Human beings, all of us, act in ways that are irrational and contrary to our own interests. And we do so much more often than we’d expect.
Yet many of the most influential philosophers, both moral and economic, base intricately constructed ethical and behavioral theories on the assumption of rational behavior.
It is partially because we cannot trust others or ourselves to act rationally that any ethical system must have a feedback and correction mechanism of the sort I suggest in The Ethic of Reflection.
Even with such a corrective mechanism; and even if diligently utilized; we must still allow the possibility that we will repeat the same error in behavior again and again; perhaps never ridding ourselves of a particular fault.
Even so, without such a mechanism and without its diligent practice, how much more likely are we to persist in erroneous, hurtful behavior?
Bernard Gert discusses the notion, common to most all traditions, that prior to reaching a certain level of reasoning ability, a person cannot be held responsible for action that might be deemed immoral in an adult. Gert terms a person who has reached that stage of development – which is really based on one’s reasoning capacity but for rough purposes he estimates to be about ten years of age – as a “moral agent”.
As logical as it seems to attribute the capacity to act morally to one having reached a certain age, though, we also have to admit that by the time one has reached that age he has also been subjected to the psychological gauntlet that is childhood. And childhood is a perilous journey; one during which many of us acquire not only a certain capacity to think but also significant trauma that influences the way we think, act, relate to others and assess situations and people.
That is: by the time an individual becomes a moral agent he has probably also acquired some or all of the common psychological and emotional flaws that cause irrational and perhaps immoral action.
It is not necessary for our purposes to discuss the myriad ways in which psychological conditioning can influence our ability to trust our own or others’ behavioral choices; to be moral, to be ethical. It is only necessary to make the case that humans in general should accept that an analytic and corrective device of some sort is needed as a part of any behavioral system, because humans in general are apt to make certain common mistakes in their thinking and behavior.
If we approach the problem from that angle, the issue is not personal. It doesn’t single out gender, religion, nationality or any other potentially sensitive sub-group. It is simply an admission of the fact that human beings have certain tendencies in common that require some thoughtful regulation.
Two brothers, Ori and Ron Brafman wrote of the common sources of behavior that contradicts the notion of rational man in their book “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” (Doubleday, 2008). In it they document several types of influence on behavior that cause us to do things that are contrary to any rational expectation.
These influences include:
1. Loss aversion, which is our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid possible losses. They found that we tend to experience the pain of a loss “much more vividly than we do the joy of experiencing a gain”.
And “the more there is on the line, the easier it is to get swept into an irrational decision”.
2. Commitment bias, which is essentially the bias of attachment to a decision already made. If we have committed to a course of action that commitment has an inertial power making an acknowledgement that the decision was incorrect very difficult.
3. Value attribution, which is our inclination to assume that a person or thing has certain qualities based on an initial perception of value, even in the face of objective evidence to the contrary.
The Brafmans reported that “value attribution is so potent that it affects us even when the value is assigned completely arbitrarily”.
4. Diagnosis bias, which is our blindness to evidence that contradicts our initial assessment of a person or situation.
We all diagnose when we encounter a person or a situation for the first time and “study after study shows we’re not very good at it”. And yet we cling to our initial assessment even in the face of contrary evidence.
The Brafmans bring fascinating examples of these tendencies and data that support the fact that they are by far the rule rather than the exception in human behavior.
If we know that we are subject to systematic and important influences in our assessment of individuals and situations, we owe it to ourselves and our fellow human beings to carefully consider our actions that will have an impact on others.
That not only adds weight to the argument for the inclusion of an Ethic of Reflection in any complete behavioral ethic but it also supports the primacy of the component we’ve called the Ethic of Restraint.
©Charles R. Lightner