INCREASING PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY TO INFLUENCE CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Behavior and Social Issues, 2009 by Biglan, Anthony

ABSTRACT: Increasing the prevalence of caring in society could contribute to the evolution of a society that ensures the wellbeing of every member. Recent research on psychological flexibility suggests that helping people to accept, but not believe, their unpleasant thoughts and feelings contributes to people becoming more caring. This paper reviews evidence of the value of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for increasing psychological flexibility and focuses, in particular, on its impact on prejudice and caring. It then discusses how this empirically based strategy for increasing psychological flexibility could contribute to the evolution of a more caring society with less conflict and prejudice and that is less punitive and more sustainable.

KEYWORDS: psychological flexibility; Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; society's evolution

This paper discusses the value of increasing the prevalence of psychological flexibility in society as a means of facilitating diverse beneficial developments in cultural evolution. Psychological flexibility refers to a mindful orientation, in which people are aware of their thoughts and feelings, as thoughts and feelings, and are able to act consistently with their values, even when they have thoughts or feelings that discourage them from doing so. Recent research in clinical psychology indicates that, as people become more psychologically flexible, their willingness to care more for others increases, while their prejudice and stigmatization of others decrease. Although this work is in its infancy, existing evidence is sufficiently promising that it seems appropriate to encourage further research on the implications of this line of thinking by influencing the direction of cultural evolution.

CARING: A CRITICAL BEHAVIOR FOR THE BENEFICIAL EVOLUTION OF CULTURAL PRACTICES

The unwillingness or inability of people to care for each other aggravates many societal problems. These problems include war, terrorism, prejudice, interpersonal conflict, crime, depression, and drug abuse.

Prejudice causes one to evaluate others based on the groups to which they belong rather than on their personal behavior. In interpersonal conflict, people are hostile to each other and typically supply "good reason" to justify the hostility. A stressful environment increases the likelihood of depression (Stroud, Davila, & Moyer, 2008); aversive behavior of a depressed person's family also adds to the depression (Biglan, 1991). A major risk factor for developing drug abuse is a coercive family environment that leads to children's aggressive social behavior (Dishion & Patterson, 2006). Peers socially reject these aggressive children, who then form deviant peer groups within which drug abuse develops (Snyder, Dishion, & Patterson, 1986).

In each of these examples, problems would diminish if those involved began to care for those around them. This claim is hardly controversial, but behavioral science has lacked a clear framework for increasing caring across such diverse problems. Recent work on psychological flexibility provides just such a framework.

PSYCHOLOGICAL FLEXIBILITY AND EXPERIENTIAL AVOIDANCE

Psychological flexibility is "the ability to contact the present moment more fully as a conscious human being and to change, or persist in, behavior when doing so serves valued ends" (Biglan, Hayes, & Pistorello, 2008, p. 142). To sense what this orientation involves, it helps to understand the opposite orientation-experiential avoidance (EA). EA is the tendency to avoid or control unpleasant thoughts and feelings, even when doing so creates problems for a person (e.g., in order to avoid feeling anxious, someone may avoid public places or avoid people who evoke anxiety). However, such behavior considerably limits one's options in life.

Growing evidence associates EA with diverse psychological and behavioral problems, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, poor work performance, high-risk sexual behavior, pain, and long-term disability. Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, and Lillis (2006) provide a meta-analysis of relationships between a measure of EA and psychological problems: the weighted effect size was .42.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Training (ACT) has increased psychological flexibility in more than 20 randomized trials. Hayes et al. (2006) summarized the evidence: ACT has ameliorated substance abuse, depression, psychosis, self-harm, chronic pain, anxiety, smoking, prejudice, worksite stress, employee burnout, diabetic self-management, adjustment to cancer, obsessivecompulsive disorder, trichotillomania, and epilepsy.

ACT employs metaphors and experiential exercises to help people accept unpleasant thoughts and feelings and defuse from them. People fuse with their thoughts when they behave as if those thoughts are literally true. That is, they do not distinguish between the thought and what the thought describes. For example, a person might think, "That person doesn't like me," and might react without noticing if the thought is true or not.