Lessons Learned from Behavioral Science

Bennett Tittler, Ph.D.

My early formative experience involved training with Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif who helped bring the scientific method to the field of social psychology. Muzafer’s seminal study demonstrated how, in an ambiguous situation, people became increasingly susceptible to the influence of others. Influence tends to be enhanced by the influencing persons’ status and authority as well as by the group they are associated with. A person is most susceptible to influence if the other person is associated with one’s reference group, i.e., the group that one identifies with. The Sherifs built their work around concepts. A significant series of studies demonstrated how group differences can be bridged. The relevant concept was called super-ordinate goals. I participated in a summer camp experience based on this concept. I was a counselor in a camp comprised of a mix of Black and white campers and staff in about equal numbers. The camp was structured such that daily decisions and activities involved discussion and participation by everyone. The outcome was a rich experience of learning about and getting along with people from different backgrounds and attitudinal patterns.

The significance of social psychology to me was that it highlighted how much people are influenced by other people—to a greater degree than people tend to realize or admit. Ironically, within the field of psychology, there seems hardly any debate or discussion between the branch of psychology that emphasizes individual action and the branch that emphasizes social influence.

An important next step in my education involved training with Dr. Carl Whitaker at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. By then Carl had converted (or advanced) to the growing interest in working with whole families. To me, this looked like the synthesis of individual and social psychology. I did a co- therapy with Carl—actually an apprentice experience. He met our patient family at the office door but wouldn’t let them in because they had left one sibling home. He wanted to work with the whole family. Carl also promoted the idea that in order to develop as an individual one had to re-activate relationships with one’s original family.

One day I came in late to Whitaker’s seminar. He got out of his chair and handed me an article saying “I think you will find this interesting.” The paper was Murray Bowen’s article about his own family. After my year in Wisconsin was up I attended a conference at which both Whitaker and Bowen presented papers. I spoke with Carl during an intermission and he said “people say Bowen is dry and boring but every time I hear him he knocks my socks off.” Soon after that I took a college teaching job. I wrote Dr. Bowen about my interest in researching his theory and specifically about measuring differentiation of self. He wrote back a two page reply—essentially saying it isn’t so easy. Within a year I had joined his training program in Georgetown.

For my purposes here, the part of Bowen’s framework that is most central is the way that relationships and emotion impinge on clear thinking. Bowen used the term “subjectivity” a lot but I can’t recall his ever using the term “objectivity.” I surmise this is because “objectivity” is a relative term and is never fully achieved. Bowen’s theory provided, and still provides, a guideline for navigating the sea of emotionality that nature has given us. The other relevant corollary to his theory about emotion and human functioning involves the way society as a whole fluctuates in its ability to contain and regulate emotion.

From this perspective, one can see that the recent and current state of affairs in society has become increasingly emotionally charged. Thus subjectivity prevails and there is a relative loss of clarity concerning the discernment of facts and reality. Put simply, society becomes more anxious. And anxiety is very contagious.

I will try to summarize and draw some conclusions from this personal journey. We are all, by our very nature, emotional and subjective and influenced by others. Indeed, subjectivity can be a source of creativity and gratification. But we are particularly vulnerable to or in need of outside influence when we are faced with ambiguity and uncertainty. To the extent that we can distinguish between internal and external influences and maintain some sense of our individuality, life can be more manageable for us and for those we live among. My effort here is to document that there has been a good 85 years of behavioral science that can help explain what we are currently experiencing in society, and that understanding might even aid us in figuring how to deal with these times.