Part Two: How to Hope
Chapter 7: Positive Causal
Networks
Michael
A. Bishop’s 2015 book, The Good Life,
introduces a philosophically informed theory of positive psychology.[1] Bishop’s theory may also offer insights into
the virtue of hope, though Bishop did not intend that result. In this and the succeeding chapters, I will
pursue insights into hope based on Bishop’s theory.
“Positive
psychology” has been a growth industry for at least forty years, reflecting the
desire on the part of many mental health professionals to move from treating
illness to facilitating health. Rather
than concentrating on the dark side—neuroses, psychoses, debilitating
syndromes, etc.—positive psychologists want to understand the “light” side of
human mental functioning. Are there ways
for ordinary people to get better? Can
we be happier? More content? More productive? How can professional therapists help people
achieve their deepest aspirations?
The
idea is intuitively appealing, at least to some. So psychologists have produced thousands of
empirical studies that investigate one or more aspects of “well-being.” And they have discovered correlations, some
of which must represent causal connections, between behaviors, patterns of
thought, accomplishments, attitudes, perceptions, and emotions. Having discovered causal connections,
therapists are sometimes able to say, “Research shows that people who do x fairly
reliably experience y as a result. Since
you want more y in your life, I recommend you do x.”
A
concrete example: C.R. Snyder’s “hope theory” begins with an operational
definition of hope and then, having
conducted a great deal of empirical research on the basis of that definition,
suggests practical interventions by which therapists can help patients increase
their hope. Snyder’s research colleagues
have collected plenty of evidence that these interventions work, in the sense
that patients report improved life outcomes on a number of measures.[2]
It
should be stressed that Snyder’s hope theory is only one example among
many. Positive psychologists have
researched organizational leadership, creativity, marital success, physical
exercise, happiness, video game playing, generosity, workplace satisfaction,
and lots of other particulars.
According
to Bishop, the problem is that until now no one has proposed a good theory to
say what positive psychology is. What is it that all these empirical
researches actually study? His answer: “positive causal networks” or PCNs. Here is an illustration.
Many
runners report that running improves their mood, their creativity, and their
overall mental state. After much
experience running, runners have a well-founded belief that goes something like
this: “Even though the weather is nasty today and I’m tempted to skip my run, I
know I’ll feel better if I do it.” This
belief, or pattern of thought, obviously tends to keep the runner participating
in her running regimen. So there is a
feedback loop: running leads to feeling better; feeling better leads to a
pattern of thought; the pattern of thought leads to more running. As Bishop says, persons get “stuck” in a
causal network that improves their lives.
Positive
causal networks are usually much more complex than my example of running. Bishop lists four components to causal
networks: emotions, attitudes, traits, and accomplishments. Notice that my example, running, refers to a
“pattern of thought,” which may seem hard to fit into one of Bishop’s
components. Bishop might try to squeeze
“patterns of thought” into his structure (maybe such patterns contribute to
“attitudes”); more likely, he would admit that the components he names may not
be all there are. At several points in
his book, he stresses that he is offering an initial theory and would welcome
corrections. The key idea is that the
parts of a positive causal network (he calls these “PCN fragments”) reinforce
each other.
There
is plenty of evidence that positive causal networks are real, Bishop says. That is,
they exist in the world whether or not we understand them or pay attention to
them. To a limited degree, people have
long been aware of positive causal networks, before modern science began
exploring them in detail. Consider the
time-honored advice of parents: You say you want to do well in school? Very well, make friends with the good
students. Enjoy the activities they
enjoy. Copy their attitudes toward books
and schoolwork. Build more friendships
based on shared academic interests. And
so on. Your friendships will help you
develop the right attitudes and habits, the right attitudes and habits will
help you do well in school, and doing well in school will attract the right
kind of friends.
Bishop
says we should see a parallel here between positive causal networks and other
natural kinds, such as “water.”
Obviously, water was an important real thing in the world, though people
referred to it for thousands of years without knowing its chemical composition. When chemists discovered that water is H2O
they improved our understanding of water and enabled us to do things with water
that we were previously unable to do.
Bishop says that as psychologists gain better understanding of positive
causal networks they will enable us to improve our lives in various ways.
One
more example: people who are kind, generous, and considerate of others’
feelings tend to make friends. Having
friends tends to create pleasurable experiences. Having friends is a kind of personal
relationship that is highly valued in our society. Having pleasurable experiences that are at
the same time highly valued by society tends to make persons kind, generous,
and considerate of others’ feelings—and the cycle renews itself. Bishop says that much empirical research by
positive psychologists supports the conclusion that PCNs are “homeostatic
property clusters.” The emotions,
traits, attitudes, and accomplishments in such a property cluster tend to
reinforce each other, so the cluster tends to endure. Bishop points to empirical research that
indicates that people displaying a high degree of a positive trait, attitude,
emotion or accomplishment at time t1 will have (compared to those
who have a lower degree of that trait, attitude, emotion, or accomplishment) a
statistically significant greater chance of having a high degree of that trait,
attitude, emotion or accomplishment at time t2—even when t2 is years or decades after t1. Further, persons who have a higher degree of
one component of a PCN at time t1, say component c1, will
have a greater chance of having some other
component of the PCN, component c2, at time t2. Positive
causal networks are real and, as
homeostatic property clusters, they tend to endure. Positive
psychology research can teach us how to build and strengthen PCNs. According to Bishop, that’s what positive
psychologists are doing, and that’s
how they should conceptualize their
work.
In
succeeding chapters, I will use Bishop’s PCN theory to explore hope. First, in chapter 8, I will discuss the most
controversial aspect of PCN theory.
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