What is Relational Thinking

An introduction to this publication

My Aim and Purpose

I’ve been researching communication, specifically in the area of social networks and computational social science, for about 20 years. During this time I’ve had many thoughts that were relevant to the theories and phenomena I was studying, but which nonetheless do not fit neatly, or really at all, into an empirical, scientific study.

One example is what I would call “this is why” explanations. I see something in the news, or a general trend in society, and I can see clearly that it can be explained by a particular theory, and think that is worth presenting and discussing. Another example is what I would call a “we should really” recommendation. According to these established theories or other findings, a problem in society should be addressed in this way.

It is possible to write these as academic papers, and on occasion I have done so. But academic papers requires detailed argument and assiduous citation, and they are written for an academic audience. Thus, academic papers are a good outlet for big ideas that one can rigorously argue are important to a small, specialized audience. But what about small ideas that one merely wants to suggest should be considered by a larger, more public audience?

The articulation of these ideas are the goal of this publication. Specifically, I plan to write about topical issues from the perspective of a communication and network scientist, that is, someone who studies how human relationships work both at the individual and collective level. I plan to do so in a lay style that focuses on making ideas clear rather than assiduously justified. In that spirit, I welcome questions and challenges. To use a tennis metaphor (and get ready for sports metaphors in this space), I’m trying to start a rally where we are “just hitting,” not serving to win a point in a match.

So what is relational thinking?

Relational thinking understands human behavior from the premise that we are fundamentally relational beings. By relational beings, I mean that our brains have both been designed (by evolution) and trained (by culture) to assume and expect we are constantly in the context of relational decisions that we have to make, and that other make about us.

Relational decisions are judgments about whether, and to what extent to rely on or make oneself vulnerable to another person. For example, do I trust this person? In what ways? Should I invest power in them or try to deprive them of it? Am I vulnerable if I expose myself to their discretion, and in what ways?

Relational decisions are based on inferences about the mind of the other person. Humans are mind readers. That is, we use what we know about another person’s mind to predict how they will act both when we are with them and when we are not. This understanding then informs how we act toward, and in response to, them. Basic aspects of this mind reading are: knowledge — what do they know, what do they know how to do; motivation — what do they want or value; emotional state — how do they feel and, critically, relational orientation — what do they see me, are we friends or enemies, close or distant, are we equals or is one of us dominant and the other subordinate.

These ideas are well known in social science. Cognitive science shows that we have an enormous capacity to model the minds of others and that we start to build this capacity at a young age. Anthropology shows that our mind modeling abilities are substantially greater than even our nearest primate cousins. Other social sciences (in particular my home area of network science, which is itself interdisciplinary across anthropology, communication, economics, information science, psychology, and sociology) show that this mind modeling, in particular, the ability to quickly assess and form friendships and other relationships of trust, is a key to our ability to solve simple and complex cooperative problems.

It follows that making good relational decisions is very, very important to us, and that we spend a lot of time and and effort on gathering and analyzing information to make these decisions as well as we can, and also that we spend a lot of time performing behaviors for the sake of influencing others relational decisions about us. This does not mean that we do so perfectly, or even sufficiently accurately to meet our goals. Relational thinking is not about arguing for some Panglossian view that humans are “optimized” to solve social problems via their precise and accurate assessments of one another’s minds. Rather, relational thinking is about emphasizing that, whether we are any good at it or not, we deeply prioritize understanding and responding to what other people are thinking, in their minds, and in particular, what other people are thinking about us.

Why Write about Relational Thinking?

A logical question in response to this explanation is: if relational thinking is so natural and intuitive, why write about it? Since we all do it all the time, what is the using in explaining or applying it?

This is an interesting question that I could answer in a number of ways. But I think the most relevant response is that, despite both its functional importance to us and its deep roots in our minds, contemporary, Western/European culture has “alienated” us from it, and this alienation has lead to increasing confusion about what is going on in the social world, particularly in politics.

Broadly speaking (and probably deserving its own post), this alienation stems from the Enlightenment. One can see this plainly in Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment,” which begins by stating the Enlightenment is “man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage…man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.” Key principles in the Enlightenment are independence and individualism. People should think for themselves, be free to act according to their own interests and so forth. These principles not only threw over the dominant, Christian-informed worldview of Europe, they are also in tension with most other cultures, which emphasize relationships within the community rather than the importance of the individual.

It must be stated that these principles have, broadly, been very effective in helping humankind intervene in the material world. As others (e.g. Steven Pinker) have argued, releasing human thinking from the bindings of commitment to tradition unleashed an astonishing amount of technological and economic progress.

Nevertheless, whatever its merits, my contention is that it is still “unnatural” to us. In other words, people still have the “instinct” to think and act relationally. This leads to two consequences.

One is that in day-to-day life, we are increasingly coming into contact with a culture that devalues our relational instincts and casts them as nonsensical. That is, we are told that our relational intuitions. which are inchoate and “feel right,” are wrong. This leads us to feel alienated and, in some cases, to want to lash out or resist.

The second consequence is that our language — and in fact our entire cultural apparatus — obfuscates this relational instinct, and forces us to articulate it and defend it in terms of other rationales. So, for example, as I’ve written about in my own research, when people reject vaccines because they don’t want to invest trust in experts (a relational decision), the media tries to understand this choice as a decision based on scientific logic and facts. Therefore, since the conclusion is false, these anti-vaxxers must be reasoning from false premises, i.e., misinformation.

From a relational view, though, the true reasons to take or not take a vaccine are obviously incomprehensible to most of us. The question is mostly relational — should we trust the scientists who recommend them or the scientists (or other purported experts) who do not. This decision, rationally, should be based on which scientists we think have trustworthy relational intentions toward us (as well as assessments of their competence).

For these reasons, I think there is value in simply in articulating and validating the relational perspective, not for the sake of saying we should always agree with it or tolerate what it recommends, but for the sake of recognizing where it is coming from, the specific ways in which it might be correct, and also seeing the specific ways in which it errs. This is the purpose of this publication.

I will create my first post tomorrow.