Two Ways of Reasoning About the World: Agency Bias vs Systems Bias
The two modes of reasoning that bias some to view the world as purely controlled by agentic forces and some to view the world as determined by systemic forces.
I’ve often noticed that there seem to be two distinct styles of reasoning about the world. I suspect this has something to do with why people come to develop very different worldviews. It leads people to interpret cause and effect in the world differently.
Some people seem to have a more paranoid bent, seeing human agency, personal desires, and planning (often with malicious intent) as the cause of various events. People like this are prone to believing in conspiracy theories, too.
I’m calling this “agency“ bias because people on the far side of this spectrum see personal agency and intent behind everything.
Other people look at the world through the lens of chance and circumstances. Incentives and systems cause people to behave in certain ways. People aren’t acting out of their own agency to conspire against the world but rather because of their personal proclivities, the immediate environmental context, and systemic incentives. People don’t have free will.
I’m calling this “ systems “ bias because people on this side of the spectrum will interpret everything as being caused by a deterministic system, where individual human agency plays no role.
I suspect that there’s both a psychological and an educational component to it. Maybe it’s related to someone’s personality, specifically where they end up along either of the Big 5 personality traits?
Some people are just more prone to have a sort of agency bias, and some people will naturally gravitate towards seeing the world through a systems lens. Your personal level of paranoia/neuroticism will play into this, as will your degree of belief in things like free will: do people have real agency or are their lives determined by circumstance?
Another way of viewing this is as a matter of reasoning styles or decision-making, e.g., “intuitive” vs. “analytical.”
People who are intuitive are more likely to think in emotive terms and will judge other people by the same standards. Analytical people will take a more logical approach and will expect other people to behave in the same way.
Some of these beliefs will result from formal education and how much you’ve learned about how people think (i.e., learning about critical thinking and facts about the world probably changes your disposition). But I believe some people can be incredibly well educated and still be prone to “agency” bias, so education and personal experience can’t explain the differences.
Everyone ends up somewhere on this spectrum; some people are very far along toward the agency side, and some are much further along on the systems side.
The fact that I’m even writing an article like this suggests I’m probably further along on the “systems” side of the spectrum. However, I’m not claiming either of these perspectives is always better or worse. Rather, I think they can blind you to obvious truths about the world if you’re not aware of where your thinking is coming from.
I’ve noticed this more and more in my own life, both because of how I act and view the world (as opposed to others) and because of how other people act and make decisions. Just the fact that I’m writing something like this will probably tip you off that I’m more on the systems/analytical side of things. But I have friends and family who have a more emotional/paranoid bent. Both ways of viewing the world can be useful.
What I’ve found is that in some circumstances, it’s useful to frame an event as a result of someone’s agency. Something happens in the world, and it’s a result of a bad actor; the best way to deal with it is to understand it as a matter of there being a “bad guy.” If you can stop him, you can make the world better. This could be a bully at work, a dictator, or anything in between. Perhaps people with a systems bias will be overly naïve in such circumstances, unable to see the forest for the trees (or perhaps more fittingly, unable to see the trees for the forest).
At other times - perhaps most often - the better way to think is in terms of systems and incentives. People are mostly affected by their internal and external environments and incentives, social or economic. People operate within systems. These systems will determine people’s behavior much more than they can themselves. Understanding this should allow you to appreciate how little control people have over what happens to them or even what they themselves do. This can lead to more empathy and a different approach toward making people do what you want them to do (see Nudging).
I think this way of understanding people’s perspectives applies as much to personal relationships as it does to world affairs. For example, one difference is how you think politics works or should work. Is it just a matter of electing the right people, or is it a matter of having the right systems and incentives in place?
What’s your mode of thinking?
I take a systems approach, but that doesn’t mean I think we don’t have agency within those systems. For example, if an individual decides to become vegan and never buy another new consumer good because they are environmentally conscious, that’s great. But if the system decides to make meat really expensive, outlaw plastics, and subsidize a resale market, people won’t eat as much meat, use as much plastic, or buy as many new things, and that will have a much greater effect.