What Influences Our Views of Agency?
August 29th, 2010[C. Eric Jones, Ph.D. is our guest blogger for the month of August, and this is his fifth post. Eric is the Director of Undergraduate Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at the Regent University School of Psychology and Counseling]
In the final post of August I would like to draw attention to the Society for Christian Psychology conference held in September and its topic of human agency. Perhaps the take home message of social psychology is that most of us underestimate greatly the power of social situations to influence our thoughts and behaviors. We like to think (especially Americans!) we are the masters of our destiny, we can decide what we like, we are true individuals. Social psychology has numerous effects across hundreds of studies that show how wrong we are about our ability to control our social thoughts and behaviors. In fact, some of the classics of the field seem to represent our misunderstanding of our personal agency. For example, the original Milgram shock studies and the later replications suggest we will be obedient to the point of harming others. Rarely do any of us admit we would do such a thing before hearing the results of the study. When I ask students in class before revealing the results, most think less than 10% of people would go beyond moderate levels of shock when the study showed a clear majority did. The helping research by Latané and Darley also force us to consider situational forces that may influence our actions or inaction. The most counterintuitive finding from that line of research may have been that as the number of people present at the site of an emergency increases, the likelihood any person will help actually decreases. Scores of studies point out our personal ignorance concerning the external influences on our social thoughts and behaviors.
So what does all of this have to do with human agency? Let me suggest these findings provide an opportunity to ask ourselves whether our view of human agency is more informed by our collective culture here in the U.S. or more informed by our Christian theology. Said another way, is a Christian view of human agency closer to the message of social psychology or closer to my personal view of human agency? I have argued in previous posts that social psychology provides a somewhat inaccurate view of social thought and behavior because so many social psychologists begin with naturalistic assumptions about people, which I consider to be faulty. Even with problematic starting points, is it possible social psychology may be able to inform us about some serious flaws in our personal views about human agency? Have we conferred on ourselves unjustified levels of volition? I am not arguing social psychology is fully correct on the question of human agency as many social psychologists assume there is no such thing. However, it may serve us well to evaluate our views on the issue. Our view of agency is central to most everything we “choose” to do or “choose” not to do. If we are unclear of what we think or if our view differs from a mainstream Christian view of agency, we should begin rethinking. Below are some questions for us to consider individually and to respond to here on the blog.
1. Can I articulate my personal view of human agency?
2. Can I articulate a dominant cultural view of human agency?
3. Can I articulate a Christian view of human agency and provide Scriptural or theological support?
4. Is my personal view closer to a cultural view or a Christian view?
5. In what ways does my view and a Christian view differ?
I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this matter and if you would like to be involved in similar discussions, check out the conference information here on the site and join us in three weeks to hear some great talks and enjoy engaging discussions about human agency.
