Sunday 10 October 2010

Who should be in a group?

The theory

I always wanted this blog to be impersonal, neutral, boring nerdy stuff about how things self-organize, in human groups and in nature. Then life happens. There was a biggie in summer, when my husband died. Well, there's been another biggie this week, when I got laid off.

Which leads me straight to the question: Who should be in a group? This is part of what you need to think about as soon as you have a group. Even if it's a group of volunteers, does it mean that we should merrily accept anybody that comes and never ask anyone to go? Are the people who come always "the right people", or should we be looking for what we need?

There is a very simple rule of thumb you can apply whenever you wonder who should be there. Every member of a group needs to have two things:

  • Something to give: Why does everybody else want this person here? If you start feeling that the answer is: "Well, nobody wants this person here..." something needs to be done about it. Either the person has to start offering something, or has to go.
  • Something to take: Why does this person want to be here? If somebody starts feeling like they aren't getting anything from being here, they will go. Unless somebody notices first and they get given something they want.
Even when there is give and take, people may feel that the exchange isn't fair. When the general feeling is that a person is taking more than they're giving, there's trouble. Most people are careful to balance their goodwill books, to the point of keeping detailed track of what favours are owed to who.

The reverse is also true: whenever there's trouble in a group, people start looking for somebody who must be taking more than they're giving. This isn't necessarily the case (problems can be for all sorts of reasons), but it's such a common human reaction, that every time there is a recession, lay-offs are a common solution.

The practice

Experiment 1

The "give and take" rule doesn't apply just to humans, it's also the base of every community in nature. Look for examples of groups of animals - a beehive, a school of fish, a rabbit warren, or a family of birds - and try to answer these questions:

1. What does each individual give and take? This may include:
  • Food
  • A chance to rest
  • Shelter
  • Protection
  • Propagation of the species
2. What happens with individuals that take more than they give? What happens with individuals that give much more than they take?

Experiment 2

You can do this in any group you are part of. Ask everyone to make a list of the things that they give to the group. Then another list of the things that they take. Then compare lists.

1. Are there many things in common between lists?
2. Is there anything that is given or taken that appears only in the list of one or two people? Does this look like it makes people more powerful or more vulnerable to have this special thing in their list?
3. Are there people that have one or two things only in their give list or their take list? Does this look like it makes people more powerful or more vulnerable?

Sunday 3 October 2010

Double bind

The theory

A commenter on the last post about how people change their mind said: "If people have to be manipulated into believing the truth, they aren't really believing the truth." This is a very good point, but not as easy as it seems at first blush. Because in actual fact, most of the things that we believe are true, we don't believe them because we know them first-hand or because we are following some careful logical reasoning. For example, most of my readers will believe that climate change is caused by humans burning fossil fuels, and that world oil production is already in decline or is going to decline soon. But we don't know these things first-hand, and if we are entirely honest with ourselves, we don't know all the ins and outs of the matter. We believe these things partly by reasoning and partly by accepting the authority of other people that we think are experts on the matter. Strictly speaking, we may have been manipulated into believing this.

Still, there are a few things we can take into account to reduce the chances of making mistakes, and one of them, as the commenter suggested, is knowing a bit more about our biases. I talked about this already on a previous post (Why things go wrong: emotional reasons). So today I'd like to touch on a particular case, a very nasty kind of confusion that is most often responsible for the worst tangles people knot themselves in. It's called "double bind". It happens when somebody believes at the same time three things:
  • Belief 1
  • Belief 2 that contradicts belief 1
  • Belief 3 that states there isn't a contradiction between beliefs 1 and 2, or that if there is a contradiction, it shouldn't be talked about.
A couple of real life examples:
  • The Earth is round, because it's the logical conclusion of observations.
  • The Earth is flat, because it says so in the Bible, and the Bible is God's word.
  • The Bible only contains the literal truth.
  • You love your son dearly
  • Your son is being asked to serve in a war, where there are good chances he'll be killed.
  • You are patriotic, so you see your nation as your family. There is no difference between the loyalty you feel for your nation and the loyalty you feel for your family.
This is particularly relevant for activists that are trying to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. One important reason that it's so difficult to convince some people to take some actions, is because they are tied in a double bind. The most common forms of this are:

The human ingenuity argument:
  • Reduction in the use of fossil fuels is necessary to avoid climate change and deal with peak oil, both of which would have disastrous consequences.
  • Increase in the use of fossil fuels is necessary to grow the economy, especially in developing countries.
  • Human ingenuity will find a way out of this contradiction in time to avoid any disastrous problems.
The positivity argument:
  • Reduction in the use of fossil fuels is necessary to avoid climate change and deal with peak oil, both of which would have disastrous consequences.
  • Increase in the use of fossil fuels is almost certain in the current world political climate.
  • Being negative about the outlook will lead people to inaction, so we must avoid pointing out this contradiction.
The behaviour of somebody trapped in a double bind is different from the behaviour of somebody that simply has to deal with bad news, even extremely bad news. Let's see it by comparing two typical examples:

Very bad news - your son has a possibly fatal disease:



  • You know and accept that the solution to your problem may be difficult or impossible.
  • You can express freely any mixed feelings and doubts
  • Usual reactions include: Sadness, anger, efforts to limit the damage, efforts to prevent any further harm.







Double bind - your son must go to war:


  • You feel like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
  • You don't feel like you are allowed to express any mixed feelings or doubts.
  • Usual reactions include: confusion, fear, erratic behaviour, denial, rationalization, actions to increase personal comfort that don't deal with the problem or are definitely inappropriate.












This comparison should make it easy to figure out when you are dealing with somebody trapped in a double bind.

The practice

Experiment 1

Animals get can get pulled in two opposite directions, the same as humans. When they do, they can engage in what's called displacement behaviour: Instead of doing something appropriate to the situation, they do something else, such as eating or grooming. Have you ever seen this? What was the exact situation?

Experiment 2

Do you know any example of somebody who seems to be trapped in a double bind? Next time that you try to talk with them about the issue, avoid a frontal attack and try something more roundabout. It's sometimes said that beliefs are like tables that are held by several legs. Try to figure out what are the legs for the particular belief that seems to be blocking this person. Ask them: Why do you believe that?

Once you have an impression about the legs for those beliefs, you can look at each of them in turn: Is this probably true but doesn't really support this belief? Is this probably false?

Another very useful question to ask is: when did you start believing that? It's much more difficult to change somebody's mind when they have been believing something since their childhood.