[From Bill Powers (930413.1100)]
Dan Miller (930413.1200) --
I have always considered the insistence that behavior
is not important as having an unstated escape clause -
except when it is important. That is, it is true that
outcomes can be achieved through variable methods, but
there are many times that those behavioral methods are a
source of error - embarrassment, humiliation, deviance.
Some attention to behavior is common with reference signals
of group conformity, obedience, rule-following, accomodation,
or of not being embarrassed/humiliated a la Goffman.
The "importance" of behavior can be assessed from two points of
view: that of a third party looking at the behavior of one party
as it affects a second party, both outside the observer, or that
of the actor, for whom behavior is known ONLY as perception of
it. The observer in any case knows of behavior only in the form
of a perception, but in the first case it is part of a perceptual
model of the behavior of others, so the role of the observer's
own perceptions is somewhat concealed.
PCT constantly reminds us that our own behavior, the behavior of
others, and the behavior of objects in the world are known to us
only AFTER they have been created in our own perceptions by our
own perceptual systems. Forgetting this can lead to confusion in
applying the model. Remembering it reminds us always to evaluate
the behavior of another person from the point of view of that
person. When we see another person behaving, all we observe are
the movements of limbs, expressions on faces, sounds made by
voices. We do not see what the other person is primarily
concerned with: the perceptual effects of creating these visible
acts.
When we act to control our own perceptions, our acts (and their
effects) become perceptions in others, or disturbances of
perceptions. As the others act to oppose any disturbances we
cause, we perceive their actions as their "response" to our own
efforts at control. If those responses indicate that we have had
an unintended effect, we can become embarrassed or humiliated, or
conclude that we have not created the expected effect.
Embarrassment and humiliation are words describing the internal
states of the actor. They are names for kinds of error conditions
and the way we act internally when those conditions occur. To
understand them in PCT terms, we must get beneath the words to
the goals and errors that are implied, rather than simply
treating the emotion-label as the end of the quest. To say that
one is humiliated is to say that one is made humble; furthermore,
the implication is that feeling humble constitutes an error, a
difference from the way one intended to feel. To feel humiliated,
one must have wanted to feel in some different way -- the
opposite of humble. Perhaps -- triumphant? So humiliation reveals
a goal, and the frustration of attempts to reach that goal. The
complex of bodily states and that particular kind of error
relative to that kind of goal is what we sum up with the word
"humiliation."
So when one's behavior results in a humiliation (as we casually
put it), a great deal more than that is going on. Our attempts to
control certain perceptions result in actions from other people,
and our perception of the relationships between our control
behavior and their ensuing actions results in a large deviation
from some internal goal of our own, and a physiological reaction
accompanying that error. In the rather vague shorthand of verbal
communication, we say "I was humiliated by his reaction."
What is important is always perception and our attempts to
control it.
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Best,
Bill P.