Barriers to Agency: Moral Attitudes

Judson Mills (1958) conducted a study of sixth graders assessing their moral attitudes following temptation. Social scientists reading this text will be interested to know that Mills’ advisor was Leon Festinger (!). The study offered differing rewards to students after they were tempted to cheat. It then asked them how they felt about others who cheat.

In the study, groups of students who cheated and received a big prize and students who did not cheat and received a small prize had no change in moral attitudes. Those who did cheat and received a small prize displayed a more lenient attitude toward cheating. Those who did not cheat and received a big prize evidenced a more severe attitude toward cheating.

The results suggest that, your attitudes are shaped by the experiences, opportunities, and rewards you perceive. The central question concerns values. Let us separate values from moral attitudes. In the Mills study above, recognize the two variables that call the results into question.

First, who told you that an opportunity to perform must be considered an opportunity to cheat or not to cheat? Second, who determined for you that one prize was bigger and therefore, more desirable than another? These two questions are questions about what you value—your individualized assessment of what is important in any given situation. My point: the value of morality is the relationship above all. Ask yourself whether the moral question supports relationship sustainably. Actions that do not violate valued relationships are options no matter how others may frown upon them.

Barriers to Agency: Balance (Example)

For example, you believe that you are a capable writer, and you have submitted a draft of a paper that we are working on together. I respond to your draft with a number of edits and corrections. In response to this you could choose to:

a) Decide that you are not a capable writer

b) Conclude that I am not a good collaborator, or

c) Conclude that writing is not an important skill.

Another option exists. Consider that you have more to learn about the type of writing that forms the basis of our collaboration. Also, consider that my edits are not a critique of your writing, but my contribution to our eventual product. Now, the question is more precisely, are you motivated to engage in the knowledge seeking required to learn more about writing, or will you give up on the collaboration?

The stress of the dissonance is the motivator. You know this in your thought, “I don’t agree with your edits. Why did you write it that way?” Now, find out. Let us discuss our collaborative work. Let us agree on a definitive source or group of sources for our pattern for writing. Our collaboration is not your search for balance. Indeed, our interaction will challenge both of us to rethink our pre-collaboration givens.

Barriers to Agency: Balance

Fritz Heider has been credited with illuminating a most fundamental human trait, called Balance theory. The power of the human mind is demonstrated in that you can convince yourself of anything. Indeed, you are motivated to create balance in your opinions about objects in the world around you. You form opinions about objects like people, places, your favorite novel, a style of car, your ability, and more. Objects are sometimes related. The challenge we must face together is that the relationships between the objects can cause you dissonance. A further challenge, you will typically resolve your dissonance in whichever way requires the least amount of effort. When faced with dissonance, Heider suggests that you will either:

a) Change your opinion of the original object

b) Change your opinion of the object being related, or

c) Deny that the relationship between objects exists.

Each of the options above is based on two fallacies. The first fallacy is that you have to make a decision as quickly as possible to regain balance using only the information that you currently have on hand. I offer to you that you must learn to tolerate ambiguity. You must seek knowledge that provides you with multiple views of objects and the relationships between them. The time it takes to seek out this new knowledge is not wasted time. Taking time to inform you could mean the difference between a sustainable balance that makes room for growth and an unsustainable balance that stifles growth.

The second fallacy is that the stress of dissonance is an enemy to health and wellbeing. You must put in the work required to decide the solution to dissonance that is best for you, and best for our collaboration. The stress brought about by the feeling of dissonance can be the motivation you need to consider new alternatives, seek new knowledge, and part with “easy” answers.

Distractions Case Study: 1 of 3

Our story from an ancient text continues. Remember that our main characters, Adam and Eve, were attendants to a beautiful garden. Eve entered into a conversation that served her ambitions well, but left her and Adam confused. They both lived in this garden, content with themselves and the garden except for an insistent desire for knowledge. The text emphasizes that both were naked and felt no shame.

So, Adam and Eve consumed from the tree that they were forbidden to touch. The first result of this insistence on consuming is not in any action or observation. Of interest is the immediate loss of that sense of contentment. A constant nagging, a feeling that something was missing replaced the contentment. Whether you take the story as truth or not, you too have that longing. But, as with much in this life, the longing is not the problem. What you do to fill the longing, though, could be problematic.

The goal should be to identify what your contribution will be to our team. It really does not matter what activity you engage in. When you are clear about your contribution, you see value, gain knowledge, and notice complexities in what others may see as frivolous. But, know that I will challenge you to compete. It is not self-conceit, but positive competition. I will question your entertainment, whether it is productive recreation or self-medication. As you gain the knowledge that you desire, I will expect you to contribute your best and grow even greater contributions for the future.

Distractions: Social Contracts and Political Correctness

Up to this point, I have focused on describing your options as an individual. You have often been deceived. You have also been distracted. Institutions have standardized your deception allowing you to hide behind the plausible deniability of corporate conformity. The more clearly you understand your own identity, the more inconsistent the world appears. This may tempt you to give up on agentic success—achievement conceived by self-reflectiveness, self-reactiveness, intentionality, and forethought. But, take heart. We can overcome the distractions.

Institutions maintain your deception by distracting you from addressing your lack of sustainability. Instead of figuring out why a choice did not work out as you had hoped, you are lulled into a sense of comfort with disappointment, surrounded by people who support this passivity.

If only you would look within yourself. Reflect on your goals, your actions, your reasoning. Determine the origins for your choices. Evaluate your will to succeed. The institutions suggest that to focus on you is to deny community. Yet, this supposed altruism is not consistent with the other messages the institution espouses.

You are told to measure your success by your consumption—if you are the best, you must have the best. You are told to conform so as not to stick out from the crowd—it is conceit to proclaim your giftedness and heresy to pursue an alternative inquiry. You are told to apologize as a reflex in order to avoid conflict—it is better not to make enemies of people you do not know. Standards are relaxed in order to save the feelings of the mediocre.

Distractions: The Next 3 Chapters

Consumerism is the institutional method to medicate through entertainment and recreation. But, you think it is the frivolity that weakens the production focus. It is not the activity that is the problem. The problem is that you are not clear about your contribution. You risk shutting me out because you cannot see the opportunity for our collaboration.

Shame is the institutional tool that seeks to deny individual giftedness in favor of the collective identity. The expressed goals are to maintain order, to be fair, and lend predictability to chaos. To bow, conforming, to shame is to stunt the chaos that motivates change and inspires growth in you and in me.

Guilt is the institutional source of choices that attempt to fix past failures. Rather than achieve goals based in principle, the guilt reflex suggests that you apologize because the goals may offend the sensibilities of another. The distraction is the quest for politeness, rather than the quest for success. Clear communication gives way to political correctness.

The End of Wanting

Too often, you look at the success as the finished product of the producer. You conclude that you cannot achieve the same success. You fail to see the time, the habits of mind, the schedule, and the discipline the producer put into achieving her wish. You only see the end result. If you do glimpse what it takes to achieve, you are overwhelmed. Take heart! Though the process seems overwhelming, it is a process. This means that the beginning of a complicated success begins with that first simple action.

Be sure that you are planning actions based on an honest view of the habits of the producers that you would like to emulate. Recognize that producers rarely are able to articulate what they have done in order to achieve success. They sometimes inflate the time or romanticize the actions they performed on the way to their goals. They either over estimate or dismiss the help they received from others.

For example, the producer, when asked how he achieved, may say, "You have to work hard each day and read a lot." When asked if that was his process, the producer admits, "Oh, no. I don't really read that much." If you could have been a fly on the wall throughout the producer's process, you would have observed a process of idea formulation and commitment to product that spanned multiple years. Even the producer is not aware of how each choice, each rehearsal, each class, was a contribution toward the final product. The producer does not intentionally mislead with his responses, but the achievement of success sometimes reframes the journey as a function of destiny rather than a result of determination.

Understand that all sustainable success—the end of wanting—is the result of your determination over time to work, to lead with purpose, to incorporate new knowledge and relationships, and to risk being wrong. Maintain those habits. Connect those dots until patterns emerge and habits result in products.