What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [5]
The nature of the beast. This book is about the psychological beasts: depression, anxiety, stupidity, meanness, traumatic stress, alcoholism, fatness, sexual “perversion.” When I was a callow learning theorist, I knew I was stalking after those beasts. I did not then realize that to understand them I had to take into account another beast, the human beast.
My ideology told me that environment is completely responsible for the psychological beasts. Stupidity is caused by ignorance; provide enough books and education, and you will cure stupidity. Depression and anxiety are caused by trauma, particularly bad childhood experience; minimize bad experience, raise children without adversity, and you will banish depression and anxiety. Prejudice is caused by unfamiliarity; get people acquainted, and prejudice will disappear. Sexual “perversion” is caused by repression and suppression; let it all hang out, and everyone will become lusty heterosexuals.
My bias now is that while this is not wholly wrong, it is seriously incomplete. The long evolutionary history of our species has also shaped our stupidities, our fears, our sadness, our crimes, what we lust after, and much else besides. The species we are combines with what actually happens to us to burden us with psychological beasts or to protect us against them. To understand and undo such malevolent effects, we must face the human beast.
No sacred cows. This book walks a political tightrope. On one side is the racist segment of the right, fervently hoping that intelligence, femininity, and criminality are all entirely genetic. On the other side are many aging 1960s liberals and their “politically correct” campus heirs, condemning all who dare to speak ill of victims; failure, they say, results from poverty, racism, a bad upbringing, a malevolent system, under-privilege, deprivation—from anything but oneself.
My loyalty is not to the right or to the left. I have no patience for their sacred cows or their special pleading. My loyalty is to reasoned argument, to the unfashionable positions that deserve a hearing, to the thoughtful weighing of evidence. I realize that much of what I will say in this book is grist for the agendas of both political positions. I believe that facing the beast entails airing unpopular arguments. When the evidence points toward genetic causes, I will say so. When the evidence points toward a bad environment or bad parenting as responsible, I will say so. When the evidence points toward unchangeability, I will say so. When the evidence points to effective ways of changing, I will say that too.
Outcome studies as best evidence. Suppose for a moment that an epidemic of German measles is predicted. You are pregnant and you know that German measles causes birth defects. Two vaccines, Measex and Pneuplox, are on the market. A famous Hollywood star says on TV that she was given Measex and didn’t get German measles. An Olympic sprinter also adds her testimonial. Your best friend has heard good things about Measex. Pneuplox, on the other hand, is not advertising. But it has been tested in what is called an outcome study, in which it was administered to five hundred people: Only two of these people contracted German measles. Another five hundred received a sham injection: Twenty-eight of them got German measles. Now assume that Measex has not been so tested. Which vaccine do you want? The one that has passed a rigorous outcome test, of course.
Making up your mind about self-improvement courses, psychotherapy, and medications for you and your family is difficult because the industries that champion them are enormous and profitable and try to sell themselves with highly persuasive means: testimonials, case histories, word of mouth, endorsements (“My doctor is the best specialist on X in the East”), all slick forms of advertising. Just as this is no way to pick a vaccine or to decide on whether to have chemotherapy versus radiation