Dr. Ellen Langer

I know there was something that I came to many years ago that I think was far more important to me than most people who read about what I say in this regard.

But it's still, let me share that with you, which is the simple idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else the actor wouldn't do it.

Now, what that means is when you see me, let's say, as gullible, I'm not intending to be gullible.

What is it I'm intending?

Well, I'm trusting.

When I see you as inconsistent, you don't intend to be inconsistent.

what you're being is flexible.

And it turns out for every single negative description, there's an equally strong but oppositely valence.

For every positive, there's a negative, every negative.

Now, what that means is, to make it a little more sensible, nobody wakes up in the morning

and says, you know, today I'm going to be gullible, obnoxious, sloppy, whatever we call people.

So what is it that they're intending?

People don't realize that it made sense to them because they often engage in the action mindlessly.

So they don't know why they're doing what they're doing.

So if you say to me, Alan, you are so gullible, which I am.

And now I look back at my behavior the way you look.

My God, I can't believe that.

And I'm not going to be gullible anymore.

of course it's going to fail because going forward i'm not being gullible i'm being trusting so the point is if you want to get someone to change you have to address the behavior from the perspective in which they're engaging in you want me to stop being gullible you have to teach me to stop being trusting and my guess is then you wouldn't want to

So you can see how life would unfold very differently because as far as I can see, people are constantly evaluating each other, judging themselves, foregoing pleasures for fear of what somebody else might say and so on.