Cognitive Association, Direct Way of Influencing Behaviors
Behaviors are people’s reactions of their surroundings based on information from that particular environment, their principles of dealing with different situations, and their perceptions of the world. These principles and perceptions are constructed through one’s former experiences, such as family backgrounds, childhoods, school educations, and maybe some genetic issues that have certain impact on the psychological construction of a person. Cognitive associations and physical surroundings, in this case, are both the significant and indispensable components responsible for individual’s behaviors; however, they play different roles during the interactions with others. In “The Power of …show more content…
So, how do the changes of environments make the characters seemingly unstable? Gladwell simplifies this relationship and elaborates that “character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context” (160). However, instead of being constructed by less connective habits, tendencies, and interests, the characters are the results of threat analysis, constantly in a rational person’s character, that helps one to make final decisions in the mind and represent the results in his/her behaviors. For instance, in the shooting case of Goetz, he inevitably ends up in violent situations in several ways. Firstly, when Goetz dealt with his family background, he chose to bear his father’s rage, according to the threat analysis as a child, because there would be a possible abuse waiting for him. There might be less threat for him at that time to bear these behaviors. Then, with the continuous bearing, he chose not to fight against the tease from his classmates. As he escaped from dealing with these situations, there were less space leave for him in his living environment, which again slightly become a threat for him. In this case, when he decided to pull a gun out of his pocket, this behavior was resulted from the stable cognitive process in his mind of choosing the ones that had less threat to him. One might argue that, in an immediate context, one person could not clearly analyze the threats and benefits in his mind to guide his/her behaviors. Gladwell makes a similar argument that “the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions than immediate context of your behavior” (161). In an immediate context, the role of environment is an important piece of information in the
Behaviors are people’s reactions of their surroundings based on information from that particular environment, their principles of dealing with different situations, and their perceptions of the world. These principles and perceptions are constructed through one’s former experiences, such as family backgrounds, childhoods, school educations, and maybe some genetic issues that have certain impact on the psychological construction of a person. Cognitive associations and physical surroundings, in this case, are both the significant and indispensable components responsible for individual’s behaviors; however, they play different roles during the interactions with others. In “The Power of …show more content…
So, how do the changes of environments make the characters seemingly unstable? Gladwell simplifies this relationship and elaborates that “character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context” (160). However, instead of being constructed by less connective habits, tendencies, and interests, the characters are the results of threat analysis, constantly in a rational person’s character, that helps one to make final decisions in the mind and represent the results in his/her behaviors. For instance, in the shooting case of Goetz, he inevitably ends up in violent situations in several ways. Firstly, when Goetz dealt with his family background, he chose to bear his father’s rage, according to the threat analysis as a child, because there would be a possible abuse waiting for him. There might be less threat for him at that time to bear these behaviors. Then, with the continuous bearing, he chose not to fight against the tease from his classmates. As he escaped from dealing with these situations, there were less space leave for him in his living environment, which again slightly become a threat for him. In this case, when he decided to pull a gun out of his pocket, this behavior was resulted from the stable cognitive process in his mind of choosing the ones that had less threat to him. One might argue that, in an immediate context, one person could not clearly analyze the threats and benefits in his mind to guide his/her behaviors. Gladwell makes a similar argument that “the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions than immediate context of your behavior” (161). In an immediate context, the role of environment is an important piece of information in the