M1 A2 Question

On Human Naturei

Dr. Thomas H. Kemp

This is a brief discussion of the nature of human beings as developed from a behavioral science perspective. It is not meant to be exhaustive; but a summary of what seems to make us who we are. It answers somewhat: who are we and of what are we capable? It also addresses the issues of commonality that I see in people that show we are more alike than different in our worldwide diversity.

It is a discussion that puts into perspective the issue of human beings in organizations, organized life, in society…of interpersonal relations, communications, and behavior in our modern complex social matrixes: our companies, our departments and our families.

We start with a summary of traditional philosophies and work toward the behavioral persuasion.

THIS IS MY HR THEORY OF PEOPLE AS WE SEE THEM FROM MANY PERSPECTIVES.

Traditional Images of Man and Woman:

Philosophical Images: Virtue and Wisdom—Man comprehends virtue using reason and following its demands.
Christian Images: Sin and Love—Man tries to control his sinful impulses, the redemption of evil human nature comes from a new definition of love (selflessness, etc.).
Political Images: Power and Will—The control of the social environment comes from a social contract wherein man is controlled by the civil ruler, not by a supernatural one; the glory of the common man is found in sharing it with his leader.
Economic Images: Rational Behavior—Man’s interest is in money and property making the good of the individual the good of the society; capitalism and class are natural to man and they are right.
Psychoanalytic Images: Ego, Self and Love—Man is driven by instinctual impulses that are never completely gratified; man learns early in life what his lot in life is and he controlled by unconscious thoughts and drives (libido and sex).

Behavioral Perspectives of Human Nature:

Bernard Berelson and Gary Steiner summarized human nature from 1045 empirical findings. Some of their conclusions are listed below. Humans:

Are far removed from their animal origins even in terms of sex, maternal needs, self-preservation, and other commonly felt concepts.
Are of enormous plasticity, able to live in a wide range of physical environments and in an even wider range of social and cultural ones.
Need to simplify reality in order to cope with it effectively.
Are subject to the influence of complex forces, inside and outside, such that almost nothing is caused by any other single thing, and where everything is more complicated than one anticipates.
Are subject to the probabilities of influence.
See that which is familiar is natural to them and most other things are unnatural; but who can adapt if given time and support.
Adapt reality to their own ends, transforming reality into congenial forms, making their own reality:

[Humans are] extremely good at adaptive behavior—at doing or learning to do things that increase [their] chances for survival or for satisfaction. [They have] learned to manipulate and modify [their] environment for [their] own purposes; and [they have] achieved, through accumulation, a degree of control and mastery in which present generations surpass not only the power but even the fantasies of recent ones.

[Humans are] not only a seek the truth, but of deceptions, of [themselves] as well as others. When [people] can come to grips with [their] needs by actually changing the environment, [they do] it. But when [they] cannot achieve such realistic satisfaction, [they tend] to take another path: to modify what [they see] to be the case, what [they think they want], what [they think] others want.

Work for what they want and want what they work for.

Have developed psychological protection so great that they have become experts in the defense mechanism.
Will misinterpret rather than face up to an opposing set of facts or point of view.
Avoid conflicts of issues and ideals whenever they can by changing the people around them rather than their own minds and when they cannot, private fantasies can lighten their load and carry them through.

How do humans do all these things in their actions to confront the world? It is their symbolic capacity and the language that goes with it. Not only can things be named, manipulated, studied, preserved, and communicated all without any physical contact; but things can be called by other than their real names, and names can be devised to suit the occasions, thus adding innumerable opportunities for gratification as well as control.

More often than not, in social life, the word can be applied to fit the occasions more easily than the occasion modified to fit the word.

To people, their very picture of themselves comes from how others regard them (see below for more information about self-esteem and sentiments).

Summary of Human Nature:

Thus, Berelson and Steiner conclude:

“So behavioral science man is social man—social product, social producer, and social seeker—to a greater degree than philosophical man or religious man or political man or economic man or psychoanalytic man—or the man of common observation and common sense, for that matter. Our man seeks virtue through reason far less than he seeks approval through the people around him; his evil comes from frustration, not from inherent nature; he is less concerned with the exercise of power than with his relations with those who are powerful, and he has learned ways to limit the power they seek to exercise over him; he seeks acceptance and the good view of the community more than he seeks political power or economic riches, and he can even control his strongest instincts, the libidinous side of his nature, to this end. The traditional images of man have stressed, as prime motivating agents, reason or faith or impulse or self interest; the behavioral science image stresses the social definition of these. Here, the individual appears less on his own, less a creature of the natural environment, more as a creature making others and made by others.”

How people come to have high ad low levels of self esteem: Socialization and daily treatment by othersii

In many respects people all over the world are alike. In other respects they are different due mostly to the cultural heritage between communities and families.

Human personality consists of the system of meanings that make up their unique orientation toward the world. Culture, social influences, biological limitations all go into making people. What causes them to be different from one another is a matter of temperament development through their interaction with their significant others.

From the moment of their birth there are remarkable differences in patterns of sensitivity and reaction in people. Biological limitations cause many of these personality differences. They are called tendencies.

What is more important is the development of sentiments in people.

Tomatsu Shibutani states:

“Sentiments are behavioral systems that are formed in the course of learning to cope with significant others. The sentiments of different people are sufficiently alike to be recognizable, yet their variation is almost infinite. What is typical in each sentiment is organized through participation in recurrent networks of interpersonal relations, and what is idiosyncratic emerges from differential participation in such networks and from the distinctive demands made by people with whom one associates. All people learn to respond to others in varying ways.”

We see that people who work with each other in times of cooperation learn to accept those they work with and displace sentiments upon them predominantly that are positive or friendly. A person learns to evaluate his partners as desirable objects, as sources of gratification, as friends.

In conflicting situations, people are not cooperating and displace negative sentiments on those with whom they interact. People learn to evaluate other people as frustrating or even dangerous objects and to develop ways to approach them as enemies and rivals.

Very early in life each child develops ways of approaching powerful as well as subordinate people as superior or inferior objects. From differential treatment early in life we develop these capacities.

Empathy is established early in life based on the social distance maintained with the child. The more distance that is kept, the less empathic we become; the closer and more touching involved with nurturing, the more we seem to have empathic capacities.

Shibutani states:

“Most important sentiments are displaced upon oneself. Each person forms a self-conception within a social matrix, and the way in which he evaluates himself depends upon the manner in which he has been treated by his significant others. Each person’s level of self-esteem is apparently set quite early in life, and subsequent transformations occur only under rather unusual circumstances.”

Shibutani continues:

“There is increasing consensus among psychiatrists that the development of an adequate level of self esteem depends upon one’s being the object of disinterested love. A sense of personal worth develops from spontaneous and unsolicited affection and respect of those with whom one identifies himself. Love must be unconditional. Then the child can conceive of himself as a worthwhile object because of what he is, not because he happens to be obedient for the moment.”

Conversely, people develop low levels of self-esteem if as children they become the object of negative sentiments or of conditional or possessive love. If children learn to conceive of themselves as undesirable, they learn that they are only worthwhile when behaving in ways to gratify their significant others. If children are told over and over they are bad, continually punished, they begin to accept they are not valued. If love is shown only when the child is good, the child will also see that others are only to be valued when they are good: useful, productive, obedient.

According to Shibutani:

“Sentiments toward oneself once formed, tend to be self-sustaining. Behavior patterns are altered each time a person learns a new conventional role, but his characteristic ways of approaching people usually remain stable. This is sentiment-based personality. It is who we are. Each individual tends to construct personifications in terms of motives that are plausible to him and to perceive in other people what he is already prepared to see. Each person’s level of self-esteem is established when he is still quite young, and it is not too likely to be transformed by subsequent experiences of success or failure.”

Thus we are people who are given our values and outlooks and our personalities early in life through learning in the interaction we have with our significant others. This is a process of socialization…and it is at best faulty. It gives us our strengths and our weaknesses. It helps us to understand ourselves and limits, and allows our empathy, our ability to respond to the pressures and frustrations of each day’s human relations.

Shibutani says:

“One’s personality is shaped while coping with the demands of significant others in recurrent networks of interpersonal relations. Interpersonal relations vary independently of culture, and similar sentiments are found everywhere. Since each significant other has a unique personality each individual becomes human in his own unique way.”

Our differences are explained somewhat by our inborn features and traits, but more than that by the unique backgrounds, we all have through our unique experiences.

That is who we are: learners, learned; teachers, taught. We are symbolic interactionists, vicarious beings, communicators of symbols and responders to their meaning. This is the essence of human communication and interpersonal behavior.

Discussion Questions: Just mostly thoughts and you only need to engage a question if you feel so moved.

Who are we and are we very different from each other?
What is our nature?
How can HR help build on human nature for the good of the organization?

I am building on these ideas as we define the potential for the high performance organization. More later in the course.

i B. Berelson and G. Steiner (1964). Human behavior: an inventory of scientific findings. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

ii T. Shibutani (1961). Society and personality: an interactionist approach to social psychology. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.