Behavior and Consequences

An article in one of my news feeds caught my eye recently. The title was “How To Predict Your Future.” It was based somewhat on the same premise as this blog, except that it concerns itself with predicting individual futures, whereas I have generalized it to apply to the future of society as a whole. Past behavior predicts future behavior, and those behaviors almost always dictate how satisfactory the results will be.

About individual results he says, “It’s not about what you want — it’s about what you do.” Look at your habits and decide whether they are the ones needed to reach goals. Don’t just set goals and assume the good intentions will see you through. The same can be said of societies. 

Just because a couple of us agree doesn’t convince me, so I dug deeper. 

This Psychology Today article claims the maxim is too simplistic and depends on a lot of factors:

•        High-frequency, habitual behaviors are more predictive than infrequent behaviors.
•        Predictions work best over short time intervals. 
•        The anticipated situation must be essentially the same as the past situation that activated the behavior.
•        The behavior must not have been extinguished by corrective or negative feedback.  
•        The person must remain essentially unchanged. 
•        The person must be fairly consistent in his or her behaviors. 

These are reasonable objections. Of course if a person is not exposed to the same situations or if he has gone through a  change brought about by a personal realization or outside intervention, the same actions will not repeat. People can quit smoking, give up drugs or turn away from a criminal lifestyle.

But these arguments apply more to an outside authority or counselor using records to judge whether someone needs professional help (or incarceration). In daily life though, there are people who almost always drive too fast regardless of the number of tickets issued and people who don't pass up the snack food aisle or the corner coffee shop. It's not the big things that catch up to people in the long run; it's the accumulation of small habits with unnoticeable consequences the lead to obesity, retirement insecurity and car crashes.

An example comes from the medical field.  A study to determine which was a better predictor of statin patients’ adherence to their prescriptions found that attitudes about taking medicine as directed were not as strong as past medication-refill behavior. The conclusion was “that past prescription-refill behavior is a better predictor of medication adherence,” which is fortunate since the refills can be tracked electronically.

In academics a 2018 article states, “Your behavior in high school could predict your income.” The study began in 1960 with 345,000 American high school students, following up with “about 80,000 of them 11 years later and another [follow up] for nearly 2,000 of them 50 years later.” Those who performed well “were all associated with career prestige at the 11-year mark and higher income at the 50-year mark.”

Of course past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior (and the consequent future outcomes), but we don’t usually need to be perfect when dealing with individuals or groups. General trends are enough to predict whether America will continue to head in what most consider to be the wrong direction. Several times in the past eight years I have written about predicting outcomes months in advance. Here is just one called "How to Predict the Future." 

In another case I criticized the panic resulting from an investigative report dubbing lean beef trimmings as pink slime. Anyone with a trace of critical thinking would have passed it off as ridiculous; but people did react, and a few years later ABC News settled a defamation case with the meat processor for $177 million.

Last spring I argued that constantly telling children scary lies is a form of abuse. One example I used was the story about the dwindling polar bear population. This week news broke with the headline: Canadian “University dumps professor who found polar bears thriving despite climate change.” (The university apparently favors such abuse.)

Likewise, I wrote in early 2015 that we must deal with our own problems by choosing healthier behavior and not “wait for the next election” to solve everything.  How right I was!

There are far too many examples bearing out the behavior/consequences link for it to be ignored or dismissed.