by Steve Rose | Aug 23, 2015 | Identity, Purpose, and Belonging
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As a sociologist, I have been interested in what makes up our social needs. Although we have basic psychological and biological needs, our social needs are often neglected in the modern individualistic world.
What are our social needs?
As described in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, our social needs are of the need for love and belonging. The need for love and belonging consists of a sense of connection, intimacy, trust, and friendship.
When these social needs are fulfilled, we feel a sense of well-being. When these needs are not met, it can cause suffering and despair.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, you can check out my resource page for suggestions on how to find help.
Let’s take a closer look at why our social needs are important and how these needs can be fulfilled.
Why Social Needs are Important
Human beings have social needs that are just as important as our biological need for food.
Just as we may risk death by starvation if we stop eating, those whose social needs are not met may find themselves at risk of a form of extreme emotional pain that leads to thoughts of suicide.
If we want to understand human thriving, the social component is essential.
According to an 80 year long Harvard study that followed a group of individuals since their college years, the quality of our close social relations is the best predictor of health and happiness:
…people’s level of satisfaction with their relationships at age 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were.
In a TED Talk on the study, Robert Waldinger emphasizes the dangers of social isolation, stating:
Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.
This situation is all the more concerning, given the increasing rates of social isolation in affluent societies, particularly among the aging population.
Modern conveniences allow us to live more independently than ever, but we need to consider the costs to our mental and physical health. We need to consider the health of our communities.
What Happens When Our Social Needs are Unmet?
Let’s do a recap on a definition of social needs. Although Maslow used the words “love and belonging,” I prefer to use a more specific definition.
Here is my sociological definition of our fundamental social need:
It is the need for a perceived sense of personal significance, achieved through a perceived sense of both social belonging and social contribution.
See the resources section below for a list of studies that have formed the empirical foundation for this theory of social needs.
When our social needs are not met, and our sense of personal significance is threatened, we compensate through fight or flight responses in an attempt to restore or escape our lost sense of significance.
Fight responses include displays of superiority and displays of power. Demonstrations of superiority include harnessing status symbols or sabotaging others, and displays of power include aggressive attempts to control or manipulate others. Flight responses include social withdrawal.
Social withdrawal is dangerous because it further diminishes the likelihood of having our social needs met, increasing the risk of suicide.
In Why People Die by Suicide, Thomas Joiner describes how intense emotional pain often comes from a perceived lack of belonging, in addition to feeling like a burden. Thwarted belonging is characterized by the statement, “I am alone.”
Thwarted belonging has two aspects: loneliness as the result of feeling disconnected from others (living alone, single, no children, etc.), and the absence of reciprocal care (family conflict, loss through death, divorce, domestic or child abuse, etc.).
As Jean Vanier states:
“To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unlovable. Loneliness is a taste of death.”
Humans are social beings and social isolation is a form of torture. Social isolation and extreme loneliness are different than merely being alone or enjoying time to oneself.
It is a profound sense of disconnection, usually marked by shame and hopelessness about one’s ability to reconnect.
To read more about the experience of isolation contributing to suicide risk, you can check out my article, Inside the Mind of a Suicidal Person.
What Happens When Our Social Needs are Fulfilled?
When our sense of significance is fulfilled, we experience a high degree of subjective well-being, feel a strong sense of identity, belonging, interpersonal connection, social support, and maintain the sense that our efforts are contributing to a cause beyond ourselves.
Classical sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies describes the joy of community when he states that man is “his best and happiest when he is surrounded by his family and his own circle.”
In my research on veterans in transition to civilian life, this had been a common theme. Many experienced a strong sense of community in the military, fulfilling their social needs. As one veteran states:
Bullets don’t discriminate, so watching each other’s back was an unwritten rule. Everything was everyone’s and for that moment in your life it’s true communal living.
It is not coincidental that Maslow’s definition of self-actualization aligns with the Army slogan, “Be all you can be.”
Human beings are inherently social creatures and can only become the best version of ourselves when we are in communion with others. The classic sociologist, Émile Durkheim coined the concept of “homo duplex” to describes our dual nature as both individual and social:
Far from being simple, our inner life has something like a double centre of gravity. On the one hand is our individuality … On the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves. Not only are these two groups of states of consciousness different in their origins and their properties, but there is a true antagonism between them.
As Matthew D. Lieberman states in his book, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect:
“socially connected will be a lifelong need, like food and warmth.”
He goes on to state:
“Living for others [is] such a relief from the impossible task of trying to satisfy oneself.”
We are social beings by nature and find a great deal of purpose in living in service of others.
Conclusion
Our social needs are fundamental when it comes to living a good life.
We need a perceived sense of personal significance, achieved through a perceived sense of both social belonging and social contribution.
If you are interested in reading more about our social needs, you can check out my article, The Need to be Needed.
by Steve Rose | Jan 20, 2015 | Identity, Purpose, and Belonging
As our modern times become ever-more chaotic, the fear of loneliness and uncertainty becomes an increasingly prominent feature in our life.
Moral certainties have turned into lines drawn in the sand and community is washed away by the waves of individualism, clearing the slate for us to write and write our own life stories.
Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, the superiority of the church eroded, neighborhoods turned into sterile suburban refuges, and the nuclear family gave way to a plethora of novel household possibilities.
We are now free from Rousseau’s chains of tradition. We are born free and we will live free.
No longer dominated by the church, we are free to further science. No longer confined to a traditional family, we are free to form households that better fit with our unique desires.
Free from moral certitudes, our desires burst into infinity. We explore the dark corners of our subjectivity, experiment with our bodies, and seek self-identity in a multitude of fleeting social groups.
Life has exploded with complexity, yet, our fundamental desire remains the same; we just want to be happy. But now, more than ever, happiness does not bring certainty, just as certainty does not bring happiness.
We have become artists of our own lines in the sand. Amidst the tides of modernity, we are tasked with redrawing ourselves again and again, but we need to remember that we can’t do it alone.
Uncertain CommunityÂ
As the late Marina Keegan describes this in her book The Opposite of Loneliness,
“It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team… Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers – partnerless, tired, awake.â€
Unlike traditional community life, modern community is something we are responsible for forging ourselves. We find a fleeting sense of community life in our hobbies, memberships, and casual associations.
Community is ever-more fluid. Like joining a gym, you find yourself surrounded by the same people for a little while, only to find a new rotation of members the following year.
But even in these fleeting communities, if we are lucky, we can find a sense of meaning. As Marina Keegan states, “an abundance of people who are in this together”.
Uncertain Love
As our modern times become ever-more chaotic, the fear of being alone becomes an increasingly prominent feature in our life.
In The Normal Chaos of Love, Sociologists Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim explore how romantic love is both a bastion of uncertainty, and a place of refuge. Love itself has become increasingly chaotic in modern times with the loss of clear-cut courtship rituals.
In this age of uncertainty we are primarily driven to find and hold onto romantic love out of a fear of loneliness in a world lacking communal bonds.
In the absence of meaning, we seek fulfillment in a romantic partner. According to Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim:
Some powerful force has pushed its way in and filled up the gap where, according to previous generations, God, country, class, politics or family were supposed to hold sway. I am what matters: I, and You as my assistant; and if not You then some other You.
Seeking love in the intensity of Eros should not be equated with fulfillment, states Beck:
That is its glowing side, the physical thrill…. How easily having one’s hopes fulfilled can turn into a chilly gaze! Were only a moment ago overwhelming urgency made a knotted tangle of two walking taboos, merging me and you, all boundaries gone, now we are staring at one another with critical eyes, rather like meat inspectors, or even butchers who see the sausages where others see cattle and pigs.
Released from traditional norms, our desire to seek fulfillment in a loving relationship because “other social bonds seem too tenuous and unreliable.â€
As this desire grows with increasing individualization, its fulfillment is more difficult to attain amidst the ever-growing emphasis on the thrill of Eros.
Expanding on Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim’s characterization of love as a means to peruse, a happy “life of one’s own†in our culture of “do-it-yourself lifestyles,â€
He goes on, in The Art of Love, to state that humans are in search of a lost union with nature. We have developed large brains, giving us a high degree of self-consciousness and awareness of our own mortality. This creates an existential need for meaning in our lives which was the source of religious life. In modern times, market capitalism took the place of religion as the central organizing force:
“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature.â€
Just like uncertain market forces, love has become a normal chaos. Dating apps give us powerful technological tools to market ourselves to potential partners. Hookup culture has been institutionalized and fire of eros burns bright.
We are liberated from the shackles of tradition, able to peruse our unique passions in places forbidden by fading taboos. But In order to balance the potentially lonely price of freedom, we need to find meaning in Agape – a form of altruistic love that requires commitment and ongoing effort.
Kahlil Gibran said, “work is love made visible;†but love is also work made visible.
Eros without agape is lustful, while agape without Eros is ascetic. Romantic love requires the fiery passion of Eros, but amidst the institutionalized chaos of contemporary life, we must not lose sight of loyalty and commitment.
When Eros and Agape come together, Self-fulfillment is a byproduct of self-giving; not in the form of submission or domination, but as equals who respect one another and genuinely care for each other’s well-being.
This way, love can weather the darkest of life’s storms, giving refuge to those who seek solace amidst the chaos.
Uncertainty in the Professional World
Traditionally, transitions throughout the life-course have been guided by clear social expectations or rites of passage. These expectations still exist but are not nearly as clear-cut as they once were.
A post-secondary student is often expected to seek employment and an eventual marital partner after graduation, but unlike the times of highly gendered courtship rituals and readily available local careers, there are often no clear paths to follow in the transition from studenthood to professional life.
Rather than a handful of job offers, many recent graduates are forced to get creative, volunteering, moving away, or picking up applied skills with extra college courses. The strict codes of conduct that guided the life-course have been reduced to a single moral imperative: to offer value to society without harming others. This is the imperative of modern liberalism.
Modern liberalism is a double-edged sword. Its benefit is that it allows for greater social mobility, equality between diverse lifestyles, and a wider array of opportunities for individuals to pursue their unique passions. This is the modern idea of the ‘life-project’. The catch is that this modern project lacks a clear template.
As long as the individual does not pose too much of a risk to others, they will have an infinite number of opportunities to restart or change paths. This can seem quite liberating compared to the traditional one-size-fits-all life-template. Although it is liberating, the drawback is that individuals are tasked with the responsibility to figure out the direction of their project on their own, without being prepared to take on this responsibility.
Each generation experiences a gap between themselves and their parents. Just as the baby boomers experienced a significant change from the courtship expectations of their parents, children of the baby boomers are experiencing their key distinction in the transition to the work world.
The traditional school-system taught this generation’s children and adolescents that is they follow rules and perform well on tests, everything will be okay – but this is far from the case in today’s entrepreneurial economy where the rules are minimum, factual knowledge is readily accessible by simple Google searches, and success is strictly measured by the amount of value you can offer an organization.
Rather than the ability to memorize factual knowledge and follow rules, creativity and the ability to put knowledge to work are the prized possessions in today’s work world.
There is a gap between what is required to succeed in the professional world and what is taught in elementary school, high-school, and even many university programs.
The ability to sit attentively through lectures and memorize facts for an exam are not the skills we should be instilling in a generation whose major challenge is finding a creative way to offer value. The professional world requires more than obedient automatons who can regurgitate a benign set of facts they will shortly forget after an exam.
I very frequently encounter students in the social sciences struggling with the idea of writing an essay based on their own analysis of a problem. Far too many students are deeply uncomfortable coming up with an innovative idea – even in their final years of university. Today’s professional world requires innovators and problem-solvers, people who know how to use knowledge to make a positive change.
In the wake of large-scale economic uncertainty, education at all levels needs to support the new imperative to creatively offer value by taking responsibility for one’s individual life-project.
ConclusionÂ
Finding meaning in our uncertain modern times requires accepting the uncertainty and finding creative solutions to life’s problems.
It requires taking responsibility for our lives, forging a sense of community, and making ourselves useful, amidst an ever-changing economic landscape.
Although the chaotic nature of modern life is not our individual responsibility, we are still responsible for building our own sense of meaning and purpose.
If you would like to read more about building a sense of purpose, you can check out my article: What Does It Mean to Have a Purpose?
by Steve Rose | Dec 21, 2014 | Suicide and Mental Health
Suicide is often thought of as an individual problem.
The field of psychology has advanced our understanding of why people die by suicide and has contributed valuable insights into its treatment, but it can be limiting when emphasizing the individual at the expense of their broader social realm.
The problem with only viewing suicide as an individual problem is that we neglect the importance of social forces contributing to suicide.
So how is suicide a social problem?
The risk of suicide in a population increases when the social context fails to provide a healthy sense of purpose and belonging, contributing to an individual’s sense of contribution and connection.
What Sociology Says About Suicide
In his classic sociological text, Suicide, Durkheim develops a typology of suicide based on the concepts of ‘social integration’, and ‘moral regulation’. He identifies four different types of suicide: altruistic (high integration), egoistic (low integration), fatalistic (high regulation), and anomic (low regulation).
Altruistic suicide results from a very high level of integration into one’s social context; Durkheim gives the example of religious sacrifices, but suicide-bombers are a contemporary version of this.
Being so highly integrated, the individual’s own personal aims are completely aligned with those of their social group to the point of self-sacrifice. Although there is a moral distinction between various types of altruistic suicide, Durkheim used the word ‘altruism’ to describe group integration which differs from its popular use to denote acts of normative moral goodness.
Egoistic suicide results from a very low degree of social integration. Durkheim found that this type of suicide was common among the most educated populations in his day.
These populations were more prone to social disintegration because the higher levels of critical thinking lead to lower levels of tradition which promoted common beliefs and practices that bind people together.
Fatalistic suicide is a concept briefly mentioned in a footnote of Durkheim’s text, referring to suicide that results from a very high degree of social regulation (e.g. prison or slavery).
For some reason, Durkheim lists “young husbands” as being at risk of this type of suicide – but this is one of his more theoretical statements, lacking empirical support in the text.
Anomic suicide results from a very low degree of social regulation. Durkheim gives examples of large-scale social transitions such as revolutions or economic chaos in the market.
The fundamental issue causing this type of suicide is the loss of a guiding morality or a meaningful sense of purpose. This form of suicide is common in wealthy societies.
Suicide in Wealthy Societies
Anomic suicide is most common among developed capitalist nations where wealth is abundant. Durkheim states:
“…those who suffer most are not those who kill themselves most. It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.”
When the central guiding force in our lives is the pursuit of material luxury, it becomes a bottomless pit requiring ever-more stimulation. As Durkheim states:
“Unlimited desires are insatiable by definition and insatiability is rightly considered a sign of morbidity. Being unlimited, they constantly and infinitely surpass the means at their command; they cannot be quenched. Inextinguishable thirst is constantly renewed torture…”
Viktor Frankl echoes this sentiment when he states:
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
And according to Frankl, suffering without meaning is what leads to despair.
In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris makes a similar statement:
“Today’s middle class lives better than did the Royalty of not so long ago, and yet humans today don’t seem very happy.”
Chasing pleasurable feelings distracts us from meaningful pursuits and long-term goals, keeping us on the hedonic treadmill. Western ‘feel-good’ consumer culture fuels this problem with its quick-fix ideology of pain-free solutions. One only needs to take a look at the ridiculous workout equipment produced over the years to get the idea (“Take the work out of your workout… If you can sit, you can get fit” – The Hawaii Chair)
The Happiness Trap is based on two opposing concepts of happiness: short term pleasures (hedonic), and meaningful fulfillment (the good life). Too much focus on the hedonic pain-avoiding route prevents individuals from attaining deeper fulfillment since the latter form of happiness requires a degree of suffering and limitation on one’s impulsive desires.
Durkheim’s concept of fulfilling happiness occurs when the individual is in a state of sufficient social regulation, whereby the social role places limits on an individual’s individual aspirations. Contrary to Karl Marx, Durkheim argues that economic class categorizations can actually contribute to individual happiness and social harmony:
“This relative limitation and the moderation it involves, make men contented with their lot while stimulating them moderately to improve it; and this average contentment causes the feeling of calm, active happiness, the pleasure in existing and living which characterizes health for societies as well as for individuals.”
This leads Durkheim to a conclusion resembling the contemporary maxim that happiness is not about getting what you want, but about wanting what you have.
It is not economic class that provides this happiness in individuals, but the regulatory force it provides. Similar regulatory forces can be found in the family, as well as one’s specific occupational role.
The key is that 1) the individual feels a sense of fair compensation for their labor, and 2) that their labor is contributing to the collective. Without these elements, social regulation disintegrates into chaos or the despair of detachment from collective life.
This despair of detachment from collective life is most evident among veterans transitioning out of the military.
Suicide Among Veterans in Transition
As described in my massive article on transitional stress, a veteran’s sense of what matters in life may be uprooted during the transition.
In the memoir, Unspoken Abandonment, Bryan Wood writes the following lines regarding the conversations of his civilian co-workers:
“I couldn’t believe the kind of silly bullshit these people thought mattered in life… I couldn’t believe I once thought these same things were important.”
Upon sharing some of my earlier writing on this topic on r/veterans, exgiexpcv responded:
“…you’re used to doing things that mattered, and suddenly your life is simply digesting bullshit and consuming instead…”
As a Canadian veteran told me:
“I don’t necessarily miss being blown up and shot at, but you miss the purpose that comes with the combat.”
In an article called What Vets Miss Most Is What Most Civilians Fear: A Regimented, Cohesive Network That Always Checks On You, the author states:
The truth is that I had never been in such a supportive social environment in my life.… when Veterans leave military service, many of them, like me, are leaving the most cohesive and helpful social network they’ve ever experienced. And that hurts. Most recent Veterans aren’t suffering because they remember what was bad. They’re suffering because they miss what was good.
A comment below the article expands on this sentiment in terms of the concept of ‘trust’: “Veterans mostly miss bonds built on trust, demonstrated through actions not just words.” The experience of this demonstration beyond words can be witnessed in the following lines from the book, Memoirs of an Outlaw: Life in the Sandbox:
“We had relied on one another to have our backs and would have given our lives to protect the others. We had built a relationship that was stronger than just rank: we were a family, a brotherhood, sewn together by trust, respect, blood, tears, and sweat. Everything we had built together was slowly being torn apart.”
Training instills this commitment to the group, evidence of this commitment solidifies it, and the transition to civilian life can tear it apart.
The social cause of suicide is the macro-level we need to consider when trying to uncover reasons why certain populations experience higher rates of suicide. On the individual level, intense mental pain may be a fundamental driver of suicide.
Interpersonally, this pain may be the product of thwarted belonging, a sense of burdensomeness, and hopelessness about this situation. This interpersonal situation may be the product of broader social realities; for example, the lack of institutional support during social transitions has the potential to radically uproot individuals from a sense of social solidarity.
Suicide and the Sacred
In the book Suicide, Durkheim describes the function of the ‘sacred’ as an ideal that binds individuals together into moral communities; he states:
“It’s object is to raise man above himself and to make him lead a life superior to that which he would lead, if he followed only his own individual whims.”
Moral communities provide individuals with a sense of purpose by giving them a cause to serve outside themselves.
As described in the previous section, in his memoir, Unspoken Abandonment, Bryan A. Wood states how this sense of service assisted his recovery after leaving the military.
Bryan found himself unable to connect with friends whose infuriating black and white view of the war drove a wedge between them. At work, he could no longer derive a sense of purpose from the office job he had once held:
“I started looking through the work files…trying to find a purpose to any of them. Strangely, I could not find a single one that seemed to matter.”
After witnessing the profound tragedy of war, Bryan’s sense of what mattered in life was uprooted. Referring to the conversations of co-workers he states:
“I couldn’t believe the kind of silly bullshit these people thought mattered in life… I couldn’t believe I once thought these same things were important.”
After a few years of feeling isolated and battling post-traumatic stress, Bryan received advice from a friend that would begin his healing process:
“If you try to do only for yourself, you’ll only get so far in life. If you reach out to touch other people, you can fix your own soul.”
‘Service’ is the outward manifestation of moral purpose provided by a sacred ideal. The military provides a high degree of moral purpose, leaving veterans vulnerable to feel lost and apathetic in civilian life.
A high degree of responsibility for one’s comrades, guided by the sacred ideal of public service, instills a strong sense of meaning and purpose for individuals in the military community, potentially leading to problems when transitioning to civilian life. An individual I interviewed stated:
“We want to serve, that’s our mantra… a lot of guys will join the paramedics, police, or fire-department, because they want to be in that position of service to other people… that’s who we are.”
Durkheim (1933) explains this sense of service as the following:
“…for the sentiment of duty to be fixed strongly in us, the circumstances in which we live must keep us awake.”
When the circumstances that keep one awake to a life of duty fades, one is thrown into a world of sleepwalkers; or as Durkheim states:
“When community becomes foreign to the individual, he becomes a mystery to himself, unable to escape the exasperating and agonizing question: to what purpose?”
Reducing suicide rates among veterans needs to go beyond individual counseling. It requires creating opportunities for veterans to regain a sense of purpose through the sacred bonds of communal life.
The first aspect of facilitating this sense of community requires governments to uphold their sacred obligation to veterans, demonstrating a degree of warmth, care, and timely access to necessary benefits and services.
The second aspect consists of creating opportunities for veterans to apply their skills in civilian life, regaining a sense of contribution to a common cause.
Conclusion
Suicide is a social problem that concerns us all. Individual treatment is necessary, but it is not sufficient to solve the problem.
Trying to solve the problem in a narrowly individualistic way is like continuing to mop the floor when the sink is overflowing and the water is still running.
Sociological solutions to suicide involve community groups and programs that integrate the individual into something larger than themselves. In the specific case of veterans in transition to civilian life, it may involve a more focus on reintegration training efforts.
Humans are inherently social beings and therefore we cannot be alienated from that part of ourselves without a cost. This is why sociology has been such a passion of mine.
If you want to see my complete definition of purpose, you can check out my article here.
If you want to read my comprehensive post on suicidal desire, you can check out my article Inside the Mind of a Suicidal Person.
by Steve Rose | Jan 11, 2014 | Identity, Purpose, and Belonging
On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here:
I’ve always been interested in what drives human behavior. This question has probably been the main driver throughout my studies.
I have spent the last decade trying to answer this question and have discovered some important facts about what makes us tick.
So what drives human behavior?
The drive to fulfill the need for a sense of significance, achieved through a perceived sense of control over one’s life, a sense of social belonging, and a sense of effective social contribution.
Simply put, this means we all want to feel significant. This sense of significance is achieved through feeling like we belong and feeling like we are making a contribution.
When this is achieved, we feel fulfilled. When it is not, we feel the need to compensate for this lack of inner-fulfillment.
What is the science behind this theory?
According to self-determination theory, there are three underlying human needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence
Autonomy is the sense that we have a level of control over our lives and are able to make our own free decisions. This can also be called a sense of freedom.
Relatedness refers to the idea that although we have a level of freedom and individuality, we still need to feel connected to something beyond ourselves. This can also be called a sense of community.
Competence is the sense that we are able to develop a level of skill or mastery over an area, allowing us to use these skills to contribute something valuable to the broader society.
According to Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan, these three fundamental needs drive intrinsic motivation. This is a humanistic perspective in positive psychology.
This theory goes beyond simply looking at rewards and punishments, as was popularized by B.F. Skinner in his theory of Operant Conditioning.
Although rewards and punishments do affect our habits, they are only extrinsic motivators. Human beings are more powerfully driven by the intrinsic motivators outlined in self-determination theory.
In their research, Deci and Ryan state:
Perhaps no single phenomenon reflects the positive potential of human nature as much as intrinsic motivation, the inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacities, to explore, and to learn.
This perspective considers the active nature of human beings and their desire to expand their abilities. It expands on Skinner’s perspective on conditioning which frames human beings as equivalent to dogs that can be trained through external reward and punishment.
Although both drive human behavior, I believe Deci and Ryan’s humanistic perspective allows us to better understand the complexity of human behavior.
What happens when our needs are not met?
When our needs are not met and our sense of personal significance is threatened, we compensate through fight or flight responses in an attempt to restore or escape our lost sense of significance.
Fight responses include displays of superiority and displays of power. Displays of superiority include harnessing status symbols or sabotaging others, and displays of power include aggressive attempts to control or manipulate others.
Flight responses include social withdrawal, which could involve escapist behaviors. These behaviors may include the use of drugs, addictive behaviors, or other ineffective coping mechanisms such as projection, denial, or displacement.
Both of these processes fuel addiction and mental health issues, including suicide.
Why is it important to understand the root causes?
When someone is acting out by engaging in destructive behaviors, we need to look beyond the surface. We are often quick to condemn someone’s bad behavior by labeling them a bad person.
The problem with simply labeling someone a bad person because of their bad behavior is that it does not get to the root causes of that behavior.
Looking beyond the surface behavior does not excuse the behavior. It just allows us to see the situation more realistically so that we can better understand what is actually going on so we can more effectively deal with the behavior.
Simply attempting to punish someone’s bad behavior without addressing the unmet needs may stop the behavior in the short term, but will only serve as a temporary solution.
Trying to change someone’s behavior by simply punishing them is comparable to trying to cure an addiction by taking away someone’s drugs and calling them a bad person. Realistically, would this get someone any closer to recovery?
From my experience in the addiction field, if the underlying reasons are not addressed, reprimanding someone with negative statements only drives them away. Their fight or flight response is already over-active, so attacking them only contributes to the problem.
If you can relate to this situation, you may be interested in checking out my article, The Ultimate Guide to Helping Someone Change.
What are some root causes of negative behavior?
As stated before, the root causes of negative behavior consist of reacting to the pain of our unmet needs through fight or flight.
Some responses may include the following examples highlighted in the psychodynamic psychology of defense mechanisms:
- Displacement: acting out on a substitute target. For example, having a bad day at work and taking it out on a partner at home.
- Projection: a way of denying our own faults or insecurities by projecting them onto someone else, and accusing that other person of those things.
- Regression: falling into childish behaviors when under stress.
- Denial: a form of flight from difficult thoughts or emotions and an unwillingness to face the reality of a situation.
People may resort to defense mechanisms instead of effectively coping with difficult situations for many reasons.
A root cause of these behaviors may include an earlier experience of trauma. Traumas may include a sudden disturbing event where an individual losses all sense of control, or a complex trauma whereby the person is traumatized by the long-term cumulative effect of a relationship or situation.
What drives positive behavior?
As stated before, human beings are not simply reacting to rewards and punishments. Our negative behavior is largely influenced by the despair associated with fundamental needs are not being met.
In the same way, our positive behavior can be largely attributed to our needs being met and our attempt to expand the sense of joy we receive from acting in alignment with these needs.
The need for autonomy gives us a sense of control over our lives. Research on children in school indicates that facilitating a child’s sense of autonomy has strong potential for developing their sense of intrinsic motivation in school.
The need for Relatedness gives us the sense that although we are our own individual persons, we are integrated within a larger community. My own research on veterans in transition to civilian life highlights this point. Many of the persons I spoke with stated the bond developed in the military was a high point in their lives.
The need for contribution gives us a sense of being connected to a clause larger than ourselves, in addition to the sense that we are expanding our abilities to make a contribution. Research on indicators of a positive mindset among men found that work satisfaction has the greatest impact.
Job satisfaction is associated with a sense of meaningful contribution. In addition to contribution, positive workplace environments facilitate a sense of trust and relatedness with one’s team, while maintaining a level of individual control of one’s work.
Conclusion
Human behavior is driven by rewards and punishments in addition to the drive to fulfill the need for a sense of significance. This is achieved through a perceived sense of control over one’s life, a sense of social belonging, and a sense of effective social contribution.
If you are interested in getting an even deeper understanding of our drive to seek purpose in life, you can check out my article, What Does It Mean to Have a Purpose?
by Steve Rose | Jul 11, 2013 | Veterans in Transition
“… I started thinking God hates me… I’m not religious or anything, but I felt like there was this hate for me…” – Sergeant Brendan O’Byrne on life after deployment
A new invisible injury is grabbing the attention of military psychologists. The concept of ‘moral injury’ is gaining traction in recent academic literature surrounding the mental health of combat veterans.
What is moral injury?
Litz (2009) defines moral injury as, “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.”
Let’s take a closer look at how it is unique.
PTSD vs. Moral Injury
In the DSM-5, PTSD is conceptualized as a fear response resulting from the perceived threat of death or serious injury. Rather than a fear response, the concept of moral injury illuminates the importance of guilt and shame.
Although many of their symptoms overlap, moral injury is distinct since it results from what a person has done, rather than something that has been done to a person.
While PTSD is an anxiety disorder triggered by an instinctual fight or flight response, Moral injury deals with the uniquely human capacity of moral conscience. As Charles Darwin said:
“I fully … subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.”
For example, dogs and humans may both develop an anxious response to repeated nearby bomb explosions. When confronted with actual bombs, this is a useful survival strategy.
But if the response continues when the actual threat is removed, this is anxiety (e.g. a slamming door may trigger the fight or flight response). This is how PTSD works at its basic level. It has actually been reported that deployed military dogs also suffer from PTSD.
Human intellectual capacity for ethical reflection, and our placement in cultural belief systems complicate the simple fight or flight response.
Moral injury is unique to humans because it is characterized by deep internal conflict, threatening to overthrow one’s sense of identity and communal belonging.
Guilt and shame drive the person with moral injury toward isolation, making them feel unworthy of pleasure and perhaps even self-sabotaging or engaging in self-harm. This makes moral injury an empirically dangerous affliction, particularly in terms of suicide risk.
While PTSD can be characterized as an overactive fight or flight response, moral injury is a profound internal conflict. For a powerful narrative illustration of moral injury, see the Public Insight Network.
Why is Moral Injury so Dangerous
Moral injury often lurks under the radar, taking lives and leaving survivors unable to make sense of the tragedy. Since moral injury has not yet been officially adopted into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, mental health professionals have not been able to properly diagnose this invisible injury.
Defined as a profound experience of guilt/shame or an institutional betrayal, persons who suffer from moral injury often blame themselves for an incident they did not have control over or become disillusioned and lose a sense of identity or meaning in their lives.
As previously discussed, this is common among those on the front lines of our nations conflicts who are often tasked with making life-or-death decisions amidst the fog of war.
Moral injury is so dangerous because its symptoms align with the interpersonal causes of suicide. As discussed by Thomas Joiner in his book Why People Die by Suicide, suicidal desire stems from two factors: 1) thwarted belongingness; and 2) perceived burdensomeness.
Moral injury deeply impacts both of these factors by making sufferers feel isolated due to their perceived transgression, as well as making them feel like a burden on others due to their suffering or perceived lack of propriety.
Morality, the social consensus of right and wrong, is the glue that bonds social groups. Our moral community is comprised of everyone we trust to conduct themselves in alignment with a code of unwritten rules.
Beyond the legal system, morality gets to the heart of our sense of identity and our ability to trust. It is like a sacred canopy we all stand under, giving meaning and purpose to our communal lives, to borrow a concept from Peter Berger’s definition of religion.
Beyond any religion, the moral code of universal human dignity largely governs us on a global scale. As Karl Marlantes states in What it is Like to Go to War:
“…any conscious warrior of the future is going to be a person who sees all humanity as brothers and sisters.”
Throughout the history of human evolution, our instinctual drives recede like melting ice, exposing the fertile ground of moral consciousness. Rather than simply responding to instinctual reflexes, we now have the conscious ability to contemplate the ethical consequences of our actions.
With this evolutionary development, like the spring thaw, comes the increased responsibility of cultivation. As this moral consciousness expands to embrace an ethic of universal humanity, we must now consider others beyond our local group or nation. This consciousness forces us to readjust to a moral reality where we cannot simply label outside groups as subhuman.
One form of reaction to this increasingly globalizing world may be to simply deny an ethic of universal humanity, reaffirming a strengthened ethic of exclusion to bolster an identity based on hatred. But this merely works to cut ourselves off from our own humanity. By neglecting the humanity of others, we neglect our own humanity.
In the case of moral injury, the ethic of humanity is strongly upheld. Although it is a good thing to have a “conscious warrior,” who holds a global perspective, this awareness also makes it difficult to cope with perceived moral transgressions amidst the fog of war, causing the victim of moral injury a great deal of pain due to the experience of shame.
Shame is one of the most powerfully isolating emotions. In the case of moral injury, it cuts one off from a sense of belonging to under the sacred canopy of universal humanity. It strips one of a sense of identity as a decent human being, leading to profound sense of isolation. This is why it is so dangerous.
Recovering From Moral Injury
Luckily, there is hope of recovery. Part of this recovery requires one to recognize the broader forces that contributed to the incident in order to remove the sense of self-blame.
The need to make a decision in the fog of war is something that happens to an individual. Specialist Joe Caley, U.S. Army. 1st Cavalry, 25th Infantry realized his lack of agency, stating:
“It’s not what I did in the war, it’s what the war did to me. That was a self-revelation.”
In the book, Soul Repair: Recovering From Moral Injury After War, Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini provide insight into the power of community in healing from moral injuries. It is this sense of community we may be sorely lacking in the modern world. They state:
In many traditional societies, all returning soldiers were required to undergo a period of ritual purification and rehabilitation before re-entering their ordinary lives after war.
Religion developed as an institutionalized means of ensuring social solidarity in traditional contexts where widely shared moral precepts regulated behaviors, integrating individuals into communal life. The Christian church developed their own version of ritual purification. The authors state:
Christian churches in the first millennium required anyone who “shed human blood” to undergo a rehabilitation process that included reverting to the status of someone who had not yet been baptized and was undergoing training in Christian faith.
This form of ritual serves powerful cognitive and communal functions. It allows individuals to process difficult experiences, facilitate grieving, and integrate the individual back into a larger communal whole.
In modern society, traditional institutions have taken a back seat to secular systems that often fall short on effective methods of reintegration. Psychological screening and preparatory transition courses are beneficial, but they focus on the head, often neglecting the metaphorical heart. Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini state:
…many veterans do not believe their moral struggles are psychological illnesses needing treatment. Instead, they experience their feelings as a profound spiritual crisis that has changed them, perhaps beyond repair.
The concept of spirituality often varies, but citing Robert Wuthnow in his book, After Heaven, he argues that
“…at its core, spirituality consists of all the beliefs and activities by which individuals attempt to relate their lives to God or to a divine being or some other conception of a transcendent reality.”
This concept of a transcendent reality is composed of an idea regarding the “true” nature of reality. This often anchors our moral precepts, guiding our concept of what it means to live a good life.
Traditionally, religious communities provided the foundation to our spirituality, providing us with rituals, texts, and creation narratives. In modern society, spirituality has become relatively detached from religion and many people are turning to individualized forms of experiencing the sacred.
The problem is that we cannot simply do away with institutional life and the meaning-systems that have oriented our communal lives. This is especially relevant for those undergoing fundamental life transitions, finding themselves disoriented in a world that no longer makes sense.
Whether provided by religion or a secular institution, we require a sense of the sacred to regain purpose.
In this sociological sense, the word ‘sacred’ simply refers to something collectively regarded as special, held in high regard, and is often associated with an idea of purity. A sense of service to the modern sacred ideal of universal humanity can fulfill this purpose.
When this sacred obligation is transgressed during the fog of war, individuals need to reorient themselves by grieving any losses and undergoing a form of atonement that brings them back within the sacred ideal.
At its etymological root, to atone means to be “at one.” Reentry into communal life requires one to regain a sense of service to a sacred ideal. Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini state:
A society that ends a war with a parade and returns to its entertainments, consumerism, celebrity worship, and casual commitments in order to forget its wars offers no purpose worth pursuing.
Harms from war are not just part of an individual diagnosis, rather, we need to look at how social processes produce individual and collective problems. This requires not only thinking more carefully about our reasons for going to war but also about the institutional gap our veterans are expected to navigate during the transition home. As one Veteran states in Soul Repair:
I belonged. I knew what was expected of me, and I had become ruthlessly proficient at fulfilling those expectations. Here I am a misfit, an aberration, isolated and alone.
Lucky, in the U.S, U.K, and now in Canada, we are making progress building transition programs that help bridge the institutional gap. Team Rubicon is making great strides allowing Veterans to regain a sense of humanitarian service through being redeployed to assist in disaster relief, allowing them to use their skills to help others in need.
Recovery from moral injury cannot happen in isolation. We need to consider forms of counseling, group therapy, and innovative programming that allows individuals to regain a sense of service upon leaving the service.
A sociological perspective may also help in recovering from moral injury.
The practical value of sociology goes beyond policy recommendations. It can help individuals recover from moral injury by changing the way they see themselves in the world, allowing them to move away from ongoing destructive feelings of shame from self-blame.
By demonstrating how larger social forces shape our private lives, sociological insight can help individuals realize they are not personally responsible for certain failures.
For example, sociology has a long history of disproving the ‘American dream’ of unrestrained economic freedom by showing how structural barriers make it more difficult for certain minority groups. Therefore, there are forces beyond their control contributing to their relative lack of privilege.
In the case of moral injury, a sociological perspective can show how an individual’s agency is influenced by broader structural forces.
Imagine the following scenario. In training, a soldier is equipped with the necessary skills to navigate difficult combat situations. In the field, these skills are put to use when the soldier decides to shoot the driver of a car speeding toward him since it appears to be a car-bomber.
Upon inspection, the driver turns out to be an innocent civilian with impaired eyesight. The civilian dies by blood loss shortly after and his family is devastated upon hearing the news. The soldier’s training had lead him to take the proper course of action since the risk was too high, but this action lead him to break his moral belief against harming non-combatants.
This cognitive dissonance results in self-blame and feelings of shame. The internal attributions of agency that occur in moral injury are destructive. In order to recover, individuals need to come to a more realistic view of their role in the conflict.
Rather than an overblown view of argentic control, the individual must come to see themselves as imperfect human beings within a complicated social environment that is impossible to navigate with certainty.
As stated before, the need to make a decision in the fog of war is something that happens to an individual.
This does not mean sociology is interested in abolishing the concept of agency and discounting guilt as an illusion. Without moral agency, individuals would be mere cogs in the social machine.
The feeling of guilt is often healthy since it means the person has high standards in their commitment to a moral code. The problem of agency arises when it is overblown and results in destructive thoughts and behaviors that prevent the individual from properly recovering from the conflict.
A sociological approach to moral injury can assist individuals in this recovery by showing how their individual lives are shaped by larger social forces.
Conclusion
Although it is not highly recognized, compared to PTSD, moral injury is an important concept when it comes to recovery from difficult moral situations in the military.
Rather than a fear-response, moral injury provokes a deep sense of guilt or shame, isolating a person from a sense of community and making them feel like a burden in life.
Because of its tenancy to isolate a person, it can be dangerous, increasing one’s risk of suicide.
Recovery from moral injury is possible and requires reintegrating the person into a sense of community, in addition to coming to terms with their position within a situation beyond their control.
If you are interested in reading more of my articles on veterans in transition, you can find them here.
Also, I have listed my favorite books on moral injury below, if you would like to read more on the topic.
Books on Moral Injury
