Controlling Behavior of Others

CSGnet Archive CSG2000
1

[From Rick Marken (2000.09.25.0840)]

Bill Curry (2000.09.25.0825 EDT)--

My thanks to Gary for his precision in pointing out that teachers
do not control the behavior of their students, only their
perception of those behaviors. I have been puzzled to see both
Bill and Rick refer to teachers as behavior controllers in the
former sense.

I've explained this a couple weeks ago but I'll try again.

The fact that teachers control _perceptions_ of student behavior
does not mean that the teachers do not actually control student
behavior. It means that there are many different _aspects_ or
_dimensions_ of student behavior that the teacher can control:
how much noise the student is producing, how much movement the
student is producing, whether the student has his nose in the
books, whether the student is hitting other students, etc.
Teachers can control some, all or none of these perceptions
of student behavior. But, in order to control any of these
_perceptions_ of student behavior the teacher must control
the aspects of the _actual behavior_ of the student that
correspond to these perceptions.

Try thinking of it in terms of a tracking task. In a tracking
task you control a perception of cursor behavior. What this
means is that you control some dimension on which the cursor
can vary: position, rate of change in position, orientation,
etc. In most of our tracking tasks you control only a perception
of the _position_ of the cursor. But this obviously doesn't
mean that you are not controlling the cursor. You have to control
the cursor -- the physical entity "out there" -- in order to
control your perception of its position. Similarly, a teacher
has to control the student -- the physical person "out
there" -- in order to control her perception of the student's
location, noise level, etc.

If you insist on believing that PCT says that people control
only their perceptions of behavior, not behavior itself, then
you would have to conclude that PCT says that Hitler was only
controlling his perception of the behavior of people going to
concentration camps, that Stalin was only controlling his
perception of people starving, etc. In fact, you would have
to conclude that people can not treat others ill _or_ well
because people deal only with their perceptions of others,
not really with others. This is a misconception about the PCT
model of behavior up with which I will not put.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
MindReadings.com mailto: marken@mindreadings.com
www.mindreadings.com

2

[From Rick Marken ((2000.09.25.1400)]

Bruce Gregory (2000.0925.1256)--

Consider the following experiment. You have a patch over one
eye and I ask you to bring your two index fingers into a
position in which they are pointing at each other separated
by a distance of two inches. When you carry out this request,
an observer notes that your fingers are offset by an inch
rather than being aligned. In this situation the observer
might note that you have aligned your perception of your
fingers, rather than your fingers. Noting, of course, that
with binocular vision accomplishing the former would also
accomplish the latter.

This is a pretty good demo. It makes exactly the point I have
been trying to make, namely, that control of perception means
control of particular perceptual _dimensions_ of reality.

In your demo the "reality" is the two index fingers and what
is controlled is the relative position of those fingers. When
asked to "bring your two index fingers into a position in
which they are pointing at each other, separated by a distance
of two inches" the person does this by moving the fingers so
that the 2 dimensional distance between the finger tips (the
distance perpendicular to the line of sight) appears to be
2 inches. The observer notes that the fingers are also offset
by one inch in a direction normal to the line of sight. So the
finger tips are actually 2.23 inches apart in 3 space. But it is
apparently not the 3 dimensional distance that is being
controlled (though this would require more testing involving
disturbance to the distance normal to the line of sight).

So there are _at least_ two different perceptual aspects of
the fingers that the subject might be controlling; 2 D distance
and 3 D distance between finger tips. The subject is controlling
one or another of these perceptual _dimensions_ of reality. Both
perceptions can only be controlled by controlling the "reality" of
the finger positions; but the perception (and, thus, the aspect
of reality) that is actually controlled is the _perceived_ 2D or
3D distance between the fingers.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
MindReadings.com mailto: marken@mindreadings.com
www.mindreadings.com