Fostering Reasonableness: Supportive Environments for Bringing Out Our Best

Abstract

 
Many people seeking to have a positive social impact have learned the hard way that designs and programs that look great on paper may fall short in the real world. Examples in developing countries abound—a well-designed water filter remains unused because it is a bit of a hassle, and people do not see the connection between dirty water and disease; a clean water distribution program is underutilized because it does not fit people’s needs and lifestyle; an award-winning neonatal incubator remains forever a prototype because it does not match the needs and interests of manufacturers and distributors (Brown & Wyatt, 2010).

Of course, one does not have to look to developing countries for examples of failed products and programs; most of us, in fact, can readily find examples in our own communities. A common thread here is a failure to fully understand and consider the knowledge, needs, values, and behaviors of the people involved. As Timothy Prestero (2010), the founder of Design That Matters, puts it, “There is no such thing as a dumb user. There are only dumb products” (p. 108). Another way to put it is this: if you want to effectively interact with or influence people, you have to understand them.

So, what’s to understand? Well, you may have an idea of what the problem is and how to fix it, but how do other stakeholders perceive the problem? What are their assumptions? What is their level of expertise? What are their values, behaviors, and cultural expectations? In short, you need to know “where they’re at.” Everyone has their own understanding of the world and appropriate design; however, effective communication, positive collaborative efforts, and successful teaching all depend in part on the ability to identify, understand, and respect these different perspectives.

Mental Models Revisited

The Scottish psychologist Kenneth Craik (1943) described the mind as constructing “small scale models of reality” that it uses to reason, anticipate events, and explain the world. While we know considerably more, seventy years later, about cognitive mechanisms and structures, the simple notion of a mental model remains powerful. Our mental models are a reflection of how we have experienced the world. We have mental models of physical places such as our neighborhood, of processes such as erosion or the spread of infectious disease, and of abstract concepts such as environmental sustainability or democracy. Not only do mental models store our knowledge about the world, they are also the lens through which we view the world—they influence what we see and how we see it and whether or not new information will be processed and integrated with existing knowledge or disregarded as irrelevant.

Like the view through any lens, however, our models are limited, offering but one of an infinite possibility of perspectives. Even though they are incomplete and idiosyncratic, mental models sure feel real, complete, and obvious to their owner. The strength of our mental models often leads us, even despite good intentions, to ignore or discount the perspectives of others. It is this inability to see things from another’s perspective that underlies much of the conflict in our world—whether between parents and children, disparate stakeholders collaborating on an environmental conservation plan, or members of different religious groups.

Acknowledging that there are other perspectives out there is a start to facilitating human interaction. But making good decisions and encouraging reasonable behavior require not only acknowledging other perspectives but also truly understanding them. The benefits of being able to peer inside someone’s brain and see how they think about a particular topic would be many, including facilitating communication, encouraging meaningful action, and creating designs for people.

Facilitating communication. When my eldest brother went off to college and requested Mom’s beloved pizza recipe, he got an index card with a list of ingredients for dough and toppings and a note that simply said, “Make as usual.” That’s one of the problems with well-learned mental models—they are so obvious that we often don’t stop to consider them. As R. Kaplan describes in Chapter 2 on model building, this lack of access to our own mental models, coupled with a lack of understanding of others’ mental models, is a recipe for ineffective communication. This can be particularly true when the givers and receivers of information differ in terms of their level or areas of expertise (for a discussion of the problems and pitfalls associated with expertise, see S. Kaplan, Chapter 3). In these contexts, having a clearer understanding of the mental models of all concerned would go a long way toward helping people appreciate their own biases and idiosyncratic views and also determining how best to frame information for those we’d like to share it with.

Encouraging meaningful action. Asking the people you are hoping to engage with to share their mental models not only facilitates effective communication but also promotes collaboration and participation. Taking the time to understand where people are coming from shows respect for their knowledge and views, and explicitly externalizing their mental models about a particular topic is a good way to listen. Because sharing mental models is so important for meaningful participation, it is useful early and often; it can highlight areas of potential disagreement or common ground and will greatly increase the chances of effective collaboration among groups with varied backgrounds.

Creating better designs for people. Those who design for others—whether products, processes, places, digital experiences, or interventions to change behavior—must be attuned to their users’ unique knowledge, perspectives, biases, and expectations. Human-centered design firms such as Design That Matters and IDEO have demonstrated that even a relatively small up-front investment in researching user and other stakeholder needs and perspectives can pay enormous dividends in terms of product success. The underutilized water distribution system mentioned in the introduction, for example, was redesigned and made more effective and accessible after taking time to talk to potential users and understand their perspectives, needs, and behaviors around water. Several of the chapters in this book also provide examples of how understanding one’s audience is essential in designing programs and experiences that aim to bring out the best in people, whether in designing landscapes (Grese, Chapter 19), engaging the public in resource management (Monroe, Chapter 14), training community leaders (Gallagher, Chapter 8), developing materials to help private landowners manage their forestland (Bradley & Cooper, Chapter 12), or facilitating dispute resolution (Hollett, Chapter 15).

Measuring and Understanding Mental Models

Given the many advantages of seeing things from another person’s point of view, why do we so often fail to do so? For one thing, it requires considerable cognitive effort—we must inhibit our own mental models, entertain a different way of thinking, and quiet any negative emotions associated with exploring a new perspective. Furthermore, even if we have the cognitive capacity to consider alternate perspectives, we may not have the appropriate foundational knowledge to begin to imagine how someone else—from a different culture, for example—sees the world. Clearly, we could use some help.

How do villagers conceptualize their health care system? How do new mothers think about caring for their newborn children? How do people understand aspects of the financial market? Getting at these types of questions can be a challenge. For that matter, how do we conceptualize our health care system or understand the financial market? Not only is it difficult to imagine how others understand such complex issues, but people often have difficulty articulating what’s in their head. This is one reason that traditional methods, such as surveys and focus groups, often fail to yield important insights in these contexts. Getting beyond shallow or off-the-cuff responses requires a tool that facilitates exploration and discovery.

The Conceptual Content Cognitive Map (3CM) is one such tool (Kearney & Kaplan, 1997). The 3CM process is a card-sorting technique with several unique features (for information on other card-sorting techniques, see Jonassen, Beissner, & Yacci, 1993) that (1) uses an opening scenario to ground and focus the participant by activating their mental model around the topic of interest; (2) emphasizes ownership of concepts by asking participants to either generate their own list of domain-relevant items or select from a broad set of items only those they understand and feel are relevant; (3) allows participants to categorize the cards based on what goes together in their minds, with no constraints on category size or number; and (4) encourages exploration and discovery as cards are generated and arranged into categories.

Externalizing Mental Models: The 3CM Process

The 3CM process was developed as a tool for measuring a person’s mental model about a specific topic or domain. This tool identifies both the content that people perceive as relevant and important and the structure or organization of that content (knowledge content + knowledge structure = a cognitive map, or mental model). The 3CM process is intuitive, has been successfully used with different age groups and cultures, requires no special technology, and can just as easily be administered in a rural Indonesian village as in a New York boardroom.

The basic 3CM procedure is as follows:

1. The relevant mental model is activated through a specific scenario along with several additional prompts.
2. Participants identify the items that they perceive are important and relevant to the topic. These items are either self-generated (open-ended 3CM) or are selected from a list of possible items (structured 3CM). In either case, the emphasis is on discrete “things” rather than emotions or lengthy explanations.
3. Each item is written on a separate card or sticky note.
4. Participants group the cards into categories according to what goes together in their mind. No specific guidelines are given for organization or for number of categories.
5. Finally, participants circle and label each category, indicating why they grouped those items together.
6. Optionally, if it makes sense in the context of the research, participants can be asked to rate their individual cards based on importance or to indicate if they consider individual cards to be positive or negative.

What results is a picture (or map, if you will) of an individual’s mental model (for an example, see Figure 16.1). We can use this map to understand what the individual knows about, what is perceived as important, and what might be missing. We can also use the map to understand how the individual perceives the bigger picture. For example, in a study of student teachers’ understanding of the animal kingdom, we asked students to select the animals they knew from a master list and then to group those animals according to how they went together. While the content of students’ mental models did not differ much (they were all familiar with roughly the same animals), the way their knowledge was organized differed drastically, indicating different ways of thinking about the animal kingdom. Some students, for example, grouped animals by classic scientific taxonomy (mammals, reptiles, etc.), while others grouped them into categories such as “slimy animals,” “dangerous animals,” and “pets.”

Figure 16.1. A middle school student’s cognitive map of a healthy natural environment.

Participants often report that 3CM is an engaging and enjoyable activity. Although it may be a relatively straightforward tool from their perspective, considerable thought and effort are needed in designing, implementing, and analyzing a 3CM. What follows is a step-by-step 3CM guide.

3CM in Practice

Example 3: Program Assessment and Design

An environmental education center wanted to know how children’s understanding of healthy natural environments changed as a result of attending their four-day camp and how the curriculum could be enhanced to more clearly communicate key environmental concepts.

Sample. The sample of camp participants included seventy-one fourth- through sixth-grade students.

Process. Because of the large sample size, a structured 3CM was used. The sixty-eight items used in the structured 3CM were based on a series of open-ended 3CMs conducted previously with similar students (both before and after camp attendance) as well as input from camp staff. The 3CM scenario and questions are provided above, in the section on the structured 3CM. Cognitive mapping was done both at the beginning and end of the camp and was administered by camp instructors to groups of eight to twelve students at a time. Prior to the first 3CM, instructors briefly helped students work through an example 3CM task on another topic (what their school cafeteria is like) in order to familiarize them with the 3CM process.

Analysis. The pre- and postmaps were analyzed with hierarchical clustering (Figure 16.2). A subsequent qualitative comparison explored differences in map items and categories, pre- and postcamp.

What was learned? The 3CM data showed that students’ understanding of healthy natural environments did become richer and more complex as a result of the camp. Staff members were able to determine that messages regarding stewardship and interrelationships among ecosystem components were getting across. They were also able to see that although students’ awareness of new concepts introduced during the camp (e.g., abiotic elements, producers, decomposers) was increased (and separate measures did indeed indicate a large increase in students’ ability to define these terms), many students tended to group these concepts in an isolated category, indicating that they may not be fully integrating them into their understanding of natural environments. These results provided evidence for the camp’s effectiveness while also giving insight to center teachers and education staff in terms of how to improve the curriculum.

Figure 16.2. Pre-and postcamp hierarchical clustering results based on seventy-one students and the items chosen by at least 15% of students. Circles indicate subgroupings within the larger category. Items in all caps were chosen by >50% of students, first letter cap was chosen by 25–49%, and all lowercase was chosen by 15–24%. The plus sign denotes items that did not show up in the precamp map but did in the postcamp map; the minus sign denotes items that were in the precamp map but were dropped in the postcamp map.

3CM IN CONTEXT

3CM is a valuable tool for helping to meet some of the fundamental informational needs posited by RPM, particularly those related to model building and meaningful action. Hence, 3CM is widely applicable to programs and projects that seek to bring out the best in people. Specifically, 3CM can help in the following crucial areas.

Gain insight into one’s own mental models. Basu (Chapter 6) makes the important points in his chapter that fostering our own reasonableness is every bit as important as fostering reasonableness in others and that bringing out the best in ourselves depends, in no small part, on self-understanding. 3CM can help in this regard. An unexpected benefit of the 3CM technique has been participants’ discovery of aspects of their understanding of which they were previously unaware. Participants completing 3CM tasks consistently comment on their satisfaction with the procedure and on the utility of the process in helping them clarify their own views.

Foster understanding and communication among one another. A basic premise of RPM, and a recurring theme in the chapters of this book, is that effective communication depends on understanding the differences in the mental models of information providers and receivers (R. Kaplan, Chapter 2). As the many examples in this chapter illustrate, 3CM can be a useful tool for externalizing mental models and uncovering differences and similarities among models.

Sidestep some of the pitfalls of expertise. Using a tool such as 3CM can help experts overcome some of the assumptions and biases that are a function of their well-learned models (discussed by S. Kaplan, Chapter 3) and help ensure that their efforts are appropriately targeted to their audience.

Foster interest and enhance engagement. The 3CM technique is a hands-on way to explore one’s own knowledge, and many 3CM participants find the process engaging. This engagement can, in turn, increase interest in finding out what others think (as the anecdote with John illustrates) and enhance participation in discussions or collaborative work that follow from the 3CM data (as Amtmann’s work with the wild and scenic river committees illustrates).

Jump-start participation. Sharing one’s knowledge and ideas through a tool such as 3CM can be a meaningful way for people to participate in a project, even when (as in the cancer center rooftop gardens project) they initially feel that they don’t have the expertise to meaningfully contribute. Subsequent endeavors that respect these initial efforts (such as the group discussion based on the garden types that emerged from the 3CM analysis) can build on this early participation by giving participants a sense of ownership over the project and helping them extend their mental models so that further participation is facilitated (for example, participation in the ensuing design charrettes).

Direct actions toward the meaningful. Building an understanding of local needs, knowledge, and ideas through tools such as 3CM (or even better, through early and repeated use of tools such as 3CM) can help program leaders more effectively design and target their actions, thereby helping ensure that their efforts have the intended effects.

Concluding Thoughts

Many people who read about or use 3CM are taken with the technique as a research tool because it provides a concrete and readily understandable illustration of the way a person thinks and is relatively easy to administer. One of the unintended side effects of the compelling nature of 3CM, however, is that people start wanting to use it everywhere, even in contexts where it is not appropriate. The 3CM technique is geared toward capturing a snapshot of a person’s unique knowledge and understanding of a specific place, process, or issue. It is not an appropriate tool for determining whether or not people have what we consider to be correct factual knowledge or for determining what their attitudes, preferences, and values are. If you want to understand people’s attitudes toward a sustainability program, gauge how they would react to different park designs, or determine the value they place on different community characteristics, there are a number of assessment tools that may be appropriate (such as surveys, photo questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews), but 3CM is not one of them.

If, on the other hand, you are interested in where people are coming from in terms of their particular perspective and understanding of an issue, 3CM can be a valuable tool. Programs and strategies focused on involving community members in solving their own social and environmental problems, such as those described by Bardwell (Chapter 7) and Monroe (Chapter 14), are good candidates for the inclusion of 3CM. Both authors argue that building a shared vision, or understanding, of the problem is a key factor in the success of collaborative efforts. Toward that end, 3CM could be useful in several ways: in helping identify gaps in knowledge and providing insight on how to frame new information, in providing an accessible way for group members to share their perspectives with one another, and in providing a picture of the larger problem space as a starting point for work on developing a shared vision.

Assessing and understanding people’s mental models can’t solve all our problems. In the context of collaboration, for example, both Bardwell (Chapter 7) and Monroe (Chapter 14) make it clear that understanding one another and building a shared vision are but two of many requirements for effective collaborative work. Indeed, in any effort to bring out the best in people there are many factors to consider beyond differences in perspective and knowledge. However, understanding where people are at is a critical—and challenging—step in helping to pinpoint problems, improve communication, open avenues for participation, and increase the likelihood that programs and products designed for people will succeed.

References

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