What Actually Guides Human Behavior? (It’s Not Reason)

Quite often, I hear people make predictions that people will behave in a certain way. Just today, I heard this on the radio:

“There is no reason kids shouldn’t be allowed to trick-or-treat even with Covid-19 being a concern. The parents need to make sure they wash their hands. And the people who give the candy need to make sure they keep their distance. If they do these things, we won’t have any problems.”

I use this example not to take a side but to shine a light on widespread problems in our thinking.

Essentially, to expect reasonable and rational behavior is itself irrational.

From what I have seen, this is the order of what actually guides human behavior:

1. Survival

2. Self-interest

3. Close relationships

4. Emotion, feelings, and intuition

5. Beliefs (e.g., religion, ethics, ideologies, politics)

6. Reason

I have met many people who are indeed quite reasonable. They work through problems in their lives methodically. But most people, most of the time, are not guided primarily by their reason. Let’s discuss these principles a bit more deeply.

Survival

The idea of survival guiding human behavior should not be difficult to understand. When your needs are not met, you will do anything to survive.

Self-interest

This should not be a shock either – we are the star of our own lives. So naturally, our focus is often on making decisions that make us happy and successful.

Close Relationships

The people closest to us in our lives are quite important to us. So often, we will make decisions that help them, or at least consider them.

Emotion, Feelings, and Intuition

Emotions, feelings, and intuition help provide us with a shortcut to make decisions effectively and efficiently much of the time. If my boss at work asks me to spit on someone he does not like, I do not need to evaluate if this falls in line with my beliefs or if this is a rational thing to do. My gut or my feelings immediately make me disgusted at the thought.

Of course, sometimes, our emotions can overwhelm us and cause us to make poor decisions. Nonetheless, they still tend to guide our actions.

Beliefs

After all the prior principles guiding our human behavior, we have our belief systems. This does not always mean religion. I can believe in certain ethical practices, or I may believe that everyone has certain rights. If none of the prior principles mentioned have led us to behave a certain way, then our belief systems will help us decide what to do.

Some people are highly religious or believe strongly in certain values or ideas, and they may aim to make this principle the primary guiding force of their lives.

Reason

Reason is last for a reason. It takes a lot of work to reason properly. If you work hard at it and fail, you may come to an unreasonable conclusion and make a bad decision. Even if you reason correctly, you may get unlucky somehow, and the outcomes of your decision may still lead to negative consequences. Otherwise, if part of your plan involves convincing other people that your reasoning is correct, you may fail to convince them even if your reasoning is correct.

So reason carries its risks. Get it wrong, and you have wasted your time. Get it right, and it still may backfire on you. Most people, most of the time, do not find good reasons to employ reason. They may not feel competent enough to think rationally or reasonably, it may be too much work, or they may have had bad experiences trying to use reason. They may have given up on it. Also, real-life has so many variables that it can be too complicated to reason through perfectly. Rather than bother to try, many of us prefer to use feelings or emotions to guide us.

We like to think that we are rational and reasonable, but the evidence does not seem to support this.

The former conclusion stands. Most people, most of the time, are not basing their decisions on reason. We cannot expect most people to behave reasonably. If we do, then we are the ones who are thinking unreasonably.

Any time I hear phrases such as “If people do this….” I already know that we are not going to be happy with the results. It isn’t easy to control or predict what a large group of people will do. Most “experts” whose job it is to predict the stock market actually fail at it. This is their job – this is how they earn their living, and they cannot predict where the stock market will go. Part of this is because they cannot predict the human behavior that affects the market.

You may be able to predict or even control what a small group of people will do. But beyond this, it seems to be a fool’s game.

Instead of guiding everyone into perfect actions or expecting them to behave perfectly rationally, we should take advantage of this knowledge that there will be unreasonable behaviors and imperfect actions everywhere we go.

How can we do this? Here are a few examples.

I am very good at avoiding car accidents because I assume that people will drive in erratic ways. I assume that they may get distracted and struggle to stay in their own lane. I have lived in places where Stop signs and traffic lights were just viewed as suggestions, so I got used to checking for traffic and pedestrians at every intersection. Ironically, assuming that perfection will happen tends to give us poor results and may result in more accidents.

As another example, when I want to succeed at something, I have backup plans. Many people end up working outside of the field that they trained for. In my case, I was studying to be a psychologist, but I changed paths and ended up becoming an author who writes about self-development, psychology, and other related themes. Fortunately, my psychology background was a great asset for this. If you are pursuing a degree, ask yourself if it will be useful for only one thing, or can you use it to succeed in various fields?

Another way to stop assuming that things will work out perfectly is to reconsider your timelines for important projects. I had a boss who once said:

“Give me your timeline. That way, I can double it in my mind. When you make up your timelines, you tend to expect things to work out perfectly, but they rarely do. We need to account for all of the problems you’ll have that we can’t predict right now.”

You can try this too. If you expect things to take a certain amount of time (usually assuming that things will work out perfectly), then double that in your mind, and that may be the true timeline.

When I see that people have assumed perfection, I expect that things will go wrong. For situations that require everyone to behave perfectly and orderly, I will avoid them and be extra cautious, waiting for something to go wrong, as it often does.

Of course, the exception here is that some people are highly trained or skilled to deal with certain scenarios. In some professions, people may operate at seemingly perfect levels to get the job done.

However, we cannot expect such a high level of rational behavior from most people, most of the time.

Learn this lesson that people do not usually make decisions based on reason, see the lack of reason around you, and use this understanding to make better decisions.

Approaching Higher Levels of Consciousness

Our consciousness needs to be ready before we can expand ourselves into higher levels of seeing, being, and doing. There are so many problems most of us are dealing with in our personal lives and with our families that most of us do not have the mental bandwidth to seriously consider problems on a higher level than our current consciousness.

It is not practical to expect anyone to jump levels, from worrying about their survival, for example, to suddenly being concerned with world peace. How can anyone expect to influence world peace if they have not been able to accomplish their own personal peace?

One of the most fruitful things we may do in our lives is to identify what level of consciousness we are at. When you know your level of consciousness, you know what types of problems you are capable of tackling. It is also useful to be aware that certain goals or problems may be above your current level of consciousness.

Here is a brief summary of some levels of consciousness:

Survival Mode

At this level, you are mostly concerned with having some basic needs met, such as food, water, and shelter. Since your life itself is possibly under threat, you face the challenge of doing the right thing and living a humble, difficult life or doing the wrong thing and receiving quick benefits from it.

For those in survival mode, the primary goal is to move out of this phase. Unfortunately, some people may become desperate and get into drug dealing or other crimes, find themselves in prison, and then become unable to escape this mode of consciousness.

At this level, hard work may not be rewarded. In fact, it may be punished, as the people around you may view you as a threat when your diligence makes them look bad. Otherwise, a boss who knows you need your job may use this knowledge against you, refusing to give you a deserved raise.

Ironically, in order to escape this level of consciousness may require you to be an especially knowledgeable, conscious, organized person. But because you are at this stage, you may not have good models to help teach you this. Also, you may be at this stage because you lacked opportunities to acquire these qualities in the first place.

The Chase

Perhaps you know what it is like to be hungry or to be without your basic needs, and so now you have been given the opportunity to chase a better way of life and you are happy to do it. You may have just completed a certification program, or a degree, or been offered a job that seemed out your league. Now, you are ready to commit and work to get that dream life you wanted.

At this point, you may find that you are actually able to save money and build up your bank account gradually and work on making life improvements such as eating better or exercising. Alternatively, through seeking a better way of life and buying more things regularly, many people will find it hard to save money when they enter this phase of consciousness. Likely, you will have the goal of moving into a better home or community, getting a car (or upgrading it), or educating yourself to pursue a path that will help get you there.

Perhaps you have lived the hard life, and are eager to enjoy the little things in life. For example, you may wish to be able to turn on the AC in the summer without worrying about how much it costs.

At this stage, we find that our good and positive actions generally lead to good and positive results. You have reached a point where the harder you work, the more rewards you tend to gain from it.

Although you may not have attained it yet, you are generally on the path to achieving what you wanted.

The issue is that as long as you are on the chase for more money, more things, more people to network with, more sales to close, and so on, you may find yourself locked into this phase, always chasing, even after you have already surpassed your goals and dreams.

Keep in mind that for some people, the chase can be for something highly maladaptive, such as alcohol, drugs, or sex – and such forms of the chase are likely to keep one stuck in this form of consciousness, or possibly even lead you back into survival mode.

Self-Understanding and Growth

Here you will be focused on understanding who you are and how you can improve yourself, not just to meet goals like getting a job or a date. Rather, you want to grow as a person at this phase because you recognize this as an important goal on its own.

You may find that you didn’t know yourself as well as you thought. Perhaps you will question things you always took for granted. You may have been born surrounded by people of a certain political belief or religious belief and now find yourself questioning it all. Everyone thinks they are right, and every belief system thinks it is right. So do you believe what you do because you are following others, or have your personal reasons for believing?

This phase will be marked by many life questions that leave us feeling conflicted:

• Who am I?

• What do I value above all else?

• Have I done something good in this world?

• Were some of the things I always thought actually wrong?

• Am I in control or just being led by outside forces around me?

• Why am I here?

• Do I matter?

• What do I believe in?

• Were the goals I set for myself the right ones?

• How can I do better?

• What will be my legacy, or what will I leave behind when I’m gone?

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If you enjoy thinking through questions such as the ones above, you may be interested in reading a book I wrote with co-author Dave Edelstein: Question Yourself: 365 Questions to Explore Your Inner Self & Reveal Your True Nature

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We may go through periods of turmoil and unrest, feeling that we don’t even know ourselves. This can happen at any point in life. We may turn to others to help us figure out who we are, and find that all we hear are what they perceive us to be. Other people have their own beliefs about who we are, but all of that is based on their perceptions and prior interactions with us. While their perceptions may help guide us to understand ourselves, they will ultimately be limited in what they can reveal to us.

We will have to decide if we will be defined by who other people think we are, based on who we have always been. Will we be limited by others, and our past, or do we want something greater for ourselves?

As a final part of your self-growth and understanding, you may come to the realization that you get to define who you are, and you get to create who you are. These are powerful ideas that when fully realized, will aid you in being your best possible self.

Becoming Your True Self

We become our true self by actualizing our self-chosen highest values.

While in the prior mode of consciousness, you probably identified some of your highest values in your life. Perhaps you will even realize that you have not been properly living out your values. You may have gotten so caught up in The Chase mode of consciousness, that you forgot what really mattered to you. Or perhaps, you never properly thought through what truly mattered to you. You allowed others to guide you toward what they valued, rather than consciously thinking through your own values.

When you have identified your highest values, you will see that all that truly matters is living by them. To live against your values is to live in falseness, and to be a hypocrite, and to cause your psyche and soul to be in pain and disorder. Every time we go against our values, we are actually going against ourselves. This leads to the inhibition or even destruction of the better parts of ourselves, which is not the way to the fruitful life.

My primary life value is truth, and I think this should be on everyone’s list of primary values. This value is so important to me because it allows me to always have a voice. Many times in my life, I felt scared to say what I truly wanted to say. I assumed that it was not important or people wouldn’t care or they would ridicule me. Now, I see that anything that comes from my heart is always worth saying, because it is my truth. Truth is actually a part of my life’s quest. I am always on the search to learn something that will help me to understand our entire universe, and our place in it.

My highest values are Truth, Balance, Love, Knowledge, and Transference. This is what I aim to live by in every thought, word, and action.

When you know all of your primary values then you can aim to live your life congruently, where your thoughts, words, and actions, and your whole self becomes one with itself. You will be a harmonious person with a clear vision for who you are, living by it every day, and people around you will come to see this too. You will represent something worth representing and not be a person who trivially pursues his impulses and desires without being connected to a greater purpose.

A powerful realization you may have at this point is that your self is connected to everyone else in the world. Your thoughts, words, beliefs, and actions are not just your own, but they ripple throughout the rest of the world. When you are lazy and do nothing for a day, that is a day that the world suffered by not gaining the best from you. When you help an elder across the street, that is a day that you, one part of the universe, is helping the elder, another part of the universe across the street. We are all parts of the universe, and not outside of it. We are all therefore interrelated with everyone and everything else. So at this stage, you will feel a compelling motivation to think better and do better not just for you, but for as many people as you can.

Your self is not just your self. Every person who has ever spoken with you or engaged with you in any way has shaped you into becoming who you are, just as you have shaped them into becoming who they are. We are all an interplay on each other, and not separate and distinct islands on our own. With these thoughts, you cannot help but focus on improving the world (the next phase of consciousness).

At the highest levels of finding yourself, you may found your own personal philosophy (or your own interpretation of it), even if this is just a mixture of other philosophies. Strictly speaking, it may not be a philosophy, but rather a religion for some people. You may grow spiritually, attaining insights that are not easily put into words. Some people may take ideas from various philosophies, religions, or spiritual traditions, to come up with their own unique path.

Improving the world

After you have surpassed survival mode, made it through the chase, figured yourself out, and then become your true self, you will be ready to aid others fully with your consciousness. Do not misunderstand, you have probably been helping others since you were on The Chase. But perhaps, when you were on The Chase, you didn’t care if you helped others. You were mostly concerned with making sure that you benefited from everything you did.

In this stage of consciousness, you are deeply concerned with everyone and everything. In reality, this mode of consciousness may happen in stages. You may find yourself more concerned with your community, then your country, then your part of the world, then the whole world. That is fine, this mode of consciousness happens in different ways for different people. Importantly, this level of consciousness involves a deeper connection with larger communities. Most people are naturally concerned with their families and close friends, almost as an extension of themselves, and so those types of connections are intertwined with our earlier stages of consciousness.

When you arrive at this level of consciousness, you may learn about physics, and realize that this domain relates to biology, which relates to your heart, which connects to all hearts, which connects to all lives. You see that physics is fundamentally important.

Then you read about history, and you realize that these stories connect to patterns in all of human history, and that currently we just happen to be in our own part of the human history. All history interrelates and interconnects, and the same themes happen over and over. So when you know your history, you know the present day, and even the future.

At this stage, with everything you learn, you can extrapolate it to mean something greater than what it was intended to mean. Everything is an analogy or metaphor or pattern from which you can absorb more understanding than was intended. You observe a bird fly outside your window, and see that humans want to be the bird, free to go anywhere they want, and free from concern.

Your seeing that the world is acting on you, and you are acting on the world, motivates you to find ways to impact the world for the better. You may pick any kind of world problem and see what you can do to make it better. For example, hunger, domestic violence, income inequality, lack of literacy or education, racism, sexism, pollution, global warming, misinformation, overpopulation, endangered animals, or improving human consciousness. There is no shortage of big problems to work on. The challenge is choosing the most important ones and then committing to them. The most important ones for you will likely be based on your most important values.

Someone who values truth above all else may choose to focus on tackling misinformation, miscommunication, poor literacy and education, and helping people to identify common personal biases (e.g., logical fallacies and cognitive biases).

As far as actually making improvements, you may decide to do this in different ways. Your daily actions may work to improve some world problem. For example, you may work in a field that works on these problems, or you may volunteer in one, or you may simply choose to speak to people about these problems and raise awareness. Another option is to donate to different causes. There is no one path for all. You will get to choose how you wish to improve the world.

A challenge at this phase is to keep ourselves grounded and remember the fundamentals. We should stay true to our core values and continue to help the most important people in our lives such as family and close friends, even though we have now come to see the greater importance of everything and the world at large. Also, we may cause ourselves new sufferings, as we see that no matter how much we do, and how much we try to change things for the better, there are limits to what we will be capable of accomplishing alone. For that reason, many people will find it useful to join organizations that can work on a greater cause together.

There are even higher levels of consciousness, but those will need to be explored at a later time.