The Search for Authentic Social Interaction: The Problem of Shaman's Condition Michael W. Raphael CUNY Graduate Center Department of Sociology Abstract • The goal of many self-help books on interpersonal relationships is for the reader to learn how to “just act natural.” There are certain processes that interfere with one’s ability to follow such advice, namely, the imposition of calculation of what is ‘natural’ will not generate a reality where the “just natural” interaction that is occurring is believed. • This raises the question of authenticity in social interaction and its significance for rapport-building, trust and solidarity. Erving Goffman addresses this issue throughout his work. However, a majority of critiques place Goffman’s work in symbolic interactionist, rational choice and game-theoretical perspectives. This raises certain challenges for Goffman’s work to be applicable to this area of research, specifically in regard to Goffman’s notion of ‘strategic interaction’. • This paper offers a revision to Goffman’s notion of ‘strategic interaction’ by clarifying how social interaction operates under (1) strategic, yet non-calculative conditions; and (2) strategic and calculative conditions. This paper then addresses the practical and theoretical consequences to this revision – the question of Shaman’s Condition. This is to say that the need to produce authenticity is the need to operate under strategic and calculative conditions in a social situation regulated under strategic, yet noncalculative conditions, which is the need to operate under Shaman’s Condition. Thus, this paper addresses how Shaman’s Condition deals with the need to “just act natural.” The Significance of Authenticity for Sociology Sociology → Mutuality Among Individuals → Social Order Authenticity → Manifestations of Mutuality Among Individuals Qua Interactants • Thus, the question is: • Expression Games → Authenticity? The Algorithm–Heuristic Distinction in Learning Social Action and in Learning Expression Games • Expression games, in their assessment of the congruency of verbal and nonverbal cues, are in of themselves a learning process as expression games build pattern and relational recognition (or, what psychologists, chess players, athletes, cops, et. al. refer to as ‘instinct’, ‘intuition’, or ‘gut-feeling’; Cf. DePaul & Ramsey, 1998; Linhares, 2005; Aagaard, 2010). • This relational-pattern recognition dimension of expression games learns how to key the definition of the situation. The data the cognitive heuristic learns from are the various configurations of nonverbal cues, verbal cues and the immediate social action that follows from the interaction of the nonverbal and verbal configurations. The Formal-Informal Distinction • One of the most important configurations that one’s heuristic relationalpattern recognition must learn is keying whether the definition of the situation is characteristically formal or informal. • It is this attribution that feeds back for the next move or subsequent expression game of the encounter. • In determining the social action that will occur in the ongoing social interaction, one’s heuristic relational-pattern recognition relies on this formal or informal characterization to determine whether to resort to learned/past heuristics or learned/past algorithms of social action. • As children, many are taught to ‘never talk to strangers’ as a straight forward rule; yet as children grow up, this rule becomes impractical and as it begins to act as a barrier to being a participating member of society in everyday interactions, the grown child’s heuristic relational-pattern recognition re-regulates this rule to a heuristic that accounts for situations where such a rule might still apply as in the possible configurations of nonverbal cues and verbal cues that might arise as one walks past an alley late at night. Law School? • The function of heuristics is the realization of what mitigates. With permission to change the example scheme for a moment, this is the main function of law school – to take the black letter law (i.e. what the law states as written) and to have law students ritualize heuristics in order to for them to understand that although the classic saying ‘the law is the law’ is accurate and sounds algorithmic, law students will learn the heuristics of case law and its corresponding legal reasoning that is exemplified by the answer to any legal question with the phrase ‘it depends’, thus turning ‘black’ into ‘gray’. • In general, informal interaction depends on the actor’s capacity to use heuristics, since, as Goffman points out, what counts is “flow” rather than form. Formal social action, in contrast, relies primarily on rules that operate like algorithms. Cognition: Learning Chess • While expression games, which involve responses to non-verbal as well as verbal cues in the course of the flow of interaction, might not be viewed as participating in the same type of heuristic analytical problem solving associated with a typical game of chess (i.e. two players sitting down taking hours to think) because of the temporality in which the problem soling operates, that notion would be misleading. • Although descriptions of the heuristic search by cognitive psychologists read as algorithmic and thus appear to take extended processing time, chess games quality actually occur at a variety of time controls. What might be thought of as the typical chess game might occur at a common time control (2 hours for 40 moves and 1 hour sudden death). It is also possible that the longest correspondence games can take years to complete (a time control of 10 moves in 50 days). Yet on a daily basis, thousands of quality chess games are played on the internet at blitz (3-29 minutes per game) or bullet (2 minutes or less per game) time controls. On occasion, one might even find players participating in time controls as swift as 10 seconds per game (with a second added for each move made). • Thus, the temporal dimension of problem solving in chess does not disqualify the cognitive problem solving from being applicable to expression games. Cognition: Problem-Solving • Since expression games are situated in everyday life, it is then, a valid inference that expression games are critical to both the simple and complex problems associated with everyday life. It is in fact during the course of an expression game, that problems are solved using the heuristic search of one’s relational-pattern recognition within the environment of the encounter. The problem solving occurs, both formally and informally, and may be as simple as avoiding a collision while walking down the street or as complex as an attempt to convince a police officer to not write a traffic ticket. In this regard, it is fairly clear that chess and everyday interaction overlap in regard to the importance of heuristics in a sequential activity in which multiple possibilities can be anticipated at each point – realizing that social action is naturally problematic and primed for problem solving. Cognition: Learning Informal Interaction • It is now clear that chess and expression games appear to use the same cognitive process for problem solving. What about the learning process? The heuristic process used in accumulating relational-pattern recognition in chess, appears to suggest that if what is meant by learning is the accumulation of patterns and relations stored for later use as resources for further activity, then learning in chess appears to occur through problem solving, but problem-solving of an altogether different order from what is done by a computer. (Newell, Shaw & Simon, 1958; Newell & Simon, 1972) • In chess, the patterns and relationships being stored is among chess pieces. In expression games, the patterns being stored are the relations among the various configurations of nonverbal cues, verbal cues, situational context and the immediate social action that follows from the interaction of the nonverbal and verbal configurations. • Problem-solving in both types of games involves a process of taking account of contingencies in such a way that relations and patterns are on-going accomplishments of a reliance on heuristics. Therefore, it appears that chess and expression games do use the same cognitive process for learning. The Cognitive Problem • Now that it is clear that the learning process for expression games is based in heuristics, it is clear why algorithms for learning expression games would appear problematic. As most elementary students learn, algorithms are excellent for summaries of numerical data which can have operations performed on them, and these steps are taught, learned and tested on exams. But what if the algorithm–heuristic distinction was not only a distinction between algorithms and heuristics but a distinction between algorithms and “algorithmic heuristics”? Consider the possibility, with algorithms taking its Oxford English Dictionary meaning as applied in formal processes, that heuristics may become routinized after a period of accumulation of relational-patterns, thereby arriving at a stage in which the routinization of the heuristics takes on the appearance of algorithm, and not the heuristics itself. These appearances, from the point of the observer, are the constitution of informal skills. The Reified Informal Interaction • A master of expression games might be said to have ‘charisma’ and is typically the type of person who ends up writing a self-help book on interpersonal relationships. This author might or might not recognize that the content of their ‘charisma’, small talk and big talk success is the result of “algorithmic heuristics”, rather than algorithms alone. Their book might describe principles or steps to participate in expression games. What the authors do not realize is in the writing of the book, the author has transformed what is in their personal experience of expression games, an algorithmic heuristic into an algorithm (just like the problem described with the reading of chess books). They instead come to disregard the problem of teaching the informal aspect of social interaction in favor of rules and an attempt to persuade readers to operate according to their specific prescriptions. In effect, these are “algorithmic heuristics” and if their mode of presentation ignores their informal aspect the result is a learning that cannot be applied with any hope of success, not necessarily because that is the author’s intent but because it is not necessarily under the author’s control. Decisions made by publishers and others that do the typesetting affect how a text is read. An Example • Consider Dale Carnegie’s bestseller of more than 15 millions copies, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It has a section entitled “Six Ways to Make People Like You in a Nutshell”: 1. Become genuinely interested in other people. 2. Smile. 3. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. 4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. 5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. 6. Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely. What’s Really Going On… • The algorithm–heuristic distinction, heuristics are the basis for social action during the course of an expression game. Over time, these heuristics are routinized and appear as algorithmic heuristics. It is in this form that the algorithmic heuristics learned informally are mistaken for the algorithms characteristic of formal interaction. The Cynical (Rationalistic/Game Theoretical) Critique of Goffman & Revision • Oran R. Young’s review of Strategic Interaction suggests interpreting the term “expression game” as referring to: “those aspects of strategic interaction involving the acquisition, revelation, or concealment of information affecting the relationship between the parties involved in the strategic situation. Consequently, expression games are calculative activities taking place within the broader framework of strategic interaction in general.” (Young, 1974:128-129; Cf. Swedberg, 2001) Strategic, Yet Non-Calculative Conditions • The strategic, yet non-calculative conditions under which expression games are situated is predicated upon the simple cognitive fact that heuristics gather and process information about the environment an interactant is located within. • This rises to a conception of strategy (Goffman, 1969: 10) but not to a conception of calculation as Young’s review suggests (Op. Cit.) or to the level of “deliberateness, calculation and express management” as suggested by Garfinkel (1967: 174). Most expression games operate under these strategic, yet non-calculative conditions. Strategic and Calculative Conditions • Expression games operating under strategic and calculative conditions tend to take two forms: (a) formal strategic interaction and (b) informal strategic interaction. • Formal strategic interaction, where there is knowingly “deliberateness, calculation and express management” like that of business negotiations and other situations examined by formal game theory as presented in von Neumann and Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior; this examination is outside the scope of this study. • Informal strategic interaction operating strategic and calculative conditions is more complex form of social action. The apparent source of Garfinkel’s critique of Goffman is how this deliberateness calculative quality adds a formal character to interaction where it is not warranted. Since most expression games operate under strategic, yet non-calculative conditions, a particular operation disguises the calculative condition as non-calculative; thus maintaining what Glaser & Strauss (1964) refer to as a closed awareness context. The operation that performs this maintenance is referred to as Shaman’s Condition. Shaman’s Condition • Shaman’s Condition is obtained through a variety of heuristics that permit social action to take on a deceptive authenticity. • The word ‘Shaman’ in the phrase “Shaman’s Condition” is a reference to the social phenomenon examined by Emile Durkheim (1965) and Marcel Mauss (1972). • The phenomenon under examination is the relationship between calculation, belief and deception. Unlike the magician who is aware of his or her intent in deceiving his or her audience, (Jones, 2011; Cf. Dutton, 2010: 70) the shaman shares the same belief as his audience and is taken in by his own performance. It is this state of being, or condition, that permits the deception to be successfully disguised. Actors • Actors must turn lines of text into not just speech but into authentic social interaction all the while an entire audience is staring at them – an actor needs to forget that he or she is acting. • Further consider the description of actors and their training as provided by David Mamet, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and director, who draws on his decades of observing good and bad acting in his authoring of True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor (1999). • Mamet aptly describes the problem of acting without Shaman’s Condition at the same time of critiquing the Stanislavsky Method of acting: • “Most acting training is directed at recapitulating the script. Actors are told to learn how to "be happy," "be sad," "be distracted," at those points in the script or performance where it would seem the "character" would so be. Such behavior is not only unnecessary, it is harmful both to the actor and to the audience. [N]othing in the world is less interesting than an actor on the stage involved in his or her own emotions. The very act of striving to create an emotional state in oneself takes one out of the play. It is the ultimate self-consciousness, and though it may be selfconsciousness in the service of an ideal, it is no less boring for that. The actor on the stage, looking for or striving to create a "state" in himself can think only one of two things: (a) I have not reached the required state yet; I am deficient and must try harder; or (b) I have reached the required state, how proficient I am! (at which point the mind, ever jealous of its prerogatives, will reduce the actor to (a). Both (a) and (b) take the actor right out of the play. For the mind cannot be forced. It can be suggested, but it cannot be forced. An actor onstage can no more act upon the order "Be happy" than she can upon the order "Do not think of a hippopotamus."” (1999: 10-11) Confidence Men • Just as an actor’s job is to take in his or her audience, what is the difference between an actor and confidence men? The purpose the audience plays – as Goffman (1952) writes, “The con is practiced on private persons by talented actors who methodically and regularly build up informal social relationships just for the purpose of abusing them.” • However, Shaman’s Condition plays an even stronger role in this type of expression game – it is crucial to convince the mark that there is ‘honor among thieves’ as they say, especially since a “confidence man prospers only because of the fundamental dishonesty of his victim.” Social Engineers • “Social engineers” appear to be a relatively recent venture when compared to the millennia that actors and swindlers have taunted society. In the current technological age of information, the necessity to secure that information grows as more information is accumulated and stored digitally; regardless of whether the data is the photos from one’s wedding, the trademark recipe to a company’s secret sauce or the Department of Defense’s contingency plans to prevent nuclear war, security experts and hackers agree that the most vulnerable aspect of a organization’s security is not necessarily its technological infrastructure but the people within its organization. When these ‘people’ are targeted for information, they are all of a sudden targeted by a new breed of manipulators – the “social engineers”. Pick-Up Artists • ‘Pick-up artists’ are also a master of Shaman’s Condition in their calculated expression games. Mystery (Erik von Markovik), host of the 1 season show on VH1, The Pickup Artist and author of the book of the same name (von Markovik & Odom, 2010) describes his experience of Shaman’s Condition: “I honestly feel like I am a master at this. Not because I can get any woman—that, of course, is impossible—but because my pickups are so controlled and smooth; not sleazy, but rather natural.” • Mystery however does not describe how he gets to be so ‘smooth’ (into Shaman’s Condition); instead he described what is referred to as the Mystery Method – another algorithmic heuristic presented as a mere algorithm for attracting hot women, even what he refers to as “10s”: “It is a very simple system, really. 1. Find 2. Meet 3. Attract 4. Close.” (Ibid: xviii) If it were that simple, such a book would not need to exist… Undercover Police Work • In undercover police work, it appears that obtaining Shaman’s Condition to disguise the lies and calculation is a prerequisite for success in the kind of informal strategic expression games, in fact their lives typically depend on it. (See Queen, 2007; Dobyns, 2009; Diaz, 2011; Sellers, 2012; Russell, 2013 for first person accounts of undercover operations.) • The question protracted undercover work poses for expression games is quite interesting – what happens when the encounter that the informal strategic expression games occur in is not truncated but protracted – meaning the calculation and goal sought in the expression game is a long term project – i.e. “covert work is very intense. The agent is always "on." For some agents, the work has an addictive quality as they savor the sense of power, intrigue, excitement, and their protected contact with illegality.” (Marx, 1988: 161) It appears this would not be problematic under Shaman’s Condition since the Shaman unlike the agent has no need to be ‘on’. Native’s Condition • This suggests that Shaman’s Condition is similar to the phenomenon of “going native”, or operating under Native’s Condition, which seems more of a requirement of these protracted expression games: “A number of the interview, news, and nonfiction and fiction accounts in the literature suggest that some deepcover agents undergo a striking metamorphosis. As lying becomes a way of life, the agent may become confused about his or her true identity. Familiarity can breed affection as well as contempt. This is particularly likely to the extent that the agent is cut off from friends and becomes immersed in a new life.” (Marx, 1988: 163) The difference between Shaman’s Condition and Native’s Condition is the length of the encounter and thus the length of the expression game. • When the situational calculative conditions of the encounter do not permit retreat – the play must go on and this sense of being always “on” appears to be a stage prior to obtaining Shaman’s Condition or the requisite for finding oneself under the operation of Native’s Condition. Swift Undercover Work • In more swift undercover operations, where one can be sure Shaman’s Condition (and not Native’s Condition) is indeed operating is in drug buys like that presented in the following excerpt from a transcript used in the training of FBI agents: • “AGENT: "I'm gonna talk to you like you were my kid brother, or something ...just because I'm available and I could do business, don't, don't get sucked in by that justbecause it's a way to make money. ... I frankly don't need the business, and, ah, if there's some other way you can survive without doing it, my advice to you because you already had the light shined on you and they probably [are] giving you your last chance would be go do something else." • SUBJECT: "Right, I understand where you're coming from." • AGENT: "Yeah, so, I just wanted to lay that on you and if you're still bound and determined then it's a new ball game, but at least we've talked about it." • SUBJECT: "I'm still bound [and] determined."” (Marx, 1988: 137) Miskeying Undercover • Marx (1988:136) gives an interesting example where an expression game can be misinterpreted: • “Frequent references to a corrupt practice may lead the unreflective observer to tie the target into the scheme, even when the target may be a passive participant. In a phenomenon linguists refer to as "contamination," one party to a conversation has a secret agenda to which he keeps returning, thus creating the impression that everyone involved in the conversation agrees with the speaker. But the failure to actively reject an offer or to vocally or visibly disagree with a line of conversation may reflect politeness, posturing, intimidation, or disinterest, rather than acquiescence. Even saying "Uhhuh," "Yeah," or "Yes" may mean "I hear you" or "I understand" rather than "I agree."” The Term ‘Strategy’ • This is now at a point where the term ‘strategy’ or ‘strategic’ may appear problematic, but only if the term is seen synonymous with the term ‘rationality’ as that appears to be a reversion back to formal interaction. • However, recalling the simple cognitive fact that heuristics gather and process information about the environment that an interactant is located within makes all interaction strategic, the real problem is what is meant by ‘calculative.’ Then, to be calculative, or tactical, is to narrow attention where the focus is upon eliminating options in the elements of the situation. • The inverse concept is to examine what ‘not calculative’ looks like. It appears to be a type of attentiveness to the overall picture of things rather than any particular detail and a type of receptiveness to spontaneity – i.e. to allow something to happen rather than applying the constraints tied to strict decision-making procedures. Just like how chess pieces have squares that are ‘natural to that particular position; or how a string of musical notes constitute a melodic harmony; or how a particular color shirt ‘just works’ with a particular pair of pants, or how a particular wine tastes ‘just right’ with a particular entrée; our heuristic relational-pattern recognition senses how things fit together. Why Shaman’s Condition Is Necessary • For informal situations, to calculate and thus attempt specific tactical considerations without Shaman’s Condition is to attempt to place a puzzle piece where it will never fit. • Such an attempt overly focuses on particular elements (like only one of the four tabs of a puzzle piece) and in focusing upon such elements, one takes action toward such elements – that is to produce a large degree of incongruity in the expression game. • This kind of focused action comes off as social incompetence. When such social incompetence is perceived by the other interactants, it is immediately marked as ‘odd’; and the incongruity in the expression game is sensed as deception. • It is this that alienates the individual from the rest of the interactants. What is needed instead is social competence, and congruency in one’s expression games, for informal social interaction. • Informal social interaction requires fitting in and therefore an act of attention that is strategic but not calculating and that it has its object the relational aspect of the situation rather than the particulars relative to other particulars. Social competence requires this kind of active attention – it requires perceiving the relations in a situation such that one knows how to fit in and one cannot teach a model of how to fit in on a model on how to calculate. Finding the Key • When things fit together, without the hazards of calculation, expression games generate a relational reality that stands on its own. The remaining question though is the character of that relational reality; what Goffman refers to as ‘tightness’ and ‘looseness’ among such component relations; or what has been discussed so far as formal or informal. The Problem • With the understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of how social action is learned and the application of that learning process to how expression games occur under a variety of strategic conditions, it can then be understood how expression games generate a relational reality that keys what type of activity is permissible – i.e. what the rules of the expression game are and what type of activity will be sanctioned and therefore deemed as the placement of a piece in the wrong puzzle – the type of activity that does not fit. • When the interaction sustains the relational reality, the ambiguity of meaning that arises from expression games is further negotiated and as meanings become further understood, rapport arises within the relational reality and functions as the foundation for trust. When interactants fail to key into the relational reality shared by the other interactants, this has several possible interrelated causes. Possible Causes of Failure • Since heuristic searches are based on previously learned patterns, the interactant might (a) have never successfully stored the various configurations of nonverbal cues, verbal cues and the immediate social action that follows from the interaction of the nonverbal and verbal configurations (as in several forms of autism) and therefore suffers from failed interpersonal socialization; (b) be socialized in a different culture where the learned configurations are inapplicable to the current set of interactants; (c) not have had the opportunity to learn the patterns appropriate for the situation; or (d) have learned the patterns through formal study with very little practice. • Formal study with extensive practice will lead to obtaining Shaman’s Condition at a minimum, if not the attainment of strategic, yet not calculative conditions through typical socialization processes. The cause of interest to this presentation is (d) specifically when formal study fails to teach how to obtain Shaman’s Condition; specifically when that failure of attainment produces alienation and the interactant feels ‘out of place’ during the course of expression games and is therefore discouraged further from the practice obtaining Shaman’s Condition requires. • As previously discussed, the underlying cause for this failure is the mistaking of algorithms for algorithmic heuristics and it is now time for a detailed examination of the materials used for formal study, drawn from the self-help literature, to see how much of what has been discussed so far is taken into account; especially the disconnection between the author’s written word and the activity of reading that accounts for the alienation experienced in interaction. Questions and Comments? Thanks For Listening! Please feel free to inquire further at mraphael@gc.cuny.edu! 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