"That someone "should get out more" is usually said as a joke, a light comment aimed at someone who seems stuck or overly absorbed in a narrow concern. It can sound dismissive or even sarcastic. Yet what if it contains serious psychological truth? We often praise people for being open-minded, creative, or flexible, as if these are stable personality traits that some individuals simply possess. We admire those who seem to think differently and assume they have access to something rare."
"But what if intellectual flexibility is not something a person has in isolation? What if it reflects the range of environments that person has actually engaged with, the conversations entered, the disciplines explored, the constraints encountered and adjusted to? Our thinking expands when our environments expand. Before urging ourselves or others to think differently, we might ask a simpler question. How different are the conditions shaping our thinking?"
"Whatever we notice is not neutral. It reflects what we have learned to notice. Over time, our environments train our attention. We become sensitive to certain patterns, signals, and distinctions because we have encountered them repeatedly and received feedback about them. Other patterns remain invisible, not because we lack intelligence, but because we have not yet learned to detect them."
Behavioral flexibility emerges from reinforcement histories and the range of environments an individual has engaged with rather than from fixed personality. Repeated encounters and feedback train attention and sensitivity to particular patterns, making some cues salient and others invisible. Passive exposure produces limited change, while active feedback and sustained engagement under new constraints reshape actions and create new discriminations. Expanded and varied environmental interaction increases the detectable options and broadens behavioral repertoires. Choices thus reflect chains of environmental and biological triggers shaped by past contingencies and learning.
Read at Psychology Today
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