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Psychology
Unprecedented: The Psychology of Operating Without the Manual
The risks and opportunities of living in an unprecedented era.
Posted November 3, 2020 Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Years in the future, when we look back at 2020, and we will, one word that will define this era will undoubtedly be “unprecedented.” A recent sketch on Saturday Night Live played with the term, portraying a couple who mistakenly thought the word was pronounced “un-presidented.”
Psychologists who keep their fingers on the pulse of the country have told us repeatedly that this is an, you guessed it, unprecedented era for widespread and often debilitating anxiety. One source of that anxiety lies in the term unprecedented itself. People find comfort in what’s called a social script or a set of expectations for social situations. We particularly do not like the feeling of being unmoored. We want to know what to expect and also what is expected of us.
We also feel better when people behave in ways that are consistent with their social roles. We like presidents who are presidential. We like leaders who lead the way to a better place. Sometimes when parents have their first baby, we say that we feel out of our depth because babies don’t come with manuals. We like to have the manual.
When we meet someone for the first time, we form impressions very quickly, often in a fraction of a second. These impressions buy us something valuable, the ability to predict what to expect from this person. Who are they? Are they a threat?
Some of what’s unprecedented can include surprising silver linings. On election day this year, though part of me wanted to stay away from news media, I decided to turn on the news for a brief time. I was glad I did. A female journalist was covering election day voting in Pennsylvania.
After covering some of the ongoing events in a traditional manner, she turned to the camera and did something that I had never seen in this context before. I’ll paraphrase: This election season has been anxiety-provoking and upsetting to most Americans. It’s been an unprecedented experience for all of us I feel it myself. We all have to remember that love wins over hate. Let’s pause right now and take advantage of one thing we can all control—our breath. Let’s all take a deep breath together.
Her candor and understanding of her audience moved me unexpectedly. I really felt like crying, like letting go of weeks of pent-up fear and anxiety. I was glad I tuned in. In a divisive climate, I appreciated that she interrupted the reporting of events to acknowledge that most of her audience was deeply and personally affected by this news story.
Recently, I was working on my laptop and playing something soothing (to me) in the background. I love figure skating and had the Olympic channel on. They were playing one of the big US national contests for 2020. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an amazing routine, the skater’s athletics blew me away. Then I realized that no one was cheering, which seemed very odd. Of course, I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to see that the audience had been replaced by cardboard cutouts. There was no one there to ooh and ah at the stunning moves.
I realized that this too was unprecedented. Anyone who loves major athletic events like the Olympics knows that part of the experience is a young athlete who’s trained for a major event betting everything on two to three minutes on the ice. But this year, the big performances felt more like the practice sessions.
In the late 1800s, the first study in social psychology demonstrated that an audience can enhance performance. Later, it took a lot of head-scratching and work to figure out that this only seems to happen when a person is performing something that’s well-learned.
For some Olympic-level ice skaters, and for some of their most difficult moves, having an audience likely helps, whereas in other situations it hurts. These performances to cardboard cutout audiences were also unprecedented. Some were probably thinking their fondest dreams had come true. Others were cursing this weird twist of fate.
I wonder how this list of unprecedented experiences—both difficult and sublime—will develop as we move through this era. For now, it seems that if we can get a little more comfortable operating without the manual, it’ll make everything that much more manageable.
