Living Behind the Veil

I'm often asked what I wear in Afghanistan and what it's like to wear a veil. It's freedom. Freedom to have a bad hair day, freedom to arrange my chadar to conceal the curve of my breasts and backside, freedom to not be an expatriate for a little while. It means freedom to hide even on the street from the Afghan men's eyes which seem to strip me naked.
When I relax my shoulders and walk less purposefully, less confidently, my eyes downcast and covered by sunglasses, I pass for an Afghan woman. I hear the men whisper in Dari, "Is she a foreigner or local woman?" I chuckle but am silent. On the street, I'm also a free target....freely exposed to groping, sexual innuendos whispered to me as a man bicycles by, free to have stones thrown at me, freely seen as no one's wife, daughter, sister, mother, friend, or boss. I step inside my gate, and remove my chapan and chadar. Now I'm someone's boss, motherhood returns to me as little steps run to greet me, and I receive a kiss from my adoring husband. Now I'm free to his loving and gentle eyes which know and enjoy my curves, free to once again be under the protective umbrella of being a wife, mother, friend, colleague, boss, niece, sister, daughter, woman.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Risk and Decision Making, Part 2 "Emotional and Psychological Analysis"

In Risk and Decision Making, Part 1, I mentioned the four major areas influencing Decision Making for the Global worker in a high-risk situation: 
  1. Spiritual Analysis
  2. Emotional/Psychological Analysis
  3. Stewardship and Information Analysis
  4. Perceived Benefits and Losses
For each area, questions may be formulated to help in the progress of decision making about a risk. In the last post, I mentioned three main questions asked for the Emotional and Psychological Analysis:
  1. What are my strong emotions in this risk situation and what about the risk is impacting me the most? 
  2. How am I behaving in comparison to predicted behavior in risk? 
  3.  Which of the 5+ biases are influencing my decision making?
For the first question, we must primarily evaluate the level of fear and the level of anger being experienced. It is important (and surprising!) to be aware that:


Fear – appears to dampen efforts at risk mitigation. We feel paralyzed and overwhelmed. The Biblical admonition in English to “not fear” means in Hebrew to not turn into wax, to not be paralyzed, to not remain passively in fear.
Fearful people make pessimistic judgments about a hazard.

Anger – angry people make more optimistic judgments and more commonly think that the risks are much lower, that it won’t happen to us and that if it does, we can do something about it.

Lest we think that emotional analysis is overly psychological or spiritual, a good place to start with someone is to use H.A.L.T. – are they Hungry, angry, lonely, tired?  Sometimes, the world looks better after a good night of sleep or a nap. Sometimes in risk, we are not eating enough calories to fuel our body because we are so stressed. EAT! Eat something healthy as a spiritual discipline and endurance strategy, and you'll be able to handle your emotions better!

The second question, "How does my behavior compare to the predicted behavior in risk?" The problem with answering this question is that the secular psychological research indicates that we act out of our biases, and our biases are culturally dependent (varying between cultures) and also gender different. 

I would add to the complexity of interpretation that our approach to risk is also based on our cultural theology - the theology imported by the church we grew up in. "Cultural Theology" is a term I use to indicate some of our theology is (incorrectly) based on our home (passport) culture, the particular cultural values we impart to the text (roles of men and women, for example) based on how we choose to interpret and read the original text (not textual criticism but translation criticism!) 

Translation is always interpretation (can't remember who said that), but more and more I am dismayed when I see how the text has been translated far from the original Hebrew or Greek, due to the cultural-theological bias of the translators. While it sounds like I am transgressing from the point, I would like to point out that one of the main problems of resiliency for the cross-cultural worker in extreme high risk is a theological problem, not a white male problem (see the bias mentioned below).

I am indebted to Glynis Breakwell for all of the following discussion on risk, from his book, The Psychology of Risk. Secular psychological research is of great value to the church, and we ignore it to our peril. However, there is little research on the effect of the Holy Spirit on people's behavior in uncertainty.  There is some research on the role of belief and effect on behavior in uncertainty. Do keep in mind that the majority of the research is based not on cross-cultural uncertainty but more on business risk, comparisons of the threat of impact of natural (and terrorist or manmade) disasters, and gambling. 

So with that caveat, here are some general guidelines for leadership and member care workers that we can consider utilizing to explore the decisions that need to be made in risk: 
  1. Look for extremes - either of denial of the risk, overly optimistic about the risk, or overly pessimistic of the risk. 
  2. Be aware of what researchers describe as "the white male effect." The research is solidly conclusive that white males perceive the risk as much lower than all other groups (women and other culture groups).
  3. Too focused on primarily one aspect of the risk - perhaps they are not taking into account a holistic risk analysis (See the RAM Action Guide for more).  
For the third question, what are the primary "biases" people can have? These include: 
  1. Using Data that is appropriate, based on one's "biases" for or against the risk. This means choosing to cite data that is equivalent in nature. A common major error cross-cultural workers make is to compare two data sets that are unrelated. For example, the traffic accident rate in an international city compared to terrorist attacks against Christian expatriates. These two data sets are not comparable, and the terrorist attack is not as statistically predictable as the traffic accident rate.  It's important to ascertain if there are statistical associations between Data Set A and Data Set B.  Note that people incorrectly assume patters occur in what are truly random events. We also need to learn to handle the information - is it actually predictive in nature?
  2.  Ability to remember - people assume the probability is higher that an event will happen if they can remember an instance of the event. So we can easily have predictability bias. If we are pre-occupied with a personal major fear of a certain hazard, we rate it as higher probability that it will happen. We also perceive higher probability if we can easily imagine it happening!  If the social situation (media, church back home) says it can happen, we fear it more and think it will more likely happen.  The problem with this is we become consumed with something that does not necessarily have in reality as high of probability of happening as we perceive.
  3. First piece of information: we rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered, "anchoring" all of our risk perception and thought about this.  Instead we need to adjust based on additional data coming in, and not the first piece of data.
  4. Egoism - we tend to view ourselves as engaging in less "risky" behavior as others, and that others are more likely to experience negative consequences. It is a form of denial, that "it won't happen to me."
  5. Hindsight Bias - this is when something negative happens, and we say after the event, “I knew that all along.”Typically people given information about an event after it occurs will say and think that they could have or did predict it.We engage in what researchers call, "meta self-delusion" because we feel that we have a greater sense of control over the future when we can feel we predicted the past.
Hopefully, using the awareness of how humans have responded in risk studies, we can become more self-aware of how we are reacting, and use this awareness as a guide to asking ourselves honest questions in the risk situation.  Asking - and answering - honestly, with authenticity, and inviting the Holy Spirit to give clarity as to when we are deceiving ourselves. 

Jeremiah 17:9 states, "The heart is more deceitful than anything else and mortally sick. Who can fathom it?"

Future discussion: Prospect Theory: An Analyis of Decision Under Risk by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman 

 




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