be organized in different ways, and I changed the order and organization of topics several times. Some points will be repeated, and different aspects of some of the same issues will appear in different sections. It is very difficult to be linear when dealing with interrelated and overlapping issues. The current theoretical framework provides tools for thinking systematically about the complexities of human action, thus enabling us to think about the entanglements without getting too ensnarled.

8 Implications for Understanding Human Functioning Integratively and Actively This chapter begins by addressing the issue of “systemic integration of dynamic processes” and its varied questions. In doing so, we will see how the current theoretical framework enables us to overcome fragmentation and to move toward understanding human action holistically and integratively. That is, we will see how starting with the current conceptualization of action enables us to think about action processes as integral parts of a wider whole, rather than as fragmented bits unto themselves. By addressing this issue and its questions we will also see how the current conceptualization of action enables us to make sense of human action in terms of active processes, thereby moving beyond the conventional psychology practice of objectifying human functioning. During the course of discussing these implications, we will see that the current theoretical framework meets criteria #1, #3, and #4 for decent theorizing (as articulated in Chapter 3). To expand on how the current theoretical framework enables us to understand human action integratively and holistically, I will use it to think about mind and body as inseparable constituents of holistic action. Please see Box 8.1 for an overview of the current theoretical framework’s implications and advantages for understanding human functioning holistically and actively.

Issue: Systemic Integration of Dynamic Processes We start this section with the following questions:  What do people do that encompasses varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes, or what is the wider whole of human functioning? What are the multiple and interrelated processes that constitute and comprise what people do? How are these processes played out as distinct processes and in relation to each other? How are these general or universal processes played out culturally and historically? Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

226  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 8.1  Implications and Advantages of the Current Theoretical Framework for Understanding Human Functioning Holistically and Actively By starting with action as a wider systemic whole, and by conceptualizing action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, the current theoretical framework

• Eschews fragmenting • Enables thinking holistically and integratively about what people do • Enables thinking about part–​ part, part–​ whole, and whole–​ part interrelations • Encompasses psychology’s major topics • Permits understanding how action is cultural and historical • Eschews objectifying and permits thinking about active processes that people do • Eschews dualism and permits thinking holistically about mind and body

From Fragmenting to Integrating Fragmenting is not exclusive to psychology, and it represents a common Western cultural way of understanding varied phenomena. For example, in the United States today, politics is a rather fragmented affair, as people are fragmented into demographic groups that are characterized in terms of isolated identity categories and/​or interests (e.g., gender, income, education). The 2016 presidential campaign epitomized and exacerbated deep divisions in American culture. Great Britain recently voted to leave the European Union, and there are questions about whether that Union can be sustained. Yet, at the same time, examples of holism and connectedness abound. The US Constitution begins with the goal of establishing a more perfect union. Connecting people around the world is possible in new ways through the internet and social media. People everywhere engage together to pursue common goals. What happens to the physical environment in one part of the world does not necessarily stay in that part of the world. Indeed, water and air do not know about country borders or national air space. To overcome

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  227 fragmentation and to promote connectedness, we can think systematically about human functioning in terms of a wider systemic whole that involves distinct and utterly interrelated processes. The current theoretical framework addresses the issue of systemic integration of dynamic processes and answers the questions posed about it by first positing that people ACT. We are thus starting with action to conceptualize the wider whole of human functioning (Raeff, 2016, 2017a). This conceptualization of action overcomes fragmenting by starting with a wider whole that is made up of varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated dynamic processes, namely constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. These processes are further taken to be made up of multiple and interrelated subprocesses. By starting with action as a wider whole, this conceptualization meets the third criterion for good theorizing by providing some alternatives to some problematic assumptions and practices in conventional psychology. This holistic and integrative conceptualization of action is derived from systems theory, which provides a basis for thinking systematically about action (pun intended). The current conceptualization provides systematic ways for thinking about how any action process functions and is meaningful in relation to other action processes. It also provides systematic ways for thinking about how any action process functions and is meaningful within a wider whole. For example, Chapter 6 is all about some of psychology’s major topics, namely thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving, interacting, and constructing self/​identity. In Chapter 6, I identified these major topics as psychological processes and conceptualized them in terms of the following three dimensions: (1) as active and dynamic processes that people do, (2) as interrelated processes that comprise the wider systemic whole of action, and (3) as processes that develop. This conceptualization enables us to think systematically about how these psychological processes are systemically interrelated to comprise wider modes of action. As such, they are no longer fragments; they are integrated constituents of a wider whole. They are conceptualized as distinct processes, and thus I presented them one by one. At the same time, I conceptualized them as integrated constituents of wider modes of action. In Chapter 6, some of the ways in which varied psychological processes involve part–​part, part–​whole, and whole–​part connections were also considered. If I may make up a new word, I like to think of them as “integrants,” rather than as fragments. Taken together, this conceptualization of action provides a holistic and integrative starting point for thinking systematically about some of the complexities of human functioning. We are thus satisfying criterion #1

228  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action for good theorizing, namely linking topics that are usually treated separately to a wider whole. This conceptualization of action also meets criterion #4 for good theorizing by providing common theoretical tools for thinking systematically about a wide range of psychological topics and issues, but without getting bogged down in minutiae. The common theoretical tools involve starting with the wider whole of action and conceptualizing action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. By starting with action and by conceptualizing action in terms of these general processes, we are no longer lost among the trees. We can see the forest, and we can make our way in the complex flux and flow of human action. Similarly, the constitutive processes of Chapter 5 represent some major topics in conventional psychology. For example, social psychologists have long analyzed social aspects of behavior. Environmental psychology and cultural psychology are burgeoning subfields. As pointed out with regard to bodily processes, the brain is a hot topic in conventional psychology today. Various subfields of conventional psychology deal with bodily issues, including physiological psychology and neuropsychology, and some psychologists refer to themselves as biopsychologists. Within the current theoretical framework, these varied topics are not taken to be separate, and they do not involve processes that function independently of one another. Rather, individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are taken to be distinct yet utterly interrelated constituents of the wider whole of action. They, too, are understood as integrants rather than fragments. In this way, we can begin to overcome fragmentation by thinking about how the constitutive processes function in relation to each other, as well as in relation to a common wider whole. Thus, at the end of Chapter 5, part–​part, part–​whole, and whole–​part connections were considered. We can also think about how psychological processes occur in relation to constitutive processes, as we did throughout Chapter 6. By thinking about action in these varied integrative ways, we are meeting criteria #4 and #1 for good theorizing. That is, we have a common language for addressing a broad range of topics that are of concern to psychologists and people in general. It is the common language of linking these varied topics to the wider whole of action and of conceptualizing action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. We have just considered how the current theoretical framework addresses all but the last question associated with the issue of systemic integration, to which we now turn. The last question is: How are these general or universal processes played out culturally and historically? The current

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  229 conceptualization of action enables us to think systematically about general and universal aspects of human functioning, namely constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Yet, at the same time, the current theoretical framework posits that human action is culturally and historically situated. Clearly, culture is central to the current conceptualization of action, and I have argued from the get-​go that human functioning always involves cultural processes. The current conceptualization of action leads to thinking about how general universal action processes are played out in culturally particular ways. Indeed, varied examples of culturally particular ways of organizing action have been used throughout this book to illustrate how action is cultural. I have drawn on research which shows that people the world over act in relation to others and that such action can be understood in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. At the same time, I also drew on research which shows that there are culturally particular ways of structuring action. We have also seen how psychological processes are understood and played out in culturally particular ways and how development occurs in relation to cultural goals and expectations. Historical change is part of the inevitable flux and flow of human functioning, and since Chapter  1, I  have been pointing out that human functioning is historical. Human beings are historical creatures in at least three ways. (1)  At any time of analysis, human functioning and experience are based on and build on what came before. Thus, understanding current events is enhanced by considering them historically. (2) Action at any time reflects the current times or the current historical era. (3) Ways of acting can be different during different historical eras. Of course, demarcating historical eras is not straightforward, but the point here is that what people do builds on the past, reflects particular times, and can change over extended periods of time. Not only can the current theoretical framework handle historical change, but it embraces historical change axiomatically, beginning with its basis in systems theory. According to systems theory, action is a system that is made up of ongoing processes that can be assembled in different ways at different times. For human action, constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are taken to be universal processes that can be assembled in different ways at different times. In other words, universal action processes can be played out in different ways in different historical settings, and thus ways of characterizing action at one point in time may or may not hold at some future point. In addition, at any given time of analysis, system functioning

230  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action is historical insofar as it builds on previous system functioning. The current theoretical framework also holds that action develops and that development is a cumulative historical process whereby new ways of acting build on previous ways of acting. Accordingly and as pointed out in Chapter 3, Gergen (1973) suggests that human functioning can be understood historically “in terms of a continuum of historical durability, with phenomena highly susceptible to historical influence at one extreme and the more stable processes at the other” (p. 318).

From Objects to Active Processes Starting with action as conceptualized here also has implications for thinking systematically about human functioning in ways that enable us to move away from treating human beings and human functioning impersonally as physical objects or things. As explained in Chapter 3, objectifying human functioning is encapsulated in the widespread habit of using nouns rather than verbs to characterize human behavior. However, human beings are not just physical beings, and the psychological processes that comprise human functioning are not like physical objects in varied ways. Thus, the current theoretical framework starts by conceptualizing human functioning in terms of active processes, or in terms of what people DO. In doing so, we are further meeting criterion #3 for decent theorizing, namely providing alternatives to at least some of the problematic assumptions and practices that comprise conventional psychology. I have addressed and provided alternatives to the problematic practice of objectifying in three ways: (1) by arguing that much of what people do is to act in relation to others, (2) by conceptualizing people as active individuals or agents who construct experience subjectively and contribute to their own action, and (3) by conceptualizing psychological processes as active and dynamic processes that people do and that develop. Again, we are starting with action, or with what people DO. Insofar as the current theoretical framework is about what people DO, it makes sense to use verbs to characterize human functioning. I have thus used verbs as much as possible to refer to the active and dynamic processes that constitute and comprise action. Although it has been difficult to completely avoid nouns, I have not talked about “having” thoughts and emotions, as in “I had this thought the other day,” or “She has so much anger bottled up inside of her.” I am explicitly avoiding such phrasing whenever possible in order to

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  231 understand human functioning actively and to emphasize what people DO. Using verbs and emphasizing what people DO open up new ways of thinking about varied complex issues, from mind and self/​identity, to beliefs, values, and attitudes. (We will get to beliefs, values, and attitudes in Chapter 12.) I hope that I have convinced readers that cognition and emotion encompass active processes that people DO as they act in relation to others (e.g., to think, to ponder, to remember, to categorize). In other words, the concern is with how thinking and feeling (and any psychological process) are enacted as people act in relation to others in all corners of the world. I also explicitly avoided the term mind. It would have made sense to use mind because much of what is discussed in the Chapter 6 section on thinking involves what is covered by the word mind, both in everyday language and in psychology (at least in English and in American psychology). For example, someone might say, “Use your mind” to encourage someone else to think logically. Or, people talk about what they have “in” mind or “on” their minds when they are planning for the future or when they are pondering some issue. You might hear that someone “lost his mind.” You might hear about the kind of mind a person has, from brilliant to deranged. People speak about wrapping their minds around some issue, or not being able to wrap their minds around some issue. These ways of speaking point to how mind is treated as an object that people have and that they can use. They also show how mind is treated as an object that contains other objects, such as thoughts, ideas, memories, and plans. As we have already pointed out, such objectifying is problematic because it obfuscates what people DO. Other ways of talking about mind are also quite revealing. For example, sometimes the mind is treated as a kind of creature that is capable of autonomous functioning. Someone might tell you about where her mind goes, or that her mind could not handle some new ideas, or about a book that is the product of a deranged mind. This way of talking about the mind is problematic because it attributes processes to the mind rather than to a person. A mind does not produce a book, a person does. A mind is neither capable nor incapable of handling new ideas, but a person is. A mind does not go anywhere, but a person thinks about particular issues in particular ways. Rather than talking about the mind as an object or as a creature, the current theoretical framework leads to considering what a person is DOING in terms of active cognitive processes such as remembering, pondering new ideas, or writing a book. What is a person DOING to remember? How is a person acting while remembering? For example, a person might be

232  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action remembering while consoling someone, or while arguing with someone, or while eating dinner with some friends. One can also ask how varied thinking subprocesses are related to other psychological processes, such as feeling, interacting, and constructing self/​identity. One can also think about the development of varied thinking subprocesses. By starting with action, mind can be conceptualized actively in terms of what people DO. This conceptualization is in keeping with the view advanced by Wertsch (1998) in a book entitled Mind as Action. He argues for understanding mind “as” action because the processes that are considered to be properties of the mind represent ways of acting, such as planning, deciding, knowing, and remembering. Although I am using the term action somewhat differently than Wertsch, the point remains: Mind can be conceptualized in active terms and encompasses what people DO. Along similar lines, Johnson (2006) explains that “characteristics traditionally attributed to mind” include being able “to conceptualize, to understand, to reason, to know, and to will” (p. 48). From a social constructionist perspective, knowledge is not taken to exist in the heads of individuals but rather refers to an active constructive process that “people do together” (Gergen, 1985, p. 270). It is also interesting to note that there is a verb in English, to mind. You can actively mind the gap, mind your manners, mind the baby, mind your own business, and I mind terribly if you blast that music while I write. As human beings, we mind by caring about and attending to what is happening in the world (Midgley, 2001/​2006). Taken together, the current action perspective leads to thinking about mind-​as-​thinking in several ways, including (1) how the way a person is thinking at any moment of analysis is part of a wider mode of action, (2) how thinking is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, (3) how thinking is related to other psychological processes, and (4) what happens during the development of thinking and how that development happens. Conceptualizing thinking as part of what people DO has implications for understanding cognitive differences between people, both within cultures and across cultures. From our action perspective, cognitive differences are not so much differences in amounts of cognition, nor are they statements about whether people in this or that culture “have” a particular cognitive ability, such as having the ability to classify taxonomically or having memory. They are also not about whether people “have” particular knowledge or whether children “have” language. Rather, cultural cognitive differences reflect different cultural ways of thinking, and different ways of using cultural

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  233 tools to think in sometimes different cultural practices (Wertsch, 1991). Understanding how human beings around the world think involves discerning what they DO to think as they go about their daily lives, acting in relation to others (Cole, 1996; Scribner, 1975/​1997, 1985/​1997, 1987/​1997). What do they DO to remember, categorize, calculate, and plan? We are also led to asking about how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes constitute such thinking, and about how such thinking is related to other psychological processes as a person acts in relation to others. In addition, the current action perspective leads to asking about what happens during the development of cultural modes of thinking, and about how such modes of thinking develop as people go about their daily lives in all corners of the world. That is, what cultural practices do people participate in with others, how do others guide their thinking, and what does a person do to contribute to their own development? The same basic points about mind and thinking can be made about feeling, as well as constructing self/​identity, which are also sometimes encompassed by the term mind. According to the current theoretical framework, what are known as particular emotions or feelings, such as sadness, anger, joy, happiness, and fear, refer to processes that people DO. Self or identity is conceptualized as actively constructing who one is. From an action perspective, anger is not a physical entity that exists inside of us and then wells up from within, or that we can locate when we look inside of ourselves. Yes, we may talk about anger and other emotions in these ways, but they are metaphoric ways of representing feeling. Yes, we may talk about having a core self or a true inner self that others may or may not know about, but these expressions are metaphoric ways of understanding self/​identity. As such, they emphasize some aspects of feeling and self/​identity while obfuscating others. Alternatively, expressing emotion and identity commitments can respectively be understood as actively constructing how we feel about what is going on and actively constructing who we are. The phrase “getting angry” reflects this view. When we get angry, we are engaging in an active and ongoing process of judging a situation that can shift over time. Taken together, feeling and self/​identity are reflected in action, they appear in action, they are enacted. The current theoretical framework can be used to consider how feeling and self/​identity (or any psychological process under scrutiny) at a given moment of analysis function as integral parts of a wider mode of action (thus satisfying criterion #1 for a decent theoretical framework, namely linking the topics that psychologists study to a wider integrated whole). When conceptualized as

234  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action processes that people DO, we can further discern how feeling and self/​identity are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, as well as how they are linked to other psychological processes. We can also think about their development by discerning what happens during development in terms of differentiation and integration and how development happens through participating with others in cultural practices.

Mind and Body The current action perspective has implications for thinking about the “mind–​body problem” that has vexed people for centuries. I am taking up this issue in this chapter because thinking about human functioning holistically and actively provides ways of moving beyond the mind–​body problem, which is a problem of Cartesian dualism. Before delving into this issue, I would like to say that I realize I just argued that the term mind is problematic, but in this section I will be using it repeatedly. I will do so because it is simply more straightforward to use the term that people have used for centuries to address this issue. However, as this section proceeds, I will reiterate some points just made about conceptualizing mind issues in other terms, namely the terms of the current action perspective. Doing so will enable us to think about mind and body holistically and integratively and as inseparable action processes.

Dualistic Problems As pointed out in Part I, Western cultural traditions, including conventional psychology, are steeped in dualistic assumptions, whereby phenomena are split or fragmented and understood independently of one another. A  dualistic approach to any phenomena treats them as separate and sometimes as opposing, rather than as inseparable parts of a wider whole. From a Cartesian dualistic perspective, mind and body are treated as two wholly different and separate substances. The term “mental processes” is often used as a synonym for mind, and body is often referred to in terms of “physical processes.” In the upcoming discussion, I will use “mind” and “mental processes” interchangeably, and I will use the terms “body” and “physical processes” interchangeably.

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  235 When mind/​mental processes and body/​physical processes are considered to be separate and different substances, mind is not considered to be physical, bodily, or material. It is disembodied and immaterial. A Cartesian dualistic approach to mind and body raises varied vexing questions. What then is this mind that has no physical attributes? How does it function outside the realm of the body? And how does it make the body move so that a person can behave? Before considering how these questions have been addressed, it is important to note that within a Cartesian dualistic approach, behavior is equated with bodily movement, whereas mind or mental processes are considered to be separate from such behavior. By equating behavior with bodily movement, another dualism arises here. That is, there is now a separation between mind and behavior because behavior is bodily and mind is not. This dualism between mind and behavior permeates conventional psychology today. For example, psychology is sometimes defined as the study of mental processes and behavior. The use of the word “and” serves to dualistically separate mental processes (or mind) and behavior. Or, I have seen psychology described as the study of thought, emotion, and behavior, indicating that thought, emotion, and behavior are being treated separately. In contrast, according to the current action perspective, thinking and feeling are active processes that people do, and they are further conceptualized as submodes of action. As such, thinking and feeling are part of action, not separate from it. Thus, it suffices to say that psychology is the study of human action because the current conceptualization of action entails thinking and feeling as well as a host of other processes. Within the current theoretical framework, one can treat thinking and feeling as distinct action processes that are interrelated within a wider whole, namely action. Within a Cartesian dualistic approach to mind and body, mind is immaterial or disembodied and thus unobservable because it cannot be seen in observable bodily movement (Gallagher, 2005/​2006). Remember Gabriel. He claimed to be thinking, but we could not observe his thinking. It did not seem to be manifest in his “observable” behavior, that is, in his bodily movement. Thinking does not always involve obvious bodily movement, and therefore thinking is not always observable in the way that walking across a room and greeting someone is. You can see someone walking across a room and greeting someone, but Gabriel is just a kid lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. And so, we come back to troublesome Cartesian questions. What then is this immaterial mind? How does it function outside the realm of the body, and how does it make the body move so that the person can engage in

236  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action some observable behavior? How do we know whether and what anyone is thinking if we cannot observe thinking? A contemporary solution to the Cartesian mind–​body problem can be found in claims about the brain, mind, and behavior. That is, the brain is the go-​to location for the embodied mind, whereby mind or mental processes are attributed to the brain. According to this materialist solution to the mind–​body problem, mental/​mind processes remain unobservable, but now they are no longer also immaterial, or disembodied, or non-​physical. They are occurring in the brain, unobservably and non-​consciously, but materially/​physically/​bodily. Non-​conscious mental processes occur in the brain and then conscious observable behavior is caused. This cause→effect chain of events seems to be bolstered by the subjective experience of uncontrollable thinking or feeling. Sometimes we think of something out of the blue or we react emotionally in ways that we wish we had not. In addition, we are often unaware of, or not conscious of, varied aspects of our action. For example, I am not now consciously curling my fingers over the keyboard, nor am I deliberately deciding to sit up in my chair. As well, a person is not always explicitly or consciously deciding what to think or feel. Some might attribute thinking and feeling in such cases to the brain. Maybe something is happening in the brain that makes someone suddenly think about X, Y, or Z. Maybe my brain “knows” that I have to curl my fingers. I remember a woodworker once explaining to me that his brain tells his arm to move so that he can cut wood in certain ways. In a nutshell, the mind is no longer a different substance than the body. It is tantamount to the brain. Advances in technology now enable us to scan and monitor the brain, which seem to provide ways of observing the mind at work. Problem solved. Not so fast. If we start to think about this solution, new problems arise. This perspective is still dualistic because it separates the brain from behavior. That is, the brain is treated as an independently functioning entity that causes observable behavior. In addition, this solution is reductionistic because it equates mental processes with brain processes, thereby reducing mental processes to the brain. There is also another dualism at work here, namely between conscious and non-​conscious aspects of functioning. As just pointed out, we are not always consciously aware of all aspects of our action. From a materialist dualistic perspective, those non-​conscious processes occur in the brain and are causing our behavior, unbeknownst to us. My brain made me do it! Again, the brain functions independently, and the brain and behavior

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  237 are being treated dualistically. However, the question arises: What causes the brain to do what it does? Although I did not ask the woodworker, I wondered who or what told his brain to tell his arm what to do. As pointed out in Chapter 7, the brain develops in part as a person acts. Thus, the current perspective emphasizes the point that the brain partly constitutes action, and action partly constitutes the brain. The brain and action are thus not separate or independent. Distinct yes, but not separate. You cannot act without your brain, and your brain does not function independently of you acting. You could not have developed ways of acting as you did without your brain, and the neural connections in your brain could not have developed without you acting. The brain and action are systemically interrelated. Within the current action perspective, the mind–​body problem and its corollary problems and questions that have so troubled so many for so long do not arise. By conceptualizing action systemically, we are starting with a wider whole that is taken to be made up of varied interrelated constituent processes. The constituent processes may be distinct, but they are assumed to be inseparable, and thus there is no great divide among them. In other words, the current perspective starts holistically, rather than dualistically. The current theoretical perspective posits that mind and body refer to what are assumed to be distinct yet utterly inseparable constituents of one wider whole, namely action.

Varied Physical Dimensions of Action It is also useful to address mind–​body issues by considering the varied ways in which action is physical or material. For example, we can (1) consider how the mind or mental processes involve non-​bodily but still physical processes, and (2) think about how the mind or mental processes involve bodily processes besides the brain. In doing so, we will also be able to consider some of the different ways in which mind processes are observable. According to the current action perspective, action is taken to be constituted partly by cultural tools which are material or physical. Thus, the ways in which action—​including its “mind” subprocesses—​is physical are not confined to bodily processes. For example, both spoken language and sign language certainly involve the body, and spoken language also involves other material or physical properties. Spoken language is material in the form of sound waves, and written language is material in the form of light waves.

238  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Hard copies refer to language-​based texts that are physically written out on physical pieces of paper. As I pointed out in Chapter 6, I thought while I wrote this book, and such thinking was constituted in part by varied physical tools, including pens, paper, and a computer. In addition, you can physically see or observe my thinking in my written notes and scribbles, many of which I saved (see Figure 8.1). For example, Figure 8.2 shows some of how I was thinking about action on October 18 and 19, 2014. Unfortunately, I did not date Figure 8.3, but it shows that I was thinking about how different modes of action emerge, and that how I was thinking about cultural and individual processes was getting differentiated into some specifics. I was thinking of cultural processes as a “good entry” into understanding action, but the question mark to the left of

Figure 8.1  My pile of notes and scribbles.

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  239

Figure 8.2  Notes and scribbling, October 18–​19, 2014.

the arrow that goes from “Individual” around “Social” indicates that I was not sure about the order for discussing individual and social processes. Two other question marks in the section after individual processes show that I was befuddled by the connections between what I now refer to as constitutive and psychological processes, as well as how individual processes might

240  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Figure 8.3  Thinking about modes of action and individual, social, and cultural processes.

affect social and cultural processes. Figure 8.4 shows a ripped off half piece of paper on which I was trying to figure out how to distinguish between modes of action and cultural practices. I was pondering the issue of the sometimes fuzzy boundaries between modes of action and cultural practices that became part of the Chapter 5 introduction to cultural processes.

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  241

Figure 8.4  Thinking about modes of action and cultural practices.

I remember reading an article in the New York Times a few years ago about hooking a writer up to brain monitoring devices while he was writing “in the hope of finding patterns that may help illuminate links between the way art is created and enjoyed, and possibly the nature of creativity itself ” (Schuessler, 2013). When action is understood through the current theoretical framework, this kind of brain-​focused endeavor raises many questions. Of course, reading and writing literature require a human brain, but does “the” nature of creativity reside there? Is there “a” nature of creativity? Is art created and enjoyed primarily in and with the brain? Without delving into a protracted consideration of creativity, the current theoretical framework leads to thinking about how what counts as creative action involves the varied constitutive processes. For example, cultural processes are involved insofar as there may be different ideas about what counts as creative in different cultures. Also, a work of art may be considered creative if it departs from previous cultural conceptions of art. It thus builds on cultural traditions and introduces new ones. Social processes are involved insofar as other people position and recognize someone as creative, and insofar as people are often creative together. Other questions also arise from this brain-​focused endeavor. Will the thinking that occurs while reading and writing be revealed on brain scans?

242  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action If you monitor a writer’s neurological processes, will you know what she was thinking at a particular moment, or why he revised a sentence in some way? According to the current theoretical framework, reading and writing can be understood as modes of action that are constituted by neurological processes, as well as by individual, social, cultural, environmental, and other body parts and bodily processes. Reading and writing also involve varied psychological processes, and, of course, they develop. From the current theoretical perspective, if we want to get at what a person is thinking or feeling while writing, it would make sense to keep track of the changes he is making to a text, and to talk to him about those changes. If some writers print out what they have written and then read over the hard copy, pen in hand, how they are thinking would be evident in the crossing out and scribbling that ensues. You could also video and audio record them, in case they talk out loud to decide what changes to make. And that evidence is material or physical. It may be a different kind of materiality than brain scans, but it is material or physical nonetheless. The word infamy was not in the first draft of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous infamy speech. He made varied other changes on paper that provide evidence of his thinking and how he decided to present the attack on Pearl Harbor to Congress and to the country the day after it occurred (e.g., National Archives and Records Administration, 2001/​ 2107). Some artists keep sketchbooks, and the same points can be made about artists and sketchbooks. That is, one can discern some of what a painter is pondering through sketches that are made before and during the course of painting a particular painting or sculpting a sculpture. The artist’s mind is thus physically observable. And, when people tell us what they are thinking or feeling, we can observe them thinking or feeling. And once again, language is material and bodily, and thus the person’s thinking is not occurring separately from physical processes. According to the current theoretical framework, thinking, feeling, and self/​identity are active and dynamic psychological processes that comprise the wider whole of action, and they are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Insofar as they are partly constituted by bodily processes, they do not occur separately from the body. As discussed in previous chapters, there are varied ways in which psychological processes and action as a whole are inseparable from the body. For example, we discussed how thinking involves the hand, as well as how it is constituted by language which involves the body. We also considered how thinking occurs through sensorimotor activity from the get-​go, and how

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  243 sensorimotor experience is extended metaphorically in abstract thinking. If what we refer to as “mind” includes thinking, and if thinking involves metaphorically extending physical/​bodily/​sensorimotor experience, then there is no split between body and mind. The sensorimotor activity does not go away, but is a fully integrated attribute of abstract thinking. Moreover, we think about what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. When we want to know about the world, we use our bodies to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Standing upright is part of what enables us to see and think about the world the way we do. We discussed how feeling is expressed and experienced through the body and may involve bodily changes, such as rising heart rate or sweating. We also considered how the body enables people to construct and express their identities or who they are. The brain is certainly involved in constituting thinking, feeling, and self/​identity, and a human brain is necessary for human ways of thinking, feeling, and constructing self/​identity. However, the brain functions in relation to other body parts and bodily processes, as well as in relation to individual, social, cultural, and environmental processes. We thus “need to consider the brain as part of a holistic system” (Gallagher, 2005/​2006, p. 143). It is also important to recognize that aspects of thinking, feeling, and self/​ identity are indeed sometimes quite observable in bodily movement, from looking thoughtful, to fidgeting nervously, to grimacing disgustedly. In the grocery store, you may see someone looking at the shelves. He then picks up a box, reads it, puts it back, takes another box, reads it, and consults some physical/​material cultural tools, namely an envelope of coupons and then an app on his phone. He sighs. He grimaces. Finally, he puts a box of cereal into the shopping cart. Throughout, he seems to be quite puzzled over what kind of cereal to buy, and he seems to be thinking about it quite carefully. We might say that he looks puzzled, meaning that his mind was manifest bodily in his facial expression. Although I did not videorecord myself when I was writing this book, I know that I grimaced, sighed, drummed my fingers on the desk, chewed on my pens, and got up and walked around. At times, I probably smiled, clapped my hands, and nodded my head. Another example of bodily manifestations of mind comes from tennis, which I like to watch on television. I am always struck by how commentators talk about mind and body issues. After a shot gone awry, they might comment that the player is really nervous or lacks confidence. For the commentators, the player’s mind is utterly observable in the player’s shot-​ making, which, of course, involves the body. When playing tennis (or any

244  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action sport), mind and body are inseparable parts of one wider and integrated action process, namely playing tennis. Players and commentators also say that playing well begets confidence, and that confidence begets playing well. In other words, mind (in this case feeling confident) and body (in this case hitting tennis balls) are interrelated or mutually constitutive systemic parts of a wider whole.

Private Sense-​Making But still, a critic might argue that there are times when we really wonder what someone is thinking and feeling. Aspects of thinking, feeling, and self/​identity remain unobservable and mysterious and do not seem to be manifest bodily or to involve material tools. Sometimes what someone says does not adequately convey what they are thinking or feeling. Some writers do not scribble and edit hard copies, and some painters do not keep sketchbooks. Sometimes we just sit and think. Of course, sitting involves the body, but what is going on when we think quietly to ourselves? What are people thinking as they sit and stare ahead on the subway? What about Gabriel? What about the person at the grocery store? For all we know, maybe he was thinking about other issues besides what cereal to buy. What, more specifically, was he thinking and feeling, and what does such private thinking and feeling involve? In addition to thinking and feeling, I will use the relatively generic term sense-​making as a way to convey the point that we are not dealing here with purely cognitive issues. Sense-​making thus refers to what and how a person is thinking and feeling about what is going on, including what and how a person thinks and feels about her-​or himself and others. What then does such private sense-​making involve? It has long been posited that some of the unobservable aspects of sense-​making involve using language for oneself to regulate what one is doing. Vygotsky (1986/​1987) referred to such thinking as inner speech, and it has also been referred to as internal speech, in contrast to external speech. I personally am not a fan of using inner–​outer or internal–​external metaphors to refer to different aspects of what people do. According to the current theoretical framework, thinking, feeling, and self-​regulating do not occur inside of us, because they are active processes that we do. There are only blood and guts inside of us. Along similar lines, Gergen (2009b) asks and explains:

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  245 Why must we conclude that quiet deliberation is “inside” the person? This would reinstate the dualist premise of a mind behind the words. Rather, let us consider this “something” we do alone as itself a relational performance. It is neither “in here” nor “out there.” It is an embodied performance, but in this case, without an immediate audience or full expression. . . . In effect, it is a social performance on a minimal scale. Instead of uttering the words out loud to another, one utters them to an implied audience and without sound. . . . What we do privately is not taking place in an “inner world”—​ called mind—​but is to participate in social life without the audience present. (78–​79)

I prefer to refer to unobservable aspects of sense-​ making as personal speaking or private speaking, but I  will use the terms that Vygotsky and others use, as they use them, when talking about their work. Whatever term is used, the point here is that thinking, regulating oneself, and judging what is going on are active processes that are accomplished in part with language. And using language can occur privately “in the internal speech we rarely cease addressing to ourselves silently, or to absent others” (Taylor, 1985/​1992, p. 248). Insofar as private thinking involves language, it continues to include bodily and physical processes, and thus again there is no divide or separation between mind and body, or between mental and physical processes. In addition, when people use inner speech to make sense of what they are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and/​or smelling, the body is involved in thinking. According to Vygotsky (1986/​1987), inner speech is silent, although it can include an interplay between speaking silently to oneself and speaking out loud to oneself. I trust that most if not all readers think out loud now and again, and some perhaps quite frequently. We ponder and ruminate silently, as well as out loud to ourselves. As I write, I say and read the words silently to myself, and sometimes I say the words out loud as I write and rewrite them. As pointed out in Chapter 5, Archer (2003) argues that individuals think about their circumstances through reflexive deliberation, which involves using language for oneself to think. Private sense-​making occurs not only when we are alone, but also as we interact directly with others. We may be speaking out loud to others and thinking privately to ourselves at the same time. Private speaking is further characterized as idiosyncratic and abbreviated. The abbreviation of private speaking includes “omitting the subject of a sentence and all words connected with it, while preserving the predicate”

246  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action (Vygotsky, 1986/​1987, p. 236). Vygotsky also argued that the sense of a word dominates over meaning in inner speech. Within Vygotsky’s conceptual framework, meaning here refers to the relatively stable, dictionary definition of a word, whereas the sense of a word encompasses “the sum of all the psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, fluid, complex whole,” and it “is a complex, mobile, protean phenomenon; it changes in different minds and situations and is almost unlimited” (pp. 244–​ 245). Because inner speech is so abbreviated and idiosyncratic, it would be incomprehensible to others who do not know the varied connotations that a person conjures for a single word. It is also part of why articulating what one is thinking in speech out loud for others can sometimes be so difficult. That is, communicating with others typically involves specifying and qualifying in ways that are not necessary for oneself in abbreviated speech (Werner & Kaplan, 1963/​1984). Using language privately to think has further been conceptualized dialogically. For example, Archer (2003) conceptualizes deliberating reflexively as a private conversation or dialogue. More specifically, deliberating reflexively involves using language privately to pose questions to oneself about one’s life and circumstances and to answer those questions. In addition, conversing privately with oneself involves taking up the varied roles that comprise a dialogue, namely, speaking, listening, and responding. Talking to oneself about one’s circumstances is also dialogical in the sense that we often converse privately with varied others as a way to think about “what we should have said to them, what we will say to them and what we would dearly like to say to them (and have them say to us)” (Archer, 2003, p. 107). As discussed earlier (in Chapter 6), dialogical approaches to self/​identity posit that we think about who we are through private or imaginal dialogues with varied others. In addition, conversing privately can be integrated with talking out loud to others about one’s life projects and circumstances. Vygotsky also argued that inner speech is best understood developmentally, and in keeping with his overall approach to development, he posited that thinking-​as-​inner-​speech begins socially as speaking to others. That is, when they first learn to speak, young children use language to communicate with others, and they subsequently begin to differentiate between speaking for others and speaking for oneself. During the course of differentiating these two speech functions, children use what Vygotsky referred to as egocentric speech. Egocentric speech is when a child speaks out loud to him-​or herself

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  247 to think through a situation, and to regulate what the child is doing. In his research, Vygotsky (1986/​1987) presented children with a series of frustrations and difficulties. For instance, when a child was getting ready to draw, he would suddenly find that there was no paper, or no pencil of the color he needed. . . . We found that in these difficult situations the coefficient of egocentric speech almost doubled. . . . The child would try to grasp and to remedy the situation in talking to himself: “Where’s the pencil? I need a blue pencil. Never mind, I’ll draw with the red one and wet it with water; it will become dark and look like blue.” (pp. 29–​30)

Vygotsky explains further that older children behaved differently: they scrutinized the problem, thought (which was indicated by long pauses), and then found a solution. When asked what he was thinking about, such a child answered more in a line with the “thinking aloud” of a preschooler. We thus assumed that the same mental operations that the preschooler carries out through voiced egocentric speech are already relegated to soundless inner speech in schoolchildren. (p. 30)

Have you ever been around a young child who seems to talk non-​stop, including commenting on her every move, and posing questions without necessarily waiting for answers? Such talking out loud enables children to think about and regulate what they are doing. But then, speaking out loud for oneself is no longer necessary, as the child can use language for making sense, but without speaking out loud. As Vygotsky (1986/​1987) explains: “when egocentric speech disappears, it does not simply atrophy but ‘goes underground,’ i.e., turns into inner speech” (pp.  32–​33). We can also posit that conversing with oneself à la Archer develops as well. That is, being able to converse with oneself by posing and answering questions develops through acting in relation to others who pose such questions and guide someone in answering them. When you cannot find your keys (or some other object), do you stop and think, and try to remember where they are? Perhaps you first tell yourself to slow down, to stop and think. You might then ask yourself: “When did I last use the keys, or when did I last see them? Where was I? What was I doing?” You look where you think they might be, based on answering these questions. According to the developmental perspective explicated in Chapter 7, we would posit that

248  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action people develop this way of private remembering through participating in cultural practices with others who ask them such memory questions and guide them in answering them (Wertsch, 1991). Although private speech is being treated as a developmental achievement, it does not mean that speaking out loud to oneself is necessarily developmentally problematic. We may recall from Chapter 7 that action can be developmentally variable, and thus it is not surprising that we still rely on speaking out loud to ourselves. And such thinking clearly maintains the bodily and physical attributes of spoken language, again pointing to the inseparability of mental and physical processes.

Non-​Conscious Processes A developmental perspective also provides a way to address the issue of non-​ conscious aspects of functioning within the wider mind–​body issue. Again, some aspects of action are automatic and are not always subject to conscious awareness. From a materialist perspective, it could be argued that non-​ conscious mental/​mind processes occur in the brain or are attributable to the brain. Although this solution provides a way of addressing the mind–​body problem by equating non-​conscious mental/​mind processes with neurological processes, it is problematic because mental processes are reduced to the brain. As such, this solution does not leave much room for considering how other processes constitute action, including non-​conscious aspects of action. A developmental perspective offers an alternative way of understanding at least some non-​conscious aspects of action. As an alternative, it does not have to be viewed as a replacement for discerning how non-​conscious aspects of action involve neurological processes. Rather, developmental analyses can be synthesized with neurological analyses to further our understanding of non-​ conscious mental/​mind processes. The claim that action develops means in part that later and more complex modes of action build on previous and less complex modes of action. Building on previous modes of action further means that some earlier modes do not necessarily disappear during development. Rather, it means that some earlier modes of action are integrated with subsequent and more complex modes of action. And some earlier and simpler modes of action become automatically integrated parts of later, more complex modes of action. The simpler processes are thus part of the more complex action, but they do not always have to be consciously attended to, thereby enabling the person to

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  249 consciously focus on the more complex parts of action. For example, when I am driving, being able to move my right foot from the gas to the brake is automatic, enabling me to focus on the road, other drivers, and planning where I am going. Right now, I am thinking about complex mind–​body issues and complex action issues, as well as how to articulate varied complex issues in writing. I am mostly conscious of the abstract ideas and how to organize them into hopefully relatively coherent statements that others can understand. I am not consciously attending to making sure that I curl my fingers just so and that my fingers hit the right computer keys. Curling and moving my fingers are automatic or non-​conscious parts of my action right now. I have been moving my fingers since I was born (possibly before that), and there was a time when I probably consciously attended to moving my fingers so that I could pick up this or that object. Since then, I have developed the ability to move my fingers, and moving my fingers is now an integrated part of many modes of more complex action. Long ago, I took a typing class and developed some typing skills. Hitting the right keys is also now an automatically integrated part of writing and thinking. Development has rendered these aspects of complex thinking non-​conscious, enabling me to consciously attend to thinking about and articulating abstract ideas. As such, these non-​conscious aspects of action are not so mysterious.

Experiencing Mind and Body Although we are conceptualizing mind and body as interrelated parts of holistic action, it seems important to acknowledge that people may sometimes experience mind and body dualistically, at least in some cultures. For example, sometimes we may hold up one or another body part and contemplate it, as if it were separate from us. Sometimes we may experience ourselves separately from our bodies, such as when our arms or legs or hands just do not do what we want them to do. Someone may want to play a tune on the piano, but his fingers do not cooperate. With regard to constructing self/​ identity, a person may claim that they are not only a body, as in, “I am not just another pretty face,” or “I am not only a fat person.” Nevertheless, according to the current theoretical framework, in these varied cases, mental processes and bodily process are not separate. Distinct, yes, but not separate. In the case of contemplating or thinking about one’s body and experiencing it as separate from oneself, such thinking still involves bodily and physical

250  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action processes. Without bodily and physical processes, you could not think about anything, including your own body. We use language to think about the body, and language itself involves the body and physical processes. You may be discussing your body with someone else, thereby again using language. As you contemplate your hands and how important they are to you, you may be looking at them, and thus thinking involves seeing, which is embodied. Thinking also occurs with the brain. Taken together, we can distinguish thinking from the body that we are thinking about, but thinking is not separate from bodily processes. The same goes for feeling and the body. We may feel positively, negatively, or neutrally about our bodies and thus experience a divide between feeling and the body that we are judging. But insofar as feeling is partly constituted by bodily processes, feeling and body are not separate. We can construct ourselves in non-​bodily terms, but bodily processes are still part of doing so. In a nutshell, we are dealing here with simultaneously distinct yet interrelated phenomena. Mind (including thinking, feeling, and self/​identity constructing) and body are simultaneously distinct yet interrelated constituents of action. The issue of treating human functioning holistically and integratively has loomed large in this book from the beginning. In the Introduction, I explained that I find psychology to be overwhelmingly fragmented, and psychology’s fragmentation was discussed further in the chapters that comprise Part I of the book. On page 6 of Chapter 1, I explicitly state that I want to conceptualize human functioning holistically and integratively in order to be able to think systematically about the functioning of a whole person. And criterion #1 for a decent theoretical framework involves addressing holism and integration. The current systems conceptualization of action provides a basis for treating human functioning holistically and integratively because it explicitly conceptualizes action as a wider whole that is made up multiple and interrelated constituent processes. It also provides a basis for speaking about whole people, rather than beings who can be characterized primarily in terms of one or another constituent process. According to the current action perspective, a whole person is someone who acts in relation to others and whose action involves varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The issue of treating human functioning actively, or in terms of active processes, has also loomed large since the beginning of this book. In Chapters 1 and 3, I explain how psychology objectifies human beings in varied ways,

Understanding Humans Integratively and Actively  251 and that objectifying is born out of modeling psychology on the natural sciences. On page 62 of Chapter 3, I explicitly state that a goal of this work is to attend to active processes and to conceptualize human functioning in terms of the ongoing dynamics of acting in relation to others. The current theoretical framework meets this goal by conceptualizing action in terms of active processes that people DO. I have also worked to meet this goal by characterizing human action in terms of verbs as much as possible. And even when we use nouns to characterize human functioning, we can conceptualize them in terms of what people are doing.

9 Implications for Thinking about Individuality and Variability As pointed out in Part I, psychology has long focused on generalizing, often at the expense of individualizing. There is concern with explicating human functioning in terms of generalizable processes that are characteristic of human beings in general, and less attention has been paid to the specifics of individual experience. However, general and individual issues are not necessarily opposing or mutually exclusive, and action can be simultaneously general and individualized. It is once again useful to reiterate the position that a goal of psychological science is to discern and understand how an individual instantiates general processes. In other words, what are some general processes and how are they individualized? How is action simultaneously general and individualized? The current conceptualization of action provides theoretical tools that are well suited to answering these questions, and thus meets criterion #2 for a decent theoretical framework by identifying and conceptualizing general human processes in ways that can be individualized. In this chapter, we consider how the current conceptualization of action encompasses general or universal human processes that can be individualized in human individuality and subjectivity. We will also consider how any person’s action can be simultaneously stable and variable. Discussing these issues will also take us to thinking about what it means to know someone, as well as to briefly considering personality. The chapter will be organized around two of the issues raised at the end of Chapter 3, and their accompanying questions. For an overview of the current theoretical framework’s advantages and implications for thinking about individuality and variability, please see Box 9.1.

Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Implications for Individuality and Variability  253

Box 9.1  Implications and Advantages of the Current Theoretical Framework for Thinking about Individuality and Variability By starting with action and by conceptualizing action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, the current theoretical framework

• Enables understanding individuality –​ As individualized ways of acting –​ As a unique confluence of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes • Enables thinking about how general action processes are individualized • Enables thinking about predicting what people will do • Enables thinking about subjectivity in terms of active processes that people do • Permits understanding how action is both stable and variable

Issue: Individuality and Subjectivity We start this section with the following questions: What is this person like as an individual, or who is this person? How are the general processes that make up the wider whole of human functioning played out in individualized ways? How does this person subjectively experience what is going on? This issue and these questions were raised in Chapter 3, mostly in reaction to the aggregating practice in conventional psychology, which traffics in samples and averages, leaving individuality and subjectivity largely outside the parameters of conventional psychological science. In this section, we begin with individuality, and then we will tackle the related issue of what you know when you know a person. The section ends with a discussion of subjectivity.

254  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Individuality The current theoretical framework enables us to discern individuality in terms of how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are played out in individualized ways. Once again, we start with action and we can recognize that everyone acts. Action and its constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes represent the broader and common human processes. Then, we can discern how a person acts in ways that represent an individualized manifestation of broader and common action process. In addition, everyone develops. Thus, we can discern how a particular person experiences and instantiates broader and common developmental processes. Individuality refers to individualized ways of acting that reflect a particular patterning and confluence of constitutive processes, psychological processes, and developmental processes. In these ways, the current theoretical framework is general because action and development apply to everyone. At the same time, it is also flexible and individualizable, and it can be applied to any individual as they go about life in any corner of the world. Moreover, it is not an individualistic conceptualization of individuality insofar as individuality is not located wholly in individual processes. That is, a person’s individualized ways of acting emerge through simultaneously occurring and interrelated social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as well as individual processes. I am reminded of an event that I went to a few years ago in which we were all asked to say what was interesting about ourselves that the others might not know about. It seems to me that we had to describe our individuality in some way. One person said, “The most interesting thing about me is all of you.” In doing so, she was attributing aspects of her individuality to other people. Her individuality was not only individualistic; it was social as well. It is important to point out that conventional psychology does attempt to address issues of individuality in terms of “individual differences,” which refer to the extent to which people differ on some common variable. Innumerable studies address the extent to which people differ on a wide range of variables, from intelligence and personality, to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, to individualism and collectivism. This approach to individual differences arose during American psychology’s early era of mental testing, which itself arose in part to provide generalizable knowledge that could be used in institutional settings to address some of the day’s pressing societal issues (Danziger, 1990/​1998). For example, as more and more children of increasingly diverse

Implications for Individuality and Variability  255 circumstances poured into America’s schools, school administrators “needed effective techniques for making selection decisions that would enhance the efficiency of existing institutional structures” (Danziger, 1990/​1998, p. 109). Toward such ends, psychologists were increasingly concerned with identifying group norms for intelligence, against which individual children could be assessed. In conjunction with the practice of aggregating individual data, analyses of individuals were increasingly directed toward discerning the extent to which individuals differed from the group’s average or mean score. As such, individual differences refer to quantitative differences among people in a group with regard to some putative group characteristic. And that characteristic is assumed to be experienced and expressed in the same way by all people in the group, albeit in different amounts. Drawing on William Stern’s treatment of the person, Lamiell (2015) argues that psychology typically overlooks a critical distinction between knowing about “variables used to differentiate individuals within populations” and “knowledge of the individuals who have been so differentiated” (p. 205). This distinction is important, because identifying the extent to which people differ on some variable does not tell us about each individual and that variable. It does not tell us about how differences between individuals come about, nor does it tell us about any individual’s ways of acting, and it does not tell us about any individual’s development (Gottlieb, 2003; Griffiths & Tabery, 2013; Lamiell, 2010, 2015; Lewontin, 2000; Overton, 2011). In other words, this approach to individual differences “is a world in which individuals are stripped of their identity and their historical existence” (Danziger, 1990/​ 1998, pp. 116–​117). As pointed out in Chapter 3, conventional psychology’s statistical procedures involve understanding some measured aspect of behavior in terms of “its place in . . . normative distributions rather than . . . its place in the life story of an individual” (Danziger, 1996, p. 31). For example, siblings are often described in terms of how they differ from one another, and the focus may be on the extent to which siblings differ on some characteristic. One sister is more outgoing than the other sister, or this sister is calmer than her older brother. It may be important and useful to know about these differences. But it is also important to know about the ways in which each sibling is outgoing or shy, or calm or nervous. Perhaps they enact these characteristics in their own unique ways as they act in relation to others. This example further suggests that understanding people is not only about quantifying what they do. It is also about discerning the organization or patterning of what they do. When it comes to individual differences between

256  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action siblings, I admit that I often think of my sister and myself. Most would probably say that Anne is more outgoing than I am. However, that does not tell you much about the ways in which we each act in relation to others in varied circumstances. Also, it does not tell you about what being outgoing means to her or to me, and it does not tell you how we subjectively experience various social situations. It also does not tell you about what happened during her and my development, or how either of us developed through participating with others in cultural practices. Taken together, assessing individual differences in the conventional way leads away from discerning and understanding individuals as they go about their complex and messy lives. I am left wondering, where is the particular person? Where is the individuality of unique individuals? People are certainly different, and there is variability between people that is important to think about systematically. The current theoretical framework in no way denies the importance of considering individual differences, and it provides tools for thinking systematically about how people are different from one another. Insofar as any person’s action is constituted by dynamic individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, then differences between people in how they act would involve qualitative differences in the structuring of these processes. For example, with regard to social and cultural processes, people may act differently in part because they participate in different cultural practices that are populated by different people and involve different modes of action that reflect different cultural meanings. In addition, insofar as any person’s action also involves dynamic psychological processes and dynamic developmental processes, then differences between people in how they act would involve qualitative differences in the structuring of these processes as well. Before thinking more about individuality, it is important to point out that although I am focusing here on individuals and individuality, I am not arguing against constructing generalizable knowledge. As pointed out in Chapters  1 and 3, knowledge of individuals and generalizable knowledge are not dichotomous or mutually exclusive ways of understanding human functioning. Also as pointed out in Chapter 1, analyzing individuals does not necessarily lead to “irreducible incommensurability” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 825) because the current theoretical framework posits general processes that can be played out in individualized ways. We can thus analyze individuals in terms of the same general action processes, namely constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. In addition, we can analyze

Implications for Individuality and Variability  257 individuals to discern if there are clusters or some common ways in which action processes are structured. Doing so would be a way of constructing generalizable knowledge by analyzing individuals. Constructing generalizable knowledge by maintaining individual data and by identifying common patterns across individuals is different from the conventional practice of generalizing from samples to populations. Nonetheless, it is general knowledge that can further our understanding of the ongoing interplay between individual and general aspects of human action.

Knowing a Person The current theoretical framework also enables us to think systematically about particular people as unique individuals. More specifically, it enables us to get to know a person as a unique individual. It enables us to think about who a person is, or what someone is like. We may recall that in Chapter 3, I added to Kluckhon’s and Murray’s statement that every person is like all other people, like some other people, and like no other person, to include considering that every person is an individual. Thus, we can ask, what is this person like? Another useful way of putting it is to pose the question that McAdams (1995) asks in his work on personality: What do you know when you know a person? As always, we start with action. According to the current conceptualization, when we know a person, we know about how the person acts. If you are describing what someone is like to a friend, you could start by telling your friend what you know about this other person’s action. That is, you could tell your friend how this person acts. More specifically, when you know about a person’s action you know about the cultural practices that they typically engage in. And you know about the person’s typical ways of acting in those practices. In other words, you know about the person’s typical ways of acting in their “characteristic multitude of contexts” (van Geert & Fischer, 2009, p. 327). When you know about a person’s characteristic multitude of contexts, you know about someone’s culture, as well as about the other people in their life and about their ongoing relationships. Thus, you know about some of the social and cultural processes that constitute what the person does. Such knowledge would also include knowing how the person is positioned and recognized by others. You would also know about the person’s position in the social order. By knowing the person in terms of varied social and cultural

258  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action processes, you can know them as an individual, but not individualistically. You could also describe the person’s action in terms of individual, bodily, and environmental processes. Knowing about the person’s individual processes involves knowing about how the person appropriates cultural meanings in unique ways. Knowing about individual processes further involves knowing about what the person believes and values, what the person cares about, what matters to them, and how a person constructs their interests. It involves knowing about how the person understands their position in the social order. You also know about someone’s struggles, conflicts, joys, and sorrows, as well as what a person hopes and dreams for the future. Knowing a person involves not only knowing about these aspects of the person’s current ways of acting but also knowing about the person’s dynamic history of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. And, knowing a person additionally involves knowing about the person’s developmental experiences, including the pathways of differentiation and integration that they experienced, as well as the person’s guided participation experiences. If you know about a person’s typical ways of acting, you also know about how varied psychological processes are structured and organized for that person. Another way of putting it is to say that you know about how varied psychological processes are individualized for that person. For example, with regard to feeling, you might know that someone typically judges what is going on as a personal affront and thus is often immediately angry. With regard to thinking, a person whom you know understands varied situations in terms of issues of power and authority and is likely to invoke concepts and metaphors about oppression. With regard to interacting, one friend almost always approaches others warmly, while another is initially stand-​offish. With regard to self/​identity, you know how a person defines and expresses herself, and you know the stories she tells about herself. For any psychological process, the current theoretical framework further leads to discerning how it is organized in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, as well as how it is organized developmentally. Taken together, when you know a person, you know about how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are organized for that person. Well, no wonder it sometimes seems so hard to get know people! Knowing a person is complex because action is complex. And we often do not know other people in all of these ways. The point here is that the current action perspective enables us to think systematically about what we do know about a person’s action in terms of general constitutive, psychological, and

Implications for Individuality and Variability  259 developmental processes. It thus provides theoretical tools that can be applied to everyone and that can also elucidate everyone’s individuality, or the person-​specific ways in which the processes are organized. In other words, it enables us to discern how particular people individually enact common general processes. As such, the current action perspective provides a basis for discerning how action is simultaneously general and individualized. When you know a person in these varied ways, or even in just some of these varied ways, you might be able to predict how they will act. As explained in Part I, prediction is a major issue and goal for research in conventional psychology. Indeed, independent variables are also known as predictor variables, and the goal is to discern if independent/​predictor variables predict dependent/​outcome variables. In survey research, some survey items are predictor variables, and researchers hypothesize that responses to those items predict responses to other survey items, which represent outcome variables. However, when statistical analyses show that an independent/​predictor variable predicts a dependent/​outcome variable, we are dealing with a very specific way of using the word predict/​prediction. Statistically speaking, prediction means that there is a consistent mathematical relationship between the independent and dependent variables, on average for the experimental group as an aggregate. It could be that as the independent variable increases, the dependent variable increases or decreases, or it could be that as the independent variable decreases, the dependent variable increases or decreases. For example, a study might show that students with high SAT scores earn better grades in college than students with lower SAT scores. If a consistent quantitative relationship between variables is found to hold for the sample, then the technical phrase is to say that the independent variable predicts the dependent variable. Or, SAT scores predict college achievement. This way of presenting research results makes it sound as if the results are about individuals (Lamiell, 2010, 2013). However as discussed in Chapter 3, they are NOT about individuals because they describe average group trends that are based on aggregating individuals’ data. They do not tell us about individuals, some of whom may not have followed the trend of their respective groups. Furthermore, the results do not mean that every person you meet will follow the group trends. Some students with high SAT scores do not do well in college, and some students with low SAT scores do very well in college. In other words, you may know about a study in which A predicts Z, but in everyday life, you cannot predict that someone will do Z just because you find out that someone has experienced A. You may know about a study and its average

260  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action aggregated findings, but “outside the lab, focus on uniqueness not only has more merit, but is forced upon us” (Smedslund, 2015, p. 360). No wonder there is debate about the utility of SAT tests, and some colleges no longer require them for admission. In addition, the goal of prediction is problematic when action is understood as inherently developmental, as it is herein. Certainly, achieving in college involves action that develops. For example, studying develops. Establishing and maintaining friendships develop. Approaching professors for help develops. Organizing one’s time develops. Thus, someone who did not do so well in high school and ended up with poor SAT scores could develop in college. And someone who seemed to be set to achieve could struggle and even show some deteriorating academic functioning. Beyond SAT scores and school achievement, prediction becomes problematic in varied life arenas insofar as any modes of action and the psychological processes that comprise them can develop. For example, although researchers have tried for years to predict future behavior based on early attachment patterns, it is not so straightforward. One conclusion about this research is that “sometimes attachment in infancy predicts later psychosocial functioning, and sometimes it does not” (Thompson, 1999, p. 274). Insofar as development is cumulative, what happens later in development certainly builds on what went before. However, to say that development is cumulative is not the same as expecting to be able to know how someone will end up because they experienced X, Y, or Z previously. What happens in between earlier and later is significant. According to the current theoretical framework, whether later ways of acting can be statistically predicted from earlier ones or not, the later ways of acting still have to develop through participating with others in cultural practices. Thus, one would want to know about the person’s guided participation experiences, and one would want to know about the ways in which the person’s action underwent differentiation and integration. Predicting the development of action is further complicated because action develops through processes that can be played out in varied individualized ways that are often unknowable in advance. In particular cultural contexts, we may be able to predict some general developmental pathways in accord with cultural meanings and goals of development, but the particulars of anyone’s development toward those goals are another story. For example, we may generally predict that someone who grows up in a Western middle-​ class milieu will probably go to college or university and will probably pursue a professional career. However, predicting development for specific modes of

Implications for Individuality and Variability  261 action in relation to specific career pursuits will likely prove difficult. In addition, it would be difficult to predict specific pathways of differentiation and integration. Taken together, in particular cultural contexts, some developmental pathways may be more likely than others, and those developmental possibilities may be bounded, rather than boundless. According to systems theory, development is canalized, meaning that development is not wholly open-​ended, and some developmental pathways may be more likely than others for a given person. At the same time, a canalized or bounded process is not set in stone. Indeed, some people who grew up in Western middle-​class milieus do not work professionally. And many who did not grow up in such milieus do work professionally. Accordingly, Valsiner (1997) argues that human functioning is characterized by “bounded indeterminism,” whereby development is “oriented toward (in contrast with determined by) a future state [but] . . . the actual courses of individual development are unique, and mostly unpredictable, except for their general direction” (p. 146). In addition, even though some modes of action and pathways of development within cultures may be more likely than others, cultures change over the course of historical time. As cultures change, people’s ways of acting change, making it difficult to predict the structuring of action over longer periods of historical time. According to the current theoretical framework, we can posit that action will always involve constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. But we cannot predict the ways in which these processes will be organized and played out in the future. Given such complexities, Smedslund (2015) questions predicting on the basis of experimental methods as a goal for psychology. Instead, insofar as “everyday common sense . . . tells us that people are in many ways eminently predictable” (p. 371), we can use what we know about them and their everyday lives, through our action in relation to them, to predict what they might do. According to the current action perspective, we can predict what someone might do based on our history of acting in relation to them and based on knowing about how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes play out for them. Let us remember the point about Michael Moore from Chapter 1. He predicted that Trump would win the American presidential election in 2016, based on knowing people through acting in relation to them. In other words, you might be able to predict what someone will do if you know the person in the individualized ways discussed here. Nevertheless, even when you know someone, you will probably find that they do not always act similarly or predictably. As systems theorists,

262  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action we must remember that action is dynamic, variable, and softly assembled. There is flux and flow. A person might surprise you, and people sometimes seem inconsistent. You may be shocked to find out about some skeletons in someone’s closet because they reveal someone who seems so different from the person you know. A person can change and develop, and as just explained, development cannot be predicted exactly. Today, the world is in the midst of rapid flux and flow, socially, culturally, and environmentally. Insofar as action is inseparable from such dynamic and variable processes, prediction becomes ever more problematic. Chance plays a role in our lives, too, making prediction difficult (Bandura, 1982; Lewis, 1997). However, variability and lack of predictability do not mean that a person’s action is unorganized or unsystematic, or not meaningful, or not interpretable. It also does not mean that we do not understand what a person is doing or that we cannot explain what a person is doing. The current action perspective provides theoretical tools for thinking about how action can be both stable and variable in relation to the ongoing dynamics of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, thus taking us to the issue of stability and variability. But before we get to that issue, let us first address some issues regarding subjectivity.

Subjectivity Within the current theoretical context, we are working to avoid nouns and to emphasize active processes that people DO. Thus, we can think about how the term subjectivity encompasses active processes that people do as they act in relation to others. Toward that end, we can substitute “subjectively constructing experience” for “subjectivity.” Although this term is a bit unwieldy, I think it facilitates emphasizing individuals and active doing. Subjectively constructing experience refers to a person actively identifying what makes life meaningful to them (Frankl, 1985). Subjectively constructing experience also refers to the meaning of what is going on to a person. As such, subjectively constructing experience involves thinking about what is going on, as well as how a person feels about what is going on. Subjectively constructing experience can sometimes occur rather neutrally, but sometimes it is fraught with suffering and conflict (Kirschner, 2010, 2015). It is an active process that occurs in the moment as well as outside the moment, as it were. That is, we construct the meaning of what is going on as it is going on

Implications for Individuality and Variability  263 and as we are acting. We can also symbolically construct and ponder what happened later. When we are in the midst of some flowing and fluctuating circumstance, we sometimes do not know how to make sense of what is going on. We might even ask, “What is going on here?” Or in the immediate aftermath, we might ask, “What just happened?” We may construct the meaning of what happened later on, and over the course of days and even years we may interpret what happened differently (Freeman, 2003). As such, we do not simply recall the facts of past events or remember the past in a straightforward way. Rather, remembering involves subjectively interpreting and giving meaning to what happened later on, when “it can be located within some broader constellation of events, read for its significance in some larger whole” (Freeman, 2003, p. 64). In addition, subjectively constructing experience involves symbolically constructing possible futures. Taken together, subjectively constructing experience can be understood through the current theoretical framework as an active psychological process that people DO as they act in relation to others. Thus, varied ways of subjectively constructing experience emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. As such, although it is individuals who subjectively construct experience, doing so occurs non-​individualistically. In other words, subjectively constructing experience is individualized, but it is not located wholly in individuals. Subjectively constructing experience also develops. As I ponder these issues, I am thinking that it might be fruitful to conceptualize subjectively constructing experience as a superordinate psychological process in which thinking, feeling, and self/​identity are subpsychological constituent processes. There is some strangeness here. If we go back to the Chapter 5 definition of individual processes, we see that individual processes include subjectively constructing experience. On page 130 of Chapter 5, I wrote: “As agents, people subjectively construct experience, and they act in terms of what circumstances mean to them personally or subjectively.” And in the current chapter, I am conceptualizing subjectively constructing experience as a psychological process. Perhaps by now readers are used to the strangeness of fuzzy boundaries, as well as dynamic, multipurpose, and overlapping processes. In this case, when a person is acting in some situation, their action includes the psychological process of subjectively constructing experience. And insofar as a person acts partly in terms of how they subjectively construct experience, subjectively constructing experience is also part of the individual processes that constitute what they are doing.

264  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action As I  make these points about subjectively constructing experience, I cannot help but think about perspective. That is, we could say that how a person subjectively constructs what is going on represents their subjective perspective on the situation. I have referred to perspective in previous chapters, and perspective is certainly a hot topic in psychology. For example, in developmental psychology, there is a great deal of research on the development of children’s perspective-​taking abilities. Autism spectrum disorders are defined partly in terms of not being able to understand or take others’ perspectives. Beyond psychology in our postmodern world, it is commonplace to recognize that issues can be looked at from varied perspectives, and it is recognized that people see the world through different perspectives. Recognizing such varied perspectives is itself a perspective that one can use to subjectively construct what is going on. When a person constructs what is going on, they are constructing their perspective about what is going on. In a nutshell, I  am suggesting that perspective-​constructing is another term for subjectively constructing experience. To know what the situation means to someone is to know about their perspective on the situation. The current conceptualization leads to thinking about how perspective refers to active processes that people DO as they act in relation to others. We could say that people are “doing perspective-​ constructing.” Alas, “doing perspective-​constructing” is also rather unwieldy as a term, and it is difficult to arrive at felicitous terms for complex phenomena. The point here is that perspective and subjectivity-​as-​perspective can be understood in terms of what people DO as they act in relation to others. The same basic points can be made about perspective-​taking. Within the current theoretical framework, taking someone else’s perspective refers to what people DO, namely considering how someone else is subjectively constructing what is going on. There is further strangeness here because perspective also refers to the assumptions and premises that inform how someone subjectively constructs what is going on. That is, at the same time that I am constructing my perspective on a situation, I also subjectively construct the situation from my perspective. In other words, my perspective provides a basis from which to subjectively construct my perspective. It does get entangled! Once again, the current theoretical framework leads to thinking about perspective in terms of doing, rather than as an object that people have. That is, we can say that how I typically construct what is going on partly informs how I construct what is going on right now. And how I construct what is going on right now

Implications for Individuality and Variability  265 can inform how I will typically construct what is going on in the future. For example, based on my current perspective or typical ways of constructing experience, the current situation may be earthshattering to me in some way, and it may provide a basis for me to develop a new perspective or new ways of typically constructing what is going on. In this section, we have thought about varied complexities regarding individuals and individual action. When we know a person, we know them as an individual. It is individuals who are unique and who construct experience subjectively. The current theoretical framework enables us to think about how general human action processes are individualized. Yet, at the same time, I have taken some pains to point out that the current conceptualization of individuals is not individualistic. I have done so in order to offer an alternative to conventional psychology’s long-​standing individualistic approach to human functioning, as discussed in Chapter 3. Toward that end, I have drawn on sociocultural perspectives, which arose partly in reaction to conventional psychology’s emphasis on the individual, and instead emphasize the ways in which individual functioning is socially and culturally constituted. However, there is a risk of lapsing into “oversocialized” views of action that obfuscate understanding how human action is individualized and how people construct experience subjectively (Kirschner, 2010). The current action perspective provides ways to balance these extremes by positing that any person’s action always involves individual, social, and cultural processes, as well as bodily and environmental processes. As such, individuality and subjectivity are not being conceptualized individualistically, and at the same time, social and cultural processes are taken to be particularized in individualized ways.

Issue: Stability and Variability We start this section with the following questions: In what ways is human functioning dynamic and variable? In what ways is human functioning stable? This issue and these questions were identified to help us address how human functioning is simultaneously stable and variable. In this section, we consider stability and variability in relation to individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. The discussion also includes considering varied kinds of intraindividual variability. At the end of this section of the chapter, I briefly take up the vexing issue of personality.

266  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Constituting Stable and Variable Action Some of the complexities of human action are evident in its simultaneous stability and variability. That is, sometimes people act in stable or similar ways, and sometimes variability characterizes our action. Indeed, in the earlier section on what you know when you know a person, we considered a person’s typical or stable ways of acting in their typical contexts. But we also recognized that systemic action is softly assembled and subject to variability in varied ways. We thus have to deal with both stability and variability. Also, as discussed in Chapter 7, organismic-​developmental theory posits that development involves variability. For example, people do not always function in the most developed ways possible for them. As explained in Chapter  4, a systems approach to human functioning embraces both stability and variability as a basic starting premise. That is, while systems tend toward stable attractors, a system’s functioning is also always softly assembled, making variability an inherent feature of system functioning. Embracing variability seems particularly apt for conceptualizing human action insofar as human affairs are often ambiguous, and we often do not know in advance how they will be played out. There is uncertainty at times. We speculate about what might happen, and we have to figure out what to do in new situations. We do not always know how someone will react or what someone will do. And people sometimes try to act differently. Moreover, as pointed out in previous chapters, human action is plastic. Accordingly, we are led to conceptualizing and analyzing sources and patterns of variability in action, as well as sources and patterns of stability in action. Just as action in general is constituted through varied processes, there may be varied sources of stable and variable action. Using the current theoretical perspective, sources of stable and variable action would include the processes that constitute action itself, namely the constitutive individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. They are sources of stability and variability because stability and variability are characteristics of how action is organized, and individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are being conceptualized as the processes through which action is organized. It is thus theoretically coherent to conceptualize stability and variability in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. When the constitutive processes are organized in basically the same ways, day in and day out, then how a person acts will likely be rather stable. Every

Implications for Individuality and Variability  267 day, Lisa gets up and follows the same routine in her characteristic multitude of contexts. According to the current conceptualization of action, we posit that her action is stable because she mostly acts in relation to the same people about the same issues, while engaging in the same cultural practices, in the same environmental settings. The cultural practices in which she participates are quite compatible with each other, meaning that they reflect similar values and goals, and they involve similar modes of action. Her position in the wider social order remains the same. Taken together, the social, cultural, and environmental constituents of her action are organized similarly. In addition, her individual processes remain stable as she enacts the same values and beliefs and acts in terms of the same reasons and goals. With regard to psychological processes, she thinks, feels, positions herself, and interacts with others similarly from day to day. She also does not seem to be undergoing any developmental changes during this time, as her action is organized along the same developmental range. Of course, as Lisa deals with the flux and flow of daily life, how she acts will not be exactly the same day in and day out. Insofar as systemic action is softly assembled, it is characterized in terms of both “global regularities” and “local variability” (Thelen & Smith, 1994/​1996, p. xviii), as well as by “dynamic stability” (Fogel, 2006, p. 9). Once again, there is plasticity and action is softly assembled. Even if Lisa goes to the same restaurant with the same group of friends once a month, it is not always the same. You cannot go to the same restaurant twice. Moreover, Lisa is not a machine, and sometimes she acts differently. Her action can thus be characterized by intraindividual variability and such variability can be played out in varied ways. One kind of intraindividual variability occurs when people act in consistently variable ways, meaning that they deviate from their usual ways of acting, but in consistent ways. For example, sometimes Lisa’s typical equanimity seems to evaporate, and her children and colleagues will tell you that she can really fly off the handle, especially when she is angry about what is going on. She acts differently, but in an expected and even predictable way (to those who know her). When Lisa is hungry or tired or hot, she engages in less developed action. She can be cranky in relation to changing bodily processes and environmental processes. Varied forms of intraindividual variability are illuminated in an ethnographic study of bullying among Israeli tenth-​graders in a remedial class within a larger combined middle and high school (Gumpel, Zioni-​Koren, & Bakerman, 2014). The students stayed together throughout the day and

268  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action had three teachers within a remedial system “designed for students who experience difficulty in the larger general education framework and are at-​ risk for dropping out or not completing their high school matriculation” (p. 217). The researchers observed the teachers and students for 6 months “on different days, at different times, in and out of the classroom, in different classrooms and with different teachers” (p. 218). They identified varied participant roles that comprise bullying episodes. An aggressive bully refers to someone who uses “physical and relational aggression systematically against weaker students” (p.  219). The bully manager role refers to a “secondary role as class manager” (p. 220). Bullying was directed toward victims who could be characterized along a passive-​to-​provocative continuum, meaning that some victims were never seen “standing up to, or coercing another pupil,” whereas some victims acted in ways that seemed to provoke others to bully them. Participant roles also included bystanders who “showed no direct or indirect involvement” in bullying episodes (p. 221). The researchers observed that bullying occurred consistently with one of the teachers, but not at all with another. These findings indicate that a bully is not always a bully, and that bullying can be understood as action that emerges in relation to differently structured circumstances. For example, with regard to what would count as social processes within the current theoretical framework, the researchers reported that “even Roy, the unabashed and unafraid leader of Ms. Dina’s class, was submissive and well behaved in Ms. Karen’s classes” (p. 222). They went on to say that they found “Ms. Karen’s teaching style to be rigid, responsive, and autocratic” but “not tyrannical” (p. 225). It seems that there was some consistent variability insofar as Roy did or did not bully in consistent ways. In addition, it seems that bullying emerged in relation to the structuring of social processes. Of course, according to the current theoretical framework, the other constitutive processes are also at work, but the research report focuses on how others shaped the students’ action. In addition to shifting participant roles in different situations and across bullying episodes, the researchers observed “the same participant assuming different roles within the same episode” (p. 223). For example, one girl started acting in a bullying episode by supporting the bully, but by the end of the episode she was defending the victim. Taken together, this research corroborates the current theoretical framework by showing how action is ongoing, dynamic, and softly assembled, making for variability in how individuals act. I think it is particularly interesting to see such variability in bullying, because bullying

Implications for Individuality and Variability  269 and being a victim of bullying are often viewed as rather static individual characteristics. Another kind of intraindividual variability occurs when a person engages in very different, and sometimes conflicting, modes of action in their characteristic multitude of contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). For example, Lisa’s neighbor, Margo, acts in varied ways at home and at work, in the context of different cultural practices that are characterized by some different meanings and values. She struggles and feels conflicted. As explained in Chapters 5 and 6, some argue that conflicting meanings are increasing as a source of individual uncertainty and conflict in our globalized world. However, not everyone necessarily experiences conflict as they act in varied ways across contexts. Some people compartmentalize. Research on self-​concept development shows that adolescents increasingly reconcile conflicting self-​ characteristics in terms of higher-​order characteristics, as well as conceptions of social normalcy (Harter, 2012). For example, viewing oneself as both sad and happy “can be integrated under the personal rubric of ‘moody’ ” (Harter, 2012, p.  121). One adolescent explained that acting differently in relation to different people is not necessarily problematic because “it wouldn’t be normal to act the same way with everyone. You act one way with your friends and a different way with your parents. That’s the way it should be” (Harter, 2012, p. 121). Intraindividual variability can also occur because anyone’s routine and relatively stable action can be disrupted in a myriad of ways. Variability can take hold at any moment because ongoing and dynamic constitutive processes can be organized in changing ways. For example, with regard to social processes, a new colleague might be hired at work, and Lisa might act differently in relation to others at work. She might act differently as she finds herself in the role of mentor for this new colleague, or she might find that she and the new colleague disagree about how work should proceed. With regard to cultural processes, a fundamental truism about culture is that cultures change. Thus, variability in a person’s action could occur in relation to cultural change, from technological changes, to changing gender role expectations, to political upheaval, to economic changes. In Chapter 6, we considered Luria’s classic research in Central Asia which points to how formal schooling is related to the development of new ways of thinking. Along similar lines, Saxe’s (2012) research shows how the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea developed numeracy and math skills in the context of establishing a cash economy.

270  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Luria’s and Saxe’s studies show once again that human action is not historically invariant or static over longer periods of time. As such, it may be futile for psychologists to search for “laws” of action that hold for all people for all time (Danziger, 1997; Gergen, 1973, 1982/​1994, 2009b; Shotter, 1975). The notion that there are laws of action in the way that there are laws of physics is problematic, in part because people act differently in different cultures as well as across historical time. Nevertheless, there is a kind of lawfulness or regularity to human action insofar as people’s action reflects cultural meanings, including rules, norms, and guidelines for action. In countries around the world, some of those guidelines for action are laws in the legal sense. Thus, we can say that action is lawful, and we can say that people act lawfully when they follow the law. From the current perspective, such lawfulness is constructed by human beings and is subject to variability. At least in democracies, the laws of a land can be changed through legal processes constructed by people precisely for that purpose. The strangeness here is that such cultural laws are a source of both stability and variability in action. That is, they provide some stable parameters for action, while simultaneously providing guidelines for changing those parameters. We thus encounter another way in which stability and variability are interrelated characteristics of human functioning. Individual processes may contribute to intraindividual variability as well. For example, insofar as people are agents who contribute to their own action, they can decide to act differently. Of course, deciding to act differently does not mean that a person will immediately do so or do so successfully. The point here is that people can and may change because systemic action is not set in stone. Once again, there is plasticity. People develop new skills, people lose weight, people quit smoking, people make amends, people leave gangs, people give up crime, people deradicalize. Of course, not everyone changes, and not everyone always tries to act differently. The point here is that change is possible because action is subject to variability, and individual processes are a source of variability, along with all the other constitutive processes. There could be a change in one or more or all of the constitutive processes. It might sometimes be possible to identify an initial perturbation in one process. However, insofar as the constitutive processes occur simultaneously and in relation to each other, that initial perturbation is unlikely to stay within the one process. It will affect the other processes, as well as how they are interrelated to constitute ways of acting, including new ways of acting. For example, one of Lisa’s children might start struggling at school, and Lisa would not

Implications for Individuality and Variability  271 only be acting differently in relation to that child. She might also start participating in new cultural practices, such as meetings with school administrators or perhaps with counselors from some local social service agencies. During the economic recession that began in 2008, many middle-​class workers lost their jobs and confronted what has arguably become the “new world of employment in America, where job insecurity is the norm, wages are depressed, benefits are few, and anyone can be thrown onto the jobless rolls at any moment and stay there for months or years at a time” (Herbert, 2014, p. 35). As people become unemployed, they may act differently in relation to varied others, and all the constitutive processes would be involved in constituting those different ways of acting, along with the economic processes that may be identified as the initial perturbation. Looking for work involves acting in relation to potential colleagues and employers, and a new job may require different ways of acting in relation to others. It might turn out to be a particularly cold winter, or a natural disaster might render one’s typical ways of acting ineffective. New, hopefully effective, ways of acting would emerge through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes as well. As people face changes in the structuring of constitutive processes, they may act in variable ways by developing some new ways of acting.

Personality Issues of stability and variability, in conjunction with issues of individuality and subjectivity, all have bearing on personality. Some readers may have missed a discussion of personality in this chapter’s earlier section on individuality as well as in previous chapters. After all, personality is a major topic in psychology, as well as in everyday situations when people discuss their own and others’ personalities. In psychology, personality is a vexing and intractable topic that is fraught with and steeped in controversy. I do not intend to delve deeply into personality psychology, but I do want to briefly ponder some implications of the current theoretical framework for understanding personality. Personality is certainly a term that depends on how you define it and it has been defined in varied ways over the course of centuries. At least since the ancient Greeks, a central way of understanding personality is in terms of traits, which in psychology today, refer to “broad individual differences among people in characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Psychologists

272  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action typically conceive of traits as bipolar linear dimensions that capture general, global, and stable dispositions of personality. People can be compared and contrasted with respect to their traits” (McAdams, 2001, p.  299). In psychology today, the so-​called Big Five personality traits are taken to represent five central and universal dimensions of personality, known as extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience. Although this taxonomy of personality traits is widely used in conventional psychological research, there is much controversy over these traits, including how to define them more specifically, as well as whether personality can be understood in terms of just five dimensions. From the perspective of the current theoretical framework, a trait approach to personality can be questioned on varied grounds. Although personality traits are defined in behavioral terms and are taken to “account for consistencies in behavior from one situation to the next” (McAdams, 2001, p. 253), they also suffer from objectifying. It seems easy to lapse into talking about traits as objects that people “have” in differing amounts. For example, McRae and Costa (1995) refer to personality traits as “somethings in the individual” (p. 244). In everyday English, people refer to having personality and to the personality that a person has. From the current action perspective, such objectifying is suspect from the get-​go. In addition, although it is acknowledged that people may act differently in different situations, the focus on how personality traits are related to regularities and consistencies in behavior makes it easy to lapse into treating personality rather statically, or in terms of stability over variability. I know someone who is fond of explaining others’ action with certitude in terms of personality, with statements such as “That’s how he is, it’s his personality.” And that is that. Recall how someone I know told me that her 15-​year-​old son did not have the personality to be an engineer. And that was that. Moreover, based on the earlier discussion of individual differences and individuality, conventional psychology’s treatment of personality traits as individual difference variables suggests that their utility for understanding a particular person is suspect. In general, it is argued that personality psychology falls somewhat short because it continues to retreat from its unique historical mission. That mission is to provide an integrative framework for understanding the whole person. The field’s founders and its early textbook authors argued that personality psychology is uniquely positioned to focus

Implications for Individuality and Variability  273 its attention on human individuality—​that is, on the individual human person. (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p. 204)

However, as pointed out earlier, analyzing individual differences is not the same as understanding a particular individual or whole person. Although the current action perspective is not strictly speaking a theory of personality, I am certainly trying to articulate an integrative framework for understanding the individual whole person. From the perspective of the current theoretical framework, we again start with action, which leads to defining personality in terms of how a particular person acts in relation to others. As a systems perspective, we further understand a person’s typical action to be softly assembled, meaning that individuals tend to act in similar ways in their characteristic contexts, and some ways of structuring action may be generalizable across contexts. For example, Betty is generally cooperative in the varied contexts of her life. Yet at the same time, we do not act in exactly the same ways all the time, and even generalizable aspects of action can be played out in different specific ways in different contexts. Moreover, sometimes a person’s action can change and vary in relation to varied processes. A person’s action can also develop. Taken together, the term personality can be used to refer to the individualized as well as relatively stable and generalizable aspects of a person’s action, while simultaneously recognizing that a person’s action can be played out in varied particular ways and that a person’s action is always open to change. As such, understanding and describing someone in terms of personality involves identifying the general patterning of a person’s action at a particular time of analysis, by identifying how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are particularized for that person. It also involves understanding that personality is not fixed, because constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are ongoing and dynamic and can be structured in varied ways. In other words, personality is simultaneously stable and variable. Personality is also simultaneously general and individualized insofar as it involves action that is constituted by general processes that are played out in individualized ways. Beyond individuality and generalizability and beyond variability and stability, the current theoretical framework can be used to think about how varied aspects of human action occur simultaneously, even though they may seem at first glance to be opposing or incompatible. In other words, the

274  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action current theoretical framework can be used to overcome varied dualisms or dichotomies. In Chapter  8, we used the current theoretical framework to overcome mind–​body dualism. Dualistic or dichotomous thinking continues to permeate Western culture and is evident in all kinds of ways today. For example, we see dualism in conceptions of gender as either male or female, in conceptions of individualism and collectivism, in arguments over determinism and indeterminism, and in arguments over whether development is primarily due to nature or nurture. Yet, at the same time, we see fractures in dualistic thinking. For example, developmentalists readily recognize that development involves both nature and nurture, and increasing attention is being paid to how nature and nurture are interrelated during development. As pointed out earlier, research has long shown that both individualism and collectivism are evident in cultures around the world, albeit in different ways. Today, transgender experiences are wreaking havoc on the dualistic view that a person is either male or female, and in some cases, public policies are being revised to encompass a non-​binary view of gender. According to the current action perspective, gender can be understood as part of what people do as they act in relation to others. Research on how parents talk to boys and girls and how boys and girls use language shows that “enacting gender is a highly fluid and situated activity socially constructed in everyday routines” (Budwig, 2003b, p. 227). Insofar as gender is fluid and enacted, gender does not have to be understood dualistically, and any person can potentially act in what are socially and culturally taken to be varied gendered ways of acting. The same could be said for individualism and collectivism. Whatever the dualism may be, the current action perspective provides ways to think about how seemingly conflicting or opposing aspects of human functioning occur simultaneously and in relation to each other within the wider whole of action. As I often tell people, I have not yet met a dichotomy that I like.

10 Implications for Pondering Some Complexities of Causality and Meaning In this chapter, we will use our action perspective to think about some very vexing and intractable issues that have plagued and befuddled people for centuries. We begin with causality and then we turn to considering issues of meaning. In this chapter, we will see how the current theoretical framework satisfies criterion #3 for a decent theory (from Chapter 3) by providing alternatives to some problematic assumptions about causality. We will see how it satisfies criterion #4 by providing ways of thinking systematically about causality, which is a major topic in psychology and for people more generally. We will also satisfy criterion #1 by linking causality and meaning to the wider whole of action. An overview of implications and advantages of using the current theoretical framework for pondering causality and meaning are presented in Box 10.1.

Issue: Causality We start this section with the following questions: Why do people do what they do? How does human action happen, come about, or emerge? How does what people do involve multiple forms of causality? How can we explain human action? How can we understand human action? Addressing these questions involves making sense of the causes of human action, both in general and for particular people. In general, we can ask: Why do people do what they do? In particular, we can ask: Why did she do that? Why did he do that? Why are they doing that? Why did I do that?! We can also ask and ponder: How can we explain what he did? How can we understand what she did? How can we understand and explain what they are doing? While presenting and then questioning some of conventional psychology’s practices in Part I, some issues regarding causality were raised, and the goal Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

276  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Box 10.1  Implications and Advantages of the Current Theoretical Framework for Pondering Causality and Meaning

Conceptualizing Action in Terms of Multiple and Interrelated Constitutive Processes

• Permits thinking about what people do in terms of –​ Multiple and simultaneously occurring causes –​ Multiple and simultaneously occurring kinds of causes • Provides ways of integrating quantitative and qualitative analyses of human functioning • Permits thinking about how action is constrained and enabled in varied ways • Permits thinking about some complexities of context –​ How context both constitutes and is constituted by action –​ How context involves the structuring of dynamic processes • Permits thinking about what action means in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes

there was to draw attention to some of the complexities of causality. Allow me to reiterate a few points. First, conventional psychology is dominated by methods that are based on prior theoretical assumptions of mechanistic and deterministic cause→effect causality, also known as efficient causality. According to cause→effect causality, a person’s behavior is the effect of independent, antecedent, and deterministic causes. Second, this dominant conception of causality was questioned on the grounds that while such causality may be quite suitable for understanding the functioning of non-​human objects and some aspects of human functioning, other kinds of causality are also applicable to human beings. Third, the dominant conception of causality was questioned on the grounds that there can be multiple sources of action, some of which are occurring at the same time that a person is acting. Let us consider these causality issues a little more specifically with regard to culture. From a sociocultural perspective, culture is not taken to cause or affect action in the conventional sense of cause→effect causality. Rather culture is taken to “mediate” action (Wertsch, 1991, 1998). Recall from the

Implications for Causality and Meaning  277 Chapter 5 discussion of cultural processes that cultural tools are sometimes referred to as mediational means, and they are conceptualized as powerless until a person uses them in some way to act. As such, culture enables us to act as we do, and also constrains what we do in some ways, but culture is not being conceptualized as an efficient deterministic cause of action. For example, language is a cultural tool or mediational means that is central to human action. Saying that language mediates action, rather than that language causes action, means that language does not exist separately from what people do, and it does not mechanistically or deterministically cause people to act in one way or another. Saying that language mediates action means that people use language to act in varied ways, that action is carried out with language, and that action is made up of language. It is interesting to consider other mediational means that seem more object-​like and concrete than language, such as a car. Or consider a bicycle or a bus. Cars, buses, and bicycles are all cultural tools that enable us to act in varied ways, and they also constrain what we can do in varied ways. But none of them is a causal force that mechanistically makes us act (even though they themselves are machines). Right now, I am thinking about going for a bicycle ride later on, but my bicycle is not causing me to think about a bicycle ride. When I do next go on a bicycle ride, the bicycle will not be causing what I do. It will enable me to go for a ride, but I have to get on it and pedal in order to achieve that purpose. It is mediating my action. If at all, I am causing the bicycle to move. A person has to use a car, bus, or bicycle. From nuclear power to the internet, people argue over whether technology is positive or negative, and whether it affects us positively or negatively. It depends. It depends on how people use some technology to act—​for good or for ill. And of course, we can argue over what counts as good or ill, which takes us to values, which are also partly cultural. As with any cultural processes, cultural values and guidelines for how to act “never so completely constrain one’s interpretation of reality that they can be said to determine thought in a mechanical cause-​ effect manner. Additional contributions are needed” (Cole, 1994, p.  90). Moreover, Cole (1994) argues that “the structuration” of cultural artifacts, from material objects to ideas and values, is “so multiform and its constituent elements so unevenly distributed among its bearers” (p. 94). Thus, culture “can be woven into a seemingly infinite variety of patterns” (p. 94) by people as they go about their messy lives in all corners of the world. If not all sources of human action are of the cause→effect variety, how do we go about thinking systematically about why people do what they do? How

278  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action can we explain and understand what people do? As explained in Chapter 4, one entry point can be found in Aristotle’s four kinds of causality. In addition to cause→effect causality or efficient causality, Aristotle identified material, final, and formal causes. Final causes or explanations refer to how people act in terms of goals and reasons. Material causes refer to the physical or material substances that partly constitute action. Formal causality refers to the organization, structuring, or patterning of a person’s action as it is happening. Although formal, final, and material causes are referred to as “causes,” they do not function in the same way as efficient causes. That is, they are not conceptualized as independent, antecedent, and deterministic causes of subsequent effects (Witherington, 2017; Witherington & Heying, 2013). Rather, “each of these modes of explanation has explanatory value because each imparts intelligibility to the person’s activity,” and each offers a systematic and organized way of making sense of human action (Witherington, 2017, p. 18). Thus, we can refer to these kinds of causality as kinds of explanation, as well as kinds of understanding. From a systems perspective, each kind of explanation provides A way of understanding and explaining action, and there is room for considering varied ways of explaining and understanding action. From a systems perspective, we have been saying that action emerges through multiple and interrelated processes. The current theoretical framework also holds that action is constituted by multiple and interrelated constitutive processes. In Chapter 4, I considered how a person’s action is always infused with these processes, and how acting always incorporates these processes. By using these varied terms I am trying to convey that not only are we what we eat, we are also the cultural categories and tools we use, we are the people with whom we interact, we are how others position us, we are the air that we breathe. We are how we act, and how we act is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. These constitutive processes are dynamic and can be structured and interrelated in different ways. When they assemble into different configurations or patterns, different modes of action can emerge. By claiming that action emerges, we are recognizing that action is ongoing and always coming into being through the dynamic organization of its constituent parts. As explained in Chapter 4, claiming that individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes constitute action means that they are not independent forces that impinge on people or deterministically make people act. Thus, we need to think about why people do what they do in terms other than efficient causality.

Implications for Causality and Meaning  279 Considering and conceptualizing formal and final causes of action are steps toward explaining and understanding some of the multicausal complexities of action. In the upcoming section of this chapter, we will focus on formal explanation. In doing so, some issues of final and material causality will also be raised.

Formal Explanation of Action The Structuring of Constitutive Processes Explaining and understanding action formally involves identifying an “abstract pattern—​ form, structure, and organization—​ from the particular, real-​time content of a phenomenon and employ[ing] that pattern to explain the phenomenon” (Witherington & Heying, 2013, pp. 170–​171). Within the context of the current theoretical framework, we are working to identify the structuring, patterning, or organization of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes to explain and understand a person’s action as it is happening or for any given period of analysis. Toward that end, one could analyze the organization or structure of each process as a distinct process, as well as the organization of the processes in relation to each other. The conceptions of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes in Chapter 5 provide some guidelines for discerning how they are structured as people act in relation to others. It is not necessary to repeat all of Chapter 5 here, and thus the upcoming consideration of the structuring of some aspects of the constitutive processes is meant to be illustrative rather than exhaustive. I will use the terms structuring, organization, and patterning interchangeably. The structuring of cultural processes includes the ways in which common and contested beliefs and values are enacted in action, as well as how a person acts in terms of cultural rules or guidelines for action. One could also analyze the cultural concepts and metaphors that a person uses while acting in relation to others. For example, when consoling Wolfgang, a person might acknowledge that he has suffered a great loss, and while consoling Ludwig, the same person might refer to the situation as a blow or as having been punched in the gut. The cultural organization of action further includes language and other tools that mediate action. As defined in Chapter 5, language and other tools have material or physical constituents, thus pointing to connections between formal causality and material causality. In Chapter  5, we also

280  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action considered how some cultural tools may be favored over others, thus taking us to the structuring of power and authority (Wertsch, 1998). For example, in formal school settings, certain ways of speaking and writing are valued over others. In legal settings, certain ways of thinking are valued over others. The formal organization of cultural processes additionally includes the structuring of political and economic processes. For example, understanding a person’s action may be enhanced by knowing that the person was laid off from work during a recession, or that someone cannot find a job with even minimal healthcare benefits. Or, perhaps someone posted a diatribe on some social medium against the view that there are more than two genders, during a time of political uncertainty and upheaval in some part of the world. Recently, some American college students told me about such an incident, and some of them were talking about trying to ban the person who posted what they considered to be offensive material from the particular social media outlet. They also wanted a picture that the person posted taken down. Although I  personally agree with supporting non-​binary conceptions of gender, I questioned whether banning was the way to go in a democratic society, and I encouraged protesting and informing. With regard to the structuring of political processes, I also tried to get them to consider that, for some people, what seems like the upending of traditional identity categories in the current American political climate may be quite distressing. The diatribe may not be about gender alone, but about what that person is experiencing as the rise of disorienting political policies. The point here is that one can try to understand the person’s posting as action, and in terms of what is going on politically, along with the structuring of other constitutive processes. Doing so could inform efforts to promote some mutual understanding and constructive communicating among people who disagree about varied complex and politically charged issues. As pointed out in Chapter 5, understanding people in relation to the social order helps one to understand why some people vote the way they do. Of course, the social order can and does change, as can a person’s place within the social order. And as people’s places in the social order change, so, too, may their action change. The structuring or patterning of social processes includes what others are doing while a person acts in relation to them. For example, is another person agreeing with or challenging the one whose action you are trying to explain and understand? Is another person using emotion to support or manipulate the person you are trying to understand? How is another person positioning and recognizing that person? A person’s ways of acting in relation to different

Implications for Causality and Meaning  281 people could also be understood in terms of their relationship and the history of that relationship. Formal explanation for individual processes includes explaining what a person is doing in terms of the organization of varied psychological processes that comprise what she or he is doing. For example, a person may be thinking by remembering, categorizing, searching for evidence, weighing pros and cons, considering different perspectives, and/​or logically linking abstract concepts. By logically linking abstract concepts, the person’s thinking is further organized developmentally in terms of Piagetian formal operational thinking. Or, a person may be feeling by first being angry at someone, and then they might become increasingly compassionate and contrite. Or, a person might be constructing who they are by telling a story about what happened to them the other day. Formally explaining how they are constructing an identity story could involve discerning its developmental organization. Or, a person may be interacting with someone else by questioning and challenging the other’s claims. One could also discern the developmental organization of such interacting by analyzing how a person is interacting with others in terms of differentiation and integration. Formal explanation of how a person’s action is organized developmentally could also include discerning the person’s history of guided participation, as well as some of the pathways of differentiation and integration they experienced for varied modes of action. Formal explanation of psychological processes further involves considering how they are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In addition to discerning the structuring of distinct psychological processes, formally explaining action would include considering how varied psychological processes are interrelated to comprise varied wider modes of action. Formally explaining individual processes would further involve discerning common modes of action for a person across contexts, as well as identifying how a person’s action is organized differently across contexts. Understanding action in terms of the structuring of individual processes also involves the structuring of agency. As explained in Chapter 5, agency includes using cultural meanings, and thus one could look at how someone interprets and expresses cultural meanings with an individual twist to accept, resist, subvert, and/​or reject cultural meanings. In addition, agency includes pondering what is going on and deciding how to act. Thus, one could look at what someone is doing to choose and decide how to act. Agentive individual processes include how a person acts for the sake of reasons. Agency

282  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action further involves how people act for the sake of future goals, and we thus find ourselves confronting final causality. The formal structuring of agentive individual processes also includes what a person does to regulate what they are doing. For example, one person may stop herself from yelling at the cashier when the line is moving slowly by checking email instead. Someone might regulate her anxiety about all that she has to do by making several lists and schedules of what she has to do for the week. A person might count to 10 before speaking out at a meeting. With regard to bodily processes, formal explanation includes discerning the structuring of varied bodily subprocesses that constitute ways of acting. For example, how are bodily processes structured when a person is consoling someone, and how are bodily processes structured to constitute arguing? Such analyses could include analyzing patterns of brain activity as people engage in different modes of action. Formal understanding of action in terms of bodily processes could also include analyzing patterns of biochemical, cardiac, and hormonal processes. In addition, formal explanation of bodily processes involves discerning the patterning of moving physically that partly constitutes what a person is doing. For example, how is a person using their hands to act? When consoling, a person might pat the person who is upset on the back, put an arm around them, and hug them. When arguing, someone might pound her fist on a table, gesticulate vigorously, and/​or point her index finger at the person with whom she is arguing. People move toward and away from each other as they act, and people raise and lower their voices as they act. One could look at how people use their eyes to act, and, as discussed previously, there is cultural variability in the patterning of eye contact. Formal explanation of action also involves identifying the dynamic structuring of environmental processes, including temperature, air quality, physical terrain, availability and quality of food and water, and space availability. As pointed out in Chapter 5, people rescued Jews for varied reasons. However, environmental conditions constituted their action as well. For example, some people who wanted to help “were inhibited because of lack of resources—​limited space and no access to extra food” (Fogelman, 1994/​ 1995, p. 61). As a physical phenomenon, the environment can also affect action in cause→effect ways. For example, as mentioned in Chapter 7, toxins and contaminants in the environment can directly cause brain damage in children. And such brain damage has been linked to cognitive problems. Although these links emphasize efficient causality from the environment to → the brain to → thinking, that is not the whole story, because thinking

Implications for Causality and Meaning  283 also emerges and develops through individual, social, and cultural processes. Understanding thinking thus involves considering how individual, social, and cultural processes are structured. In this case, we have an opportunity to consider multiple forms of causality. That is, we are considering how both cause→effect causality and formal causality are involved in the emergence of thinking. According to the current action perspective, the varied constitutive processes are distinct but also interrelated, meaning that they constitute action simultaneously and in relation to each other. Thus, formal explanation of action involves thinking about how varied constitutive processes are organized in relation to each other. As just pointed out, eye contact is played out in culturally particular ways, making for interrelations between bodily and cultural processes. In addition, environmental causes of action are inseparable from cultural, social, and bodily processes. Let us go back to cars, buses, and bicycles, which were discussed earlier as cultural tools that do not mechanistically cause action. With regard to the structuring of individual processes, we could discern that Franklin takes the bus to work because it is more important to him to save money for his children’s education than to have a car, and we could discern that Benjamin takes the bus to work because he is trying to minimize his carbon footprint. In this case, Franklin and Benjamin are interweaving cultural tools and values into their action in different ways. This action that reflects values and is mediated by tools is organized both culturally and individually. As pointed out earlier and in previous chapters, people use cultural meanings in individualized ways, making for interrelations between individual and cultural processes. Of course, social, bodily, and environmental processes are also involved, and thus formal explanation involves considering the patterning of interrelations among the varied constitutive processes. Taken together, when you want to know why people did what they did, or why they are doing what they are doing, you can think about how varied individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes were or are structured. He was consoling his friend because of how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes were structured. She lashed out at her mother and did not talk to her for 3 months because of how varied individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes were structured. They hid Jews in their house during World War II because of how varied individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes were structured. He posted that diatribe on social media because of how varied

284  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes were structured. A person’s action is not constituted by any one of these processes alone and cannot be understood or explained in terms of any one of these processes alone. The ways in which these processes are organized enables us to explain and understand some of the complexities of what people do and why they do what they do. Claiming that action is not constituted by any one process alone raises the thorny issue of responsibility, and I can imagine some readers wondering if individual responsibility or accountability is being sacrificed here. If multiple processes constitute action, why not just blame others, or the government, or your neurons, and get off scot free? I confess that I hesitate to even mention this issue because it is so thorny and there are so many gray areas. It is so thorny because it encompasses how people blame and praise each other, as well as judge and punish each other. I in no way presume to speak definitively about these complex topics, and my goal for now is to use the current theoretical framework to make a few points that seem relevant to navigating some of the thorniness of individual responsibility. As explained earlier, claiming that action is “constituted” by varied processes means that the processes do not determine action in the sense of cause→effect causality. Thus, understanding action in terms of varied processes is not equivalent to claiming that they unavoidably determine what people do. Insofar as they do not unavoidably determine action, people can still be held responsible for what they do. In addition, insofar as individual processes are among the processes that constitute action, individual responsibility is still involved when varied processes constitute action because a person can still agentively decide and choose what to do. Unless circumstances are extremely dire or constraining, there remains “a limited but nevertheless real area of human freedom” (Berlin, 1958/​1969, p. 116). In extremely dire or constraining cases, people may judge that circumstances or conditions are such that a person cannot be blamed. But often, it is not either/​or, or not clearly either/​or. It is not the case that a person is either responsible or the passive pawn of other processes. It is not the case that this person is either completely at fault or the person is not at all at fault. Rather, individuals constitute their own action, along with other processes. Thus, conceptualizing action in terms of multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes is not necessarily equivalent to completely absolving individuals of responsibility for what they do. As Nussbaum (2001/​2003) puts it, we should not “accept the simple contrast between agency and passivity” (p. 408). For example, a person who was fired

Implications for Causality and Meaning  285 during a recession and who has been diligently looking for a job for 6 months may end up stealing food because he has no money to his name. That person is still the one who stole and he may readily admit to stealing, but the cultural circumstances are also important for understanding what he did. The person is still an agent and can be held responsible, but we can also see about structuring varied constitutive processes to support other ways of acting. The notion that people may be “held” responsible or accountable indicates that responsibility for action is not a purely individual phenomenon. Because it is people who hold each other responsible for what they do as part of acting in relation to each other, individual responsibility is inseparable from social processes. In addition, cultural meanings about how to act in relation to others are reflected in what people are held responsible for and how they are treated if they fail to live up to expectations for action. There are so many gray areas. People disagree about and negotiate how to assign responsibility. And they argue about how to treat those deemed responsible, particularly those deemed blameworthy. We can also recognize that acting in what are taken to be culturally responsible ways develops. As explained in Chapter 7, the current theoretical framework holds that action develops through participating with others in cultural practices. If someone has not experienced opportunities to develop particular ways of acting, what do we do? Insofar as a person’s development is not up to a person alone, we can also ask, who and what else are responsible for this lack of development? And again, we encounter gray areas because development occurs through varied processes. A person can be held responsible for what they do, and others can also create developmental opportunities by structuring cultural and social processes in ways that support particular ways of acting. Is that not a goal of varied intervention programs, such as programs for troubled youth or prison education programs? A goal is to go beyond holding people responsible only by punishing them for some way of acting, but to provide opportunities for them to develop different ways of acting. Considering formal causality is also relevant to the problems raised in Part I regarding conventional psychology’s focus on quantifying human behavior. According to the current action perspective, human action is being conceptualized in terms of what people do, or in terms of active and dynamic processes, rather than as objects that can be measured quantitatively. As ongoing processes, they are also not being treated as objects that people have in varying amounts. Within this theoretical context, individual, social, cultural,

286  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action bodily, and environmental processes are all taken to contribute 100% to action. Thus, it would be conceptually incoherent to try to discern their relative quantitative contributions. Instead, it is conceptually coherent to discern how the processes are structured as distinct processes and in relation to each other, to constitute wider modes of action. Focusing on patterns of action and the structuring of constitutive processes does not mean that quantitative analyses of action have to be abandoned. Quantitative and qualitative methods are not necessarily incompatible. They can be combined depending on the particular issues under scrutiny. For example, with regard to cultural processes, one could look at how often certain cultural tools are used for different modes of action. Or with regard to social processes, one could analyze whether certain others challenge someone more than others. One can discern whether certain others are more likely to position someone as X, rather than as Y. In these ways, one is identifying the structuring of qualitative processes as well as discerning their relative frequency. What one is not doing is starting by defining the qualitative processes in terms of quantitative variables. Enabling and Constraining Action Another useful way to formally explain action involves thinking about how the constitutive processes create opportunities for different ways of acting. Another way of putting it is that individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes all enable and constrain action in varied ways. Yet another way of putting it is to say that these processes may support and limit action in varied ways. Thus, the formal structuring of these constitutive processes can also be identified in terms of the dynamics of constraining and enabling, or the dynamics of supporting and limiting. To illustrate this point for now, let us consider how cultural and social processes may constrain and enable action. The same kind of analysis is also wholly applicable to individual, bodily, and environmental processes. Here I will use the terms enable and support interchangeably, and I will use the terms constrain and limit interchangeably. Within the current action perspective, action is shorthand for acting in relation to others in cultural practices, and cultural practices are taken to be characterized by different modes of action. As pointed out in Chapter 5, it is not always straightforward to identify cultural practices, but insofar as modes of action are organized in different settings or practices, cultural practices can be viewed as circumstances that provide different opportunities for action.

Implications for Causality and Meaning  287 For example, there may be some different opportunities for acting in school, home, and work practices. There are opportunities for different ways of acting on sports fields and in art museums. Insofar as cultural practices provide opportunities for action, cultural processes include the ways in which cultural practices enable or support action. School practices, home practices, playing sports, and going to art museums may enable a myriad of modes of action. To name a few, school practices (hopefully) enable students to think critically, home practices may enable children to contribute to common goals, playing sports enables people to cooperate and compete, and going to art museums enables people to learn about cultural history and to encounter varied social and cultural perspectives. With regard to formal causality, the patterning of cultural processes includes the ways in which a person’s action is supported within cultural practices. At the same time, however, cultural practices may also constrain or limit people’s action. Sometimes the same cultural practice both supports and constrains action. Constraint is further complicated because some constraints on action may be considered rather benign and part of what makes action within a cultural practice go along relatively routinely. For example, people are constrained from talking out of turn when it is agreed that people take turns to speak at a meeting. At the same time, constraining people from talking out of turn enables everyone to talk. Stopping at a red light constrains you, but it also enables other people to go, and it enables safety for everyone. And the light will soon turn green, and you will be able to go. However, it is not always so rosy, because cultural circumstances also sometimes constrain people’s action in problematic ways, such as in slavery and forced labor, curtailing access to education and healthcare, and making it difficult for some people to vote or buy homes. And, people may disagree about what counts as enabling and constraining circumstances. Such complexities of enabling and constraining point to the importance of discerning conceptions and patterns of both enabling and constraining for different modes of action in the context of different cultural practices. In addition, part of the formal structuring of cultural processes includes the structuring of opportunities to even participate in cultural practices that enable and/​or constrain action in varied ways. Within cultures, not everyone necessarily enjoys the same access to practices that some would consider to be enabling of action. For example, in some cultures, schooling for girls is limited and even prohibited. In the past in the United States, many babies with Down syndrome were abandoned in dreary institutions, and African

288  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Americans went to separate and unequal schools. And despite the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 to integrate schools, and despite civil rights legislation, educational opportunities continue to vary in relation to race and income in the United States. Without ramps, access to some cultural practices may be curtailed for people in wheelchairs, and this example also points to the interrelated structuring of cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Changes in the structuring of cultural processes include changes in opportunities for people to participate in cultural practices that enable varied modes of action and that provide opportunities for individuals to develop ways of acting. With regard to social processes and formal causality, we can also think about the patterning of constraining and enabling action as people act in relation to varied others. That is, what other people do can constrain and/​ or enable a person’s action. Thus, the formal causality of social processes includes identifying the ways in which others constrain and enable a person’s action as they act in relation to each other. Another person can literally or physically prevent someone from acting in some way. Another person can constrain someone’s action in varied other ways as well, such as by ridiculing or challenging. Another person can also enable someone’s action in varied ways, such as by supporting and encouraging. Part of the strangeness of the structuring of social processes is that what the other person is doing is not inherently constraining or enabling. For example, sometimes being ridiculed by others may end up partly enabling a person to act in some way because the person wants to show them what she can do. Challenging someone is not necessarily constraining and can enable new ways of acting to develop. In some cultures, teasing and shaming are considered to be appropriate ways of guiding people to act in some ways and not in others, thereby both enabling and constraining what they do (Martini, 1994; Rogoff, 2003; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986/​1992). Sabat (2001) describes a patient with Alzheimer’s disease whose opportunities for action were quite different at home and at an adult day care center that she attended. Differences in how her action was constrained and enabled can be understood partly in terms of the different ways in which social processes were structured for her at home and at the day care center. At home, her husband “would do most of the talking, including his speaking for her even though she could speak for herself ” (p. 112). Also at home, her action was constrained because “she had no ‘work’ to do other than trying as best she could to respond to her spouse’s infrequent requests, for he took on many

Implications for Causality and Meaning  289 of the household chores” (p. 112). However, “bringing cheer to people at the day care center was her ‘work,’ her purpose” (p. 128). The center social worker “often asked Mrs. D to talk to new participants so as to help integrate them into the group, or to provide sympathy and understanding to those who were experiencing difficulties” (p. 128). In addition, on her own, she “would strike up conversations with others who seemed to need some sort of diversion, and would provide humor and understanding” (p. 128). At home, Mrs. D “was positioned principally as deficient,” but at the center “the staff actively enlisted her help and allowed her to use her remaining intact abilities to the fullest extent” (p. 113). Taken together, the structuring of social processes enabled and constrained Mrs. D’s opportunities for action in different ways at home and in the center. Context The current action perspective and the notion of formal causality have implications for understanding the role of context in human functioning. Knowing about “the context” helps us to understand and explain why people do what they do. Pundits and politicians may be criticized for taking what someone says “out of context.” Some movies and novels begin with scenes that provide wider contextual information. Within conventional psychology, it is commonplace to discern the effects of context on behavior. Some of conventional psychology’s most famous (and infamous) findings come from analyses of the effect of the social context or situation on behavior, as in the case of Milgram’s obedience research (Milgram, 1974/​2009). Since the 1980s, considerations of the cultural context have been on the rise in psychology. And environmental psychology is now a major subdiscipline within psychology that includes investigating how the environmental context affects behavior. However, we are again confronting the dominance of efficient causality in conventional psychology. That is, social, cultural, and environmental contexts (or aspects thereof) are typically treated as independent variables that cause behavior in the form of dependent variables (Bhatia, 2007; Cole, 1994; Rogoff, 2003; Valsiner, 1997). In Milgram’s research, aspects of the social context are treated as independent variables that cause obedience. In contrast, sociocultural theory holds that social, cultural, and individual processes are mutually constitutive, and that social and cultural processes shape action and development not as independent forces, but because individuals participate with others in culturally meaningful practices. Culture is also not

290  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action taken to be an independent force that affects individuals because individuals have to use cultural tools in order for the tools to be effective. As explained at the beginning of this chapter, culture is taken to “mediate” action. Along similar lines, Geertz (1973) points out that “culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context . . . within which they can be intelligibly—​that is, thickly—​described” (p. 14). Also along similar lines, Harré and Gillett (1994) explain that although people follow cultural rules, a person “is not causally compelled to do so” (p. 120). To consider context issues from the perspective of the current action approach, let us again go back to the premise, explained in Chapter 5 and just recalled here, that people act in relation to others in different cultural practices, such as at work, home, and school, or in restaurants, parks, and museums, or at concerts and sporting events. Action within such practices is situated in cultures or cultural communities, in physical locations, and is populated by other people. In the parlance of the current action perspective, context can be understood in terms of the social, cultural, and environmental processes that constitute action. And these processes can be understood formally in terms of how they are structured, both as distinct processes and in relation to each other. In addition to part–​part interrelations, from a systems perspective, we can consider action and context in terms of part–​whole connections and whole–​ part connections. That is, context—​in the forms of social, cultural, and environmental part processes—​partly constitutes action. And at the same time, the wider whole of action partly constitutes the ways in which context—​in the forms of social, cultural, and environmental processes—​is structured. In other words, not only does context constitute action, but contexts come into being or are created through human action. For example, there was a time when the United States, and what is known as American society or culture, did not exist. American culture came into existence through people acting in relation to each other, and people acting in relation to each other continue to constitute American culture today. The American “founding fathers” acted to form a more perfect union, thereby explicitly establishing a particular cultural context. At the same time, the way they so acted was constituted by social, cultural, and environmental processes (along with individual and bodily processes, but we are focusing on “context” processes for the moment). Recall from Chapter 5, the conversation I had with young Seth about whether society is a lady. I used that conversation to make the point that just as cultural

Implications for Causality and Meaning  291 processes constitute action, cultural processes are themselves constructed by people as they act. And around and around we go on the interplay between action and context, or between context and action. The same goes for creating more immediate contexts of action. For example, academic department meetings, organization meetings, and town council meetings are all contexts that are created by people as they act. At first, people gather and chat. At some point, someone might ask, “Should we start,” or “Is it time to start?” In some cultural contexts, it is customary for someone to “call the meeting to order.” The meeting takes place as people discuss varied agenda items. Eventually, there is a motion to adjourn and the meeting ends. Some other people may then come into the room and they create another context. For example, when an academic department meeting ends, students may come into the room and start creating a classroom context. Or, imagine that some children are doing their homework at a big table which is located in what is referred to as the dining room and then the babysitter calls out that it is time to get dinner going. The children pack up their books and start setting the table with plates and cutlery. The context of dinner is being created through their action in the same physical location that was used for different purposes and as part of a different cultural practice, just moments ago. Sometimes the family does crafts at the big dining room table and sometimes the family gathers around the dining room table to discuss weighty family matters. In these ways, quite different action contexts are created in the same physical location by the same people through acting in relation to each other in different ways. As such, “context is not taken as a given but rather . . . is interactively achieved in the process of participating in social activities” in culturally particular practices (Budwig, 2003a, p. 107). Context is thus “negotiated and emerges” between people as they act in cultural settings (Budwig, 2003a, p. 113). At the same time however, it is important to recognize that there is a way in which contexts do exist separately from action, or at least separately from some people’s action sometimes. Strangeness always lurks, because aspects of action are fluid and complex and defy unidimensional categories and functions. We are now thinking about how context is inseparable from action, but we are also thinking about how there are ways in which the context is “out there” and apparently separate from us. For example, imagine that the mother in the family just mentioned is late for dinner. In this case, the dinner context exists relatively separately from and prior to her. The children and

292  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action babysitter are creating the dinner context by acting in relation to each other, and she enters the dinner context when she gets home. I just wrote that the dinner context exists “relatively” separately from her because even if she is not immediately present, she may still be contributing to what is going on. For example, she is part of what the others are doing before she enters the scene insofar as the babysitter and the children are doing what they are doing partly because she told them what to do. Moreover, they are doing what they are doing partly because she is not there. If she were there, perhaps she would be calling the children to dinner. When the mother physically enters the scene, she contributes to its continued, ongoing creation through acting in relation to the others. And she acts as she does in part because it is a dinner context and not a work context. From the perspective of formal causality, the context is not causing our tardy mother’s action as a separate, antecedent, deterministic mechanism or force. Rather, her action is taken to reflect and be structured in terms of cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for how to act during dinner at home. She also acts in ways that reflect her place in the social order. Her action is further constituted socially by what the others are doing, and she is simultaneously contributing to how they are acting. From the perspective of formal causality, analyzing what she is doing in relation to context would involve analyzing the structuring of cultural, social, and environmental processes more specifically. Let us consider a few more examples. A baby is born into a particular social, cultural, and environmental context that exists prior to and separately from the baby. At least it existed prior to and separately from her before she was conceived. Yet, at the same time, a newborn is contributing to creating the context that was and continues to be created by other people in culturally particular ways. Tourists and immigrants enter contexts that exist separately from them and prior to their travels. Yet tourists contribute to the contexts they enter as they act in relation to people there, not to mention spend money. Taken together, it is not one or the other; contexts are not either external to us or inseparable from us. Context is both “out there” and constructed by us through our action. Yes, there is some reality out there, and people find themselves placed involuntarily in the midst of varied wider societal processes that shape who becomes “privileged/​under-​privileged in relation to resource distributions” (Archer, 2003, p. 136). Involuntary placement by temporally prior (and ongoing) societal processes also includes how gender and skin color are subject to “positive and negative cultural evaluations” (Archer, 2003, p. 136). We also

Implications for Causality and Meaning  293 find ourselves in the midst of environmental circumstances that can be understood as partly external to us, or as literally outside. The environmental reality is that the desert is hot and sunny, whereas Siberia is very cold. If you want to sail around the world, you have to accommodate to an oceanic reality that has existed long before you arrived on this earth, and will continue to do so long after you depart. The environmental reality is that the earth is warming. With regard to social processes, I suspect that most if not all readers have faced the reality of others who just will not do what you may desperately want them to do. They just will not budge, and there is a certain reality to that. Yet, at the same time, some aspects of reality are of our own making, even though the context may sometimes seem more powerful over us than we are over it. Insofar as it is partly of our own making, we can make and remake it. Indeed, social, cultural, and environmental contexts change through human action (Archer, 2003; Shotter, 1975; Stetsenko, 2015). Again, part of the strangeness here is that context refers to social, cultural, and environmental processes that both constitute action and are constituted through action. The current systems perspective enables us to handle this complexity by conceptualizing phenomena in terms of reciprocal relations between parts and wholes. There is thus an ongoing interplay between systemic parts and wholes here. In this case, there is an ongoing interplay between dynamic constitutive “context” part processes (i.e., social, cultural, environmental) and the wider whole of action (which is further constituted by individual and bodily processes). Insofar as action and context processes are mutually constitutive, human functioning can be understood in terms of the “ceaseless dynamics at the shifting nexus of people collaboratively transforming their world while bringing it into existence through the very process of agentively contributing to collaborative and communal modifications of existing realities” (Stetsenko, 2015, p.  107). In addition, Stetsenko argues against conceptualizing human functioning in terms of adaptation, because it emphasizes reacting passively to existing realities, rather than agentively constructing the world in which we live. When human functioning is conceptualized in terms of active transforming and constructing, the way is open to actively remake the world or context in relation to values and conceptions of what ought to be (Shotter, 1975). People are also not passive pawns of “the” context, because people actively think about social structures and their positions in relation to them (Archer, 2003). As Archer argues: “Situations do not directly impact upon us; they are reflexively mediated via our own concerns and according to how well we

294  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action know our circumstances, under our own descriptions” (p. 139). As pointed out in Chapters 5 and 8, according to Archer, context “effects” on action are mediated through reflexive deliberation, whereby people ponder and evaluate their circumstances in relation to personal beliefs, values, and goals. By deliberating reflexively, we “delineate and prioritise our concerns,” as well as “survey our objective circumstances and make discretionary judgements about the courses of action that we both deem to be desirable and with which we think it feasible that we can live” (p. 142). Deliberating reflexively further involves deciding what to do in ways that “are both expressive of our ultimate concerns, yet are also within our means” (p. 142). In the parlance of the current theoretical framework, social, cultural, and environmental processes are inseparable from individual processes. At the same time, individuals are not omnipotent over contexts insofar as social, cultural, and environmental contexts are real, and “we cannot make what we will of them with impunity. If the descriptions under which they are known are wildly divergent from reality, then reality will have its revenge, because the strategy for pursuing a project will be defective” (pp. 139-​140). According to the current action perspective, we can say that there are ongoing systemic interrelations among individual, social, cultural, and environmental processes. Taken together, context here refers to how social, cultural, and environmental processes are structured. Whether we use the term context or constitutive processes, the current theoretical framework leads to considering the manifold formal structuring of social, cultural, and environmental processes. By thinking about action and context in terms of the formal structuring of social, cultural, and environmental processes, I believe that we are meeting Robinson’s challenge (presented in Chapter 2) to theorize “at the level of global and richly contextualized experience and activity” (Robinson, 2007, p.  192). As already pointed out, the current theoretical framework involves conceptualizing action in terms of general or global human processes, namely, constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Insofar as constitutive processes include social, cultural, and environmental processes, the current theoretical framework encompasses contextualized experience and activity. I  like to think that it represents theorizing about “richly” contextualized experience and activity as well. The adjective “richly” to modify contextualized suggests that theorizing should be more substantive than recognizing that context influences action, or that people always act in some kind of context. The current theoretical framework goes beyond such models by emphasizing formal causality and the varied ways in which

Implications for Causality and Meaning  295 social, cultural, and environmental processes may be structured as people engage in varied modes of action. It also involves thinking about how social, cultural, and environmental processes are interrelated to constitute action, along with individual and bodily processes. In addition, the current theoretical framework leads to thinking about how context influences action, and also about how contexts are created by people through action. When it comes to human affairs, causality is always complex and sometimes downright confusing. Considering multiple forms of causality and explaining action in multiple ways help to deal with some of that complexity, although it does not always prevent confusion. Of course, we cannot always account for all kinds of causality at once. Nevertheless, the current theoretical framework provides some tools for thinking systematically about the varied ways in which action emerges. Within the current theoretical framework, the varied causes of action are not taken to represent competing causes, of which only one can prevail as “the” true cause. Rather, action is taken to emerge through varied simultaneously occurring and interrelated processes that constitute action in varied ways. A major task for future theory and research will be to further conceptualize and investigate how varied processes are structured, both as distinct and interrelated processes that constitute varied modes of action.

Issue: Meaning Here we consider the following questions: What does a person’s action mean? How can we interpret what people do? Meaning has come up several times and in different ways in this book. Indeed, human action is meaningful in varied ways, and meaning is a major part of what makes human action so complex and messy. Accordingly, some argue that it would behoove psychology to proceed as an interpretive or hermeneutic science, and not only as an experimental and predictive science (Gantt, Lindstrom, & Williams, 2017; Gergen, 1985; Falmagne, Iselin, Todorova, & Welsh, 2013; Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). As the label implies, the goal of psychology as an interpretive science is to discern or interpret the meaning of what people do. It involves understanding and explaining human action in terms of what it means to human beings themselves. In this section, I begin by making a few general points about meaning to illustrate some of the complexities involved in interpreting action. Then,

296  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action I will use the current theoretical framework to ponder and make some sense of the meaning of action in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes.

Some Complexities Human action is meaningful, human beings are meaning-​making creatures, and a person’s action is meaningful or significant to the person and to others (Polkinghorne, 1983; Shotter, 1975; Taylor, 1985/​1992). As Geertz (1973) puts it, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun” (p. 5). As such, human action is not mere physical movement, nor is human action only directed toward achieving life-​preserving and life-​reproducing goals. For example, if you see someone crossing the street, you might wonder, what does it mean that he crossed the street? If someone responds, it means he went to the other side, you might laugh. It is a joke and it is funny because you know that it is not the whole story. There is further meaning to it. There is meaning or significance to what people do that requires interpreting. What is so great about the other side of the street? What does being on the other side of the street mean to the person? What do different sides of the street mean to the other people who may also be walking down the street? What does the other side of the street mean in that person’s culture? Or, what does it mean if someone double-​checks that the door is locked one day, but goes back and checks it 11 times the next day, and 4 times the day after that? There seems to be more to it than locking the door. And by more, I am suggesting that understanding this checking involves interpreting its meaning or significance beyond securing the house against intruders. Similarly, understanding walking across the street involves interpreting its meaning or significance beyond getting to the other side. What does action mean? What is the significance of action? It can sometimes be difficult to interpret someone’s action, and different people may interpret someone’s action differently. Have you ever wondered what it means when someone does not respond to an email message? Is spanking a child discipline or abuse? Was she joking, or was she insulting them? In some cultures shaking one’s head means no and nodding means yes, whereas in some cultures it is the opposite. What does it mean when adults do not talk much to babies and rarely look them in the eye? Among the Gusii of Kenya in the 1970s, it meant that they think it is “silly to talk to a

Implications for Causality and Meaning  297 baby” (Dixon, Tronick, Keefer, & Brazelton, 1981, p. 155), and in accord with their “code of restraint,” it meant that “excessive sociability [is] dangerous for a person of any age” (LeVine et al., 1994/​1998, p. 47). As pointed out in Chapter 6, rather than interacting with babies visually and verbally, Gusii mothers engage babies primarily through touch. For an American parent, such interaction may be interpreted as being unresponsive, whereas Gusii mothers may see Americans as neglectful for not being adequately physically responsive to babies (LeVine, 2004). What does it mean when preschoolers who are playing together try to exclude others from joining them? According to Corsaro (2003), it means that they are protecting the current social situation, which is often quite difficult to establish and maintain. It does not necessarily mean that the children are being mean to each other. What does it mean when preschool boys and girls split up into sex-​segregated groups during free play time? Does it mean that sex segregation is “natural?” Does it mean that the children are starting to develop identities based on differentiating gender as an identity characteristic? In the previous section on causality, I considered an incident of posting a diatribe about gender on social media and explained that I tried to guide some students into thinking about the issue in relation to varied constitutive processes, including political processes. That incident is relevant here as well, insofar as it involves trying to discern the meaning of the diatribe. The students and I were interpreting the person’s action somewhat differently, and we were co-​constructing the meaning of the incident. The meaning of action is expressed, negotiated, and co-​constructed between people in part through language. In the example just given, the students and I were negotiating the meaning of the social media diatribe through language, and the diatribe itself was linguistically constructed. We may do our best to say what we mean and to mean what we say. Sometimes clarifying the meaning of someone’s action may be a matter of clarifying what was said. We can ask the person directly to clarify or rephrase what they said, and that may suffice. However, language is not straightforward, and understanding the meaning of what someone is doing is not simply a matter of understanding the dictionary meaning of the words being used. It is also a matter of understanding the function of words in relation to other words within sentences, as well as understanding how people are using words to act. For example, Stephen understands the words that Brendan uttered, but interprets them further as an insult. Even when language is garbled or does not seem to make sense, it can still be meaningful. For example, Sabat’s (2001) research shows

298  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action that people with Alzheimer’s disease are using language meaningfully and are striving to construct coherent meaning, even though they may forget words or cannot say what day it is. Language and meaning are also messy because sometimes the very same words and phrases can be uttered in different ways to express different meanings. Similar meanings can also be expressed with different words and phrases, as well as different tones. For example, one can say “sorry” sincerely, sarcastically, or perfunctorily. One can use a gentle or abrupt tone of voice. One can say “sorry” or “I am sorry.” One can explicitly mention the infraction in different ways that express different meanings regarding one’s culpability, such as “I am sorry that I upset you,” or “I am sorry if what I said upset you.”

Interpreting the Meaning of Action This discussion of some complexities of meaning and human action points to some of the difficulties that are involved in interpreting action. To at least begin figuring out how to interpret action, we can think about how meaning involves the concepts and categories of the current action perspective. According to our action perspective, action reflects cultural meanings, which include common and contested beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. Thus, the meaning of action is very much a cultural issue and is culturally constituted in varied ways. It really helps to act in relation to others and to understand the meaning of what others are doing when you know that you are in a culture where nodding your head means no and shaking means yes, or vice versa. As a cultural issue, the meaning of “Black lives matter” is clarified in relation to the history of African Americans in the United States, as well as current wider societal practices in the United States. Insofar as cultural meanings are contested phenomena, people within cultural communities do not always agree about beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. Thus, the cultural meaning of action can be debated and is also inseparable from individual and social processes. In addition, the meaning of action may change in relation to historically changing cultural meanings. For example, what counts as sexual harassment today may not have been interpreted as sexual harassment in the past. Insofar as there are public policies about harassment and other ways of acting, the meaning of action is also politicized. As discussed earlier with regard to the gender diatribe incident, I think that its meaning can be clarified in part by considering the political circumstances

Implications for Causality and Meaning  299 in which the person was acting. It also can be interpreted in relation to changing cultural beliefs and guidelines for understanding and enacting gender. The meaning of action involves social processes insofar as acting in relation to others involves interpreting what others are doing in order to coordinate with them and to achieve common goals. If action is partly constituted by what others do, then your action is partly constituted by the meaning of what others are doing. And of course, what others are doing occurs partly in relation to what your action means and how they interpret what you are doing. In many situations, the meaning of what everyone is doing is clear, and we go along and get along just fine. The meaning of people’s action is often so clear that we do not give it any pause at all, and interpreting the meaning or significance of each other’s action occurs automatically. Such common meaning-​making occurs among people with shared cultural experience, who know, for example, that saying “Hi, how are you” is usually a greeting rather than a request for a long story about how you are. Yet these people also know that sometimes saying, “Hi, how are you” is indeed a genuine question that requires a response beyond, “Fine, thanks, how are you?” Common meaning-​making occurs between people who know each other well. Common meaning-​making may also occur between people who might not know each other that well but who engage in the same routine modes of action in particular cultural practices. For example, when Rita goes to the bank every week, she and the bank teller engage in the same routine, including chit-​chat about the weather, as well as discussing how to deposit the week’s income. Common meaning can also be constructed among strangers, as well as by people of different cultures, and among people who vary in all kinds of ways. At the same time, however, interpreting the meaning of one another’s action is a big part of what makes human experience so strange and complex, because the meaning of someone’s action is not always clear to the other(s). In addition, the meaning of action is negotiated or co-​constructed between people while they act in relation to each other. Sometimes co-​constructing meaning may be a mode of action. For example, two people may be arguing about the meaning of what one of them did. Sometimes people struggle mightily to achieve common meaning as they act in relation to each other. Even within cultures, with your good friends, and between you and the bank teller, there may be times when you are utterly baffled by what others are doing, and there are times when they are utterly baffled by what you are doing. Stephen and Brendan have been good friends for decades. One day, Stephen

300  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action interprets what Brendan does as an insult, but Brendan insists that he did not mean it that way. As they continue to discuss the situation, they hopefully come to understand each other’s interpretations. And hopefully they co-​ construct a new common meaning. Indeed, people’s interpretations of each other’s action can change. People can and do interpret and reinterpret, and reinterpret some more. In these ways, interpreting action is unfinished and the meaning of action is unfinished. What action means is not necessarily set in stone, and “whether an act is defined as envy, flirtation, or anger floats on a sea of social interchange. Interpretation may be suggested, fastened upon, and abandoned as social relationships unfold across time” (Gergen 1985, p. 268). And new ways of interpreting or constructing meaning contribute to the unfolding of a relationship. By considering what someone’s action means to others, as well as to a person him-​or herself, we are widening the angle to include multiple perspectives on the meaning of someone’s action. Doing so can provide a basis for resolving conflicts among people when they interpret action differently. It also encourages us to look at how people go about co-​ constructing common meaning based on their sometimes initially differing interpretations. Taken together, interpreting each other’s action is constituted by ongoing and dynamic social processes. We can further interpret someone’s action in relation to individual processes, including how a person interprets others’ action, as well as what a person’s action means to that person subjectively. With regard to the latter, for example, research with people who smoke suggests that smoking is “a heterogeneous social practice” (or way of acting in relation to others) that is meaningful to individuals in varied ways (Laurier, McKie, & Goodwin, 2000, p. 292). For some people, smoking means rebelling, for others it means establishing social solidarity, and for yet others it means time for quiet contemplating. In addition, the meaning of smoking can change for individuals during the course of the day, as well as during the course of their lives. For example, the meaning of the day’s first cigarette may differ from the meaning of the after-​dinner cigarette. Or, when first starting to smoke, some may use “cigarettes to become an adult,” whereas in later life, smoking may be “associated with pleasure and time away from the pressures” of adulthood (Laurier et al., 2000, p. 300). Considering the meaning of smoking in relation to individual processes takes us back to issues of subjectively constructing experience, discussed in Chapter 9. It is not necessary to repeat all that was said there. The point is that individuals construct meaning, including what their own action means to themselves. Knowing how someone interprets their

Implications for Causality and Meaning  301 own action helps others to interpret it as well, thus pointing to interrelations between individual and social processes. Individual processes also encompass how people act as agents in terms of individual reasons, values, and goals. Acting as an agent includes acting intentionally to achieve a particular goal or for a particular reason. Sometimes consciously and sometimes not so consciously, people intend to act in some way and not in other ways. The ways in which human action is intentional, as well as sometimes unintentional, have vexed people for centuries, and it is beyond the scope of this section to delve deeply into issues of intention. The point here is that the meaning of someone’s action may be interpreted by considering what the person intended. Consider someone who says, “I was making a joke, I did not intend to insult you.” In this case, the word “mean” could be substituted for “intend,” as in “I did not mean to insult you. I meant to make a joke.” Thus, the meaning of action can be clarified by discerning what a person intended to accomplish (Rychlak, 2003). Indeed, a dictionary definition of “to mean” is to intend. The meaning of action is also embodied and is conveyed physically, as some of the examples used thus far suggest. Gallagher (2005/​2006) distinguishes among different types of movement, including reflex, locomotive, instrumental, and expressive. Expressive movement, such as pointing and gesturing, “contributes to the accomplishment of thought; it enables communication. In these regards it seems to transcend its purely motor aspects” (Gallagher, 2005/​2006, p.  122). Expressive movement transcends its motor aspects by expressing meaning. Meaning can be conveyed through head movement to express yes and no. Facial expressions can accompany a sincere apology. Extending and moving one’s index finger in slightly different ways can mean

• Look at what I am pointing to. • Come here. • Come hither. • Do not do that. • We are number 1.

A split-​second shared glance between people can express common understanding of a situation. We see Thomas bending down on one knee and surmise that he is about to propose to Martha. However, we surmise differently when we see someone bending down on one knee upon entering a Catholic

302  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action church. And we surmise differently when we see someone bending down on one knee when the American national anthem is played at a football game. In these examples, the meaning of physically bending down on one knee is clarified in relation to the cultural practice in which it is occurring, thus pointing to interrelations between bodily and cultural processes. Insofar as action is partly constituted by environmental processes, the meaning of action is also inseparable from environmental processes. For example, you might wonder what it means if you see some people jumping up and down and moving their arms and hands vigorously. If they are standing on a rooftop during a hurricane, it might mean HELP US! If they are in an open field, you might wonder if they are dancing or doing calisthenics. In addition to the constitutive processes, it may be illuminating to consider the meaning of action in relation to the psychological processes that are taken to comprise action. For example, when someone yells at the bus driver, it could mean that she is angry about what happened earlier at work. Or, when adolescents change their hairstyles or raise their eyebrows in response to most of what their parents say, it could mean that they are constructing their identities. When someone does not answer your email, it might mean that she is annoyed by what you wrote, or it might mean that she is taking time to think about how to respond, or it might mean that she is very busy, or it might mean. . . . Even though it sometimes helps to discern the meaning of action in terms of particular psychological processes, the current theoretical perspective reminds us not to forget the others. That is, a person is acting in relation to others and varied psychological processes are comprising what they are doing. For example, raising eyebrows may be identity constructive, but insofar as it occurs while acting, other psychological processes are also likely involved, including sensing and perceiving, feeling, thinking, and interacting with others. In this chapter, we have considered causality and meaning in separate sections. However, I must admit that in thinking about action at this juncture, I am struggling with distinguishing between discerning the meaning of action and understanding the why of action. Sometimes issues of meaning and causality overlap. For many of the examples used in the discussion of meaning, getting at the meaning of action seems almost equivalent to getting at the why of action. For example, what is the difference between asking about the meaning of not engaging with babies visually and asking why the Gusii do not look babies in their eyes? The answers to these questions could

Implications for Causality and Meaning  303 be the same or at least somewhat the same. Not engaging with babies visually means that they are following their code of restraint and avoiding the dangers of excessive sociability. Or, she did not look into the baby’s eyes because she was following the Gusii code of restraint and avoiding the dangers of excessive sociability. At the outset of this section, I adapted the question Why did the chicken cross the street to What did it mean that the person crossed the street? Is there a significant difference between discerning the meaning of crossing the street and discerning why someone crossed the street? Although there is overlap between causality and meaning, I find it useful to distinguish between them, because in order to explain and understand someone’s action, it is useful to first know what the person is doing. In other words, before you can explain why someone did X, you need to know what X is or what the person did. And what the person did is subject to interpretation, thus requiring attending to the meaning of what the person did. For example, before you can explain why Brendan insulted Stephen, you first have to interpret what Brendan did as insulting. If you interpret it as tough love, then explaining why Brendan acted as he did might proceed somewhat differently. Taken together, causality and meaning can be understood as distinct, yet interrelated dimensions of action.

11 Evidence and Research Implications The overarching goal of this book is to take some first theoretical steps toward conceptualizing some of the complexities of what people do as they go about the flux and flow of their complex lives in all corners of the world. Toward that end, I have identified and conceptualized action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Although I come to this endeavor from psychology, the theoretical framework that I have articulated here is for everyone, from professionals in any field to anyone who is interested in making sense of what people do. I am articulating the current conceptualization of action in part to provide new directions for studying and analyzing what people do. Four of the nine criteria by which to evaluate theorizing (listed in Chapter 3) involve evidence and research. According to the ninth criterion, a decent theoretical framework is one that can be validated by systematic research, as well as refined and elaborated on the basis of evidence from research conducted to empirically validate the theory. We are not yet able to assess the current theoretical framework in relation to criterion #9, because no one has conducted research that is based on it or conducted research specifically designed to validate it empirically. I certainly fervently hope that people will use the current theoretical framework for future research. In the meantime, we will satisfy ourselves in this chapter by discussing it in relation to criteria #6, #7, and #8. In addition, a goal of this book is to articulate an integrative and holistic theoretical framework that can encompass psychology’s innumerable studies about innumerable fragmented bits of behavior that fill innumerable journals. Research on human functioning is conducted in varied other disciplines as well, making for even more fragmenting. It can be utterly overwhelming to make sense of it all. Fortunately, the current theoretical framework provides guidelines for making systematic sense of already existing research. Thus, in the second section of this chapter, we will apply our action perspective to already existing research and discuss ways of bringing disparate research into (some) coherence. At the end of the chapter, I will also suggest some guidelines for analyzing research critically. Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Evidence and Research Implications  305

Evidence for the Theoretical Framework Although research is needed to validate, refine, and elaborate the current theoretical framework, there is evidence for it already. In other words, it is evidence based and it meets criterion #6 for a decent theoretical framework. Indeed, I did not pick the concepts and claims that comprise this action perspective out of a hat willy-​nilly. As the many pages of references show, I drew on and synthesized a wide range of sources. I incorporated established and empirically grounded theoretical treatments of human functioning. For example, I used systems theory as my starting point for conceptualizing action in terms of multiple and interrelated constituent processes. I have drawn on sociocultural theory and research, and synthesized sociocultural theory with organismic-​developmental theory and research. I have incorporated dialogical perspectives, positioning theory, social constructionism, and interactive perspectives. I have used historical sources to ground my ideas about human action. To explicate a non-​reductionist view of bodily processes, I have drawn on theoretical and empirical treatments of the brain, genes, and epigenetics. I also used a wide range of empirical evidence, along with examples from daily life and the news, as a basis for the current theoretical framework’s main claims and to support claims about its implications. Conceptualizing action in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes is based on the reasonable premise that all human beings are individual biological beings who engage with others in cultural practices in physical locations. There is evidence that these processes do indeed constitute what people do, and I refer to some of that evidence in the Chapter 5 presentation of constitutive processes. For example, the Chapter 5 discussion of cultural processes includes examples from research on socioeconomic circumstances and action, research on cultural tools, as well as research on how action reflects varied cultural meanings. In the Chapter 5 discussion of bodily processes, I incorporated research on the brain, as well as research on how human functioning is embodied. The Chapter 5 discussion of environmental processes is based on historical and evolutionary analyses of how different modes of action emerged in relation to environmental conditions. The current theoretical framework does not come out of an idiosyncratic blue with regard to psychological processes either, and I have drawn on varied empirical sources to conceptualize them as active processes and in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. For example, in the Chapter 6 discussion of thinking, I drew on varied empirical sources

306  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action for conceptualizing thinking in terms of active processes that people do. I discussed research on thinking in varied cultural circumstances and cultural practices, from remote villages of Central Asia, to dairy workers and literacy practices in the United States, to legal decision-​making. I incorporated Sabat’s research on Alzheimer’s disease, Lakoff ’s and Johnson’s work on metaphor, as well as Piaget’s analyses of infant thinking. The discussion of self/​identity in Chapter 6 draws on classic and contemporary treatments from James, Mead, and Cooley, to Bamberg, Arnett, and McAdams. I considered research on culture and identity for people in far-​flung corners of the world, from an Arab Druze community, to Danish professionals, to Americans with Alzheimer’s disease, to European-​origin and First Nation adolescents in Canada. I was bowled over when I read Howes’ and Classen’s book on cultural aspects of sensing, and I used it as a major empirical basis for the section on sensing and perceiving. I incorporated classic research on parent–​infant interaction to discuss social interaction in terms of mutuality and reciprocity. The discussion of social interaction and cultural processes incorporates research on Japanese interaction patterns in inner/​private and outer/​public settings. The same also goes for developmental processes. With regard to organismic-​developmental theory, conceptualizing development in terms of differentiation and integration is in keeping with the systems view that action is made up of distinct or differentiated parts, as well as interrelated or integrated parts. In addition, differentiation and integration are basic life processes that can be observed empirically. For example, brain development involves functional and structural differentiation and integration. More generally, in living organisms, varied organs and biological processes undergo differentiation and integration. In Chapter 7, I drew on Piaget’s research, empirical examples of cultural goals of development, and empirical analyses of developmental variability. The Chapter 7 discussion is also based on a wide range of research about how development happens in different cultures and socioeconomic circumstances, in relation to others, in relation to environmental circumstances, and through epigenetic bodily processes.

Guidelines for Conducting Research My main goal for this section is to use the current theoretical framework to suggest some directions for future research. In the course of

Evidence and Research Implications  307 doing so, we will end up identifying some research goals, as well as some specific research questions, thereby satisfying criterion #7 for a decent theoretical framework. We will also use the concepts and categories of our action perspective as a basis for designing studies and for analyzing data. Providing common concepts and categories satisfies criterion #8 because common concepts and categories enable us to systematically analyze human action. They also provide researchers with a common language for coordinating with each other to conduct research and to discuss findings.

The Structuring of Action The current conceptualization of action is taken to be applicable to all human beings because everyone acts. And everyone’s action is taken to involve constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. These processes represent general human processes that can be played out in culturally particular ways, as well as in individualized ways. But how, more specifically, can one go about discerning how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are played out? As explained in Chapter 10, the current systems conceptualization of action emphasizes formal causality or formal explanation, which refers to the structuring or organization of action. Accordingly, a central goal of research would be to identify some of the specific ways in which constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are structured or organized as people act in relation to others in all corners of the world. Research may also be directed toward addressing more specific research questions. For example, with regard to cultural constitutive processes, some specific research questions might include the following: a. What cultural meanings are reflected in action? b. What cultural tools do people use to accomplish action? c. How are power and authority organized as people act in one or another cultural practice? d. How does action reflect people’s position in the social order? e. How is action constrained and enabled within one or another cultural practice?

308  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action With regard to individual constitutive processes, some specific research questions might include: a. How does a person subjectively construct what happened? b. How is a person’s action organized developmentally? To discern interrelations between cultural and individual processes, some specific research questions might include: a. How does a person use cultural meanings in their own way to act? b. How does a person use cultural tools in their own way to act? c. How does a person construct their place within the wider social order? With regard to the psychological process of self/​identity, some specific research questions might include: a. How does a person position him-​or herself in relation to varied others? b. What cultural meanings does a person use to construct him-​or herself? c. What is the developmental organization of how someone constructs him-​or herself? d. What bodily means are involved in self/​identity constructing? With regard to the psychological process of thinking, some specific research questions might include: a. How is a person categorizing (e.g., what criteria are they using to categorize)? b. What kinds of evidence is a person searching for, if at all? c. Is someone trying to link abstract concepts, and how so? d. Is this person thinking critically about some issue, and how so? e. What is the developmental organization of how a person is thinking? Once specific research goals and questions are identified, qualitative research is well suited for analyzing the structuring of action. Recall from Chapter  3 that qualitative research can be conducted in varied ways and includes investigating ongoing and dynamic processes, as well as individual experience. It involves engaging with people as they go about the thick of their complex lives. One way of conducting research to discern how action

Evidence and Research Implications  309 is structured or organized involves observing people as they act in particular contexts. We are thus choosing observing as a method based on the theoretical framework that we are using to conceptualize what people do. We could observe by video recording, and/​or by taking notes while watching and listening to particular people in particular contexts. How do we decide what to takes notes on, and how do we decide what to do with the video data? It depends on the specific research goals and questions. Analyzing the varied action processes and their respective subprocesses could be topics for a lifetime of research, and they can be analyzed in different specific ways. It is, of course, impossible to study all of the systemic constituents of action in any single study or even a series of studies. Individual researchers will clearly pick and choose particular topics and questions to focus on, and the current action perspective provides a theoretical basis for making such choices. However, focusing on particular issues does not mean that we have to end up with fragmented analyses of human functioning. Rather, the current action perspective provides a holistic and integrative framework for treating particular issues as “integrants,” or integral and integrated parts of the wider whole of action. The current theoretical perspective leads to discerning the structuring of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes for different modes of action. Any of the modes of action mentioned or considered in this book could be investigated to discern how they involve particular ways of structuring constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Researchers could systematically observe people as they act in particular settings. For example, one could observe consoling in one or more cultural communities. To address more specific questions about how consoling is structured within different cultural practices (across and/​or within cultures), one could observe consoling in one or more cultural practices, such as (a) between parents and children at home during dinner, (b) at work between colleagues, (c) at school between students, (d) between teachers and students at school, (e) between people at a support group meeting, or (f) between people on whatever social media outlet is in vogue. Research in these settings would involve analyzing how consoling is constituted through particular ways of organizing individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. One could also analyze how consoling involves varied psychological processes and how they are structured individually, socially, culturally, bodily, and environmentally. Specific analyses would depend on specific research questions. The current action perspective further leads to analyzing developmental pathways

310  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action of differentiation and integration for consoling in different cultures and cultural practices, as well as how such development happens through particular patterns of guided participation. In addition, using the current action perspective as a basis for research provides a common framework that researchers can use to coordinate with each other in an organized way. That is, different researchers could analyze different aspects of the same observed action. Some may focus on cultural processes, some may focus on individual processes, some may focus on thinking, feeling, or self/​identity. Some may focus on developmental processes. Ultimately, they could collaborate by putting their analyses together to construct knowledge of action and its constituent processes. As such, the field could be democratized, and researchers who are interested in different action processes would not be competing for ascendance or dominance. Again, I readily recognize that one cannot study all of these processes at once, and there is not a single way to analyze how they are formally organized or structured. Some analyses would be particular to the different constituent processes because they are distinct in some ways. Thus, the current suggestions for research are hardly exhaustive, and they are meant to illustrate some ways in which research based on the current action perspective could be conducted. In the upcoming discussion, I will present some basic steps for conducting such research, and I will use consoling someone in a support group situation as a concrete example throughout. The focus will be on analyzing the formal structuring of action for the person who is consoling. In other words, the general research goal is to understand action from the perspective of formal causality. Research on the structuring of action begins by identifying a mode of action to observe, as well as by identifying a particular constituent process or processes to analyze. We have already identified consoling as a mode of action to observe, and specific formal analyses could be conducted for any of the action processes—​namely, constitutive processes, psychological processes, and developmental processes. Researchers would proceed to investigating some action processes more specifically in terms of particular subconstituents. This step involves the laborious work of creating and defining coding categories that will be used to analyze the structuring of the processes under scrutiny. Fortunately, the concepts and categories of the current theoretical framework provide a theoretical basis for constructing coding categories, thereby satisfying criterion #8

Evidence and Research Implications  311 for a decent theoretical framework. For example, with regard to constitutive processes, researchers could construct coding categories for how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and/​or environmental processes are structured when a person is consoling someone. For individual processes, a researcher could analyze the means a person uses to console, including (a) what the person says to try to comfort the other, (b) how what the person says involves beliefs and values, (c) what the person says to distract the other (e.g., joking, talking about the future), (d) tone of voice, and (e) pats on the back (which of course involve bodily processes). Analyzing the structuring of individual processes could also include analyzing how they are organized developmentally. For example, if the person is consoling someone over the death of a loved one, a researcher could analyze the ways in which what someone says about death-​ related issues are differentiated and integrated. With regard to social processes, one could analyze how the person being consoled positions the one who is consoling as, for example, a wise person, or as someone who does not know what they are talking about. With regard to cultural processes, one could identify cultural beliefs and values about life and death. With regard to interrelations between individual and cultural processes, one could identify how individuals use cultural meanings in individualized ways. Analyzing action in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes could address the more specific question of how they contribute to both constraining and enabling action. Creating and defining coding categories for psychological processes would involve defining particular psychological processes in terms of particular subconstituents. For example, with regard to social interaction, one could analyze turn-​taking by discerning if the consoler takes clear turns and/​or if and when they interrupt the person being consoled. With regard to self/​identity, one could analyze if a person is presenting herself as a friend, a mentor, and/​or an objective outsider. With regard to feeling, one could analyze how a person expresses particular feelings, such as sadness, empathy, anger, and happiness. Insofar as psychological processes are taken to be constituted through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, analyses could also be directed toward discerning how these constitutive processes are structured for particular psychological processes. For example, how is a person presenting himself in culturally particular ways, or how is turn-​taking structured in culturally particular ways? In addition, any psychological process can be analyzed developmentally in terms of differentiation and integration.

312  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Once analytic categories have been defined, the third step is to code the data (live or from video). A coding sheet can be used to record instances of the various codes. The data can be coded by more than one person to establish inter-​rater reliability for the coding scheme. Next, the researcher would analyze the structuring of the action processes under scrutiny for each study participant to discern how the general processes are played out in individualized ways. Analyses of individual ways of acting could also include discerning intraindividual variability and stability. For example, does a study participant console different people in somewhat different ways, as well as in some similar ways? Additionally, one can analyze the data across individuals in order to discern if there are some common ways in which the action processes under scrutiny are organized. Analyzing individuals, as well as identifying common patterns of action, would permit constructing generalized knowledge from individual cases. It also provides a basis for discerning how people are similar, different, and unique. Research along these lines would permit creating generalized knowledge that is not merely anecdotal and that would not suffer from “irreducible incommensurability” (Salvatore & Valsiner, 2010, p. 825). And, very importantly, research along these lines for varied modes of action can further our understanding of how action is organized systemically in terms of different kinds of relations among constituent processes. Research is sorely needed to further our understanding of interrelations within and among constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Such research would involve discerning part–​whole connections as the constituent processes are organized in different ways to constitute and comprise different wider modes of action. Such research also involves discerning whole–​part connections insofar as the constituent processes are organized in different ways in relation to the wider mode of action of which they are fleetingly parts. As well, analyses can be directed toward discerning part–​part interrelations among constitutive processes, as well as among psychological processes. We must also briefly consider that developmental analyses involve discerning not only the current developmental organization of someone’s action but also developmental changes in action. Discerning developmental changes in action could proceed macrodevelopmentally, microdevelopmentally, or both. That is, one could conduct research to discern macrodevelopmental changes in people’s ways of consoling as well as microdevelopmental changes in how someone consoles during the course of one particular consoling encounter. With regard to the psychological process of feeling for example,

Evidence and Research Implications  313 analyses could be directed toward discerning if someone moves from expressing sympathy relatively globally to expressing sympathy in a relatively differentiated and integrated way. Or, with regard to cognitive processes, one could analyze if differentiation and integration occur as a person tries out different means for consoling someone. Such developmental analyses involve their own set of research steps, including identifying cultural expectations for development, constructing coding categories for modes of action, sequentially coding someone’s action, and identifying points of differentiation and integration on the sequential record (Raeff, 2016). As is the case with research on the other action processes, developmental analyses further involve identifying individual pathways of differentiation and integration, as well as analyzing data across individuals to discern if there are some common clusters or patterns for sequences of differentiation and integration. Research on the development of action additionally involves analyzing how action develops through guided participation. That is, analyses would be directed toward discerning what individuals do that promotes differentiation and integration for particular modes of action, discerning what others do that promotes differentiation and integration, as well as identifying cultural opportunities to participate in practices that involve particular modes of action. In addition to conducting research on how people act in a particular cultural practice or setting (e.g., consoling in a support group), one could conduct research on how particular people’s action is structured in their characteristic multitude of contexts, both within and across cultures. The general goal of such research would be to analyze the structuring of particular constitutive and psychological processes for particular individuals as they act in different practices. And multiple observations over varied time frames could be conducted to discern pathways of microdevelopment and macrodevelopment for varied modes of action. Research on the structuring of action in varied contexts could also shed some light on issues of stability and variability. That is, what are some of the stable and variable ways in which individuals act in particular contexts? Research could be conducted to identify how a person’s action across contexts is both stable and variable. Research could also address how cultural change is related to variability in individuals’ ways of acting. By studying individuals in these ways, we would be constructing knowledge about how general processes are individualized. Analyzing individuals as well as analyzing data across individuals to discern common patterns for constitutive, psychological, and developmental

314  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action processes would additionally provide insights into how individuals are like others, different from others, and particular unto themselves. It could also prove fruitful to not only study individuals as they act in cultural practices but to also analyze action in cultural practices more generally. For example, just about any work setting that I can think of is a cultural practice that involves people acting in relation to others in varied ways that can be understood and investigated in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. I recently watched a public television program about African-​American barber shops in Pennsylvania, called “Barbershops:  PA Stylin.’ ” It showed that action in a barber shop is about so much more than the physical skills of cutting hair, or a customer and barber exchanging money for a service. It is about a place in the community where people come together to talk and listen, to advise and be advised, and to relax. It is about a place where boys and young men are mentored through discipline and love. It is, in other words, about a cultural practice in which people act in relation to others in varied ways that involve constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Research could be directed toward discerning the formal structuring of varied modes of action as customers and barbers act in relation to each other. Research along these lines could be conducted for action within other cultural practices as well. For example, sports practices are not just about the physical skills of different sports; they can be understood in terms of acting in relation to others. As pointed out in Chapter 7, participating in sports enables children to develop ways of acting in relation to others. Researchers could investigate varied work, home, school, or play/​ leisure practices by identifying and analyzing modes of action that take place within them. As pointed out in Chapter 5, it is not always straightforward to distinguish between cultural practices and modes of action. Research that is directed toward identifying modes of action within cultural practices could advance how we conceptualize them as distinct, yet interrelated phenomena. The possibilities for research seem vast at this point, and these suggestions provide a few starting points. These qualitative research suggestions may sound odd to the ear of someone trained exclusively to do quantitative work. We are used to hearing questions that inquire into group differences and seek to explicate interesting sources of variation. Questions that focus on description or process, and pertain to specific situations and limited groups may sound strange. . . . Qualitative research questions tend to focus on process rather than variance, are specific with respect to place, and draw

Evidence and Research Implications  315 on a relatively small group that is not meant to serve as a sample of a larger population. (Rogers, 2003, pp. 54–​55)

At the same time, however, the current theoretical framework and the qualitative research it engenders can still include some quantitative analyses. For example, one can quantitatively analyze how frequently particular modes of action occur, or how frequently people use one or another cultural tool when they act. Embracing the current action perspective is not tantamount to avoiding quantitative analyses altogether, nor does it imply that quantitative and qualitative analyses are mutually exclusive. Differences in qualitative and quantitative research do not lie in “a disavowal of ‘numbers’ per se” (Marecek, 2003/​2004, p. 55), but rather in how human functioning is conceptualized and in the kind of knowledge about human functioning that is sought and created. The point here is that the current approach does not start by conceptualizing what people do in terms of variables that can be measured quantitatively. Rather, it starts by conceptualizing what people do in terms of ongoing and dynamic active processes that cannot be pinned down easily. In addition, by analyzing individuals, the current approach does not entail aggregating data across study participants to discern mean differences across groups. At the same time, however, the current theoretical approach does not eschew groups or group comparisons. For example, you might be interested in some aspects of how people who identify with particular groups act, from young Black men to old Japanese women, from Holocaust survivors living in Canada to Syrian refugees in Germany, from college freshmen to women in business. Again, the point here is that action would be conceptualized in terms of qualitative processes and individual data would be preserved.

Subjectively Constructing Experience As explained in Part I, a goal of the current enterprise is to offer some ways of dealing with individuality and subjectivity, which are rather neglected in conventional psychology. In Chapter 9, I considered some implications of the current theoretical framework for thinking about how people subjectively construct experience in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The current theoretical framework also provides a basis for conducting research on how individuals subjectively construct experience. The point of such research is not to arrive at “the” facts or “the”

316  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action truth about a person or about what happened. Rather, the point is to try to get at how individuals construct experience at a particular juncture in time, including themselves and their own action, as well as others and their action. Understanding human action involves understanding what people do in and on their own terms. In a nutshell, the question is: What does some event mean to people? Interpretive analysis or hermeneutic analysis is directed toward the “central aim of laying-​bare both the implicit and explicit meanings of given social acts, both for those particular agents involved and for the cultural and social context within which human acts take place and from which they derive their meaning” (Gantt, Lindstrom, & Williams, 2017, p. 141). A goal of interpretive science is to understand particular people in the midst of their particular lives and to discern the meaning of their action to themselves and others. Another goal is to discern how specific people interpret specific circumstances. As such, “specificity, in this context, is not a problem; rather, it is both the method of understanding and the substance of what is to be understood” (Gantt et al., 2017, p. 144). Ironically, even though prediction is not a goal of interpretive science, it might enable us to predict an individual’s action because it enables us to know individuals as individuals. At the same time, the current theoretical framework provides systematic tools for discerning subjectivity and individuality without lapsing into random or wholly idiosyncratic analyses of individuals. In addition, interpretive science embraces ambiguity, uncertainty, and inconsistency in how people talk about experience because the process of interpreting what happens is subject to “alternative formulations” (Gantt et al., 2017, p. 142). To study subjectively constructing experience, researchers can use qualitative interview and narrative methods (Bamberg, 2003/​2004, 2012; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008; Bruner, 1990, 2002; Freeman, 2003; McAdams, 1993; Mishler, 1986; Polkinghorne, 1988). Researchers can conduct semi-​ structured interviews that involve asking people theoretically predesigned questions about themselves or some action episode and allowing for follow-​ up questions. Interview themes can be analyzed in terms of the current theoretical framework’s concepts and categories to discern how subjectively constructing experience is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, as well as how subjectively constructing experience develops over varied time spans. Semi-​structured interviews could be particularly useful for discerning final causes or explanations of action. That is, one can ask people about why they do as they do or why they did as they

Evidence and Research Implications  317 did, to discern their reasons and goals for acting. In turn, reasons and goals can be analyzed in terms of constitutive processes, as well as developmentally. One can also ask study participants to tell stories or narratives about themselves, as well as stories about some action episodes. As pointed out in Chapter 6, it is argued that people tell narratives to construct themselves and to make sense of what is going on, including what they and others are doing. More specifically, narrative research can include asking people to tell “big stories” about themselves or some action episode. Such narratives can be analyzed in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. In addition, telling stories can be viewed as a mode of action in and of itself that involves constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes and hence can be analyzed in terms of these action processes. For example, during the course of acting in relation to others, people may tell “small stories” about themselves and others. Such stories can also be analyzed in terms of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The internet provides a means for conducting research on how people subjectively construct experience. People write blogs, participate in chat groups, post statements about themselves on various social media, and participate in online support groups. People’s statements on these sites can be analyzed in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. With regard to constitutive processes, for example, one could analyze individual twists on wider cultural meanings. In this book we have considered how it is currently culturally common in the United States to attribute what people do to the brain. Yet, at the same time, analyses of online bipolar disorder discussion groups suggest that individuals construct themselves in relation to their brains in subjective ways, including in ways that link experience and the brain to other aspects of life (Martin, 2010). In the next chapter, we will encounter developmental analyses of one person’s narrative about changing racial attitudes that was posted on an online social networking site. Research on the subjective meaning of action could involve talking to the people who participated in your observational research on action. For example, after you have observed someone consoling, you could talk to participants about what happened. You and the research participant could go over a video of the consoling episode, and you could ask questions about how they construct the situation, including their own action. Again, the point is not to get at “the” truth of what happened. Rather, the point is to discern how people subjectively construct experience and how such constructing

318  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action is constituted. Developmental analyses could also shed light on the microdevelopment of subjectively constructing meaning during the course of talking to someone about what happened. This method would additionally allow research participants to collaborate in the research, thus treating them as research partners who can contribute to analyzing their own action. Another way to discern how people subjectively construct experience and meaning would be through surveys. However, I am thinking of using surveys differently than is typical in conventional psychology. Rather than only administering surveys to large groups of people and statistically analyzing aggregated data, it would be interesting to interview individuals while or after they take a survey to discern how they interpret varied interview questions. One can, of course, still conduct conventional statistical analyses on the survey data to discern group trends and to generalize to a wider population. The individual interviews and analyses could be an additional component to the research that would enable researchers to discern some of the varied ways in which individuals understand the survey questions. More specific analyses would include discerning how constructing such subjective meaning involves varied constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Analyses across individuals could lead to identifying clusters of common ways of interpreting the issues of the survey, thereby creating generalized knowledge through analyses of individuals. As before, we are not necessarily eschewing groups and group comparisons. Rather, we are also maintaining and analyzing individual data within groups. The possibilities for research about action are vast, and perhaps readers have already begun to think about research topics and questions. Think imaginatively and creatively. The current theoretical framework provides guidelines for research, but it does not stipulate particular research questions, nor does it stipulate a particular research method. The door is open for imagining and creating new ways of engaging with study participants, and new ways of analyzing what and why people do what they do. In addition, researchers can still focus on specific questions about action and on specific aspects of action. For example, a researcher may focus on a cultural practice and mode of action. Or, a researcher may focus on one or two constitutive processes or one or two psychological processes. Another researcher may focus on what happens during the development of one or two psychological processes as they comprise a wider mode of action. Although researchers may be focusing on different specific action issues and questions,

Evidence and Research Implications  319 the point is that they are all focusing on issues related to the common wider whole of action. They could work together to integrate findings about how action involves constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Once again, we can say that they would be studying integrants of action, rather than fragments of behavior. Although researchers would be approaching action in these common theoretical terms, there is much leeway in how particular constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes can be conceptualized and analyzed more specifically. For example, as pointed out in Chapter 5, culture can be and has been defined and analyzed in varied specific ways, and I focused on some, but by no means all, cultural processes. The same goes for any of the constitutive processes, as well as for any psychological process. As explained in Chapter 2, empirical confrontation research involves discerning how different conceptualizations of psychological phenomena are played out in different contexts. Empirical confrontation research could be conducted to discern how different ways of conceptualizing varied action processes are played out in different contexts. Thus, people can still study specific issues and conceptualize them as they see fit, but within a common overarching systems framework. In this way, the current theoretical framework supports research that is pluralistic, as well as holistic and integrative.

Implications for Making Sense of Research Thinking Systematically about Research Reports As explained since the outset of this book, psychology is a vast and fragmented discipline. There are innumerable studies of fragmented bits of behavior, and one may be overwhelmed when trying to make sense of the volumes of psychological research, along with the volumes of research in other disciplines that address human functioning and experience. Sometimes, different studies present conflicting findings about some bit of behavior, yet each study seems quite reasonable. Conflicting, yet reasonable findings are confusing. How can they both be “true” or “right?” The current theoretical framework enables us to think systematically about a range of findings and to bring disparate findings into some coherence. It does so by, as always, starting with action, and by conceptualizing action systemically in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. And by conceptualizing these processes more specifically, we have tools for thinking systematically about

320  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action a wide range of research reports and for posing systematic questions about any research report that we encounter. An overview of how to use the current theoretical framework to think systematically about research on human functioning is presented in Box 11.1. To begin, when reading a research report about some aspect of human functioning, readers can think about how it involves acting in relation to others in some way, and about whether it encompasses one or more concepts from the current theoretical framework. In other words, is it a study of what

Box 11.1  How to Use the Current Theoretical Framework to Think Systematically about Research on Human Functioning

To Understand Some Research on Human Functioning, Think about

• The topic in terms of the wider whole of action • How constitutive processes are involved –​ How are individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes relevant to the structuring of what people are doing in a study? • How psychological processes are involved –​ What particular psychological processes are involved (e.g., thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving, self/​identity, interacting)? –​ How are psychological processes structured? –​ How are psychological processes constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes? –​ How is a psychological process under scrutiny potentially related to other psychological processes? –​ How would a psychological process under scrutiny be played out as part of different wider modes of action? • How developmental processes are involved –​ What are some developmental expectations? –​ How are differentiation and integration involved? –​ How does development happen? • Part–​part interrelations, part–​whole connections, and whole–​part connections

Evidence and Research Implications  321 can be viewed as a way of acting in relation to others, even if it does not specifically refer to action as conceptualized here? If yes, think about how it involves constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, even if the research does not directly address those issues. For example, if the research is about parent–​child attachment relationships and whether or not early attachment patterns predict later outcomes, readers can think about how different attachment patterns involve different ways of acting in relation to others on the part of both parents and children. One can think about what parents and children who are characterized in terms of different attachment patterns DO in relation to each other, and how these different ways of acting in relation to each other involve different ways of organizing constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. One can think about how the later outcomes involve development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration, as well as how that development occurred through guided participation. One can think about the ongoing developmental processes that had to occur in between the time of initial assessment and later outcomes. Readers can also ask, is it a study of one or more constitutive processes? If yes, think about how the process under scrutiny contributes to the wider whole of action. You can also think about how the process under scrutiny might be related to other constitutive processes. For example, you may be reading an article about culture and behavior. You can think about the implications of the research findings for conceptualizing cultural processes and for how cultural processes partly constitute action. You can also think about how the cultural issues discussed in the research might be related to individual, social, bodily, and environmental processes. Invoking the concept of circular causality (i.e., that parts and wholes mutually constitute one another), you could think about how the cultural issues of the reported research might be played out in relation to different wider modes of action. One can also ask if the article is about a psychological process that partly comprises wider modes of action, such as thinking, feeling, interacting, or self/​identity. If yes, think about how the process under scrutiny contributes to the wider whole of action, as well as how it is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Thinking about the psychological process under scrutiny would also involve thinking about part–​whole connections, whole–​part connections, and part–​part interrelations. With regard to part–​part interrelations and part–​whole connections, how is the psychological process under scrutiny potentially related to other psychological processes to comprise wider modes of action? With regard to whole–​part

322  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action connections, how would the psychological process under scrutiny be played out as part of different wider modes of action? Or, if it is a study about development, is it a study of the development of a wider mode of action? Is it a study of the development of psychological processes that comprise wider modes of action? Even if the study does not identify the empirical issue in terms of the current developmental perspective, readers can think about the issue in its terms. That is, one can think about cultural expectations for the mode of action or psychological process under scrutiny. One can think about what happens during the development of the modes of action and/​or psychological processes in terms of differentiation and integration. One can also think about how they develop through guided participation. If the study identifies a cause or causes of development, think about the cause in terms of guided participation and promoting differentiation and integration. More specifically, think about (a) some cultural expectations for development, (b) how interacting with others promotes or could promote differentiation and integration, and (c) what individuals do or can do to promote differentiation and integration. In Chapter 1, I briefly considered Milgram’s obedience research as an example of conventional psychology. It is instructive to consider this work again here as an example of how to think about research from the perspective of the current theoretical framework. Toward that end, it is useful to start with some vexing issues that have been raised over the years about Milgram’s work. Although Milgram conducted his obedience studies many decades ago, they remain among the most well-​known and influential in psychology. They are also well known “across a range of disciplines, from sociology to theology,” as well as in “society at large” (Reicher, Haslam, & Miller, 2014, p. 394). However, despite decades of further considering and experimenting, Milgram’s research also remains a source of consternation (Burger, 2014). Indeed, Milgram’s “work provides us with a powerful phenomenon still in search of a compelling explanation” (Reicher et al., 2014, p. 399). Milgram’s findings have certainly been interpreted in different ways. For example, Alper (2013) argues that Milgram’s experiments show how to get people “to do something they really don’t want to do. You rush them to the point of panic, you bully them, manipulate them, you do whatever you can to elicit the herd-​like, follow-​the-​leader response” (p.  37). Putting it another way, Milgram “succeeded in what he set out to do: to create a context in which a majority of people would obey” (Jetten & Mols, 2014, p. 589). He did so

Evidence and Research Implications  323 “by stacking contextual elements in favor of obedience” (Jetten & Mols, 2014, p. 590) and thus was not studying what ordinary people ordinarily do in their ordinary circumstances. Gibson (2014) argues that thinking about Milgram’s work mostly in terms of obedience is misplaced insofar as “a sizeable proportion of participants managed to defy the experimenter” (p. 436). Focusing on what the participants did to defy the experimenter could “be used to facilitate strategies for challenging unjust authority” (p. 436). In a nutshell, Milgram’s findings remain open to debate and questioning. Social scientists continue to ask: Why did so many “regular” people administer the highest level of shock? What causes obedience? What causes defiance? Milgram himself recognized that obedience is complex, and he worked to identify some of the multiple possible causes of obedience. As pointed out in Chapter 1, he was a good experimentalist who worked to identify varied efficient causes of obedience. It is also important to consider that Milgram explicitly frames his research historically in terms of the Holocaust. Already on the first page of his book, he writes, Obedience, as a determinant of behavior, is of particular relevance to our time. It has been reliably established that from 1933 to 1945 millions of innocent people were systematically slaughtered on command. Gas chambers were built, death camps were guarded, daily quotas of corpses were produced with the same efficiency as the manufacture of appliances. These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only have been carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of people obeyed orders. (Milgram, 1974/​2009, p. 1)

Milgram readily recognizes that there are clear and major differences between his experimental set-​up and any particular incident of mass murder. Nevertheless, he sought to identify some generalizable aspects of obedience by “constructing a situation that captures the essence of obedience” (p. xx), thereby enhancing understanding of any particular historical case of obedience. Historical studies of the Holocaust continue to this day, and “for historians the Holocaust is among the most complex historical situations in which to try to explain perpetrator behavior” (Overy, 2014, p. 515). Ultimately, there may be no “essence of obedience” that can be captured in one contrived experimental situation. Although some historians have used Milgram’s work to advance historical understanding of how and why Nazi personnel engaged in mass murder, it is also recognized that “any analysis

324  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action of why they behaved the way they did must rely on a variety of explanations rather than a generic core” (Overy, 2014, p. 515). Moreover, given that so many participated directly in the genocide, a single explanation cannot account for the “spectrum of behavior when confronted with the requirement to kill” (p. 518). Such claims are certainly in keeping with the current theoretical framework that action is complex and involves multiple and interrelated processes that can be structured in varied ways. To get at that complexity, Overy (2014) advises us to “exercise care in using social psychological theory as a means to ‘unblock’ explanatory channels for which conventional cause-​and-​effect analysis is clearly deficient” (p. 528). Although the current action perspective is compatible with this statement, I would make the point slightly differently. I would say that we exercise care in using conventional psychology approaches that presuppose cause→effect causality, and that we use alternative theoretical approaches to explain some of the complexities of human action. Overy (2014) also cautions that we “avoid any temptation to overgeneralize how individuals would react in a given situation,” as well as avoid trying “to disaggregate the many social, cultural, psychological, and physical elements that might affect the exercise of individual agency” (p. 528). Exercising such caution and avoiding such temptations are possible with the current action perspective because it conceptualizes action in ways that can be individualized and in terms of multiple and interrelated processes. It also conceptualizes action as holistic, variable, and dynamic. As such, the current action perspective enables us to consider some of the complexities of what was going on in the Milgram studies. It may even be useful for historical analyses of human action, thereby providing ways for psychologists and historians to collaborate. The current theoretical framework provides a basis for thinking about Milgram’s research by starting with the premise that people act. Thus, we begin by thinking about the study participants as people acting in relation to others, and we can ask how their action was organized during the experiment. More specifically, they were acting in relation to the researcher, and they at least thought they were acting in relation to a learner. In some experimental conditions, they thought they were also acting in relation to another teacher. Their action in relation to each of these others involved varied psychological processes, such as sensing, perceiving, thinking, feeling, interacting, and self/​identity. And what they did during the experiments emerged through simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Over the course of each participant’s time in

Evidence and Research Implications  325 the experiment, one could try to discern how those constitutive and psychological processes were dynamically organized. For example, with regard to individual processes, one could look at the reasons each participant gave to justify shocking at each shock level, as well as what reasons each participant gave to avoid shocking. As pointed out in Chapter 1, some participants questioned the experimenter and resisted administering shocks in subtle ways. With regard to cultural processes, one could try to discern how wider American beliefs and values were reflected in what each participant did. In this regard, it is interesting to consider that when participants hesitated to shock the learner, the experimenter used the following series of increasingly urgent prods:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Please continue, or, Please go on. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on.

The experimenter used as many prods “as necessary to bring the subject into line” (Milgram, 1974/​2009, p. 21). When confronted with the fourth prod, no one continued shocking. Milgram reports that one participant responded, “If this were Russia maybe, but not in America” (p. 48). This explicit reference to cultural context points to how individuals may draw on wider cultural meanings to justify their action, thereby shedding light on how individual and cultural processes are interrelated. It might also involve identity issues, and it would be interesting to know more about what the participant meant, as well as how he constructed himself as American. Just as some of the Milgram research participants defied and resisted the order to shock, people throughout Europe resisted Hitler during the course of World War II. In Chapter 5, I drew on Fogelman’s interview research with people who hid Jews during the War. I used that research to consider how hiding Jews involved acting for the sake of reasons and values. In Chapter 10, I used that research to point out that environmental conditions could support or constrain hiding. The overall point is that hiding Jews was complex action that can be understood in terms of the current theoretical framework. That is, it emerged through individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. We can also think about how such action involves varied psychological processes, such as thinking about how to arrange hiding and planning how to get food for more people than usual. It

326  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action was certainly emotionally fraught, and it certainly involved interacting with varied others. Hiding Jews also involved self/​identity constructing. From a developmental perspective, one can think about how acting to help people in need develops, as well as how acting to hide particular people in particular circumstances at a particular time may develop over the course of days, weeks, and months. Using the current theoretical framework to think about any research report can bring disparate findings into coherence because we are approaching the findings systematically, and we are working to understand the issues under scrutiny from a consistent perspective. When we encounter apparently conflicting results about some aspect of human functioning, we can think about whether the results provide insight into how the aspect of functioning may be particularized in different ways in different contexts. One can also think about how the explanations may not be conflicting, but together may provide ways of thinking about the multiple constituents of action. It is not necessarily the case that either one or the other offers “the true” way of understanding action. Rather, the explanations may be more or less fitting in different contexts and in relation to different configurations of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes.

Critically Analyzing Research Reports As explained in Chapter 2, theorizing in psychology includes analyzing psychology itself. The current theoretical framework can be used to critically analyze treatments of human functioning in psychology and other disciplines as well. An overview of how to use the current theoretical framework to critically analyze research on human functioning can be found in Box 11.2. Going back to Overton’s analyses of how research in psychology is based on metatheoretical assumptions (discussed in Chapter 4), a starting point for critically analyzing research would be to discern the metatheoretical assumptions that inform a particular study or treatment of human functioning. For example, one can ask whether the study is based on Cartesian-​ split assumptions or on process-​relational assumptions. One can read a research article to discern if human functioning is being objectified. Toward that end, one can analyze if and how nouns and verbs are used to describe and explain what people do. Readers can also analyze articles to discern if the researchers consider individual data as well as aggregate results. One can

Evidence and Research Implications  327

Box 11.2  How to Use the Current Theoretical Framework to Critically Analyze Research on Human Functioning

To Critically Analyze Some Research on Human Functioning, Ask



• What meta-​theoretical assumptions inform the research (even if they are not explicitly stated)? • What values inform the research (even if they are not explicitly stated)? • Does the research draw on sources and evidence from varied disciplines and from outside of academics? • Is human functioning being objectified? • Does the research include individual analyses? • Is there any attempt to relate the topic/​issues to a wider whole? –​ If yes, how is that wider whole identified and conceptualized? –​ If no, how can understanding the topic/​issues be enhanced by relating it to action and by thinking about the topic/​issues in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes? • What metaphors are used? What do they illuminate and what do they obfuscate? • How are constructs conceptualized? • How is causality treated? Are multiple causes and kinds of causes considered?

further ask if the research draws on sources and evidence from varied disciplines, as well as from non-​academic sources and evidence. Going beyond general aspects of how research is designed, we can use the current systems conceptualization of action to think critically about more specific aspects of scholarship on human functioning. To begin, we can try to discern if a work addresses how some aspect of functioning is related to a wider whole in some way. Even if the focus of the article is not on a wider whole, is there at least an attempt to relate the bit of functioning that the article focuses on to some wider whole? If yes, what is that wider whole and how is it conceptualized? If no, how could understanding the bit of functioning be advanced by considering it in relation to the wider whole of action?

328  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action As discussed in Chapter  2, theorizing by analyzing psychology itself includes analyzing the metaphors that are used, as well as analyzing how concepts are defined. Toward that end, one can analyze the metaphors that are used in a research report, and one can think about how they both illuminate and obfuscate the issues under scrutiny. In addition, one can look at how major concepts are defined. For example, if the research is about development, is development defined specifically, or is it assumed that development is tantamount to change over time? Even if the research does not refer to organismic-​ developmental theory, do the results point to development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration? If the article presents research on issues pertaining to causality, one can critically analyze it by discerning the assumptions about causality that implicitly or explicitly inform the study. Doing so would be related to analyzing the research in terms of metatheoretical assumptions as just described. In addition, one can ask if the researchers acknowledge that their study of causality is based on a particular way of conceptualizing causality and whether they acknowledge other forms of causality. If the research focuses on a particular cause of some aspect of human functioning, is that one cause understood in relation to other possible causes? For example, if the study focuses on how social processes shape some aspect of functioning, one could first question how causality is understood, as well as how social causes are understood. Then, one could question if the research considers how social processes shape behavior in conjunction with other constitutive processes. Considering how social processes occur in conjunction with other constitutive processes is precisely what Cherry (1995) does in her critical analysis of what is known as bystander research and the bystander effect. The “bystander effect” refers to research which shows a decreasing likelihood that a person will help someone in distress as the number of other people present in the situation increases. Cherry (1995) argues that much of the experimental research on quantitative social context variables is deterministic and obfuscates the cultural processes that constitute bystander action. Psychological research on the bystander effect took off in the wake of the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese by Winston Moseley, early on a March morning in Queens, New York. Initial reports describe how 38 people witnessed what was going on, but they stood by and did not help Kitty. No one even called the police. Why not? According to bystander effect research, it seems that no one helped because too many people were there. Bystander research suggests that people do not help when others are there,

Evidence and Research Implications  329 for varied reasons including: (a) they think others will help, (b) they do not want to behave inappropriately in front of others, (c) they think it is not necessary to help because no one else is helping, (d) they do not think they are capable of helping, and (e) other goals conflict with helping (Aronson, 2004; Fischer et al., 2011). However, as Cherry (1995) argues, understanding what happened in the Kitty Genovese case requires considering dynamic social processes, as well as cultural issues. For example, it is important to consider the structuring of male–​female relationships and violence in the 1960s in the United States, as well as how power was organized in relation to gender, class, and race at the time (Moseley was African-​American, Genovese was European-​American). Cherry (1995) explains that my own experiences with the women’s movement and my own feminist politicization prevented me from seeing this event exclusively within the framework of unresponsive bystander intervening behaviour. Rather, I found myself returning to view Genovese’s murder first within the framework of sex/​gender relationships and then within an even larger framework of multiple structures of powerlessness (sex, race, age and class) that play themselves out in our daily lives. (p. 21)

In other words, it is important to go beyond isolated details to the Big Picture of what was going on. The current theoretical framework is suited to going beyond isolated details because it starts with the wider whole of action. By starting with action, we can approach the complexities of the Kitty Genovese case by thinking about how it involved varied modes of action on the part of different people in relation to each other. That is, we can think about how the bystanders were acting in relation to each other, in relation to Genovese, and in relation to Moseley. In some cases, bystanders may have been acting in relation to family members and others who were in their apartments. For each of these action scenarios, we can think about how the bystanders’ action emerged through varied constitutive processes and was made up of varied psychological processes. We can also think about how the case involved an assailant and victim acting in relation to each other in ways that were constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. It is additionally important to point out that subsequent reports of the Genovese case reveal a different story (Kassin, 2017; Manning, Levine, & Collins, 2007). For example, there may have been fewer than 38 bystanders,

330  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and some people claimed that they did try to help by calling the police. One person apparently shouted out the window to Moseley, who was temporarily scared off, but he returned to assault Kitty again. The assaults took place in different locations, and many of the bystanders were not able to discern what was going on because they could neither see nor hear the scenes clearly. During the course of making a documentary about Kitty (The Witness), her brother, William Genovese, found out that a neighbor and friend of Kitty’s realized who was being assaulted, went to her, and held her as she died. It is further interesting and ironic to note that ultimately Moseley was apprehended 5 days after killing Kitty Genovese through bystander intervention (Kassin, 2017). As he “tried to burglarize a home,” a neighbor “confronted him and then called a second neighbor” (Kassin, 2017, p. 379). One of the neighbors “unhooked the distributor caps in [Moseley’s] car, thereby disabling it. The other called the police. Fleeing on foot, Moseley was picked up a short distance away and brought in for questioning” (p. 379). Fast-​forwarding to today, analyzing research on bystanders would involve checking to see if the research involves conceptualizing helping as a complex and dynamic mode of action that involves multiple constitutive processes, as well as psychological and developmental processes that can be organized in varied ways. In addition to critically analyzing research on bystanders, the current theoretical framework provides a basis for conducting new research. As I write this paragraph (in January 2018), it seems to me that what it even means to be a bystander is quite different today than it was in 1964. At that time, there was no 9-​1-​1 emergency calling process in the United States, making it difficult to call for help. The 9-​1-​1 emergency call number was established in 1968, and today even young children may know and use the number to call for help. In addition, cell phone technology enables modes of action for bystanders that were not possible in 1964. People can now videorecord events as they happen and then post them online for all to see. In some cases, these videos provide valuable information about crimes, and some have contributed to current discussions of police practices in the United States. Research could be conducted to discern how people use their cell phones to help or not help in varied ways, in varied situations, as well as to discern how people subjectively construct the role of bystander-​with-​phone. One of many thorny and vexing issues raised in this book is that there are varied ways to be scientific or to do science. As pointed out in Chapter 1, science broadly involves using systematic evidence to advance understanding,

Evidence and Research Implications  331 and what counts as systematic evidence is subject to debate and consensual agreement. Although conventional psychology privileges experimental and statistical methods and data, there are other scientific traditions to draw on. A key point of the current perspective is that methods for amassing evidence should be chosen on the basis of theorizing and not vice versa. In this chapter, we have seen that the current theoretical framework is based on varied sources of evidence and also leads to conducting research in varied ways. Being scientific also includes systematically assessing information, truth claims, and appeals to evidence. In this chapter, we have seen that the current theoretical framework provides a systematic basis for assessing information, truth claims, and appeals to evidence about human functioning. That is, it leads to assessing information, claims, and evidence in terms of the wider whole of action and its constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes.

12 Casting a Wide Net The current theoretical framework is applicable to so much of what people do, as well as to so many human issues and concerns. The current theoretical framework provides conceptual tools for considering varied complex human issues systematically in terms of action. And if we are considering action, we are considering constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Throughout this book, I  have used examples of varied cultural practices, modes of action, psychological processes, and human issues to convey the wide applicability of the current theoretical framework. In this chapter, I will cast a wide net and consider a few more topics, namely eating, freedom, attitudes, extreme action, and art. Rather than treating these topics exhaustively, my goal is to illustrate and suggest ways of using and applying the current theoretical framework. Doing so is a way of meeting Robinson’s challenge (presented in Chapter  2) to take “ever more seriously the busy world of actual persons” (2016, p. 330). Why these topics? Some of them are hot topics in the world today, such as eating, attitudes, and extreme action. Eating, attitudes, and extreme action are also hot topics in psychology as well as in other academic disciplines. Eating, freedom, attitudes, extreme action, and art are also quite different topics. By thinking about them in terms of the current theoretical perspective, we can see how it provides a common language for thinking systematically about a broad range of topics that are of broad concern. In doing so, we are meeting the fourth criterion for decent theorizing. I  am including freedom here to illustrate how the current theoretical framework can be used to hopefully shed some light on a topic that is important to people but not typically addressed in psychology. I will briefly discuss art at the end of this chapter to add to the range of topics that the current theoretical perspective can encompass. I also admit that I am personally interested in and value art, and I find it interesting and useful to think about art from the current action perspective.

Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Casting a Wide Net  333

Eating Certainly, eating is an issue that is salient and important to people. Of course, we need to eat to live, making eating fundamental to life itself. But for better or worse, eating is not only about ingesting enough calories to sustain life. If it were, weight loss and gain might not be so fraught and complicated. The complexities of eating can be illustrated by posing some questions about eating and food. What does that chocolate bar that you save for the end of the day mean to you? Does eating Chinese noodles remind you of someone? Who will eat the last piece of cake? (You eat it. No you, go ahead. No you. Are you sure?) What did you argue about at dinner last night? Did you seal the deal over lunch? Who paid for dinner? What will you serve at your dinner party next week? How is the menu for your wedding coming along? Did you eat the whole bag of chips, or did you savor the taste of just a few? Did you eat that granola bar because you think of yourself as a health-​conscious person? Did you eat that tofu burger because you are trying to eat “right?” Did you go to that Italian restaurant because your family is originally from Italy? Where is the food you ate today from? Who grew it, who processed it, and who cooked it? How much did it cost? Is the food you eat safe to eat? Who decided that it is safe to eat? Is the safety of your food regulated by some government entity? Did you eat too much or too little yesterday? Who decides how much is too much or too little? What food did you bring your neighbor whose wife just died? Of course, we can pose many more questions about eating and food, but these few questions point to how eating involves many of the issues that the current theoretical framework encompasses, from subjective experience and identity, to cultural customs, to politics and economics, to feeling and interacting with others. As such, we can begin to think systematically about eating by considering eating in terms of action that involves constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Using the current theoretical framework, we can approach eating as action that occurs within cultural practices. For example, people eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. Sometimes breakfasts, lunches, and dinners are business meetings, sometimes they are family meals, sometimes they are romantic trysts, and sometimes they are casual gatherings with friends. People eat at parties and holiday celebrations, as well as at weddings and funerals. Clearly, people may be engaging in other modes of acting in addition to eating when they are participating in these

334  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action and other cultural practices. The point here is that eating can be understood as acting and thus can be further understood in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes.

Constitutive Processes With regard to constitutive processes, eating is taken to be constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Clearly, eating involves the body in varied ways—​from tasting, smelling, seeing, touching, and sometimes hearing food, to putting food into our mouths with our hands, to biting and chewing, to the biochemical processes that are involved in digesting and eliminating food as well as burning calories. Insofar as people eat together in varied cultural practices, eating also involves social processes. Some people may eat more or less in the company of different people, or they may eat different foods in the company of different people. Someone may be thinking about their body and weight in terms of what others think about body and weight, or in terms of what they think others think. People position and recognize others in terms of how they eat, what they eat, and how much they eat. People position others in terms of weight and may or may not recognize others as whole people beyond their body size and how much they weigh. Insofar as eating involves cooking food, you may consider others’ food preferences when you cook for them. And as a guest, you may eat certain foods that you would not ordinarily eat, in order not to insult your host who keeps trying to fill your plate. Social processes are involved as people participate in eating-​related support groups. Even when a person is eating alone, eating can be understood in terms of social processes. For example, people may eat different amounts and kinds of food when they are angry at someone who is not physically present. Individual processes constitute eating in varied ways as well. It is individuals who subjectively experience eating, and it is individuals who construct the meaning of eating and of food for themselves. Such subjective meaning constructing further involves using cultural meanings about eating and food in individualized ways, pointing to how individual and cultural processes may be interrelated to constitute eating. For example, dominant cultural conceptions of healthy eating and weight may be accepted or resisted by individuals in varied ways. When people are discussing their dieting efforts, someone might argue that the supermodel approach to weight is unrealistic

Casting a Wide Net  335 for most women and comes with mental health as well as physical health risks. Someone else might point out that pressure to be thin is promulgated by a powerful dieting industry, at the same time that the food industry does all it can to make us eat. And insofar as it is individuals who put food into their mouths, eating involves individual agency, including choosing and deciding what to eat. However, choosing and deciding what to eat, as well as choosing when, where, and how much to eat, are not always conscious or deliberate. Moreover, such choosing and deciding are inseparable from the other constitutive processes. Thus, eating is not simply a matter of individual self-​control. As noted earlier, people may eat in varied ways in relation to particular others, including deciding and choosing what, when, where, and how much to eat. Environmental processes partly constitute eating, including deciding and choosing what, when, where, and how much to eat. For example, a person can only choose what to eat from the food options that are available in the environment. If fresh fruits and vegetables cannot be grown in a particular geographical location, or if they are not available in any local stores, or if they are not available for quick delivery on the internet (assuming a person has access to the internet and could afford the produce items), a person cannot choose to eat them. As changing climate conditions affect the foods that can be grown in different parts of the world, choosing what to eat may be constrained in new ways in the future. Eating is also culturally constituted in oh so many varied ways. From table manners to who pays for a meal, eating reflects cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. Varied foods are endowed with symbolic meaning in varied cultures. Eating is also inseparable from cultural conceptions of health as well as cultural aesthetic ideals. One may immediately think of cultural conceptions of ideal weight, which are dynamic and debatable and have changed over the course of history, within and across cultures. Also, in different cultures, there may be different guidelines for what, when, and how much to eat. For example, average portion sizes in France are smaller than in the United States, and, on average, the French eat more fat than Americans do (Rozin, Kabnick, Pete, Fischler, & Shields, 2003). Some research also suggests that, on average, the French take more time to eat meals than Americans do. As just mentioned in the paragraph on individual processes, eating involves agentic choosing and deciding. As such, eating involves individual self-​control. However, the very notion that eating is a matter of self-​control is itself partly cultural (Biltekoff, 2013; Boero, 2007; Saguy & Riley, 2005).

336  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Historical analyses show that public discussions of eating and weight in the United States have long reflected cultural conceptions of good citizenship and values regarding individual self-​control (Biltekoff, 2013). For example, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American progressive reformers embraced the burgeoning science of nutrition, which included analyzing the chemical composition of foods, as well as measuring food in terms of calories (Biltekoff, 2013). Taking a scientific perspective, reformers argued that the best foods were those that “provided the most energy for work at the least cost” (Biltekoff, 2013, p. 17). Reform efforts were directed toward educating people about nutritional science and using that science to promote social class values and identity. People were advised to choose what to eat based on the nutritional value of food as a means for “creating better homes and cities” (p. 21) that would keep them off the streets and away from alcohol. As such, eating could be seen in terms of right and wrong. To eat right was thus to act right, and it was up to individuals to act right by choosing food based on its nutritional value and by controlling their own appetites. Biltekoff (2013) argues further that maintaining health through eating “became a key marker of middle-​class morality and identity” (p. 36). Linking eating and wider cultural values regarding choice, control, and responsibility was elaborated during World War II by federal, state, and local agencies to serve the war effort (Biltekoff, 2013). For example, the federal government created nutrition guidelines to promote healthy eating that would enable people to be strong and vigorous in battle as well as on the home front. People who did not eat right were considered “irresponsible and indifferent” (p. 69). And those people were often of poor and working-​class circumstances, thereby further strengthening a class-​based (and biased) understanding of eating and cultural values. During the waning decades of the 20th century, middle-​class American health consciousness increasingly involved being responsible for one’s own health, including being individually responsible for what one eats. As Biltekoff explains, “Eating right, increasingly defined by the avoidance of potentially harmful foods, gained national attention as a primary means through which individuals could practice and pursue health” (p. 91). In addition, body size has come to represent a key sign of health and eating right. Insofar as health and eating right are taken to be under individual self-​control, and insofar as body size is taken to be a sign of health and eating right, weight has become a value-​laden basis for judging people. That is, being thin is taken to be a sign not only of physical health but also of self-​control and responsibility. In addition,

Casting a Wide Net  337 cultural conceptions of beauty emphasize thinness and are promoted by a very lucrative diet and weight loss industry. However, health, too, can be understood systemically as a complex phenomenon that is made up of multiple and interrelated processes, including but not limited to body weight. The kinds of food one eats play a role in health, as do exercise, genetics, access to healthcare, air quality, water quality, and stress. A list of processes that contribute to health could get quite lengthy. Moreover, each issue just listed is complex and can be expounded upon much further. For example, whether someone exercises may be related to their work schedule, the availability of childcare, financial issues, as well as environmental opportunities for exercise. The point here is that eating and weight can be viewed systemically in terms of multiple and interrelated processes, including but not limited to individual agency. As suggested in some of the preceding paragraphs, eating, weight, and health are inseparable from political and economic processes (Krieger, 2005; Robert, 2017). In countries around the world, there may be varied policies regarding food, from food production and safety, to food prices, to packaging label requirements. The cost of different kinds of foods can rise and fall in relation to political and economic processes around the world. In this age of globalized food production, there are international agreements about importing and exporting food. With regard to political and economic processes, one can ask: What rights are accorded to seasonal migrant workers who are in a country to pick apples, or grapes, or tomatoes? Do they pay taxes? Are concerns with individual responsibility for what one eats exacerbated in relation to governmental policies that decrease funding for food and healthcare assistance? It is argued that current American concerns with obesity and referring to obesity as an “epidemic” represent ways to “individualize ill health at a time when healthcare access and social support for healthy communities have been severely curtailed” (Boero, 2007, p. 57). Again, we are confronting issues that could and have taken up volumes. Again, the point here is that eating is constituted in part by cultural processes, which include political and economic processes.

Psychological Processes In addition to constitutive processes, eating is further taken to involve multiple and interrelated psychological processes, which themselves are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. In

338  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action the discussion thus far, we have mentioned interacting with others, as well as choosing and deciding, which may be viewed as cognitive subprocesses. Thinking about eating and food may also involve planning what food to grow, hunt, fish, and/​or buy, as well as what foods to cook and for whom. Clearly, eating involves sensing, as we see, taste, touch, and smell food. We can hear popcorn popping, as well as steaks sizzling on a grill. In addition, eating is emotionally fraught, as people eat when they are, for example, happy, sad, or angry. Feeling also comprises eating when someone feels angry or proud about what they ate. How do people who do not know where their next meal is coming from feel? And eating involves self/​identity constructing in varied ways, including but certainly not limited to (a) how one views one’s own body, (b) defining oneself in terms of weight, (c) defining oneself in terms of eating or not eating particular foods, (d)  defining oneself as someone who buys local food, or (e) thinking of oneself as someone who can or cannot ensure that there is food on the table for one’s family. In addition, self/​identity processes include how one positions oneself in terms of eating and food while interacting with others. For example, someone may position herself as an adventurous eater while discussing where to eat with others who want to go to a restaurant that serves pigs’ feet and calf intestines. Of course, in some cultures eating pigs’ feet and calf intestines may be quite commonplace and thus may or may not be a way of positioning oneself adventurously in different cultures. As always, these varied psychological processes may be interrelated in varied ways for individuals as they eat. For example, what you plan to eat may be informed by how you are feeling about yourself, and vice versa, thinking about different eating possibilities may be informing how you feel about yourself. Or, you and your grandmother may be eating dinner together at a restaurant, and what you are deciding to order may be informed by how you feel about yourself in relation to her years of commenting negatively about your weight. And you may feel pleased with yourself for ordering a dish that you enjoy and for changing the subject when she remarks how overweight some people at the next table are. In these examples, thinking, feeling, self/​ identity, and interacting are wholly intertwined.

Developmental Processes Human beings can suck and swallow at birth, which enable us to ingest liquid food that others provide. Sucking and swallowing, and being fed by others also

Casting a Wide Net  339 provide a foundation for the development of eating. According to the current conceptualization of development, we can think about what develops during the development of eating in terms of cultural expectations, as well as in terms of differentiation and integration. For example, as pointed out earlier, eating is inseparable from cultural expectations regarding health, aesthetics, and self-​control. The development of eating would thus involve developing in relation to those goals, as they are particularized in particular cultures. However, insofar as cultural meanings are contested, people may experience varied pathways of development for eating within cultures, as well as across cultures. The development of eating also occurs in relation to cultural guidelines regarding table manners and how to interact with others during meals. With regard to development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration, the development of eating involves differentiating and integrating the physical skills that comprise eating, such as differentiating and integrating one’s fingers to pick up food with them, or with a fork, or with chopsticks. Analyses of seated 6-​month-​olds show that, on average, they initially reach for food by rotating their shoulders to lift their hands, suggesting that they are not differentiating the hand and arm components of reaching (Sacrey, Karl, & Whishaw, 2012). Early reaching for food also tends to be “jerky,” indicating that the components of reaching are not consistently integrated (Sacrey et al., 2012, p. 548). As pointed out earlier, eating is inseparable from conceptions of varied issues, such as food, health, beauty, and weight. Such conceptions develop and can be analyzed in terms of differentiation and integration. Insofar as eating is bound up with identity, the ways in which people define themselves in terms of eating may be understood and analyzed developmentally. Choosing and deciding what to eat also develop. Prior to eating, some people grow, hunt, or fish for their food, and some go to stores to buy food. Procuring food in these and other ways develops, as does cooking food. Eating while engaging with others within the context of different cultural practices also develops, such as eating at home, at a restaurant, at a Passover Seder, or at a Moroccan wedding ceremony. Recall the restaurant scenario from Chapter 7, about Shatz’s grandson Ricky, who “stopped at each booth on the way out, smiled, waved, and said, ‘Bye-​bye’ ” (Shatz, 1994, p. 36). Shatz points out that saying goodbye to other restaurant customers may be culturally appropriate in some parts of the world, but it is not typically American. This example illustrates how eating is embedded in cultural practices (e.g., going to a restaurant) and occurs in tandem with other ways of acting in relation to others (e.g., saying goodbye). With regard to development, this

340  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action example suggests that Ricky has yet to differentiate among eating practices and the ways of acting in relation to others that are particular to them. Thinking about the development of eating also includes thinking about how eating develops. The current perspective holds that action, including eating, develops as a person actively participates with others in cultural practices. More specifically, eating develops through individual processes as a person actively eats or tries to cook, or chooses what to eat, or tries to figure out why the Passover meal is different from meals on other days. Eating develops through social processes as others guide a developing person in varied ways, from physically guiding them in how to use utensils, to instructing and explaining, and to breaking eating down into manageable steps. Eating develops through cultural processes as a developing person participates with others in eating practices that are infused with cultural meanings and guidelines regarding eating, food, health, and weight. This analysis of eating illustrates how the current theoretical framework can be used to think systematically about some of the complexities and dynamics of human eating. Different people may be particularly interested in particular aspects of eating, and using the current theoretical framework can bring different aspects of eating into coherence by conceptualizing eating as a wider action whole that is made up of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. I am reminded of the Chapter 11 discussion of how the current theoretical framework can be used to bring disparate research into coherence. I could have included eating in that chapter insofar as research on eating abounds across varied disciplines. Indeed, the sheer amount of research on eating is utterly overwhelming. Beyond academic research, volumes have been written about eating, food, and weight. The point here is that the current theoretical framework provides tools for thinking systematically about the complexities of eating, whether you are thinking about a particular person who is eating, research on eating and weight, public discussions of food, eating, and weight, public policies regarding food and eating, or news reports about eating, food, and weight.

Free Action As pointed out in Chapter 1, I hope that this theoretical framework can and will be used to address issues that are important to people, as well to address

Casting a Wide Net  341 important human issues that are not major topics in contemporary psychology. Freedom is an issue that encompasses these two goals. Not only have people long argued over how to define and understand freedom, but people have fought and died for freedom, all indicating that freedom is important to people. Despite its importance, and although there are some treatments of freedom in psychology, it is not a major topic in psychology. In some ways, I find it surprising that freedom is not a major topic in psychology, given the long-​standing importance of freedom to people the world over. At the same time, however, it is not so surprising that freedom is not a major topic in psychology because it is a value-​laden and elusive phenomenon that is difficult to pin down objectively. Moreover, in one way or another, freedom is about how some aspects of human functioning are indeterminate, and how some aspects of human functioning are not caused in ways that can be predicted in advance. As such, thinking about human functioning in terms of freedom is at odds with the cause→effect model of causality that dominates conventional psychology. Fortunately, these problems do not arise for the current theoretical framework, for at least three reasons. (1) Action is taken to be infused with values through and through. (2) The current theoretical framework embraces the premise that action involves varied kinds of causality, including how an individual can contribute to their own action. (3) The current theoretical framework recognizes that human action is not always predictable and that people act in the face of an unknown future. In the midst of some indeterminacy and unpredictability, there is conceptual space for considering the freedom of contributing to one’s own action by doing as one sees fit. As I have argued elsewhere, freedom is manifest in what people do and encompasses ways of acting (Raeff, 2017b). For example, the forms of freedom that are protected by the American Constitution refer to ways of acting, such as speaking freely, which involves speaking as one sees fit or saying what one wants to say. Insofar as freedom is manifest in action, our task is to conceptualize free action or acting freely. Toward that end, we can use the current action perspective to think systematically about free action. The goal here is to briefly illustrate and suggest how the current action perspective can be used to think about free action. I will use the terms free action and acting freely interchangeably. Freedom is certainly a vexing and intractable topic, and freedom can be and has been defined in varied ways. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to delve into the volumes that have been written about freedom over the

342  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action course of centuries and from varied perspectives. Instead, allow me to provide a starting point for thinking about freedom from an action perspective with a working definition of free action. Very generally, acting freely involves doing as one sees fit or controlling what one is doing. Acting freely further involves doing as one sees fit without coercion or constraint. This working definition of freedom combines what Berlin (1958/​1969) refers to as positive and negative freedom. Positive freedom involves controlling or regulating oneself and is based on wishing to be one’s “own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind” (p.  131). Berlin defines negative freedom in terms of non-​interference by others as “the area within which a [person] can act unobstructed by others” (p. 122). A prototypical form of doing as one sees fit without coercion or constraint involves deciding what to do in a situation and then doing so, such as: • Deciding for whom to vote among varied viable candidates and then voting • Deciding what to eat for dinner and then doing so • Deciding whom to marry and then getting married • Deciding what to write on a placard and then displaying it while marching at a political rally • Deciding when and where to go on vacation and then doing so I find that this general definition of free action is useful as a way to start thinking about freedom in terms of action. However, it is not unproblematic, and we are in some trouble right away because what people do is always constrained in some way. For example, deciding for whom to vote is constrained by the choices before you. Deciding where to go on vacation may be constrained by how much money you have and whether your employer lets you take time off from work. Thus, we are not talking here about some kind of total or pure free action, and perhaps we should define free action as doing as one sees fit without undue coercion or constraint. But then we would end up arguing about what counts as “undue.” It could be different in different cultures, and what counts as undue constraint for one person may or may not be experienced as undue constraint by another. The current analysis will not address all of the vexing complexities of free action. The point is to consider some aspects of free action in terms of the current theoretical framework. And doing so involves thinking about free action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Ultimately, conceptualizing

Casting a Wide Net  343 free action in terms of the current theoretical framework will hopefully help us to deal with some of the vexing complexities of freedom.

Constituting Free Action With regard to constitutive processes, acting freely certainly involves individual processes, because it is individuals who do as they individually see fit, and it is individuals who regulate their own action. It is precisely because individuals are capable of deciding what to do, as well as capable of regulating their own action, that it even makes sense to speak of free action. Insofar as individuals are capable of deciding what to do and of regulating their own action, they may be understood as free to decide how they act, as well as free to do otherwise than they did. Acting freely is also tied to how people experience and understand themselves as agents who are a source of their own action. Sometimes we feel in control of our action and lives, but sometimes we do not, suggesting that free action involves subjectively constructing experience. In this case, subjectively constructing experience involves how individuals subjectively construct themselves as free. It is possible that in the apparently same circumstance, one person may experience herself as free, and another may not. For example, one person may not feel free to go on vacation anywhere at any time because she feels that she has to be available to her aging mother. She resents this circumstance, and she experiences it as undue constraint. In contrast, one of her sisters does not feel so constrained and makes whatever plans she wants. Also in contrast, but in a different way, a third sister does not feel free to go on vacation anywhere at any time, but she does not resent not being able to do so. She embraces being available to her aging mother and does not feel unduly constrained or coerced. For these three sisters, what counts as free action is experienced differently. Freedom is thus not absolute, but is partly in the eye of the beholder. Part of the strangeness of free action and individual processes is that sometimes individuals may freely decide to constrain what they do in varied ways, yet they may not subjectively experience undue constraint. In addition, acting freely sometimes constrains further action, and such constraint may or may not be subjectively constructed as undue constraint. Taken together, we are not dealing with either/​or issues here. It is not an issue of either there is freedom or there is not. It is not the case that people are either free or not

344  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action free. Rather, there is an ongoing interplay between freedom and constraint that can be illuminated by considering some of the varied ways in which individual processes are structured to constitute free action. Acting freely also involves cultural processes, including cultural conceptions of and values regarding freedom. Cultural conceptions of freedom include cultural ways of conceiving the areas of life that are considered to be up to individuals. In different cultures, different issues may be identified as areas of life that are subject to individual regulating, from clothing and hair style, to choosing friends and spouses, to pursuing jobs, to expressing oneself and voting, to believing and valuing. In addition, areas of freedom can be contested and debated within cultures. For example, in an Arab Druze community, areas of freedom include work, education, leisure, and friendship for men, but not for women (Turiel & Wainryb, 2000). However, “the large majority of females considered the cultural arrangements to be unfair” (Turiel & Wainryb, 2000, p. 253). In this way, cultural aspects of free action are inseparable from individual processes as individuals actively construct cultural conceptions. Cultural conceptions of freedom also include cultural ways of defining and valuing individual self-​regulation. DiBianca Fasoli (2017) argues that many considerations of the cultural importance of self-​regulation are based on “research among certain secular segments of the U.S. population” (p. 479). Within that cultural community, self-​regulation is defined and valued insofar as it protects self-​determination and individual autonomy. In contrast, her research with Evangelical Christians in the United States shows that they value and understand self-​regulation in terms of freely choosing to submit to God’s way. Cultural processes include political arrangements, and freedom is certainly a complex political issue. Acting freely occurs in relation to the political arrangements that enable people to do as they see fit. People have fought and died for freedom for centuries, including forms of political freedom, such as freedom of self-​government, religion, and speech. As already pointed out, the American Constitution provides political support for varied forms of free action. At the same time, political policies also limit individual free action. As Berlin (1958/​1969) explains, it is necessary to publicly regulate free action because people “are largely interdependent, and no [person’s] activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of others in any way” (p. 124). In addition, free action requires some political regulation because freedom is not an absolute value and “must be weighed against the claim of other values, of which equality, or justice, or happiness, or security, or public order are perhaps

Casting a Wide Net  345 the most obvious examples” (p. 170). Where to draw the parameters of free action is, of course, subject to ongoing political debate and has been hotly contested throughout history around the world. People have fought and died over those parameters, and the political parameters of free action continue to shift in varied ways in varied countries. Struggles for political freedom have been joint efforts that involve people coming together to promote or protest particular political parameters of free action. As pointed out in Chapter  5, struggles for political freedom have also involved seeking to be positioned and recognized by others as full-​fledged people who are capable of acting as they see fit (Berlin 1958/​1969). As such, and also because people are “largely interdependent,” free action can be further understood in terms of social processes. Doing as one sees fit without coercion or constraint includes doing as one sees fit without being coerced or constrained by others. Yet other people are often sources of coercion and constraint. Thus, acting freely occurs when social processes are organized in ways that are neither coercive nor constraining. However, and once again, what counts as coercive or constraining is not a straightforward matter. Insofar as different people may or may not experience what someone else is doing as coercive or constraining, the social aspects of free action are inseparable from individual processes. For example, I may freely decide to do what you tell me to do, meaning that I am deciding to do what you tell me to do, and that I do not feel coerced by you to do so. In addition, social processes may constitute free action as a person considers another person while figuring out how to do as they see fit. For example, someone may be walking along the beach alone, trying to decide whether or not to accept a job offer by considering how it might affect others in her life. Just the other day, while I was talking to a colleague, I was explicitly (but privately) debating whether or not to tell her what I had heard about another colleague. I ultimately freely decided not to tell her out of consideration for the other colleague and because I did not want to spread potentially false rumors around the department. Acting freely was thus socially constituted in part by the other colleague, by thinking about other people in the department, as well as by the person with whom I was interacting directly. As with any kind of action, action that can be characterized as free is also constituted by bodily processes, such as using one’s vocal chords and mouth to speak freely or one’s hand to write freely. Marching freely at a political rally involves the body. And last but not least, physical environmental processes also co-​ constitute free action. That is, doing as one sees fit is partly constituted by

346  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action the affordances of a given physical setting. For example, deciding whether to exercise indoors or outdoors may be constituted in part by the air quality and temperature, as well as by the arrangements of the indoor physical space. Building on the earlier discussion of eating, we can posit that eating as one sees fit occurs in relation to the food that is available in one’s environment. For people who need wheelchairs to get around, the physical environment can be structured in ways that make it possible for them to act freely in varied ways. Building wheelchair-​accessible environments is also partly a cultural issue insofar as wheelchair-​accessible environments are built in some but not all cultural communities and are politically mandated in some as well.

Psychological Processes As presented at the outset of this discussion, a prototypical case of free action involves deciding, which can be viewed as a cognitive issue or as a matter of thinking. As Dewey (1933/​1974) put it, Genuine freedom, in short, is intellectual; it rests in the trained power of thought, in ability to “turn things over,” to look at matters deliberately, to judge whether the amount and kind of evidence requisite for decision is at hand, and if not, to tell where and how to seek such evidence. (p. 258)

In addition, free action can be understood in terms of other psychological processes, including feeling, interacting, and self/​identity. For example, acting freely by voting as one sees fit can be emotionally fraught. Voting involves constructing oneself and positioning oneself in relation to others. And deciding whom to vote for may be worked out by discussing politics while interacting with others. The same goes for making job decisions or deciding whom to marry. A person may freely decide what to eat, and as discussed in the section on eating, deciding what to eat involves feeling, interacting with others, and constructing self/​identity.

Developmental Processes And finally, we can think about acting freely from the current developmental perspective (Raeff, 2017b). Certainly deciding develops, and controlling

Casting a Wide Net  347 or regulating what one does also develops. Constructing conceptions of freedom develops. According to the current developmental perspective, the development of acting freely occurs in relation to cultural expectations and involves undergoing differentiation and integration. In addition, development is taken to be a cumulative process, whereby more complex ways of acting build on and incorporate previous ways of acting. For example, with regard to controlling what one does, newborn functioning begins with organized reflex sensorimotor schemes (e.g., sucking, grasping, looking) that are self-​generated and provide sensory feedback (Piaget, 1953). Subsequently, infants are increasingly capable of initiating varied sensorimotor schemes on their own, thereby developing ways of controlling how they move physically (Kopp, 1982). In addition, babies integrate schemes to “make interesting sights last,” which provides a way for them to differentiate between means and ends (Piaget, 1953, p. 153). Such differentiation enables babies to achieve goals that are interesting to them, thus providing a basis for doing as they see fit. The current developmental perspective also involves thinking about how free action develops through participating with others in cultural practices. I once conducted an observational study of an American kindergarten classroom, and although the study was not specifically designed to analyze the development of free action, it is relevant here (Raeff, 2006b). The teacher and student teacher regularly guided the children in voting about what to do, including whether to go outside or stay inside for recess, whether to read or sing the words of a book, and what to write on the daily calendar. In a nutshell, making sense of how free action develops involves discerning how interacting with other people provides opportunities to practice culturally particular ways of acting freely. It also involves discerning how free action undergoes differentiation and integration as a person participates with others in cultural practices.

Attitudes in Action Issues related to beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes came up a lot in the previous chapters. For example, as part of individual and cultural processes, we considered how people act for the sake of beliefs and values, and we considered how action reflects cultural meanings, including beliefs and values. We also considered how individuals interpret cultural meanings, which can

348  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action include beliefs, values, and attitudes. We just considered cultural values regarding freedom. In this section, I begin by considering some common ways of speaking about beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes, and then I use the current theoretical framework to think about them as active processes that people DO as they act in relation to others. The upcoming pondering is hardly definitive and is meant to suggest some ways of using the current theoretical framework to enter the messy morass of beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes.

In a Manner of Speaking In keeping with objectifying practices, it is certainly commonplace (in psychology and in everyday language) to speak about “having” or “holding” attitudes, as well as beliefs, values, and opinions. For example, we may speak about the interesting beliefs that someone has, or remark that someone has the same political attitudes that you have. We may wonder where an adolescent is getting a belief from, and we might speculate that he is getting it from his new friends. We may also speak about values as objects that can be transmitted from one person to another, such as transmitting values from one generation to the next. In addition, and in keeping with conceptualizing causality in terms of efficient causality, beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes may be understood as independent and antecedent mechanisms that cause people to act in one way or another. For example, a friend might explain to you: “Oh, he did that because he has this belief that children should be seen and not heard.” On National Public Radio (NPR) recently, there was a story about support groups for overcoming racist attitudes, which are considered to be ideas and concepts that “just float around in our heads, shaping our actions” (Spiegel & Rosin, 2017). Even though we may speak of beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes as objects, we also know that they are not tangible objects that we can physically hold, or get from our parents, or buy at a store to have. We may value freedom, and people may even talk about having freedom in varying amounts. Yet, we are also aware that freedom is not a tangible object that we have in varying amounts. Or, someone may believe in a person’s right to X, Y, or Z, but they are also aware that beliefs (and rights) are not tangible objects that we have. The metaphor of value transmission implies that values are static and given in the same form by one generation to the next, who then gives them to the next generation, and so on. But if values are transmitted in this way, how

Casting a Wide Net  349 do we get a generation gap? A generation gap means that people of different generations disagree about values. How do people develop new values, and how do cultures change if values are primarily static and “transmitted?” The NPR story on racist attitudes also refers to attitudes as things that are inside people, such as “inside your head in the deep, deep center where no one could see.” One guest on the radio show apparently told the show’s host that “if he could, he’d rip the bias from his body.” However, beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are abstract phenomena, not tangible objects that are located somewhere inside of people. Only blood and guts are inside of us. With regard to causal processes, what does it mean to say that a belief or value causes someone to act in some way? What does it mean to say that an attitude influences behavior? As abstract phenomena, how can a belief or value make a person act? Recall Wertsch’s claim (presented in Chapter 5) that cultural tools are powerless by themselves and require agents who construct and use them to act. A variation on that theme is applicable here: Beliefs and values are powerless by themselves. They are constructed and enacted by people. Insofar as the current theoretical framework begins and ends with action, it is well suited for conceptualizing beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes as active processes. In English, you might say that someone “really has an attitude,” or you might tell someone to “lose the attitude.” Although these phrases also refer to attitudes as objects that one has, they implicate how a person is acting. Someone who is telling you that Larry really has an attitude may go on to say more about what Larry did that reflects that attitude: “He barged into the room, interrupted us, and started yelling at me about how he always ends up having to replenish the paper supply, and he does not have the time for that, and why don’t I do what I’m supposed to do, and blah blah blah.” An adolescent who “really has an attitude” may be sitting sullenly in the corner, refusing to talk to anyone, and raising her eyebrows at every comment her parents make. In addition, these phrases about attitudes imply that there is a negative quality to what the person is doing. Telling someone to lose the attitude is a way of saying that they should lose the angry, resentful, bitter, or generally negative attitude. It is a way of saying that the person should not be angry, resentful, bitter, or negative. Ultimately, it seems to me that it is a way of telling someone not to ACT in certain ways. No doubt, it seems that way to me because I see what people do through the lenses of the current theoretical framework, which begins and ends with action. From the current theoretical perspective, beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are taken to be expressed

350  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action or reflected in ways of acting. The current perspective also guides us in how to think about these issues in terms of active processes that people DO, as they act in relation to others.

Enacting Beliefs, Values, Opinions, and Attitudes To begin, we can use verbs, such as to believe, to value, or to opine. I cannot think of a verb form for attitude. But the point remains: The current theoretical framework provides ways of thinking about how attitudes are active processes that people DO. They are enacted. If you want to locate them somewhere, I would say that they are “in” action. They appear in action, they are reflected in action, and they are accomplished through action. Drawing once again on my trusty Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, for current purposes I loosely define believing, valuing, opining, and attitude as follows. • To believe X is to accept X as real or true, as in, “I believe her when she says that she did not take the money.” To believe “in” X means to accept or consider X to be worthy in some way, as in “I believe in democracy,” or “I believe in public schools.” • To value X is to consider X to be important, worthwhile, or good in some way. There is thus overlap between valuing and believing in, as just defined. • To opine about X is to construct X subjectively, as in “I liked the movie,” or “I think she should apologize to him.” • An attitude refers to how a person constructs or approaches some phenomenon or a situation. It is the most general of the four terms here and can encompass the other three. As the discussion proceeds, I will use the term attitude to include beliefs, values, and opinions. In English, one can talk about living one’s values, or some variation on the notion that values are part of what we do and how we live, as in: “He is living his values.” “She wants to live her values.” “They are living up to their values.” A person who recycles, keeps the heat way down in the winter, does not use air conditioning in the summer, and drives a hybrid is living or enacting environmental values. Some financial investment companies offer possibilities for values investing. Investing money in companies that promote values that you espouse is a way of living or enacting what you value. Yesterday, a friend

Casting a Wide Net  351 told me that she had dinner with some people who “are really trying to live what they believe.” In other words, and as the current theoretical framework posits with regard to individual processes, people act in accord with what they believe, for the sake of what they believe, or to uphold what they believe. The same goes for values or valuing. Someone might tell you that he values life, and thus will go to an anti-​capital punishment rally next week. A parent might take a child to art museums, thus acting in part for the sake of valuing art. In these ways, believing, valuing, opining, and attitudes are inseparable from action. Another way of putting it that connotes active processes is to speak of harboring or endorsing certain beliefs, values, opinions, or attitudes. As much as possible, I will use the verbs “to harbor” and “to endorse” to emphasize the active processes involved here and to move away from talking about beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes as “things” that people “have.” However as noted in Chapter 3, using verb forms is not always feasible and it is not necessary to avoid nouns completely. I myself have used nouns and possessive forms throughout this book, including with regard to beliefs and values. The general point is to think about what people DO and to explain what a noun means in terms of people acting. With regard to the specific issues at hand now, the point is that beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are not being conceptualized separately from action, but rather as active processes that people DO as they act in relation to others. Thus, we can still say that someone “has” a belief, value, opinion or attitude. But saying so means that their action reflects a belief, value, opinion, or attitude, or that a belief, value, opinion, or attitude is evident in what they do, or that people believe, value, opine, and harbor attitudes as they act in relation to others. People may believe, value, opine, and harbor attitudes relatively strongly and weakly, or relatively fervently and half-​heartedly. Believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes fervently suggests links to feeling. Self/​ identity may also be involved insofar as people define themselves partly in terms of what they believe and value. People may endorse beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes that are related to each other in varied ways, thereby constructing networks of beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. And sometimes people may endorse beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes inconsistently. Beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes may be shared with (some) others, making them “communal and consequential in terms of our relations to a cultural community” (Bruner, 1990, p. 29). Sometimes we consciously think about what we believe, value, and opine and try to act accordingly. Sometimes we neither think consciously about what we believe nor act

352  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action accordingly. Moreover, what counts as acting in ways that reflect particular attitudes is partly in the eye of the beholder, has changed historically, and can be different in different cultures. As active processes, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes can change in varied ways. Insofar as beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes inhere in action, they are not being conceptualized as antecedent and independent entities or as determining forces that cause a person to act in some way. However, as just pointed out, according to the current theoretical framework, people act in part for the sake of beliefs and values. At first glance, these claims may seem contradictory. People act for the sake of beliefs and values, but beliefs and values do not “cause” their action. Let us use the current theoretical framework to clarify this apparent contradiction. Within the current theoretical context, claiming that people act to uphold certain beliefs and values is not equivalent to claiming that people are being caused to act by some antecedent, independent, or deterministic force that impinges on them. It also does not mean that beliefs, values, or attitudes are objects that people “have in their heads” (or elsewhere) that physically cause them to act. Beliefs and values remain abstract phenomena that can be constructed and pondered through language. As such, thinking about, talking about, arguing about, and articulating beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are part of what people DO. Positing that people act in part for the sake of beliefs and values means that people act in ways that are in accord with what they believe and value. They are acting in accord with what they are constructing as their beliefs and values, and what they believe and value is enacted in how they act. A student in one of my classes last semester commented that a person can think about what they value, and then try to befriend people who value similarly. In this case, befriending people who value similarly is a way of acting in accord with constructed values, as well as a way in which values are reflected in action. Of course, people do not always actively ponder what is important to them or what they take to be true about the world. But they may still act in ways that reflect beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. Let us consider sexism and racism in terms of believing, valuing, opining, and attitudes. What is a sexist attitude, what are racist beliefs, and what is prejudice or a prejudicial attitude? According to the current theoretical framework, people actively construct what they believe, value, and opine, and believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes are part of how someone acts. From the current action perspective, we would try to discern how a person is acting in relation to others or what a person is doing that enacts certain attitudes. Pointing to how sexist or racist attitudes are enacted, we could say, “What

Casting a Wide Net  353 he did was racist or sexist,” or “She was being racist when she did that,” or “That was a sexist/​racist way to act,” or “He is so prejudiced. He refused to drive through that neighborhood.” The word prejudice also comes in the verb form to prejudge. Thus, he prejudged the people in the neighborhood. Sexist attitudes are evident in action when the men in the office act by repeatedly asking female colleagues to make coffee or by commenting repeatedly on their clothing and looks. Sexist ways of acting may also be evident when men act by talking to each other about women in derogatory ways. Racist attitudes can be enacted while acting in relation to people of different races or ethnicities. Racist attitudes can also be enacted while acting in relation to people of the same race or ethnicity. At different times, people themselves may or may not be aware that they are acting in ways that can be interpreted as sexist or racist, and they may or may not consider themselves to be racist or sexist (Sue, 2010). One of the points that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof makes in a series of columns entitled “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” is that some White people who endorse non-​racist attitudes also support an institutional system that perpetuates racist policies. However, they do not necessarily think about the institutional structures in those terms. In varied ways, different people may interpret the meaning of someone’s action as racist or sexist, or not. We thus come back to the messy issue of meaning and the point that the meaning of action can be interpreted in different ways. This discussion is going in varied directions. To avoid complete disorganization, the bottom line for now is that beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes can be understood as active processes that people DO as they act in relation to others. As such, they can be considered more systematically in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. We are emphasizing what people DO as they ACT in ways that reflect beliefs, values, opinions, or attitudes that they construct. We are asking about what people are doing when they construct, harbor, and express beliefs, values, opinions, or attitudes. Let us now consider a few ways in which individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes may constitute action that reflects beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes about gender and race.

Constituting Beliefs, Values, Opinions, and Attitudes Some cultural constitutive processes that reflect attitudes about gender and race include cultural guidelines for male and female action, as well as cultural

354  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action guidelines for what counts as appropriate action for people of different races. Cultural processes further include how gender and race are understood and defined as well as valued by people of a cultural community. To discern how cultural processes constitute race and gender attitudes we can ask questions such as the following: • How are cultural attitudes about race and gender evident as people act? • How do cultural attitudes about race and gender constrain and enable people’s action? • What is the history of attitudes about race and gender in particular cultural communities? The history of racial attitudes is long and troubled in many cultures, and they continue to be hotly debated around the world today. In the United States, racism was institutionalized over decades of slavery and then segregation, and institutional racism persists in American culture in varied guises today, from housing policies, to law enforcement practices, to policies that constrain voting. With regard to wider societal processes and gender, public policies may curtail or promote women’s rights to, for example, vote, drive, or own property. The cultural dynamics of gender attitudes are currently evident in American culture in discussions of transgender issues and policies. Some of the ongoing cultural dynamics for what counts as appropriate action between males and females are currently evident in the Me Too movement. Attitudes about both race and gender are also infused with the cultural structuring of power and authority. Thus, we can ask questions such as the following: • Who decides what counts as appropriate action for people of different races and genders? • Who decides what counts as appropriate gender and racial categories? • Who benefits from different ways of positioning people in terms of race and gender? • How do people of different gender and racial groups negotiate what count as appropriate and legitimate ways of acting? Attitudes about race and gender also involve bodily processes insofar as gender and race involve ways of constructing bodily and physical aspects of human beings. In addition, there are interrelations between cultural and

Casting a Wide Net  355 bodily processes in the constitution of attitudes about race and gender. For example, in some cultures, women are constructed in terms of dirty bodies that require monthly ritual cleansing. The ways in which cultural attitudes about gender change include how physical contact between people is structured in particular cultures. Interrelations between bodily processes and cultural processes may be particularized in the structuring of physical contact between people of different racial groups. The structuring of contact among people also occurs in relation to environmental processes. For example, in some religious practices, physically separate spaces may be designated for men and women. Historically in the United States, separate physical spaces were designated so that Blacks and Whites did not engage with each other as equals. Alternatively, physical spaces can be constructed that facilitate contact between people of different genders and races. Individual processes partly constitute attitudes about race and gender insofar as individuals construct and experience gender and race subjectively. Individuals may also accept or resist dominant cultural ideologies about gender and race. Individuals may regulate what they do in accord with what they believe, value, or opine, including what they believe, value, or opine about gender and race. With regard to social processes, believing, valuing, opining, and endorsing attitudes are constituted in part by others. Just as a person may be shy or outgoing in the company of different people, a person may express certain beliefs and values about gender or race in the company of different people. A person may believe and value what some others in his life believe. Others may challenge or support a person in harboring certain attitudes about gender or race. Others may position someone in terms of gender or race. A person may question what she believes and values as others challenge her in some way, thus pointing to interrelations between social and individual processes.

Changing Beliefs, Values, Opinions, and Attitudes As active processes, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes are fluid and dynamic. They can change and thus they are not necessarily a set or permanent feature of individuals or cultures. Believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes may change in varied ways and in relation to the varied constitutive processes. For example, with regard to individual processes, a person may explicitly think about what they believe is important in life and

356  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action construct new beliefs and values. As we have pointed out many times already, cultures change historically, and cultural change can include changing cultural attitudes about varied issues. The Me Too movement is an example of currently changing cultural attitudes about men and women acting in relation to each other. In addition, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes can be influenced by others, indicating that they can change in relation to social processes. For example, your neighbor may start to construct anti-​immigrant attitudes while talking to someone who repeatedly tells him that illegal immigrants are being hired for less pay and are taking jobs away from communities around the United States, not to mention all the crimes they are committing. In this example we also see individual processes at work because it is your neighbor who is individually pondering and constructing a new way of thinking about immigrants. Insofar as believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes can change in relation to social processes, you can persist in explaining to your neighbor that evidence shows that immigrants are not committing most crimes in the United States and that immigrants are not taking jobs away from the community. And sometimes the changes that occur may be developmental changes, meaning that a person’s ways of acting that reflect beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes can develop, as can a person’s ways of constructing certain beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. Throughout childhood, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes develop. In many ways, a goal of development is for children to develop ways of acting that reflect cultural beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. Around the world, the specifics of such development may be different, but the point is that around the world people are developing ways of acting that reflect cultural beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. Of course, development does not begin and end during childhood, and people can continue to develop with respect to beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes at any time during the lifespan. For example, what a person believes or opines about varied issues, such as politics, religion, art, eating, childrearing, the environment, gender, and race, may undergo development-​ as-​ differentiation-​ and-​ integration. And that development may occur as the person participates with others in varied cultural practices. Within and across cultures, beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are, of course, highly contested phenomena, which makes for some developmental complexities. As discussed in Chapter  7, development occurs in relation to cultural meanings, including cultural conceptions and goals of development. What then are some cultural goals for developing beliefs, values, opinions, or

Casting a Wide Net  357 attitudes? It is hard to answer this question because such goals may be highly contested. Even within cultures, what counts as the development of “good” values to one person may be abhorrent to someone else. What counts as prejudice or as sexism to one person may not to another, and what is considered prejudice or sexism in one cultural community may not be so considered in another. In some cultures, some might say that valuing gender equality is a goal of development, whereas in some cultures, goals of development for people of different genders may be different. The current theoretical framework does not stipulate goals of development or pathways of differentiation and integration. Rather, it provides tools for discerning if development toward some identified goal is occurring. It is important to point out that just because this developmental perspective does not stipulate goals of development for beliefs and values (or any aspect of action), it does not prevent people from endorsing particular values over others. Indeed, one can conceptualize development in terms of cultural goals and differentiation and integration, without personally endorsing all cultural goals. In other words, this view of development takes development to be relative to cultural goals, but it is not tantamount to taking an extreme relativist “anything goes” position that requires one to agree with all cultural goals. For all of these cases, development could involve the goal of disavowing some attitudes in favor of endorsing others. That is, for a racial integrationist, development would involve disavowing racist attitudes and developing ways of acting that are in accord with racial integration values. For a gender egalitarian, development would involve repudiating sexist attitudes and developing ways of acting that are in accord with gender equality values. Developmental analyses of a White supremacist’s transformation show that he initially endorsed global and mutually exclusive ideas about Blacks and Whites and that he also described how he constructed those attitudes during childhood through interacting with his father (Mascolo, 2017b). For example, he claimed that Blacks are inferior to Whites in varied ways, and that Blacks and Whites do not share any common interests. However, as he interacted with and got to know an African-​American woman whom he had to work with in a college class, he began to differentiate her from his undifferentiated attitude toward Black people as all the same. He eventually repudiated his White supremacist attitudes, they eventually married, and he no longer sees his father (at least at the time the blog was posted). Some (including me) might view these changes as developmental in part because he

358  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action achieved the goal of not being racist, and because differentiation and integration occurred. It is interesting at this juncture to briefly point out that there have long been inquiries into how contact with people who are deemed “other” in some negative way is associated with changing attitudes toward them. For example, Allport (1954/​1979) considered some of the ways in which equal status and pursuing common goals may reduce racial prejudice. Sherif ’s (1958) classic research shows how two groups of young boys overcame highly negative attitudes toward each other when they had to cooperate to achieve goals that could not be achieved by either group alone. Discerning the ways in which intergroup contact can promote positive attitudes toward others is a hot topic in psychology today in developmental and social psychological research (e.g., Mascolo, 2017b; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008; Rutland & Killen, 2015). The current conceptualization of action and development leads to viewing contact as action that potentially provides opportunities for development-​as-​differentiation-​ and-​integration. For example, cooperating is a mode of action that may enable people to start differentiating among individuals within an identified group, rather than treating them as undifferentiated members of some global group of others. Cooperating also potentially provides opportunities to discern and construct common or integrative ground with others. The current theoretical framework provides tools for discerning if and how varied ways of engaging with others enable development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​integration to occur for harboring attitudes, as well as for acting in ways that reflect non-​racist and non-​sexist attitudes. The current theoretical framework also suggests that promoting attitude development can be facilitated by engaging with others in ways that provide opportunities for differentiation and integration. To recapitulate, from the current theoretical perspective, action reflects beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes. Another way of putting it is that believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes are enacted as people act in relation to others. As such, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes partly comprise action. In addition, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes are taken to be constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes also develop. Taken together, believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes can be viewed as psychological processes within the current theoretical framework. According to the current theoretical framework, psychological processes refer to the action subconstituents

Casting a Wide Net  359 that comprise wider modes of action. As subconstituents of action, psychological processes are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, and they also develop. In Chapter 6, we conceptualized thinking, feeling, interacting, sensing and perceiving, and self/​identity as psychological processes in these ways. And here, we have considered believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes in these ways as well, and we can add them to our list of psychological processes that comprise action. In addition, we can begin to think about believing, valuing, opining, and harboring attitudes systemically in terms of how they are related to other psychological processes when people act. For example, believing and valuing may be inseparable from self/​identity as a person defines him-​or herself in terms of particular beliefs and values. As people act in relation to others, they may get angry when the values they endorse are contested in some way. They may also reflect upon or think about beliefs and values as they interact with others.

Extreme Action Sometimes beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes can be endorsed, harbored, and enacted in rather radical or extreme ways, including through terrorism or terrorist action. Although radicalism and terrorism are not new in the grand scheme of history, they are certainly major issues in the world today. They encompass a wide range of complex and messy topics, and I in no way presume to be providing a comprehensive analysis of radicalism, radicalization, extremism, or terrorism. Instead, I would like to ponder these issues and suggest how they can be understood in terms of the current theoretical framework. As I set out to so ponder, I first wanted to look into some of the research that has been conducted on radicalism and terrorism. I  was immediately overwhelmed, as studies of these issues fill volumes, and I know that I have barely scratched the surface of this research. Nevertheless, I was struck by several points that came up quite quickly and repeatedly. Not surprisingly, one point is that definitions of relevant terms abound, including radicalization, radicalism, extremism, terrorism, and deradicalization (Borum, 2011a, 2011b; Hafez & Mullins, 2015; Horgan, 2017; Pruyt & Kwakkel, 2014; Sedgwick, 2010). We are in trouble right away, because beliefs and attitudes are partly culturally and individually constituted, and thus people within and

360  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action across cultures may disagree about what counts as extreme or radical, as well as what counts as terrorism. Extremism and terrorism have also been understood and played out in different ways historically. What is considered radical is “relative in many ways: it is inherently context-​, stance-​and issue-​ dependent, it is relative in relation to points of view and actions of other citizens. . . . Radical varies with what is seen as mainstream in any given society, section of society, or period of time” (Pruyt & Kwakkel, 2014, p. 1). For current purposes, I will use the terms radicalism and extremism to refer to endorsing extreme beliefs, values, opinions, or attitudes, while recognizing that what counts as extreme is contested. For the term terrorism, I will use Hoffman’s (2006) “attempt to define terrorism as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change” (p. 40). In keeping with the current action perspective, I will also use the verb form “to terrorize” as much as possible. With regard to who becomes a terrorist, it is repeatedly pointed out that most people do not become terrorists, and that even most people who harbor radical beliefs do not terrorize (Borum, 2011a, 2011b; Horgan, 2008, 2009). Indeed, there are few terrorists. Despite the potentially enormous consequences of terrorism, it remains a disproportionately low-​volume activity perpetrated by relatively small numbers of activists. There may be a larger network that contributes in some way to sustaining the terrorist individual, but it remains a low-​volume activity. The drama that surrounds terrorism obscures this fact. (Horgan, 2009, p. 3)

In addition, there does not seem to be a typical terrorist profile or generalizable explanation for why those few people end up terrorizing (Borum, 2011a, 2011b; Horgan, 2008, 2009). In the aftermath of 9/​11, analyses focused on trying to isolate causes of terrorism, such as individual personality characteristics and particular context factors (Horgan, 2009). Trying to analyze terrorism in this way is certainly in keeping with conventional conceptions of cause→effect causality. That is, there is a search for personality characteristics or context factors that precede and reliably cause a person to terrorize. Although no specific terrorist profile has been identified, some factors have been identified as common to some terrorists, and they may serve as a kind of “ ‘openness to socialization’ into terrorism” (Horgan, 2008, p. 85). Within developmental

Casting a Wide Net  361 psychology, the term socialization has been defined in terms of “processes whereby naïve individuals are taught the skills, behavior patterns, values, and motivations needed for competent functioning” in a cultural context (Maccoby, 2007, p. 13). Talking about terrorism in terms of “openness to socialization” suggests that people are not born terrorists and that engaging in terrorist action can be taught to people who have become open to learning certain ways of acting. Some of the factors that comprise openness to such socialization include “emotional vulnerability, in terms of feelings of anger, alienation (often synonymous with feelings of being culturally uprooted or displaced and a longing for a sense of community)” (Horgan, 2008, p. 84). Other factors include “a sense of reward” and believing that “they will achieve more in death than they ever could in life,” and “kinship or other social ties to those experiencing similar issues” (Horgan, 2008, p. 85). In addition, some research suggests that common terrorist circumstances include “poverty, lack of (or an abundance of) education, humiliation for some perceived wrongs, discrimination or a combination of these” (Horgan, 2009, p. 3). However, many, many people throughout the world experience one or more of these factors, but again, very few people terrorize. The fact that efforts to identify terrorist profiles have proved futile suggests that understanding radicalization and becoming a terrorist can be enhanced by thinking about them outside the box of conventional psychology assumptions and practices. Along these lines, it is interesting to note that there are calls to consider not only why some people become terrorists, but how they become terrorists (Borum, 2011a, 2011b; Horgan, 2008). According to Horgan (2008), “A critical conceptual point . . . is that answering questions about why people may wish to initially become involved in terrorism may have little bearing on what they do . . . as terrorists or how they actually become engaged in specific terrorist operations” (p. 81). Focusing on what terrorists DO and how they become involved in terrorism implies that rather than trying to identify why people terrorize in terms of an efficient cause of terrorism, terrorism could be fruitfully understood as action, and in terms of ongoing and dynamic processes that people DO. As such, focusing on how people become terrorists involves discerning the different ways in which different people first become engaged in specific terrorist operations. It further involves discerning what they DO as they engage in different forms of terrorizing thereafter. Toward that end, we could discern the structuring of what they do as they engage in varied modes of terrorizing. In other words, discerning the

362  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action formal organization of relevant processes might help to understand and explain some aspects of terrorizing. In addition, given that most people are not radicalized and given that terrorizing is such a low-​volume activity, we are not talking here about phenomena that readily lend themselves to conventional psychology methods. For example, given that there are so few terrorists, it is impossible to conduct studies with large numbers of subjects and to generalize from samples to populations of terrorists. As Horgan (2008) explains, the assumptions that feed into how we think about the terrorist (who he or she is, and what population or demographic he or she is likely to come from) are often based on the actuarial projections from a small, and statistically insignificant, sample of individuals. The dangers of overgeneralization should be obvious. (p. 84)

In a nutshell, there may be no average terrorist. Thus, to conduct studies, it seems that different methods, based on different theoretical premises, may be useful. Again, it seems important to discern some of the varied ways in which individuals become involved in terrorizing, as well as to discern some of the varied ways in which individuals engage in terrorizing once they are involved. Interestingly, Horgan (2009) advocates an individualized approach, and he is working on discerning multiple pathways of disengaging from terrorism by interviewing individuals. From the perspective of the current theoretical framework, we would posit that some general processes may be particularized through individualized pathways of disengaging. Another point that comes up frequently about radicalization and terrorism is that they involve dynamic, variable, and diverse processes (Borum, 2011a; Horgan, 2008, 2009, 2017). In general, “the composition of terrorist groups is remarkable for its diversity. Those involved in terrorism can be men, women, and even children who engage in different ways, via multiple pathways, and whose subsequent encounters and experiences differ significantly from each other’s” (Horgan, 2017, p. 200). There are also varied and dynamic routes (as opposed to roots or root causes) to and through both radicalism and terrorizing (Horgan, 2008, 2009). In other words, there are varied ways to enact radical attitudes, and there are varied ways to terrorize, from standing on a street corner and railing against the government all day, to writing plays and poems, to painting provocative paintings, to marching in protest, to going on a hunger strike, to writing threatening letters to newspapers, to tweeting and

Casting a Wide Net  363 posting online, to bombing a crowded market place or concert hall. Invoking the language of systems theory, Borum (2011b) points out that “different pathways can lead to radicalization (sometimes called the principle of equifinality); conversely, different persons on a shared pathway or trajectory may have different outcomes (sometimes called the principle of multifinality)” (p. 57). For example, for some people “religion leverages their attachment to a grievance. For others, a grievance leverages their attachment to religion. For some, ideological commitment leads to group affiliation. For others, social or group affiliations lead to ideological commitments” (pp.  57–​58). Furthermore, for some people “the strength of personal conviction and commitment to the cause precedes their willingness to take subversive action. For others, engaging in subversive actions strengthens their personal conviction and commitment to the cause” (p. 58). Terrorizing is also dynamic and variable insofar as it involves varied roles and because individuals can take on varied roles at different times. In addition, the meaning of being a terrorist can vary among particular terrorists. As well, the meaning of being a terrorist can change for particular terrorists during the course of engaging in terrorizing. Some terrorists struggle as terrorists and question whether they should be terrorizing. One Northern Ireland terrorist whom Horgan (2009) interviewed returned to the IRA after a few years of disengagement, “but it was clear that he was still struggling with a wavering commitment to the movement” (p. 93). One research review concludes that “grievances, networks, ideologies, and support structures appear in many of the radicalization studies, but the context and circumstances of their convergence varies” (Hafez & Mullins, 2015, p. 970). Hafez and Mullins use the metaphor of a puzzle to understand radicalization, in part because it can “highlight the interdependent nature of radicalization variables, where one piece of the puzzle contains elements of the adjacent pieces” (p. 970). Moreover, “cases of radicalization can exhibit tremendous diversity even when the variables of radicalization are reoccurring” (p.  970). Although the current theoretical framework favors active qualitative processes over variables, statements about multiple radicalism factors that can be particularized in diverse ways are compatible with our central systems premise that action is made up of multiple and interrelated constituent processes that can be structured in varied particular ways. With regard to radicalization, Borum (2011a) argues that we need ways of “illuminating variations as well as common patterns” (p. 16). The current theoretical framework explicitly encompasses common processes that can be played out

364  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action in varied individualized ways. It also explicitly conceptualizes action processes as dynamic, diverse, and variable. Taken together, the current theoretical framework provides ways of thinking about some of the complexities of radicalism and terrorism. More specifically, the current theoretical framework starts with action and conceptualizes action systemically in terms of multiple and interrelated processes. Thinking about radicalism and terrorism in terms of action means that to be radical is to act in relation to others in certain ways, and to terrorize is to act in relation to others in certain ways. As ways of acting they can be understood in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. From our action perspective, understanding radicalism and terrorizing, as well as deradicalizing and disengaging from terrorizing, would proceed by studying individual radicals and terrorists to find out about the ways in which constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are organized for them in particular. Then, one could see if there are some clusters or common ways of organizing constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. As I read some studies of radicalism and terrorism, I often thought and sometimes scribbled in the margins, “sounds like individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes to me.” Or, “sounds like psychological processes,” “sounds like developmental processes.” For example, with regard to constitutive processes, a review of “evidence on what leads to radicalization” points to the importance of considering “multiple cultural, social, psychological, economic, geographical, personality or health factors and influences, and the interactions between them” (McGilloway, Ghosh, & Bhui, 2015, p.  39). When I  read an article in the New  York Times about the role of Jihadi wives in helping their husbands to deradicalize, I saved the article as an example of how the structuring of social processes constitutes radicalization and deradicalization (Varagur, 2017). The current theoretical framework also leads to considering how radical and/​or terrorist action involves varied cultural processes, from cultural beliefs and values, to political and economic circumstances. Considering cultural processes includes considering how cultural tools mediate action, and today social media are widely used to mediate radical and terrorist action. Not only do information-​spreading media serve as recruiting tools, they can enhance and enlarge the impact of radical and terrorist action. Without widespread dissemination a terrorist act “is arguably wasted, remaining narrowly confined to the immediate victim(s) of the attack rather than reaching the wider ‘target audience’ at whom the terrorists’ violence is

Casting a Wide Net  365 actually aimed” (Hoffman, 2006, p. 174). Individual processes are clearly involved, as individuals subjectively construct experience in ways that open them up to radical and/​or terrorist action. Individuals may participate in radical and/​or terrorist activity for individual reasons and in pursuit of some individual goals. It is also interesting to consider environmental processes, from the availability of physical space to train recruits, to the structuring of physical spaces for carrying out terrorist attacks. Radical and terrorist action can be understood in terms of varied and interrelated psychological processes, such as thinking, feeling, interacting, and self/​identity. Self/​identity processes are involved as individuals come to define themselves in relation to a terrorist group or a radical position. Young people may be especially vulnerable recruits insofar as adolescence and emerging adulthood are life phases that involve active identity exploring (Arnett, 2000; Erikson, 1959/​1980). Self/​identity issues would also be involved in the process of deradicalizing, as individuals question who they are and see alternative ways of constructing themselves. Varied submodes of thinking may be involved, such as planning, strategizing, and assessing means for achieving ends. Even “suicide tactics” can be understood as “an entirely rational and calculated choice, consciously embraced as a deliberate instrument of warfare” (Hoffman, 2006, p. 132). They are “devastatingly effective, lethally efficient, have a greater likelihood of success, and are relatively inexpensive and generally easier to execute than other attack modes” (p. 132). As discussed in the previous section, beliefs, values, opinions, and attitudes are not set in stone. What a person believes, values, and opines can change and develop. Research shows that “even the beliefs of deeply committed extremists may be subject to more change than we have expected” (Horgan, 2009, p.  150). The current theoretical framework provides ways of thinking about disengaging from radicalism and/​or terrorism and developing new ways of acting. That is, one can analyze how disengaging from terrorism and deradicalizing involve differentiation and integration in relation to new goals.

Art as Action I feel compelled to begin this section by explicitly acknowledging that I am not an art expert. I know a little about some art history, but I have not delved deeply into the philosophy of art, art theory, aesthetics, or theory and

366  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action research on creativity. And I will not even attempt to summarize centuries of scholarship on art. I know about art mostly through personal experience as someone who appreciates varied art forms. I am partial to paintings, literature, and music, and I dabble in pottery and photography. I personally value art and believe that art is essential to human well-​being. Quite honestly, I am including this section on art because I am personally interested in art and because I  value art. More importantly, human beings have created art for millennia, and both creating and beholding art seem to be ubiquitous human endeavors. My goal now is to briefly suggest ways of thinking about art as action, as well as to further illustrate the wide applicability of the current theoretical framework by applying it to art. Of course, one can argue about how to define art, and people certainly do so. What counts as art is a value-​laden judgment. People also judge and debate what counts as good or bad art. One person’s art may be another’s sacrilege; one culture’s art may be another’s taboo. Any art work can be interpreted in different ways by different people. Art can be interpreted differently by people at different times historically, and individuals can interpret art in different ways at different times in their individual lives. An artist also expresses personal and cultural meaning through a work of art. Right away, we see that individual, social, and cultural processes are relevant to art. It would seem that the current theoretical framework might provide ways of making sense of some of the complexities of art. We now turn to briefly considering how art as action involves creating art, as well as beholding and engaging with art.

Creating Art Art is not only about the artifacts that are produced, such as paintings, sculptures, poems, novels, plays, movies, symphonies, operas, or songs. It is about people actively creating these art forms. Sometimes artists work alone, and sometimes they work with others. Clearly, musicians who play in orchestras, bands, or other musical ensembles are collaborating with others to produce music. Sometimes multitudes of people working together in varied ways are required to produce movies, plays, and operas. From Renaissance Florence to Scalp Level, Pennsylvania, painters have worked together in schools and studios. A painter identifies as a painter, and some may loosely or strongly align themselves with other artists or artistic schools. Artists study art and engage with others to develop as artists. Novelists and

Casting a Wide Net  367 poets comment on each other’s work and read their work to audiences at readings. Novelists write to tell stories to others, musicians, dancers, and actors perform for others, and painters give or sell their art to museums and galleries for others to see and buy. During the Holocaust, some concentration camp prisoners drew and painted not only to express themselves but also to document what was going on. Some musicians survived by playing for Nazi officers. Musicians entertain troops in war zones. Musicians play at weddings and funerals and contribute to the pomp and circumstance of graduation ceremonies. Musicians may get together to put on huge concerts to raise money for a worthy cause, thus also bringing people together for a common goal. Painters, musicians, novelists, dancers, and sculptors may be trying to make a particular point or express particular meanings. Sometimes those points are political, as well as personal. Examples of what artists do could go on and on. The point here is that artists are acting in relation to others, and such action can be understood in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. With regard to constitutive processes, we can think about how art as action involves individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Clearly, individual processes are involved, as individual artists express subjective meaning and create art for their own reasons and goals, as well as for the sake of beliefs and values. Sometimes artists explicitly explain those goals and reasons in varied ways, such as in artist statements on websites, in interviews, on back covers of books, or in texts that accompany an exhibit or performance. Individual processes also include a particular artist’s typical and developmentally organized ways of working within a medium. Without looking at the signature, you can spot a painting by certain artists from across a room. You can identify a band or composer, even if you are not sure which particular piece is being played. As artists work, they may agentively decide what to do. For example, a novelist chooses her words and constructs her sentences carefully. A painter steps back from his easel, and then puts one more dab of blue paint on the canvas before proclaiming that the painting is finished. As artists work, they may agonize and struggle mightily. Gombrich (1995) vividly explains that each aspect of a painting is the result of a decision by the artist: that he may have pondered over them and changed them many times, that he may have wondered whether to leave that tree in the background or to paint it over again, that he may have been pleased by a lucky stroke of his brush which gave a sudden unexpected

368  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action brilliance to a sunlit cloud, and that he put in these figures reluctantly at the insistence of a buyer. (p. 32)

The last line of Gombrich’s explanation takes us to social processes, in the form of creating art for others. Social processes are involved as others constitute what artists do, from requests by patrons, to comments by critics, to how an audience reacts. In addition, others may position and recognize artists in varied ways, from genius, to radical, to blasphemer. Of course, individual artists can accept, as well as resist and reject, such demands and positions, pointing to interrelations between individual and social processes. Artists sometimes collaborate to produce art, and thus what the others are doing partly constitutes what each artist does. Qualitative analyses of “adults active in free improvised music-​making” indicate that they improvise in part by reacting to each other (Wilson & MacDonald, 2017, p. 138). One person may initiate a move in a different direction, and if the others interpret it as such, they may react by changing what they are playing. As improvising so emerges, individual processes are also involved, pointing to interrelations between social and individual processes. In addition, a musician described “tailoring his choices during the improvisation to emphasize musical features that he expects his fellow guitarist to appreciate, on the basis of what has been said on previous occasions” (p. 140). Insofar as this musician seems to have been acting based in part on what he expected the other to do, the other was partly constituting how he acted. Even for an artist who is working alone, social processes are involved, as the artist considers how others may react to what she is doing, creates art for someone in particular, or tries to convey some meaning to others in general. Cultural processes constitute what artists do as they use cultural meanings and symbols in varied ways and as artistic creations reflect cultural meanings. Particular art styles may be associated with particular cultures, and you can certainly learn a lot about a culture by looking at, listening to, and reading its art. In doing so, you learn about cultural beliefs, values, and guidelines for action. You can learn about how others live, as well as about other ways of acting. Of course, individual artists may use cultural meanings and symbols in their own unique ways, thus pointing to interrelations between cultural and individual processes. Sometimes, individual artists use cultural meanings and symbols in new ways, and in ways that are directed toward resisting and rejecting dominant cultural meanings and power structures. And sometimes vibrant countercultures emerge, as artists collaborate to

Casting a Wide Net  369 resist and counter the status quo, pointing to interrelations among cultural, individual, and social processes. Going back to a point that was initially made in Chapter 5 (and taken up again in Chapter 10) about the ongoing interplay between culture and action, we see that art as action is partly constituted culturally, and that art as action also partly constitutes culture. In addition, political processes partly constitute art as action in varied ways. For example, what kind of public funding for the arts is there, if any, in a cultural community? What kinds of art classes and programs are there in the public schools? Is the local board of education increasing or decreasing funding for art classes and programs? Are there government policies that suppress or support artistic expression? The Nazis declared some art degenerate, and socialist realism was the official, government approved art of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, some unofficial and dissident artists created and clandestinely exhibited art that did not conform to the demands of the government, pointing to interrelations among cultural, social, and individual processes. Also with regard to cultural processes, let us not forget cultural tools. Art is created with cultural tools, from language and musical notes, to paint and paintbrushes, to pens, typewriters, and computers, to pottery wheels, saws and lathes, to varied musical instruments. Electronics have transformed photography. Today, electronic tools, including computers and synthesizers, enable musicians to create new sounds. I recently watched part of a public television series on music which showed the “power of technology to continuously redefine what music is” (Higher Ground, 2016). Certainly, bodily processes are involved as artists act in relation to others while creating art. In addition to the brain, artists use their bodies in varied ways, depending on their art form. Dancing and singing are obviously bodily. What happens to a musician who loses functioning in one hand? Playing an instrument with one hand may be possible, but it is different from playing with two hands. Artistic action is also constituted by environmental processes in varied ways. What are the acoustics like in this or that concert hall? What is the lighting like in a painter’s studio? Landscape painters paint physical environments, and “plein air” painters paint on site. What kind of painting will be painted under the intense light of a New Mexican sunset; what kind of painting will be painted at dawn in the Vienna woods? What paint pigments can be made from the earth in your corner of the world? What kind of clay can be made from the earth in your corner of the world? What would

370  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action Michelangelo have done if he had not found just the right marble in Carrara? Today, it may not matter much if some materials an artist needs are not readily available in the immediate physical environment. Nevertheless, environmental processes necessarily constitute what artists are doing. And procuring the materials may involve legions of other people acting in relation to each other to produce, transport, and sell the materials. The current theoretical framework also leads to thinking about how art as action involves varied psychological processes. Art is certainly associated with feeling. For example, artists express and convey feeling through varied media, and some artists may be known for their emotional expressivity. Art also involves thinking. As the earlier quotation from Gombrich indicates, painters are deciding all the time. Artists identify as artists and define who they are artistically. Artists may express who they are as individuals, as well as in terms of group identity. As artists act, they may be interacting with varied others in varied ways. And, as always, the structuring of these psychological processes can be further understood in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Creating art certainly develops. In a few pages, we will briefly consider the development of creating art in conjunction with the development of beholding art and engaging with art.

Beholding Art and Engaging with Art Art as action also involves beholding art and engaging with art in some way, depending partly on the particular artistic medium. People may behold and engage with varied art forms in varied ways, from reading poems and novels, to looking at paintings and sculptures in museums, to watching movies and plays, to listening to music on the radio, on electronic devices, or at concerts. People may engage with varied art forms together or on their own in varied ways. You go to a museum with a friend and you discuss what you see. You and some friends go to a concert and have a wonderful time. You traipse around a city by yourself looking for murals. You read a novel in quiet solitude. You read poems to your beloved. A counselor counsels people through art therapy. People sing as they march in protest or in support of some cause, and certain songs become the songs of social movements. A parent sings a lullaby to soothe a baby. You are moved to tears while watching a movie. You whisper a comment about a play to the stranger next to you.

Casting a Wide Net  371 Examples of beholding and engaging with art could go on and on. The point here is that these and other ways of beholding and engaging with art can be understood as acting in relation to others. Accordingly, we can think about such art as action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The ways in which these processes can be played out to constitute such art as action are vast and varied. After working with these processes for the last 250 or so pages, it does not seem necessary to spend too much more space and time on considering how they are played out in this case. Allow me to very briefly offer a few examples here. Beholding art and engaging with art involve individual processes insofar as individuals subjectively experience and interpret the meaning of art. To each their own taste. But taste is not set in stone, and how anyone interprets art can change. Perhaps you see some of the same paintings regularly and sometimes you see something different in them. Maybe you reread a novel some years after first reading it and you experience it differently. Perhaps a song that you loved as an adolescent seems silly to you now. The way an individual beholds art is ongoing, dynamic, and unfinished. In addition, individuals engage with art in cultural ways, as they interpret art in relation to cultural meanings, thus taking us to cultural processes. With regard to cultural processes, there are cultural standards for evaluating art as good or bad, worthy or unworthy. From community organizations to schools, cultural processes are evident in the opportunities that people have or do not have for beholding and engaging with art. From television to the internet, cultural tools make it possible for people to behold and engage with art in new ways. From records, to cassette tapes, and CDs, to radios and Walkmen, to iPods and smartphones, cultural tools have transformed how we behold music. People create their own playlists, pointing to interrelations between individual and cultural processes. Although it is not the same as standing in front of a painting on the wall of a renaissance church, or in a museum, or in an artist’s studio, the internet provides access to paintings around the world. And some people behold art by quickly taking pictures or snapping selfies of themselves in front of the Mona Lisa or some other famous work of art. Beholding art and engaging with art are socially constituted insofar as what others do constitutes someone’s action. For example, you may see a painting in a new way as you consider what someone else says about it. Or you may think about a novel differently after reading a review of it or upon discussing it with some friends. You sing a particular lullaby to one baby

372  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action because it seems to soothe her, but another song works for a different baby. Perhaps a painting or a poem or a novel leads you to new ways of acting in relation to others. In such cases, the painter, poet, or novelist is indirectly constituting your new action. You may also be trying to figure out what the artist means, and thus the artist is partly constituting how you engage with their piece. Varied psychological processes comprise beholding and engaging with art in varied circumstances. Clearly, sensing and perceiving are involved. Experiencing art is highly emotional, and people may feel in varied ways when beholding or engaging with specific art forms and works of art. Also, with regard to feeling, Nussbaum (2001/​2003) argues that beholding art promotes knowing about others compassionately because it can “cultivate the ability to imagine the experiences of others and to participate in their sufferings” (p. 426). Thus, beholding and engaging with art can bring people together when it provokes compassionately imagining others’ lives. With regard to self/​identity constructing, people may define themselves and express aspects of their identities partly in relation to particular art forms and/​or artists. Thinking is involved as people remember, analyze, critique, and otherwise reflect upon art. People interact with each other as they behold art together and/​or discuss particular works of art. People may use art to persuade or challenge others as they interact. Actors and audiences interact, as do musicians and audiences, as do painters and patrons. As always, these psychological processes can be further understood in terms of how they are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. And finally, art as action develops. Creating art of any kind develops, and beholding and engaging with art can develop as well. The current theoretical framework provides a common language for thinking about the development of art as action in terms of cultural goals, and in terms of differentiation and integration. It also leads to thinking about how art as action undergoes differentiation and integration as individuals actively participate in art practices with others who guide them. Each of the topics discussed in this chapter is complex, and I recognize that I have barely scratched the surface of each one. The point has been to illustrate the wide applicability of the current theoretical framework, as well as to ponder and provide an entry into these complex topics. The current theoretical framework also provides a basis for conducting research on these complex topics. As pointed out in Chapter 11 with regard to future

Casting a Wide Net  373 research directions, the possibilities are vast. In each case, research could be directed toward identifying the varied ways in which constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are structured. For example, with regard to freedom, research could be fruitfully directed toward discerning some of the varied ways in which free action is constituted as people act in relation to each other in varied parts of the world. Research is needed to discern how different ways of organizing individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes can both enable or support and constrain or limit varied modes of free action. With regard to attitudes, it would be interesting to discern some of the different ways in which engaging with others may promote attitude development for different individuals and in different ways for different attitudes. The bottom line is that so much of what people do can be understood as acting in relation to others, and in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The current action perspective thus provides conceptual tools for thinking systematically about the complexities of action as people go about their lives in all corners of the world.

13 Complex and Empathic Understanding There will always be more to say about human action, but for now the time has come to end this work. In the first section of this final chapter, I will consider how the current theoretical framework can be used to address some complexities of human action. I will also offer some general guidelines for using the current theoretical framework to think systematically about what people do in varied circumstances. I end the book by considering the empathic image of and vision for humanity that I believe the current theoretical framework reflects and that I believe it promotes and promulgates.

Some Complexities Life is complex. The world is complex. People are complex. Human action is complex. As people go about their lives in all corners of the world, complexity rages and reigns. At the beginning of this book, I  identified some overlapping complexities of human functioning, namely holism, dynamics, variability, multicausality, and individuality. These issues have come up in varied guises throughout the previous chapters, and we can now take one more look at them through the lenses of the current theoretical framework. As can be seen in Box 13.1, the current theoretical framework addresses the complexities of human functioning in varied ways.

Holism Systems theory provides a theoretical basis for exploring the complexities of holism because it explicitly defines complex phenomena as wider wholes that are made up of multiple and interrelated processes. As a systems conceptualization, the current theoretical framework holds that action is a wider whole that is made up of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and Exploring the Complexities of Human Action. Catherine Raeff, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190050436.001.0001

Complex and Empathic Understanding  375

Box 13.1  Using the Current Theoretical Framework to Address some Complexities of Human Action







Dynamics

• Human action is conceptualized in terms of ongoing qualitative processes that do not stop in time. • Part of the dynamic flux and flow of human action includes fuzzy boundaries between overlapping processes that cannot be easily pinned down.

Variability

• Human action is conceptualized in terms of relative plasticity. • Human action is conceptualized in terms of dynamic processes that can be structured or organized in varied ways. • As action processes are structured in varied ways, people can change and develop.

Multicausality

• Human action is taken to be constituted by multiple processes (i.e., individual, social, cultural, bodily, environmental). • Human action is taken to emerge through multiple kinds of causes (i.e., formal, final, material, efficient). • Human action can be understood in terms of systemic circular causality between parts and wholes (i.e., part–​part interrelations, part–​ whole connections, whole–​part connections).

Individuality

• Human action is conceptualized in terms of general human processes that can be particularized in individualized ways. • Human action is conceptualized based on the premise that all people are distinct individuals who construct experience subjectively.

developmental processes. As such, we are thinking about human action holistically and integratively. Although one aspect of action may strike you or seem dominant at some fleeting moment, it does not occur independently of the other parts. We may enter an episode of human action by looking at

376  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action a particular process, but the current theoretical perspective entails seeing it as part of the wider whole of action and in relation to other action processes. In other words, there are no fragments, only “integrants.” As such, understanding action involves looking at what people do in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Once again, it is readily recognized that it is impossible to always look at all processes (and subprocesses, and sub-​subprocesses and . . . ). However, we do not have to go to the other extreme and focus on one or another process in isolation from the others. Even if one ends up focusing on one or a few processes, the point here is that they are being seen as part of the wider whole of action. In other words, there is always a Big Picture to consider. In yet other words, we can see the forest as well as the trees.

Multicausality According to the current theoretical framework, action involves multi­ causality in two ways. One is that action is taken to be constituted by multiple simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. We may begin analyzing action in terms of one or another process, but the current theoretical framework entails considering the other constitutive processes as well. In a nutshell, always be skeptical about one-​cause discussions of complex action. Although one process might seem dominant in a particular case, and sometimes more than one (but less than all five) might seem relevant, the other processes are also constituting action. In other words, there is a Big Picture of multicausality to consider. Another way that the current theoretical framework embraces multi­ causality is by positing that there are multiple kinds of causes. Although cause→effect causality and material causality dominate psychology and are prevalent in everyday discussions of why people do what they do, action can be understood in terms of final and formal causality as well. Formal causality enables us to understand what someone is doing in terms of how the varied constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are structured at any given moment of analysis, as well as how they enable and constrain action. Formal causality also enables us to understand what someone is doing by considering part–​part interrelations, part–​whole connections, and whole–​part connections. Just because a process does not

Complex and Empathic Understanding  377 occur prior to or independently of action at a given fleeting moment, it does not mean that the process is not constituting or influencing action in some way. In addition, just because a process does not deterministically cause action, it does not mean that it is not constituting or influencing action. Moreover, it is often very difficult to discern an efficient cause of action, or even several efficient causes. Rather than searching in vain for “the” cause or determinant of action, discerning how varied constitutive processes are structured or organized promotes rich understanding of why someone acted in some way. Insofar as human beings act for the sake of goals and purposes, as well as for interests and reasons that they identify, discerning final causality can also shed light on action. You may ask: “Why did he do that?” Or maybe you exclaim: “I cannot believe he did that.” Someone might respond: “Well, he had his reasons.” You respond: “Such as?” Knowing about those reasons could be quite useful for understanding and explaining why he did what he did. When someone commits a crime, there are typically calls to find out about the motive. Motive refers to a person’s reasons for doing X, Y, or Z, and it also encompasses a person’s goals or purposes. As such, knowing about motive can help to understand why the person did what they did. However, sometimes knowing about reasons and goals just does not seem adequate. The motive does not justify the crime, and someone proclaims: “Well, that’s no reason to steal.” And so we want to know more about the action episode and about what was going on with the person. According to the current theoretical framework, knowing more about any action episode and about any person would involve considering formal causality. That is, one could discern how constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes were structured or organized during the action episode. Knowing about a person involves thinking about the structuring of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes for this person over time in their characteristic multitude of contexts. In addition to thinking about action in terms of multicausality, the current theoretical framework leads to thinking about the meaning of action as a way to understand what someone is doing. That is, understanding action involves discerning what some action episode means or meant to the people involved. Once some action episode is interpreted as, for example, sibling rivalry or good-​natured teasing (or both), one can go on to understanding it further in terms of multiple constitutive processes, as well as in terms of multiple kinds of causality.

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Dynamics and Variability Action does not stop in time, even though we may be analyzing someone’s action at a particular juncture or referring to what someone did at some specific time. Action and the processes that constitute and comprise action are ongoing and continuous over time. As such, they are dynamic and variable, not static. They fluctuate and flow. As a way of making the point that human action is dynamic and variable, I have characterized human action in terms of flux and flow throughout this book. In Chapter 1, I explained that I am using flux and flow as a metaphor that emphasizes the variability and fluidity of qualitative action processes. It also conveys the point that action is ongoing and cannot be pinned down easily. Looking back at what I have written, I have used “flux and flow” when discussing somewhat different aspects of dynamics and variability. For example, in Chapter 3, I pointed out that flux and flow includes participating in varied groups that involve varied modes of action. In Chapter 6, I pointed out that a person can judge the same situation in varied ways, including while it is happening. In Chapter 8, I wrote that historical change is part of the inevitable flux and flow of human functioning. In several chapters, flux and flow was used to make the point that there are not always clear-​cut boundaries between ongoing action processes. These varied examples of flux and flow suggest that there may be different kinds of flux and flow. Identifying how human action involves different kinds of flux and flow is an area for further theorizing and future research. For now, let us consider flux and flow in terms of variable action and fuzzy boundaries. As a dynamic phenomenon, action can be played out in varied ways. As explained in Chapter  4, systems theory holds that dynamic systemic processes can be understood in terms of both variability and stability. That is, system functioning is taken to be softly assembled, meaning that even though a system tends toward stable functioning, the processes that constitute and comprise a system do not always assemble in the same ways. A portion of Chapter 9 addresses how action is both stable and variable. Without repeating all the claims from previous chapters about simultaneous stability and variability, the point here is that the current theoretical framework enables us to deal with the complexities of dynamics and variability. Although people act in varied ways, and sometimes we may even be confused and surprised by someone’s variable action, it does not mean that action is random, or unorganized, or unsystematic. The current theoretical framework enables us to think systematically about how variability occurs in relation to the ongoing

Complex and Empathic Understanding  379 assembly of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. One can discern how the processes are organized in varied ways as action goes on over time, and one can look for patterns of variability for individuals and across individuals. Part of the dynamic flux and flow of action also includes the issue of fuzzy boundaries that has come up throughout this book. Human action is not so clear-​cut; there are ambiguities and there is overlap. Sometimes we are talking about a cultural practice, and then it seems as if the same phenomenon is a mode of action, or maybe it is a psychological process. Maybe you start by categorizing an action phenomenon in one way, and then it seems to morph into another category. Such overlapping and morphing are to be expected, because we are dealing with ongoing qualitative processes. I have used the word “strangeness” several times to convey how action processes can be overlapping and serve multiple purposes. The current theoretical framework enables us to deal with at least some of this strangeness by conceptualizing action in terms of distinct yet interrelated constituent processes. In addition, in Chapter 5, I suggested ways to distinguish among “a” culture, cultural practices, and cultural processes that partly constitute action. As recommended in Chapters 5 and 6, we can proceed on a case-​by-​case basis of action analysis and work to be clear about identifying particular action processes. Doing so would enable us to discern how they are interrelated, as well as when and how they overlap.

Individuality All human beings are individuals, and all human action is characterized by individuality. That is, we are all separate and unique beings, and we experience life subjectively. We also act in particular individualized ways. The current theoretical framework embraces individuality, and some of the varied ways in which action is individualized have been discussed throughout the previous chapters. At the same time that all human beings are particular individuals, we are also all human beings. The current theoretical framework thus also posits that general human processes characterize everyone’s action and that general human processes can be played out in individualized ways. The issue of how action is simultaneously individualized and general first came up in Part I. Then, in Chapter 9, we considered this issue further from the perspective of the current theoretical framework, by emphasizing the

380  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action point that these two dimensions of action occur simultaneously and need not be treated dichotomously. In addition, the general processes that constitute and comprise action can be particularized in varied cultural ways. The current theoretical framework posits that action is constituted in part by cultural processes, and varied examples of culturally particular ways of organizing action have been used to illustrate this theoretical claim. Taken together, we have ways of thinking about how action is simultaneously general, individual, and cultural. Social scientists have long struggled to address variations on the issue of how human functioning is simultaneously general or universal, culturally specific, and individually idiosyncratic. Questions about this issue abound. Is there a human “nature” that is biologically given? Are there universals that are played out in culturally particular ways? Are there no universals and only cultural specificities? What came first, the individual or the group/​society/​ culture? The current theoretical framework provides ways to think about how action is universal or general, and culturally specific, and individualized, all at the same time. That is, it posits that people the world over act in relation to others and that such action can be understood in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. The constitutive processes include individual and cultural subprocesses, allowing for cultural and individual ways of acting. And as just pointed out, constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes can be individualized and culturalized. Within the context of the current theoretical perspective, we are led to asking different questions, such as: In what ways is action always general, cultural, and individual? How are general, cultural, and individual action processes structured as distinct processes and in relation to each other for a given episode of action?

Imposing Complexity Take any example of action discussed in this book, such as consoling, arguing, eating, or creating art. They are all beset by the complexities of holism, multicausality, dynamics and variability, and individuality. The current theoretical framework can be used to deal with these complexities so that we are not overwhelmed by them. Not only can it be so used, but the current theoretical framework requires thinking about action in terms of these complexities because it is based on prior systems premises that include the

Complex and Empathic Understanding  381 complexities of holism, multicausality, dynamics, and variability. That is, we are assuming that understanding any mode or episode of action requires thinking about it holistically. We are assuming that understanding any mode or episode of action requires thinking about multicausality, dynamics and variability, and individuality. As such, the current theoretical framework does not simplify, but instead imposes complexity on our understanding of human action. We can deal with holism by thinking about action as a wider whole that is made up of multiple and interrelated constituent processes. We can deal with multicausality by thinking about action in terms of multiple constitutive processes and in terms of formal, final, efficient, and material causality. To advance understanding action, we can also try to discern the meaning of action to the person who is acting and to others as well. We can deal with dynamics and variability by considering how ongoing action can be played out in varied ways, as well as by considering how the varied action processes can be played out in varied ways. We can also discern how variability occurs in relation to stability. We can deal with the individuality of action by discerning how a particular person’s action is structured, as well as how a particular person subjectively constructs experience.

General Guidelines for Thinking Systematically about Action A goal of this book is to offer a theoretical framework that people can use to make sense of what people do as they act in relation to others in all corners of the world. It is not only for psychologists and academics; anyone can use it to make sense of any action. Imagine being on the road and approaching a town, village, or city. As you approach, you start to see people going about their lives, acting in relation to each other. Or, say you come upon a scene, such as the one in Figure 13.1, and you want to know what is going on. Perhaps it looks a bit like a mob scene at first glance, but then you start to see that it is a busy world of people acting in varied ways. Maybe you go to a bakery first, and then you stop and watch some people in a park. At the bakery, the baker chats with a customer, other customers meet there and end up arguing over politics, a customer asks to look at every loaf of bread, a child cannot decide what cookies to get, and her father tries to hurry her along. People walk in the park and some gather for a picnic. Some teenagers hang out on the swings and a painter paints the scene. People are

382  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Figure 13.1  A busy world of action.

running, walking, driving, and cycling. The school bus is action packed. In the bookstore, some people read while a writer gives a reading to attentive listeners. Someone is washing the window, others are fixing the roof, and in the distance, farmers are tilling some fields. Or, maybe you are looking at a painting and trying to figure out what the person or people in it are doing. Perhaps they are acting in relation to each other, or to people who are not explicitly depicted in the painting. Maybe she is smiling at someone in the distance, or perhaps at the painter himself? You may be reading a novel and trying to figure out what and why the characters are doing what they are doing. Or maybe you are trying to understand a story in the news about some teenagers who blew up their high school. Or, you may be trying to understand what you see as an offensive post on some social media outlet. In any of these (and other) cases, we can begin by identifying a mode or modes of action. As people go about their lives in all corners of the world, they act in varied ways in all kinds of situations and cultural practices. We can make sense of

Complex and Empathic Understanding  383 varied modes of action with the common concepts and categories of the current theoretical framework. An overview of guidelines for using the current theoretical framework to think systematically about action is presented in Box 13.2. The current theoretical framework leads to asking particular questions about action and it provides conceptual tools for answering those questions. When you are trying to understand what someone is doing or what some people are doing, think about what they are doing in terms of acting in relation to others. Once a mode(s) of action is identified, ask and think about how it is constituted by simultaneously occurring and interrelated individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. More specifically, ask and think about how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes are structured, including how these processes may be both constraining and enabling action. In addition, ask and think about how the people’s action involves varied psychological processes. Those psychological processes can be further understood in terms of individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes. Comprehensive understanding of action also involves discerning how it is organized developmentally. That is,

Box 13.2  Guidelines for Using the Current Theoretical Framework to Think Systematically about Action When you are trying to make sense of what someone is doing or of what someone did, think about and find out about



• What the person is doing in terms of acting in relation to others, that is, identify a mode(s) of action • How the person’s action is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes • How varied psychological processes comprise what the person is doing, and how those psychological processes are constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes • How the person’s action is organized developmentally • How the person’s ways of acting may have developed through participating with others in cultural practices • What the person’s action means to that person and to the other(s) involved

384  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action how is anyone’s action played out in relation to cultural goals and in terms of differentiation and integration? How did anyone develop through participating with others in cultural practices? Understanding what someone is doing also involves discerning what action means to that person and to the other(s) in relation to whom that person is acting. In addition to making sense of people’s action for a particular episode of action, the current theoretical framework provides guidelines for understanding particular people in terms of their ongoing action. As explained in Chapter 9, the current theoretical framework permits knowing someone by finding out about action in varied contexts. Such knowing includes finding out about a person’s action history. That is, one can ask: How have constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes played out for this person over time?

An Image of and Vision for Humanity In the final paragraph of Chapter 4, I acknowledged some of the values that I endorse and that I believe this work reflects, including respect and tolerance, diversity and pluralism, as well as equality, commonality, and unity. I also invoked individual agency and connectedness. These values inform an image of and vision for humanity that I hope the current theoretical framework not only reflects but also promotes and promulgates. As explained in Chapter 1, an image for humanity is a way of characterizing and understanding human beings that has implications for how people treat each other. That is, there are implications for how people act in relation to each other. I am now adding the notion of a vision for humanity to convey moving forward by using the current theoretical framework to promote ways of characterizing, understanding, and treating people into the future. The current theoretical framework provides ways of characterizing, understanding, and treating people equally and diversely, thereby promoting respect and tolerance, as well as pluralism. There is equal treatment insofar as all people are taken to act in relation to others, and there is diversity insofar as action can be played out in varied individual and cultural ways. The current theoretical framework further enables us to view people in terms of commonality, thereby also promoting connectedness. By viewing humanity in terms of interrelatedness, perhaps the current theoretical framework can even contribute to overcoming divisiveness and to building connections

Complex and Empathic Understanding  385 among people, locally and globally. By conceptualizing action in terms of ongoing, dynamic, and variable processes, the current theoretical framework provides ways of characterizing, understanding, and treating people as open to change. In turn, embracing openness to change promotes a hopeful and constructive vision for humanity. By conceptualizing people in multifaceted terms, and as constructors of subjective meaning, the current theoretical framework provides ways of understanding and treating people empathically and compassionately. This theoretical framework also offers a complex image of humanity, which includes understanding people in terms of holism, multicausality, variability, and individuality. Some of these aspects of the current theoretical framework’s image of and vision for humanity have been discussed throughout this book (including earlier in this Chapter). I will not now dwell on all of these issues here but will raise some issues pertaining to diversity and commonality, openness to change, and understanding and treating people empathically.

Diversity and Commonality The current theoretical framework supports and promulgates characterizing people diversely because it encompasses varied ways of acting. In doing so, it advances a pluralistic and inclusive image of humanity. The current theoretical framework posits that all people act and that action is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, is made up of psychological processes, and develops. However, the current theoretical framework does not stipulate particular ways of acting or particular ways of structuring constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. As such, it encompasses varied ways of being, and it promotes viewing and treating people equally, tolerantly, and respectfully. It further provides conceptual tools for thinking systematically about varied ways of acting and varied ways of structuring action processes. As pointed out in Chapter  2, an open-​minded, or tolerant and respectful stance toward people does not necessarily mean that one has to endorse, support, or otherwise condone all ways of acting. One can, however, use the current theoretical framework to take varied ways of acting seriously and to understand them systematically. Doing so can facilitate reflecting upon one’s own beliefs and values, as well as building connections among people. The current theoretical framework provides ways of knowing and treating people as unique individuals who

386  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action also differ from one another. That is, all people act in their own ways, experience constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes in their own ways, and construct subjective meaning in their own ways. In addition to characterizing action in terms of individual diversity, the current theoretical framework also supports and promulgates viewing people in terms of cultural diversity. At the same time, the current theoretical framework supports and promul­ gates characterizing people in terms of commonality because it holds that all people act. We share some common humanity insofar as everyone’s action is constituted by individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes, is made up of psychological processes, and develops. In addition, people can act for the sake of common beliefs and values and to pursue common goals and interests. Furthermore, within and across cultures, people may act in some similar ways, and constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes can be structured in some similar ways as well. Characterizing people in terms of common humanity can promote unity, including among diverse individuals and groups. A challenge is to “identify regularities that make sense of the variations across communities as well as the impressive commonalities across our human species” (Rogoff, 2003, p. 7). Diversity is certainly a complex issue as well as a hot topic around the world today. There is much discussion about respecting differences among people, both individually and culturally. Respecting individual and cultural differences has given voice to and recognized many marginalized and oppressed individuals and groups and promotes everyone’s well-​ being. Personally, I am all for it. I believe that respecting individuality and diversity, as well as providing equal opportunities for all, is good for everyone. Giving voice to multiple and different cultural perspectives strengthens a diverse culture as a whole. Respecting diversity promotes equality and guards against one group dominating others. As such, differences among people do not have to divide us. Moreover, respecting and promoting diversity and also recognizing and promoting our common humanity enable everyone to contribute to common goals and interests. In addition, pursuing diversity and commonality simultaneously provides a basis for diverse individuals and groups to mutually support each other. Understanding people in terms of action as conceptualized here suggests ways of guarding against dichotomizing diversity and commonality by pointing to how diversity and commonality are systemically related as people act in relation to others. Once again, difference does not have to be divisive.

Complex and Empathic Understanding  387 Being different is not equivalent to being divided or separate. Within the context of the current theoretical framework, we can say that because people are individually diverse and unique, as well as culturally diverse and unique, they offer distinct ways of acting that can contribute to a common good. As such, diversity shapes commonality. At the same time, the current theoretical framework holds that everyone acts, and that general action processes constitute and comprise all human action. As discussed since the beginning of this book, the current theoretical framework posits that general human processes are individualized, and that general human processes are played out in culturally particular ways. As such, commonality shapes the ways in which diversity is played out. In addition, the common good can be structured in ways that support and enable everyone to act in their individualized ways, as well as culturally particular ways. As such, the common good is promoting diversity, and diverse people are also contributing to the common good. It is important to point out that policies that enable everyone to thrive in individualized and culturally particular ways does not mean that anything goes. Once again, the specter of relativism rears its vexing head. Although people will argue over the common good, public policies and the common good can be constructed and structured by diverse people in terms of some common values and goals that mitigate against extreme relativism and doing whatever one wants. Alas, respecting and promoting diversity do not always occur in tandem with recognizing commonality, or with pursuing common goals, or with mutually supporting one another. When taken to extremes, emphasizing difference can be divisive by obfuscating our common humanity. There is a danger of retreating to different and separate corners. There is a danger of putting people into unidimensional boxes, and a common good seems increasingly out of reach. New York Times columnist David Brooks (2018) refers to the “misplaced idolization of diversity” and argues that “diversity for its own sake, without a common telos, is infinitely centrifugal, and leads to social fragmentation.” Divisive diversity is evident in contemporary American identity politics, whereby people are categorized and positioned in terms of particular identity categories, such as gender, race, income, education, religion, job type, or sexual orientation. Or, people are categorized and positioned as being either for or against some hot-​button issues, such as gun control, abortion, a border wall, marriage equality, transgender rights, or tax cuts. As pointed out in Chapter 3, a problem with this way of categorizing people is that people are not unidimensional. A person can be understood

388  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action in terms of multiple categories at the same time. People are not only their gender, or race, or income. Many people are not exclusively for or against some hot-​button issue. Categorizing and positioning people in terms of one or another category is simplistic and reductionistic, and there is little room for nuance and complexity. According to the current theoretical framework, no one is in one box. There is variability. There is flux and flow. People are in varied, often overlapping, and sometimes changing boxes. People endorse varied attitudes and act in varied ways that reflect varied attitudes. People act in relation to varied others, in varied ways. People identify and position themselves in varied ways as they act in relation to others. Acting in relation to varied others and multifaceted positioning can create opportunities for forging common ground, as well as for pursuing common interests and goals with others, despite disagreeing on some issues. Along these lines, Gergen (2009b) muses: “Are there means of defusing hot conflict in such a way that boundaries are obscured, mutuality is revealed, multi-​being is restored, and a consciousness of relational being encouraged?” (p. 193). When human action is conceptualized as it is herein, the answer to this question would be yes, because we are characterizing human beings in terms of commonality and individuality, as well as in terms that involve “multi-​being” and “relational being.” Gergen himself answers yes, and goes on to describe efforts by the Public Conversations Project in 1989 to “bring together committed activists on opposing sides of the abortion conflict” (p. 193). If you go to whatisessential.org, you will see that what began with one woman fostering dialogue between pro-​choice and pro-​life advocates has become an organization called Essential Partners. Their “mission is to foster constructive dialogue where conflicts are driven by differences in identity, beliefs, and values.” The work of such organizations shows that it is possible for diverse people to get to know one another as whole people beyond their opposing positions, to construct common ground, and to pursue common goals and interests. The current theoretical framework provides ways of characterizing and understanding people that could inform such efforts. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it does so by conceptualizing people in terms of action, and by conceptualizing action in terms of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. Within the context of identity politics, pollsters and pundits do indeed sometimes consider people in terms of more than one category at a time. For example, as I  write these sentences in September 2018, there is talk

Complex and Empathic Understanding  389 in the United States about how White suburban women may be turning against Trump, and may be central to electing Democrats to the House of Representatives in November. Although more than one identity category is being used, multitudes of multifaceted people are being lumped together and implicitly positioned against other groups. For example, White suburban women may be positioned in contrast to White working-​class men. This kind of identity politics involves aggregating individuals into identity groups to discern group voting trends. Doing so provides important information for the specific purpose of tracking voting trends, but such analyses create a kind of divisive diversity along group lines. Such analyses also ironically obfuscate individuality and diversity within groups. It is challenging to figure out how to enable both diversity and commonality to thrive in constructive ways as people act in relation to each other in and across all corners of the world. Toward that end, the current theoretical framework provides some guidelines. According to the current theoretical framework, people can be understood in terms of how they act and in terms of multiple and interrelated constituent processes. Thus, promoting both diversity and commonality may be facilitated by positioning and recognizing people multidimensionally so that people can see areas of overlap with others. Doing so could further facilitate identifying common beliefs and values, as well as common concerns, interests, and goals. People can then go on to identify how everyone can contribute in unique ways to common goals, as well as how diverse individuals and groups can mutually support each other’s varied endeavors. In addition and as just pointed out, the current theoretical framework provides guidelines for thinking about and getting to know others in multifaceted and complex terms. For example, people could work to understand each other in terms of how individual, social, cultural, bodily, and environmental processes have been and are played out in their lives. Or, they could work to find out about each other’s developmental participation experiences. In doing so, they might forge some common ground.

Openness to Change The current theoretical framework supports and promulgates characterizing and treating people as being open to change, including developmental change. Insofar as action is made up of ongoing and dynamic qualitative processes, action is not statically set in stone. As discussed so many times in

390  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action this book, there is variability. There is plasticity. Action is unfinished. There is flux and flow. Accordingly, people can and do change. People may try to change in particular ways. People change in all kinds of circumstances, even when the odds seem stacked against them in all kinds of ways. Some people make professions out of helping people to change. There is hope. Yet, at the same time, we also know that people do not always change. Some people try mightily to change in some ways, but do not succeed. The current theoretical framework not only promulgates understanding people as creatures who can change, it also provides tools for thinking systematically about how change occurs, as well as how change can be achieved. It thus also promotes and promulgates a hopeful vision for humanity. To discern how someone changed or why someone is changing, look for changes in the ongoing and dynamic structuring of action processes. For example, perhaps there has been some kind of change in the structuring of constitutive processes for someone who is acting in a particular setting. If someone wants to change, think about how restructuring varied constitutive processes for particular modes of action in particular settings might help. It is also useful to remember the systems theory principles that • Similar prior conditions can lead to different subsequent outcomes. • Similar modes of functioning can emerge from different prior conditions. • There can be multiple routes to the same end. Thus, action change can be fostered in varied ways, and one can be sensitive to a particular person’s action and change circumstances. In addition, understanding and treating people as being open to change can be enhanced by using the current theoretical framework’s approach to development. When people try to change, they may be trying to change in relation to some goal or to improve in some way. We could say that they are trying to develop. When others help people change, they may do so in relation to some goal or to help people to improve in some way. We could say that they are trying to help people to develop. By conceptualizing development in relation to cultural goals, and in terms of differentiation and integration, the current developmental perspective provides tools for fostering developmental change. One can begin by identifying a goal or goals of development, and then one can analyze a person’s typical current ways of acting

Complex and Empathic Understanding  391 with regard to that goal, as well as in terms of differentiation and integration. Understanding the current developmental organization of action would then enable one to identify aspects of action that could be further differentiated and integrated to achieve a developmental goal. One could also identify ways of achieving that developmental goal through participating with others in cultural practices. That is, • What can the developing person do to facilitate differentiation and integration? • What can others do to facilitate differentiation and integration? • How can cultural and environmental processes be structured to facilitate differentiation and integration? As a systems perspective, the current theoretical framework recognizes that facilitating development can be particularized in varied ways because goals can be reached in varied ways. By conceptualizing development in terms of differentiation and integration, we have some systematic criteria for figuring out how to go about facilitating varied routes toward developmental change. Understanding action developmentally also promotes and promulgates a hopeful and constructive vision for humanity because it assumes that development is always at least possible. Understanding people in terms of developmental possibilities opens up constructive ways of addressing what may be deemed problematic action. That is, rather than focusing on figuring out how to punish someone in order to prevent future problematic action, one could focus on figuring out how to help someone to develop new ways of acting. For example, one could provide opportunities for people to participate in cultural practices with others in ways that enable them to develop. One could guide them in ways that promote differentiation and integration in relation to varied goals of development. In 1998, Susan Burton founded A New Way of Life, in Los Angeles, to provide a safe, sober, and supportive community for women to live in upon release from prison (Burton & Lynn, 2017). Burton herself spent 15 years going in and out of prison, and explains: women take their first step of freedom at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Los Angeles. . . . It’s nothing like the freedom you’d dreamed about in your cell. This freedom smells of urine and stale beer. Lingering to check out the new releases are pimps and drug dealers. . . . You can almost

392  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action touch the desperation, the doom in the air. You can feel it on you. On your prison-​issue clothes. Everyone recognizes the ill-​fitting clothes stitched by inmates. . . . Ego tells you you’re a grown woman. But you’re scared. How do you calm yourself? How do you connect with something healthy and hopeful when you’re surrounded by Skid Row? When you haven’t been allowed to make a decision in five, ten, twenty years? (pp. 3–​5)

It seems to me that A New Way of Life provides formerly incarcerated women with opportunities to develop new ways of acting that enable them to decide, get jobs, regain custody of their children, and stay out of prison. Burton sees it as her role to “value each and every woman, to cast aside my doubt and to believe in them—​and to teach them to cast aside their own doubt and to hold themselves and others to a standard of accountability, integrity, and respect” (pp. 148–​149). In keeping with the current theoretical framework, developing new ways of acting is possible and can be actualized through participating in cultural practices with others in varied settings, from youth programs, to drug and alcohol treatment programs, to counseling centers, to prison release programs. The current theoretical framework holds further that development can be facilitated by engaging with others in ways that build on what an individual can currently do and by providing opportunities for differentiation and integration. In addition, understanding action developmentally leads to thinking about how to create constructive opportunities for anyone to develop, including during difficult or challenging times. For example, proponents of “positive youth development” argue that young people are not problems to be managed or punished, but active and able individuals who can develop positive and productive ways of acting by engaging with others at home and school, as well as within their wider neighborhoods and communities (Damon, 2004; Lerner, 2017). Even in the face of “adversities and developmental challenges that may affect children in various ways” developing “productive activities” is possible (Damon, 2004, p. 15). While there may always be potential for anyone to develop, development does not happen on its own or passively, and it is not up to individuals alone. As pointed out earlier and explained in Chapter 7, the current theoretical framework holds that development happens through participating with others in cultural practices in ways that promote differentiation and integration. But participating with others in cultural practices does not simply occur on its own either. Those others who are guiding developing individuals can be supported in varied

Complex and Empathic Understanding  393 ways by individuals, community programs and organizations, as well as public policies. As pointed out at the end of Chapter 7, development is relevant to all of psychology because all human action develops, and because all human action is organized developmentally. However, developmental psychology is one of conventional psychology’s many fragmented areas of specialization, and developmental issues are not typically taken up by psychologists who do not identify as developmental psychologists. By conceptualizing human action as open to development, the current theoretical framework leads to applying a developmental perspective to a wide range of topics in psychology, from coping in the midst of a traumatic event, to work productivity and mid-​life career change, to group dynamics and resolving conflicts, to leadership, to deliberating on a jury. Organismic-​developmental theory provides systematic yet flexible and widely applicable criteria for discerning what happens during development for any modes of action, over the course of any time frame. Indeed, differentiation and integration are applicable to psychology as a whole, because any ongoing psychological process and any way of acting can be understood in terms of constituents that undergo differentiation and integration. For example, resolving conflicts involves differentiating among and integrating perspectives, differentiating among and integrating common interests, and differentiating among and integrating means to achieve common goals. Or, one could look at (1) whether acting at work undergoes differentiation and integration, (2)  whether the ways in which jurors think and talk about a case are increasingly differentiated and integrated, (3)  whether a dieter differentiates among and integrates varied means to eat less, or (4) whether a group differentiates among varied common goals and differentiates among and integrates varied means to achieve them. Liberating development from the confines of a subdiscipline or area of specialization, and liberating other areas of psychology from non-​developmental assumptions, can provide useful and widely applicable insights into human action. It would also enable all of psychology to reflect and promote openness to change. In addition, embracing development more widely would open up new research directions for psychology as a whole and could promote some integration among contemporary psychology’s many and fragmented areas of specialization. Beyond psychology, anyone who is interested in understanding and promoting development can apply the principles of differentiation and integration as well as progress toward developmental goals to specific cases.

394  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action

Understanding and Treating People Empathically I believe that the current theoretical framework promotes and promulgates understanding and treating people empathically. Going back once again to my trusty Webster’s dictionary, empathy refers to “the capacity for participation in another’s feelings or ideas.” Although I am using the term empathically as the official term of this section, other words work here as well, including understanding and treating people compassionately, inclusively, respectfully, and tolerantly. While distinct in some ways, these words all convey entering into and taking seriously someone else’s experience. I think that they also all involve recognizing others and engaging with them on their terms. They involve recognizing others as whole people who act, and whose action involves the complexities of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes. These terms convey knowing people richly in the concrete terms of their concrete lives. I will mostly use the term empathically to encompass these varied dimensions of understanding and treating people, but the other terms will crop up as well. The current theoretical framework promotes understanding and treating people empathically in varied ways. For example, it promotes understanding and engaging with people on their own terms by conceptualizing people and action in terms of individuality and subjectivity. As pointed out in Chapter 9, by conceptualizing action in terms of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, we can understand and get to know people as specific individuals for whom constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes are organized in specific ways. By conceptualizing people in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes, we have tools for approaching and recognizing people in rich and complex ways. Rich, complex, and specific understanding can promote empathy because it enables people to participate in each other’s experience, as opposed to superficially labeling each other in terms of unidimensional or isolated characteristics. Conceptualizing human action developmentally and treating people as open to development contribute to understanding people respectfully and compassionately because we are not giving up on people. That drug addict can develop; that student who is failing in school can develop; that hoodlum can develop; that _​__​ ​_​_​_​_​(fill in the blank with any adjective you want) person can develop. Moreover, understanding someone as open to development requires discerning how that particular person’s current action is

Complex and Empathic Understanding  395 organized developmentally. It also involves considering that person’s developmental history, including how their action builds cumulatively on previous ways of acting. Considering someone’s developmental history further involves finding out about that person’s guided participation experiences. And helping that person to develop involves building on how that person’s action is structured, in ways that are suitable for that person. Taken together, such developmental understanding comprises understanding and treating people empathically because one is entering into and taking seriously a particular person’s complex developmental experience. In discussing the role of emotion in politics and the law, Nussbaum (2001/​ 2003) points out, “Political systems are human, and they are only good if they are alive in a human way” (p. 404). Toward that end, she explains how politics and the law can be compassionate and empathic. With regard to political leaders, Nussbaum recommends that they “show not just mastery of pertinent facts about their society and its history, but also the ability to take on in imagination the lives of the various diverse groups whom they propose to lead” (p. 435). Using the Brown v. Board of Education case as an example of empathy and the law, she argues that judges should not “refuse themselves concrete empathic knowledge of the special disadvantages faced by minorities and the asymmetrical meaning of segregation for blacks and whites, in order to ensure that their principles are applied without political bias” (p.  443, italics added). As I was reading Nussbaum’s work, I was immediately struck and taken by the idea of “concrete empathic knowledge” because it conveys what I am trying to get at here. It conveys knowing and recognizing people in terms of the complexities of their action, as they go about their everyday lives in all corners of the world. The current theoretical framework provides tools for constructing concrete empathic knowledge of people, or of knowing them concretely and empathically. It does so by enabling us to think about, know, and understand the complexities of action for particular people. Beyond politics, the law, and everyday life, constructing concrete empathic knowledge could also be a goal for psychology, because it could provide insight into the messy complexities of human life in general as well as particular people’s lives. We thus come back to some issues raised in Part I regarding science. As pointed out, conventional psychology is dominated by “the” scientific method that originated in the natural sciences and that privileges objectivity. However, using “the” scientific method to study human beings objectively involves characterizing and treating human beings in ways that stand in contrast to constructing concrete empathic knowledge.

396  Exploring the Complexities of Human Action That is, it involves characterizing people in the same terms as the physical objects of the natural sciences, and it involves avoiding getting to know study participants in individualized ways. Once again, I  am not suggesting that psychologists wholly abandon this method, nor am I in any way suggesting that people abandon science or scientific thinking. Certainly, human beings are physical beings who can be understood in terms of physical processes and efficient causality. However, that is not the whole story, and understanding human beings requires characterizing them in terms of other processes as well. Moreover, science can be conducted in varied ways, and it is possible to create concrete empathic knowledge that is systematic and evidence based. With regard to legal issues, Nussbaum recommends that judges and jurors approach “the human facts before them” empathically and with compassion that is “tethered to the evidence” (p. 445). The same goes for a science of human action that constructs concrete empathic knowledge about people. Not only can such knowledge be tethered to evidence, but it can also be systematic, as well as generalizable. The current theoretical framework provides conceptual tools for constructing evidence-​based complex and concrete empathic knowledge about human beings, and it also enables us to think systematically about human action. In doing so, we can guard against making random, idiosyncratic, dogmatic, or impressionistic claims about people. Ultimately, the current conceptualization of human action can inform empathic scientific understanding of complex human beings as they go about their complex lives in all corners of our complex world.

The Road Ahead We have come a long way in this book, yet articulating the current conceptualization of action is just the beginning of a long and winding road toward making sense of what people do. There is still further theorizing to do and much research to conduct. Moreover, the way people act will continue to change as time marches on, making it impossible to characterize human action definitively, once and for all. The current conceptualization of action provides a productive framework for organizing our ongoing understanding of human action, as people go about the flux and flow of their complex lives in all corners of the world. It provides ways to think systematically and integratively about so much of what people do. By starting with the wider whole of action, the current theoretical framework enables us to see the Big

Complex and Empathic Understanding  397 Picture of what people do. Another way of putting it is to say that starting with action and conceptualizing action in terms of constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes enable us to see the forest as well as the trees. In doing so, we can think systematically about a wide range of issues that are of interest and concern not only to social scientists but to people more generally. Moreover, starting with action and understanding action in terms of multiple and interrelated constitutive, psychological, and developmental processes enable us to understand, know, and treat people complexly and empathically. As pointed out in the Introduction, I  see this endeavor as primarily constructive, even though I  began by theorizing critically in the form of questioning some of psychology’s assumptions and conventional practices. I  think of all of that questioning as constructive because it provides a basis for constructing an alternative conceptualization of human functioning. Questioning conventional psychology and constructing conceptual alternatives are not only useful for psychologists or for academics and professionals. They are useful for anyone. Questioning traditional, conventional, in-​vogue, and taken-​for-​granted assumptions about human beings and thinking about human issues in terms of the current theoretical framework provide constructive ways for anyone to think about themselves and others complexly. The current theoretical framework is also constructive insofar as it offers conceptual tools for thinking about human action in ways that can enable people to develop, as well as to build and rebuild their lives in positive and productive ways. It is constructive insofar as it promotes mutual empathic understanding among people that facilitates pursuing common goals. Hopefully, the current systems conceptualization of what people do will ultimately contribute to going beyond some entrenched ways of approaching and understanding human functioning to thinking holistically, integratively, empathically, constructively, and creatively about varied complexities of human action.

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Index Figures and boxes are indicated by f and b following the page number For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. abbreviated speech, 245–​46 abstract thinking, 157–​58, 203 accountability,  284–​85 active processes, conceptualizing in terms of,  230–​34 adolescence concept of, 64–​65, 133 intraindividual variability, 269 self/​identity and,  179–​80 advertising, 189 African Americans Black lives matter, 181, 298–​99 self/​identity constructing, 181 agency, 77 conventional psychology and, 7 eating,  335–​36 feelings and, 166–​67 free action, 343 individual processes, 130–​31 responsibility and, 284–​85 self/​identity and, 176 structuring of, 281–​82 aggregating general discussion, 20–​21 questioning, 57b,  69–​74 aggression, 195 aging, concept of, 133 agriculture,  135–​37 Allport, G. W, 71–​72, 75–​76, 82 Allwood, C. M., 146 alone with others, 118–​19 Alper, G., 322–​23 Alzheimer’s disease brain imaging, 133 cognitive assessments for, 56–​58, 70–​71,  151–​52

enabling and constraining action,  288–​89 language, use of, 297–​98 American Pragmatism, 53–​54, 177–​78 Anderson, C. A., 35, 79–​80 anger, 161–​62, 163, 164, 170, 171 Arab Druze community, 178–​79, 344 Archer, M. S., 70–​71, 138–​39, 246, 292–​94 arguments, 67, 214–​15 Aristotle, 100, 277–​78 Aronson, E., 35 art beholding and engaging with, 370–​72 creating,  366–​70 overview of, 365–​66 atheoretical nature of psychology, 37–​38 attitudes changing,  355–​59 constitutive processes, 353–​55 enacting,  350–​53 overview of, 347–​48 speaking about, 348–​50 authority, 127, 189 babies. See infants background general feelings, 164 Bakerman, Z., 267–​69 balance,  157–​58 Bamberg, M., 81, 175 Barbershops: PA Stylin (TV show), 314 Barrett, L. F., 168–​69 beauty, 190, 336–​37, 339–​40 Beck, D. M., 134 behavior,  111–​12 behaviorism, 12 beholding art, 370–​72

420 Index beliefs changing,  355–​59 constitutive processes, 353–​55 cultural,  123–​25 enacting,  350–​53 overview of, 347–​48 speaking about, 348–​50 Bellinger, D. C., 215 Berlin, I., 19–​20, 127, 283–​84, 341–​42, 344–​45 Berry, J. W., 146 Bhui, K., 364–​65 Bibace, R., 72–​73 Bidell, T. R., 47–​48 Big Five personality traits, 271–​72 Billig, M., 15, 16, 42–​43, 62 Biltekoff, C., 335–​37 biochemical processes, 218 Black lives matter, 181, 298–​99 Bliss-​Moreau, E.,  168–​69 bodily processes action development, 217–​20 art, 369 eating, 334 experiencing mind and body, 249–​50 feeling, 161b,  168–​69 free action, 345 general discussion, 132–​34 interacting with others, 192b, 195 manifestations of mind, 243–​44 meaning of action, 301–​2 overview of, 114b self/​identity, 173b, 181, 182–​83 sensing and perceiving, 184, 185b structuring of, 282 systemic connections, 139–​40 thinking, 150b,  155–​58 body-​based metaphors, 169 Boero, H., 337 Bornstein, M. H., 69–​70 Borum, R., 362–​63 brain bodily processes, 132–​34 feelings and, 168–​69 mind and, 236–​37 neural plasticity, 65 role in development, 219–​20 systemic connections, 139 written language and creativity, 241–​42

Brazelton, T. B., 296–​97 Bronfenbrenner, U., 15–​16 Brooks, D., 387–​88 Bruner, J., 45, 53–​54, 139, 152, 172–​74,  351–​52 Budwig, N., 273–​74, 291 bullying, variability in, 267–​69 Burton, S., 391–​92 Bushman, B. J., 35, 79–​80 bystander effect, 328–​30 canalization, 96b, 105–​6,  260–​61 Cartesian dualistic perspective, 234–​36 categorization, 152–​54,  387–​89 causal constituents, 108–​10 causality, 27. See also cause→effect causality; formal causality brain functioning and, 132–​34 critical analysis of research reports, 328 final, 96b, 100, 101–​2, 277–​78 general discussion, 21–​24 implications and advantages of theoretical framework for, 276b meaning and, 302–​3 metaphors related to, 47–​48 multicausality,  376–​77 multiple kinds of, 100–​2 overview of, 275–​79 questioning, 57b,  74–​80 in systems theory, 96b,  100–​2 cause→effect causality environmental processes and, 282–​83 general discussion, 22–​24 parent–​child interaction, 27 questioning, 74–​80,  275–​77 in systems theory, 96b,  100–​1 Chandler, M. J., 179–​80 change in attitudes, 355–​59 cultural, 64–​65, 179, 209, 355–​56 historical, 64–​65,  229–​30 openness to, 389–​93 Cherry, F., 328–​29 children development of free action, 347 egocentric speech, 246–​48 environmental toxins, effect on development, 215

Index  421 interpreting meaning of action, 296–​97 play,  213–​14 Classen, C., 188, 189 climate change, 134–​35, 195 co-​constructing meaning, 299–​300 coding categories, 310–​11 cognition, 149–​50. See also thinking cognitive development, Piaget’s theory of, 101, 203, 205 cognitive functioning tests, 56–​58 Cole, M., 154–​55, 277 collaborative learning, 159 collectivism, 50–​51,  273–​74 color–​smell associations, 189 commonality, support for, 385–​89 common meaning, 299–​300 compassion, political processes and, 171–​72,  395 complexities of human functioning cultural processes, 120–​23 dynamics and variability, 378–​79 holism,  374–​76 imposing complexity, 380–​81 individuality,  379–​80 multicausality,  376–​77 overview of, 3–​4, 4b, 374 using theoretical framework to address, 375b computer metaphor, 47–​48 conceptual papers, 38–​39 concrete empathic knowledge, 395–​96 conferences, 16 conflict,  214–​15 conscious feelings, 165–​66 consoling, 203, 214–​15 guidelines for future research, 309–​15 constitutive processes, 228. See also specific processes attitudes,  353–​55 beholding and engaging with art,  371–​72 causality and meaning, 276b creating art, 367–​70 eating,  334–​37 enabling and constraining action,  286–​89 evidence for, 305 free action, 343–​46

guidelines for future research, 309–​15 individuality,  254–​57 knowing a person, 258–​59 overview of, 108–​10, 111, 114b research on subjectively constructing experience,  315–​19 structuring of, 279–​86 systemic analysis of research reports,  320–​21 systemic connections, 137–​43 terrorism,  364–​65 constraining action, 286–​89 constructing identity, 122. See also self/​ identity consumerism, effect on psychology, 13 contaminants, environmental, 215 context, role of, 289–​95 conventional psychology aggregating, 20–​21, 57b,  69–​74 analysis of critical theorizing, 42–​45 terms, phrases, and metaphors, 46–​48 causality, 21–​24, 57b,  74–​80 fragmenting in, 15–​17, 56–​59, 57b limitations of, 7 methodological practices, theory in,  39–​41 objectifying, 17–​20, 57b,  59–​66 overview of, 14b qualitative research, 80–​83 quantifying, 57b,  66–​68 theory in, 35–​39 Cooley, C. H., 177–​78 cooperation, intergroup, 358 co-​regulation of feelings, 167–​68 counter-​positioning,  117–​18 creating art, 366–​70 creativity, 241 crisis situations, development in, 206–​7 critical analysis of research, 326–​31, 327b critical psychology, 42–​43 critical theorizing, 42–​45 critical thinking, 8 cultural beliefs, 123–​25 cultural change, 64–​65, 179, 209, 355–​56 cultural community, 120 cultural identity, quantifying, 68 cultural institutions, 155

422 Index cultural meanings, 123–​25 developmental goals, 201–​2 individual processes and, 131 interpreting meaning, 298–​99 self/​identity and,  179–​80 cultural practices development of free action, 347 enabling and constraining action, 286–​88 environmental processes, 216 guidelines for future research, 313–​14 overview of, 121–​23 cultural processes. See also cultural meanings; cultural tools action development, 207–​9 art, 368–​69, 371 attitudes, 353–​55,  356–​57 causality and, 276–​77 complex issues regarding, 120–​23 context, role of, 289–​95 developmental goals and, 201–​2 development of free action, 347 eating, 333–​34, 335–​37, 340 enabling and constraining action,  286–​88 feeling, 161b,  170–​72 free action, 344–​45 guidelines for future research, 307–​8,  313–​14 interacting with others, 192b,  194–​95 knowing a person, 257–​59 meaning of action, 298–​99 overview of, 114b,  119–​20 prediction and, 260–​61 self/​identity, 173b,  179–​82 sensing and perceiving, 185b,  187–​90 structuring of, 279–​80 systemic analysis of research reports, 321 systemic connections, 138–​39, 140–​42 terrorism,  364–​65 thinking, 150b,  152–​55 variability in, 269 wider societal processes, 125–​28,  138–​39 cultural setting. See cultural practices cultural tools, 128–​30 art and, 369 causality and, 277

individual processes and, 131 interacting with others, 194 self/​identity and,  181–​82 structuring of, 279–​80, 283 thinking and, 152–​53 cultural values, 123–​25 culture effect on psychological theory, 44 identifying, 120 psychological processes and, 145–​46 systemic integration, 229 dairy business, 160 Damon, W., 392–​93 Danziger, K., 11, 18–​19, 20–​21, 34, 36, 37, 39–​40, 59–​60, 69–​70, 145,  254–​55 data collection, 18 deterioration, 221 determinism, 20, 22 developmental analyses, 312–​13, 317–​18 developmental goals cultural meanings, 201–​2 cultural processes and, 209 individual processes and, 209–​10 openness to change, 390–​92 developmental processes, 111 art, 372 attitudes,  356–​57 bodily processes, 217–​20 cultural processes, 207–​9 differentiation and integration, 202–​3 eating,  338–​40 environmental processes, 215–​17 evidence for, 306 free action, 346–​47 general discussion, 199–​200, 220–​22 goals, standards, and expectations, 201–​2 guidelines for future research, 309–​15 individuality,  254–​57 individual processes, 209–​11 knowing a person, 258–​59 macrodevelopment and microdevelopment,  205–​7 organismic-​developmental theory, 200 overview of, 199 prediction and, 260–​61 research on subjectively constructing experience,  315–​19

Index  423 responsibility and, 285 social processes, 211–​15 systemic analysis of research reports, 322 terrorism, 365 variability in, 204–​5 development-​as-​differentiation-​and-​ integration advantages of concept, 220b,  220–​22 attitudes,  356–​58 bodily processes, 217–​20 cultural processes, 207–​9 eating,  339–​40 environmental processes, 215–​17 individual processes, 209–​11 overview of, 207 social processes, 211–​15 Dewey, J., 346 dialogicality,  116–​17 dialogical self/​identity positioning,  176–​77 Diamond, J., 135–​36 differentiation, 202–​3, 210–​11, 306,  338–​40 direct social interaction, 115–​16 disabled employees, self/​identity construction in, 178–​79 distributed cognition, 159 diversity, support for, 385–​89 Dixon, S., 296–​97 DNA, 217 Doi, T., 201–​2 Downey, G., 139 Down syndrome, 219 dualism, 234–​37,  273–​74 Dunn, J., 204–​5 dynamics of human functioning, 3, 4b,  378–​79 eating constitutive processes, 334–​37 developmental processes, 338–​40 overview of, 333–​34 psychological processes, 337–​38 economic processes art, 369 changes in, 270–​71 eating,  335–​37 overview of, 126–​27 structuring of, 280 educational processes, 126–​27

efficient causality. See cause→effect causality egocentric speech, 246–​48 embodied cognition, 155–​56 emergence, 96b, 102–​4,  105–​6 emerging adulthood, concept of, 64–​65 emotion, 39–​40, 161–​62. See also feeling empathy,  394–​96 empirical confrontation, 50–​51 empirical validation, 50–​51, 52 enabling action, 286–​89 enacting attitudes, 350–​53 engaging with art, 370–​72 environmental processes action development, 215–​17 art,  369–​70 context, role of, 289–​95 eating, 335 feeling, 161b,  169–​70 free action, 345–​46 general discussion, 134–​37 interacting with others, 192b, 195 meaning of action, 302 overview of, 114b self/​identity, 173b, 183 sensing and perceiving, 184, 185b structuring of, 282–​83 thinking, 150b, 160 environmental toxins, 215 epigenetic conception of causality,  78–​79 equifinality, 96b, 105–​6,  362–​63 Erikson, E. H., 180 Essential Partners, 388 evaluation of theories, 51–​55 evidence for theoretical framework, 305–​6 executive functioning metaphor, 47–​48 expectations, of development, 201–​2 experiencing mind and body, 249–​51 experimental psychology, 9–​11, 21,  59–​60 expressive movement, 301 extreme action, 359–​65 eye contact, 187, 194 facial expressions, 168 fago (compassion/​love/​sadness), 161–​62, 164, 171, 201

424 Index families context in cultural settings, 291–​92 mother-​infant interactions, 192–​93,  296–​97 systemic connections in, 98–​100 farming,  135–​37 Fasoli, A. D., 344 feeling action perspective, 233–​34 art, 370 bodily processes, 161b,  168–​69 cultural processes, 161b,  170–​72 eating,  337–​38 environmental processes, 161b,  169–​70 free action, 346 individual processes, 161b,  166–​67 manifestations of mind, 242–​44 microdevelopmental changes in, 205–​6 overview of, 161b,  161–​66 sense-​making,  244–​48 social processes, 161b,  167–​68 feminism, 43 final causality, 96b, 100, 101–​2, 277–​78 First Nations, 179–​80, 212–​13 Fischer, K. W., 47–​48, 105 Fishman, D. B., 82–​83 flux and flow, 8–​9, 102–​3, 261–​62, 378 fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), 134 Fogelman, E., 130–​31, 282–​83 formal causality context,  289–​95 enabling and constraining action,  286–​89 general discussion, 100, 101 guidelines for future research, 307–​15 overview of, 96b, 277–​78,  376–​77 structuring of constitutive processes,  279–​86 formal interacting, 194 fragmenting general discussion, 15–​17 integration, moving towards, 226–​30 questioning, 56–​59, 57b France, eating habits in, 335 free action constitutive processes, 343–​46 developmental processes, 346–​47

overview of, 340–​43 psychological processes, 346 Freeman, M., 36–​37, 43–​44, 262–​63 free recall tasks, 154–​55 free role experimentation, 180 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 134 future, causal role of, 75–​76 Gallagher, S., 149–​50, 155, 301 Gantt, E. E., 316 Geertz, C., 296 gender attitudes,  356–​57 constitutive processes in attitudes, 353–​55 dualism,  273–​74 interpreting actions, 280, 296–​97 positioning, 117 general human processes, 30–​31, 379–​80 generalizable knowledge, constructing,  256–​57 generalization in research, 39–​40 genetics developmental role of bodily processes,  217–​19 epigenetic conception of causality,  78–​79 genetic sequencing, 78 plasticity in, 65–​66, 78–​79 Genovese, K., 328–​30 Georgakopoulou, A., 175 Gergen, K. J., 24–​25, 33, 37, 43–​44, 45, 53, 54–​55, 64–​65, 73, 75, 80–​81, 117, 125–​26, 139, 229–​30, 245, 299–​300,  388 gesturing, 301 Ghosh, P., 364–​65 Gibson, S., 322–​23 Gillett, G., 123–​24 Gilligan, C., 45 Girl Scouts, theoretical perspectives on, 48–​49,  50 Gladstone, C. M., 151–​52 Gleick, P. H., 134–​35 global–​articulated feelings, 165 globalization, 17, 125–​26, 141–​42, 180 goals. See also developmental goals final causality, 101–​2

Index  425 importance of future, 75–​76 individual processes, 130–​31 Gombrich, E. H., 366–​68 Goodnow, J. J., 123–​24 Goodwin, N., 300–​1 greetings, 132, 203 groups in psychological research, 74 guidance, role in development, 212–​14 guided participation, 212 guidelines for action, cultural, 123–​25 Gumpel, T. P., 267–​69 Gusii of Kenya, 187, 296–​97, 302–​3 Gutiérrez, K. D., 120 Hafez, M., 363–​64 Hallett, D., 179–​80 hands, use of, 182–​83, 301 Hardonk, S., 178–​79 Harré, R., 123–​24 Harter, S., 269 Hashmi, M., 201 Haslam, S. A., 322–​23 health,  335–​37 Heath, S. B., 127, 155 Herbert, B., 117–​18, 270–​71 Hermans, H. J. M., 176–​77 hermeneutic analysis, 316 Heying, S., 279 historical change, 64–​65, 229–​30 Hoffman, B., 359–​60, 365 holism, 3, 52, 374–​76 Holocaust,  323–​24 Horgan, J., 360–​63, 365 Howes, D., 188, 189 human functioning/​action. See also theoretical framework for human  action articulating theoretical perspectives,  48–​51 basic assumptions, 107–​8 complexities of, 3–​4, 4b flux and flow in, 8–​9 overview of action, 6f systems perspective, 104–​7 Human Genome Project, 78 humanity, image of, 7, 26, 112, 384–​85 hunting and gathering, 135

identity. See self/​identity identity formation, 172–​74 identity politics, 5–​6 idiographic research, 30–​31 Ifaluk emotion among, 161–​62, 167, 171, 201 fago (compassion/​love/​sadness), 161–​ 62, 164, 171, 201 physical environment, effect of, 170, 216 situation-​specific feelings, 164 song (anger), 161–​62, 170, 171 image of humanity, 7, 26, 112, 384–​85 improvised music, 368 indeterminism, 20 indigenous psychology, 146 individual differences, 254–​56, 272 individualism, 50–​51,  273–​74 individualistic approach, 73 individuality complexities of, 379–​80 in conventional psychology, 71–​74 general discussion, 254–​57 knowing a person, 257–​62 overview of, 253 personality,  271–​74 qualitative research, 80–​83 in theoretical framework, 3, 4b, 252, 253b individual processes action development, 209–​11 art, 367, 371 attitudes, 355 context, role of, 293–​94 eating,  334–​35 feeling, 161b,  166–​67 free action, 343–​44 general discussion, 130–​32 guidelines for future research, 308 interacting with others, 192b,  193–​94 intraindividual variability, 270 knowing a person, 257–​59 meaning of action, 300–​1 overview of, 114b responsibility and, 284–​85 self/​identity, 173b,  176–​77 sensing and perceiving, 185b, 186 structuring of, 281, 283 structuring of agency, 281–​82

426 Index individual processes (cont.) systemic connections, 139 terrorism,  364–​65 thinking, 150b, 159 individual responsibility, 284–​85 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,  171–​72 infants development of free action, 346–​47 development of walking, 216–​17 eating,  338–​40 emotional co-​regulating in, 167–​68 interactions with mothers, 192–​93, 296–​97 object permanence, 210–​11 self/​identity constructing, 182 sensorimotor processes in, 156 informal interacting, 194 inner speech, 244–​48 inner versus outer contexts, 194, 201–​2 integration developmental processes, 202–​3, 306 eating,  338–​40 increasing,  226–​30 individual processes and, 210–​11 integrative approaches in psychology, 17 interacting with others bodily processes, 192b, 195 cultural processes, 192b,  194–​95 environmental processes, 192b, 195 individual processes, 192b,  193–​94 overview of, 190–​91, 192b social processes, 192b,  192–​93 Internet, research on, 317 interpreting meaning of action, 295–​96, 298–​303 interpretive analysis, 316 interrelated constituents guidelines for future research, 312 systems theory, 96b,  98–​100 interviews, 316–​17, 318 intraindividual variability, 267–​71 Inuit of Canadian Arctic, 212–​13 James, W., 174, 177 Jammaers, E., 178–​79 Japan, formal and informal interacting in, 194,  201–​2 Jetten, J., 322–​23

Johnson, M., 157–​58, 165, 168–​69, 232 Josselson, R., 43–​44, 81 judging, role in feeling, 163 jury decision-​making, 205–​6,  395–​96 Kaepernick, C., 181 Kaplan, B., 200, 202–​3, 220–​21 Karmiloff-​Smith, A., 65 Kassin, S. M., 329–​30 Kavanaugh, B., 127–​28 Keefer, C., 296–​97 Keller, E. F., 65–​66, 78–​79, 217 Kessel, F., 15–​16 Kessen, W., 15–​16 Kirschner, S. R., 46, 72–​73 Klopack, E. T., 65–​66, 78 Kluckhon, C., 71 knowing environmental processes and, 160 how to act, 152 others,  257–​62 Kober, H., 168–​69 Koch, S., 11 Kohn, M., 126–​27 Kpelle rice farmers, 154–​55 Krieger, N., 109–​10 Kristof, N., 352–​53 Kwakkel, J. H., 359–​60 ladder metaphor, 47–​48 Lakoff, G., 157 Lalonde, C. E., 179–​80 Lamiell, J. T., 255 land, identity and, 183 language causality and, 276–​77 as cultural tool, 128–​30 developmental variability and culture,  208–​9 interpreting meaning, 297–​98 private speaking, 244–​48 self/​identity constructing,  181–​82 sense-​making,  244 speaking about attitudes, 348–​50 storytelling, 155, 207–​8, 212–​13 structuring of, 279–​80 thinking and, 152–​53 writing, 237–​42, 238f, 239f, 240f, 241f

Index  427 Lareau, A., 208–​9 Laurier, E., 300–​1 Lawrence, J. A., 138 laws, 270 lead exposure, 215 Leahey, T. H., 12–​13 leave-​taking,  203 Lende, D. H., 139 Leonard, R., 127–​28 Le Pen, M., 127–​28 LeVine, R. A., 296–​97 Lewontin, R., 65–​66, 78–​79 Lieblich, A., 81 life transitions, development and, 206–​7 Lindquist, K. A., 168–​69 Lindstrom, J. P., 316 literacy practices, 127, 155 literature, discussion of, 36–​37 localizing processes, 125–​26, 180 local variability, 106 logical thinking, 157–​58 Looren de Jong, H., 43 Louis, É., 127–​28 Luria, A. R., 153–​54 Lutz, C. A., 39–​40, 161–​62, 163, 164, 167, 170, 171, 201 Lux, V., 133 Maccoby, E. E., 360–​61 machine metaphor, 47–​48 macrodevelopment,  205–​7 Markowitz, J., 132–​33 Martin, E., 132–​33 Martin, J., 7, 39–​40 Mascolo, M. F., 28–​29, 214–​15 material causality, 96b, 100–​1,  277–​78 materiality of spoken language, 129–​30 McAdams, D. P., 81, 148, 271–​73 McGilloway, A., 364–​65 McGuire, W. J., 50–​51 McKie, L., 300–​1 Mead, G. H., 177–​78 Meadows, D. H., 98 meaning complexities in, 296–​98 endowment of, 60–​61 interpreting meaning of action, 298–​303 overview of, 295–​96

meanings, cultural. See cultural meanings mechanistic causal model, 22 mediational means, 128–​29 meetings, 291 memory, 154–​55,  158–​59 mental processes, 234–​36 Messer, S. B., 82–​83 metaphors abstract thinking, development of,  157–​58 analyzing,  46–​48 critical analysis of research reports, 328 for emotions, 169 environmental processes and feelings,  169–​70 metatheory, 93–​94,  326–​27 method-​driven theorizing,  35–​38 methodological practices choice of, 33–​34 effect on theorizing, 35–​38 theory in, 39–​41 Me Too movement, 354, 355–​56 Michell, J., 18–​19 microdevelopment,  205–​7 Midgley, M., 74–​75 Milgram, S., 23–​24, 25–​26, 289–​90,  322–​26 Miller, A. G., 322–​23 Miller, P. J., 123–​24 mind, conceptualizing, 231–​34 mind–​body connections dualistic problems, 234–​37 experiencing,  249–​51 non-​conscious processes,  248–​49 overview of, 234 private sense-​making,  244–​48 varied physical dimensions of action,  237–​44 modes of action, 122–​23, 130–​31 co-​constructing meaning, 299–​300 guidelines for future research, 309–​15 Molenaar, P. C. M., 30, 82 Mols, F., 322–​23 Moore, D. S., 217–​18 Moore, M., 25–​26 Moseley, W., 328–​30 Moshman, D., 133 Mullins, C., 363–​64

428 Index multicausality, 3, 4b,  376–​77 multifinality, 96b, 105–​6,  362–​63 Murray, H. A., 71 mutual social influence, 115–​16 narrative research, 316–​17 narratives, 175, 177 natural resources, 134–​35 nature/​nurture dualism,  273–​74 Navajo Indians, 187 Nazi Germany hiding Jews in, 130–​31, 325–​26 Milgram’s obedience studies and,  322–​26 Nazi salute, 182–​83 negative freedom, 341–​42 neural plasticity, 65 neurogenesis, 65 neuroimaging,  133–​34 New Way of Life, A, 391–​92 nomothetic research, 30–​31 non-​conscious feelings,  165–​66 non-​conscious processes,  248–​49 non-​social experiment, 119 nouns, describing human functioning with, 61–​62, 148 Nussbaum, M. C., 163, 164, 166–​67, 171–​72, 284–​85, 372, 395 nutrition,  335–​37 obedience studies, 23–​24, 25–​26, 289–​90,  322–​26 obesity,  335–​37 objectifying active processes, moving towards,  230–​34 general discussion, 17–​20 personality traits, 272 questioning, 57b,  59–​66 objectivity, in research, 54–​55 object permanence, 210–​11 oblique references, 116–​17 observational research on action, 308–​15 ongoing mutual influence, 115–​16, 141–​42 online research, 317 open-​mindedness,  45 openness to change, 389–​93 openness to socialization, 360–​61, 365

open systems, 106 opinions changing,  355–​59 constitutive processes, 353–​55 enacting,  350–​53 overview of, 347–​48 speaking about, 348–​50 organismic-​developmental theory, 200, 202–​3, 204–​5,  220–​21 orienting to others when alone, 118–​19 orthogenetic principle, 202–​3, 220–​21 other, attitude towards, 358 outer versus inner contexts, 194, 201–​2 Overton, W. F., 52, 94, 99–​100, 103–​4 Overy, R., 323–​24 Pals, J. L., 272–​73 parent–​child relationships, 27 part–​part interrelations constitutive processes, 137–​39, 142 general discussion, 98–​99 guidelines for future research, 312 overview of, 106–​7 psychological processes, 196 part–​whole connections constitutive processes, 137, 140–​42 context, role of, 290–​91, 293 general discussion, 98–​99 guidelines for future research, 312 overview of, 106–​7 psychological processes, 196 past, causal role of, 76 peer relationships, 159, 213–​14 perceiving. See sensing and perceiving personality,  271–​74 personal values, effect on psychological theory, 44 perspective,  264–​65 philosophy, psychology distinguished from,  10–​13 philosophy of science, 41 phrases, analyzing, 46–​48 physical dimensions of action, 237–​44 physical environments development and, 215–​17 feelings and, 170 free action, 345–​46 overview of, 136–​37

Index  429 self/​identity constructing, 183 thinking and, 160 physical processes Cartesian dualistic perspective, 234–​36 experiencing mind and body, 249–​50 Piaget, J., 159, 203, 205, 346–​47 plasticity in genetics, 65–​66, 78–​79 in human functioning, 63–​64 neural, 65 play, 208–​9, 213–​14,  296–​97 pointing, 301 political positioning, 127–​28 political processes art, 369 eating,  335–​37 feelings and, 171–​72 fragmenting,  226–​27 free action, 344–​45 overview of, 126–​27 structuring of, 280 Polkinghorne, D., 98–​99 pollutants, 215 polysemy,  51–​52 positioning diversity and, 387–​89 general discussion, 117–​18, 126–​27 political,  127–​28 self/​identity and, 176–​77,  178–​79 positive freedom, 341–​42 positive youth development, 392–​93 postmodernism, 43 power, 127, 189 pragmatic approach, 53–​54, 177–​78 prediction, 19, 259–​62 pretend play, 213–​14 private speaking, 244–​48 private versus public contexts, 194, 201–​2 privileging ways of thinking, 155 process-​relational metatheory,  94–​95 Progressive Era, 12–​13 Pruyt, E., 359–​60 psychological analysis, 34 psychological processes, 227–​28. See also specific processes in action, 6–​7 art, 370, 372 distinguishing between, 146–​48

eating,  337–​38 evidence for, 305–​6 free action, 346 general discussion, 144–​49 guidelines for future research, 308,  309–​15 individuality,  254–​57 knowing a person, 258–​59 meaning of action, 302 overview,  110–​11 research on subjectively constructing experience,  315–​19 structuring of, 281 systemic analysis of research reports,  321–​22 systemic connections, 195–​98 terrorism, 365 psychological science, 29–​30 psychology aggregating in, 20–​21, 57b,  69–​74 alternative to conventional, 24–​31 analysis of critical theorizing, 42–​45 terms, phrases, and metaphors, 46–​48 causality, 21–​24, 57b,  74–​80 conventional, overview of, 14b fragmenting in, 15–​17, 56–​59, 57b history of, 9–​13 methodological practices, theory in,  39–​41 objectifying in, 17–​20, 57b,  59–​66 qualitative research, 80–​83 quantifying in, 57b,  66–​68 theory in, 35–​39, 42b public versus private contexts, 194, 201–​2 qualitative research general discussion, 80–​83 guidelines for future research, 308–​15 on subjectively constructing experience,  316–​17 quantitative imperative, 18–​19 quantitative research formal causality and, 285–​86 human functioning in, 39–​40 including in qualitative research, 315 questioning, 57b,  66–​68 questioning, development and, 212–​13

430 Index questioning conventional psychology aggregating,  69–​74 analyzing terms, phrases, and metaphors,  46–​48 articulating theoretical perspectives, 48–​51 causality,  74–​80 critical theorizing, 42–​45 fragmenting,  56–​59 issues and new questions, 84–​87 judging theoretical perspectives, 51–​55 objectifying,  59–​66 overview of, 57b qualitative research, 80–​83 quantifying,  66–​68 usefulness of, 8–​9, 24–​31 racism constitutive processes, 353–​55 developmental processes, 356–​58 enacting attitudes, 352–​53 speaking about, 348–​49 radicalization,  359–​65 Raeff, C., 60–​61, 62, 108–​9, 110–​11, 172–​74, 199, 227, 341, 347 reaching for food, 338–​40 reading, 127, 155, 212–​13, 241–​42, 371–​72 recognizing, 117–​18,  127–​28 Reddy, V., 72–​73, 118 reflexive deliberation, 293–​94 regression, 221 Reicher, S. D., 322–​23 relatively articulated emotion, 165 remembering, 154–​55,  158–​59 repositioning,  117–​18 research critical analysis of, 326–​31, 327b guidelines for future overview of, 306–​7 structuring of action, 307–​15 subjectively constructing experience,  315–​19 systemic analysis of, 319–​26, 320b responsibility, individual, 284–​85 Robinson, D. N., 49–​50, 56–​58, 77, 294–​95 Rogoff, B., 48–​49, 50, 120, 212, 386 Roosevelt, F. D., 241–​42 Rose, N., 132–​33 Rychlak, J. F., 60

Sabat, S. R., 56–​58, 70–​71, 82, 117, 133, 151–​52, 288–​89,  297–​98 Sacks, O., 83 sadness, quantifying, 67 saluting,  182–​83 sample size, 70 Sarason, S. B., 28, 60, 146 scaffolding,  212–​13 Schuessler, J., 241 science, definitions of, 28–​29 scientific method, 35, 39, 41, 54–​55,  395–​96 Scribner, S., 149–​50, 160 second-​person approach, 118 self-​concept,  172–​74 self/​identity action perspective, 233–​34 art, 372 bodily manifestations of mind,  243–​44 bodily processes, 173b,  182–​83 constructing, 122 cultural processes, 173b,  179–​82 eating,  337–​38 environmental processes, 173b, 183 guidelines for future research, 308 individual processes, 173b,  176–​77 metaphors related to, 47–​48 overview of, 5–​6, 172–​76, 173b psychological processes and, 146 quantifying,  67–​68 social processes, 173b,  177–​79 terrorism, 365 use of term, 148 self-​regulation,  344 semi-​structured interviews,  316–​17 sense-​making,  244–​48 senses,  188–​89 sensing and perceiving art, 372 bodily processes, 184, 185b cultural processes, 185b,  187–​90 eating,  337–​38 environmental processes, 184, 185b individual processes, 185b, 186 overview of, 183–​84, 185b social processes, 185b,  186–​87 sensorimotor activity, 156, 203, 210–​11

Index  431 sexism constitutive processes, 353–​55 developmental processes, 356–​58 enacting attitudes, 352–​53 sexual harassment, 298–​99 Shatz, M., 203, 339–​40 Shenk, D., 217–​18 Shotter, J., 58, 76–​77, 116–​17, 123–​24 Simons, R. L., 65–​66, 78 situation-​specific feelings, 164 Slife, B. D., 32, 37, 40–​41 Smedslund, J., 70–​71, 261 Smith, L. B., 106, 216–​17 smoking,  300–​1 social constructionism, 43–​44 socialization, 360–​61, 365 social media, 171, 181–​82 social processes accountability, 285 action development, 211–​15 alone with others, 118–​19 art, 367–​68, 371 attitudes, 355 context, role of, 289–​95 critical analysis of research reports, 328 dialogicality,  116–​17 eating, 334, 340 enabling and constraining action, 288–​89 feeling, 161b,  167–​68 free action, 344–​45 interacting with others, 192b,  192–​93 meaning of action, 299–​300 overview of, 113, 114b positioning and recognizing, 117–​18 self/​identity, 173b,  177–​79 sensing and perceiving, 185b,  186–​87 structuring of, 280–​81 terrorism,  364–​65 thinking, 150b,  158–​59 variability in, 269 what others do, 115–​16 societal movements, 127 sociocultural theory, 211–​12 socioeconomic status, 126–​27, 208–​9, 215 soft assembly, 104–​6 Sokol, B. W., 179–​80 solitary action in relation to others,  118–​19

song (anger), 161–​62, 170, 171 sound–​smell associations, 189 Soviet Union, art in, 369 specialization in psychology, 15–​17 specificity principle, 69–​70 split metatheory, 93–​94 sports participation, 208–​9 stability, 63, 378–​79 general discussion, 266–​71 overview of, 265 in systems theory, 96b,  104–​7 standards, of development, 201–​2 Stanovich, K. E., 21, 36, 79–​80 static conceptions of human functioning, questioning,  63–​65 statistics, 12–​13, 20 stepping reflex, 216–​17 Stern, D., 192–​93 Stetsenko, A., 75–​76, 293 storytelling, 155, 207–​8, 212–​13 strangeness, use of term, 116–​17 Stroud, W. L., Jr., 29, 30–​31, 86 structuring of constitutive processes, 279–​86 guidelines for future research, 307–​15 subjective experience of emotion, 166 subjectively constructing experience general discussion, 262–​65 guidelines for future research, 315–​19 individual processes, 300–​1 subjective values, 112 subjectivity. See also subjectively constructing experience in conventional psychology, 72–​73 overview of, 253 personality,  271–​74 qualitative research, 80–​83 subjects, use of term, 72 Sugarman, J., 7, 39–​40 surplus food, 136–​37 surveys, 318 Syria, civil war in, 134–​35 systemic analysis of research, 319–​26,  320b systemic connections constitutive processes, 137–​43 psychological processes, 195–​98 systems theory, 98–​100

432 Index systemic integration of dynamic processes from fragmenting to integrating,  226–​30 from objects to active processes, 230–​34 overview of, 225 systems theory conceptualizing action, 107–​12 development in, 199–​200 emergence,  102–​4 holism and, 374–​76 multiple kinds of causality in, 100–​2 overview of, 77–​78, 93–​98, 96b stability and variability, 104–​7, 266 systemic connections, 98–​100 Taipei, storytelling in, 212–​13 talking to oneself, 246–​48 Taylor, C., 60–​61, 72–​73 technology, 209, 369 temperature, 169–​70, 195 tennis,  243–​44 terms, analyzing, 46–​48 terrorism,  359–​65 Thelen, E., 104–​5, 216–​17 theoretical framework for human action addressing complexities of human functioning, 375b empathy,  394–​96 evidence for, 305–​6 guidelines for future research overview of, 306–​7 structuring of action, 307–​15 subjectively constructing experience,  315–​19 image of humanity, 7, 26, 112, 384–​85 implications and advantages for causality, 276b individuality, 3, 4b, 252, 253b openness to change, 389–​93 overview of, 5–​9 support for diversity and commonality,  385–​89 thinking systematically about action, 381–​84,  383b understanding human functioning holistically and actively, 226b variability, 252, 253b theoretical perspectives, articulating, 48–​51

theory analysis of psychology critical theorizing, 42–​45 terms, phrases, and metaphors, 46–​48 articulating theoretical perspectives,  48–​51 critical necessity of, 32–​35 evaluation of, 51–​55 in methodological practices, 39–​41 in psychology, 35–​39, 42b thinking action perspective, 232–​33 art, 370, 372 bodily processes, 150b,  155–​58 causality and, 282–​83 cultural processes, 150b,  152–​55 eating,  337–​38 environmental processes, 150b, 160 free action, 346 guidelines for future research, 308 individual processes, 150b, 159 manifestations of mind, 242–​44 overview of, 149–​52, 150b psychological processes, 146–​48 sense-​making,  244–​48 social processes, 150b,  158–​59 written language and, 237–​42, 238f, 239f, 240f, 241f Thompson, J., 7, 39–​40 Tobin, J., 194 tools, cultural. See cultural tools toxins, 215 traits, personality, 271–​72 Tronick, E., 296–​97 Trump, D., 127–​28 Turiel, E., 344 understanding how to act, 152 unfinished quality in human functioning,  63–​64 United States culture in, 120, 290–​91 eating habits in, 335–​37 environmental regulation in, 215 fragmenting in politics, 226–​27 gender attitudes, 354 political processes, 127–​28, 171–​72 psychology established in, 12–​13

Index  433 psychology programs in, 11 racism in, 354 self/​identity constructing, 181 societal movements in, 127 Užgiris, I. C., 27, 123–​24, 156, 193 Valsiner, J., 30, 70, 82, 138, 260–​61 value-​laden subjectivity,  54–​55 values changing,  355–​59 constitutive processes, 353–​55 cultural,  123–​25 enacting,  350–​53 overview of, 347–​48 speaking about, 348–​50 van Ommen, C., 133 variability,  378–​79 developmental processes, 204–​5 general discussion, 266–​71 implications of current theoretical framework for, 252, 253b overview of, 3, 4b, 5–​6, 265, 378–​79 in systems theory, 96b,  104–​7 variables, human functioning in terms of,  61–​62 verbs, describing human functioning with, 62, 148, 230–​31 violence, 195 violent media exposure, 79–​80 vision for humanity, 384–​85 von Bertalanffy, L., 77–​78 voting,  127–​28 Vygotsky, L. S., 165, 204–​5, 211–​12, 244,  245–​48 Wager, T. D., 168–​69 Wainryb, C., 344 walking, development of, 216–​17 web metaphor, 47–​48

weight,  335–​37 Werner, H., 202–​3 Wertsch, J. V., 129, 131, 232 Wertz, F. J., 11, 80–​81 Western culture adolescence in, 64–​65, 133 aging, concept of, 133 dualism in, 234, 273–​74 feeling in, 161–​62 psychological processes, 145 storytelling in, 212–​13 White, S., 15–​16 White supremacy, 356–​58 whole–​part connections constitutive processes, 137, 139–​42 context, role of, 290–​91, 293 guidelines for future research, 312 overview of, 106–​7 psychological processes, 196 systems theory, 98–​99 wider societal processes, 125–​28, 138–​39,  194–​95 wider whole of human functioning,  227–​28 Williams, R. N., 32, 40–​41, 316 Wilson, F. R., 182–​83 winking, 139 Witherington, D. C., 278, 279 words, sense of, 245–​46 writing, 237–​42, 238f, 239f, 240f, 241f Wundt, W., 9–​11 Yan, Z., 105 Zanoni, P., 178–​79 Zielke, B., 45 Zioni-​Koren, V.,  267–​69 zone of actual development, 204–​5 zone of proximal development, 204–​5