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Sets of dispositions (to actions)

B. Think of actions as resources
Or rather, think of DtoAs as resources for deciding plans and action on the fly; and not as just dormant plan/software libraries. Not large libraries, but small sets of alternatives, which are not at all fully fixed but are initial tendencies. Because the "libraries" are primarily decision-making resources, rather than action resources i.e. careful, complex, pre-planned actions.

C. Evolutionary functions vs. DtoAs
The usual "commonsense" view of instincts is that they correspond to one big function or purpose e.g. eating / self-protection / reproduction. But the DtoAs are smaller. We as theorists may "explain" them as contributing to joined up actions that deliver the big functions, but observations support DtoAs much better.

D. Analogue "planning" not digital.
Each disposition may have its own level of activation, and fight it out with the alternatives.

How likely we are to enact such a DtoA in our current situation varies, partly with whether other emotions are pushing in another direction (anger is often visibly balanced by fear). Furthermore, the detailed implementation (plan) varies according to situation too (will I strike them, throw things at them, try to recruit supporters for a joint attack, think of something really hurtful to say, ....). And after that, we may start to think about the cost of each action: but the preliminary shape of our response was determined very quickly, but very roughly, by these ready-made small sets of dispositions to action.

The idea of a set of DtoAs is similar to Konrad Lorenz's view of instincts in ch.6 of On Aggression. This chapter was about the ways an animal's set of instincts can interact with each other. Furthermore that each such instinct has some degree of autonomous force. And they may counteract each other; or in displacement activities, the "force" of one drive may get expressed in a dysfunctional way e.g. you have a bad day at work and are angry with your boss, then take it out by snapping at your family and friends.

This suggests that in animals, including humans, planning is analogue not digital; and amounts to quantitative balance, not exact pre-planning of action.

E. The real heart of this web page is a shift in perspective

• Emotions are not primarily feelings but generic action types.
• Think of actions as resources, not fully prepared action plans.
• They are not libraries of fixed action sequences like software subroutines, but resources for planning.
• Consider the large variations in specific actions still to be decided by the person and explained by theorist in much of human behaviour.

Once this perspective is adopted, then you may start to notice that a number of apparently quite separate areas of psychology can also be seen as sets of dispositions to action. This page explores this little thought. There are several different sets, quite different in their origins, that have in common that they are sets of dispositions to action.

• Konrad Lorenz's account of the five standard actions young ravens apply.
• Emotions
• Stages of grieving
• The five personality dimensions

Ravens' sequence of actions

The observation as I remember it was that young ravens generally follow a fixed sequence of responses when a new, strange object appears or is found by them.

• First they hide from it.
• Then they attack it.
• Then they play with it
• Then they try to eat it.

The lesson that has remained with me is of creatures who learn about objects through a fixed set of actions which yield information as well as, occasionally, material rewards. Affordances cannot always be perceived directly; sometimes they can only be learned through interaction (play, exploration).

Emotions

• Disgust: disposed to physically reject by moving away, vomiting, shunning; avoid all touching. (But not to move far; and to move the face away first, the whole body less far.)
• Contempt: (the social version of disgust): the disposition towards the person who is the object of your contempt, that you despise, do not value them.
• Joy: disposed to be excited, full of energy, but without any particular purposeful action.
• Sadness: disposed to be quiet, not to act, show little inclination to action of any kind. Be inert.
• Surprise: disposed to startle, to be very alert and seek more information; but not to move much. (The opposite of being bored, and disinclined to pay attention to any one thing.)
• Anger: disposed to attack and hurt the person or thing. Run towards or throw things at.
• Fear: disposed to flee, avoid, hide from, seek shelter from the person or thing. Run away.

Grieving

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Despair
• Acceptance

These are all attitudes that dictate types of action, or predispose toward one type. The fact that typically a person does not move through these in a strict and predictable sequence only reinforces the realisation that they are possible types of action, not part of a fixed, rational plan.

Personality

1. Openness ↔ traditional thinker.
   Progressive ↔ traditional thinker
   High value for imagination ↔ high value for experience.
   Choose action on what can create a better future OR based on the past only.

2. Conscientiousness ↔ Irresponsible.
   High impulse control ↔ low impulse control.
   Attention to external measures of achievement ↔ attention to internal (personal) measures.
   Doing what was asked of you ↔ doing what seems actually best to you.

3. Agreeableness: Cares a lot about pleasing others ↔ indifferent to displeasing others.

4. Extraversion ↔ Intraversion.
   Roughly: highly sociable ↔ small appetite for socialising.
   Prefers interaction with people, even if only for its own sake.
   (Perhaps) Keen to align / synchronise with others' actions ↔ prefers solo activity.
   Or perhaps: Driven by external cues from others ↔ driven by internal needs and goals.

5. "Neuroticism": Easily worried ↔ Calm, hard to upset.

Catastrophisation

• Fear: Traditional "catastrophisation": the person assumes the worst possible interpretation, thus justifying being fearful of it.
• Sadness: interprets the event as bad; despair, hopelessness; "We're all doomed! Doomed!".
• Contempt: cynicism. The person assumes the interpretation of an event is evidence of despicable actions by others. Contempt is the social version of disgust for objects.
• Disgust: similar. But turning away from things and people. An interpretation of an event as justifying your abandoning something.
• Anger: interprets the event as something to be angry about; "blame culture".
• Joy: disposed to be excited, full of energy, but without any particular purposeful action.
• Surprise: It's all so important! Amazing! "Wow" as the default reaction to any event.

Not alternative dispositions, but stages

This is similar to CBT -- cognitive behavioural therapy. The therapy and the client must tackle and change both the cognitions (thoughts) and the behaviours; and contrary to what was commonly thought, these are not alternative therapies.

Most human action is under-determined

Over-determination   Freud noted, however, that the really big things in life such as choosing whom you marry, what house you will live in, what job/career you will pursue are done for multiple reasons (are "over-determined"), so that if one of those reasons later fails, it may very well not mean changing that decision. Such actions are selected AND performed for multiple strong reasons.

Under-determination   But a different observation we should note is that a lot of human action is under-determined: that knowing why a person is doing an action, often (usually) gets nowhere near letting you predict exactly what they do. I need to get to work most days: that is why I do the journey. But I might choose my method of travel to get some exercise, to pass through a green space, to be able to chat to my friend regularly by sharing the mode of transport (even if it isn't the very quickest way for me to travel). And this is just one tiny example of the under-determination of human actions by understanding only the main goal of the action.

To execute most actions entails taking many more decisions about methods which are not determined by the main goal. This is both a fact about planning in general, and a psychological fact about how human planning seems to work, and a fact about how human behaviour has so much variability in it.

Just some of the main types of under-determination of human actions

• Speed vs. error rate
  The great majority of tasks we set ourselves do not have a fixed timescale nor error rate. Generally, speed and error rate are inversely proportional for a given task, so a choice is somehow made. See this section for a dramatic example of a 4-fold increase in worker speed. But also consider how differently you do a task when trying to go as fast as possible, vs. to avoid errors as much as possible. This is also strongly related to the effect of others' expectations as in the Pygmalion effect of school teachers' expectations on actual pupil performance. Knowing what is to be done often has little to tell you about how it will be done.

• Which disposition-to-action is selected given the initially available information? (See "catastrophisation" above.) Even what is to be done may vary depending not on objective facts about the situation but on major differences in how the actor initially perceived the situation.

• All actions have multiple effects, and you may (or may not) select a particular action (from a set of all the actions that all achieve the intended effect) on the basis of gaining or avoiding secondary (i.e. not primarily intended) effects.
• All human actions have two main types of effect: those that change the state of the material world; and those that change (increase) what the actor knows. Normally we either do an action for the material effect and neglect the fact that we will learn something (get better at the skill, and perhaps also perceive something while doing it); or do an action to see what happens (i.e. learn some new fact) and ignore the fact that we also wear out shoes looking over the hill or round the corner; get tired, strain our eyes, and spend a whole day when reading a book in order to learn something.
• Roles. What people do, and how they do it, are strongly affected by the role they adopt and display, not only by their private goals. If you don't know what role they are playing, you are unlikely to be able to predict or understand their actions. This is true in the work place; in how parents behave with their families; and just as much in how players behave in video games, where their adopted character frequently changes their behaviour greatly. [Read Goffman on roles, and particularly on his concept of "role distance".]

Tony Clear's work

Tony Clear has proposed that "collective empathy" is a skill or ability which is highly desirable in a Software Engineer working in a team (as most programmers do outside the amateur world). He has worked out how to specify this in the language of current educational curriculum specs. In that language: Competencies = {Knowledge + Skills + Dispositions} in the context of a Task. Furthermore he suggested that empathy might have three aspects: {cognitive, affective, behavioural}. This work is partly expressed in a 2024 paper: Computing Competencies, Dispositions and the Affective Taxonomy: More Work Still to Do?

So this page is not only some notes on concepts, and how some concepts are linked philosophically and conceptually to other concepts normally thought of differently, but may well be a contribution to ideas and concepts of practical technical importance in education.

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