The Logic of Practice

“Kuya, tam-is kaayo ni” (“Elder brother, these are sweet”), the kid pitched a bunch of mangoes as soon as the car stopped at the intersection. He must have been about eleven years old, thin, in porontong shorts, a Lakers shirt, and a salesman’s smile. Of course I bought the mangoes. 

As I drove away I saw him scamper off around a corner, no doubt to get another bunch of mangoes. I wondered why he didn’t keep his stocks nearer, so he wouldn’t have to run back and forth. That led me to think of other puzzling things. 

Like, why do many MRT and LRT commuters pay just enough for one trip, when they could get a Stored Value Card? When you have to stand in a long line, endure the heat and get delayed, it seems to make more sense to get a card that can be used for several trips.

Why does a pan handler persist in begging, when all he has to show for a day’s effort are a few coins in his can?

Why does DPWH break up what seems like a perfectly good concrete road, only to cement it once again?

Why do intelligent voters who read about how professional organizations package politicians to make them look better still vote for those politicians?

Seemingly illogical behavior can be puzzling, even amusing - until they affect your project. Sometimes our colleagues or partners behave in ways that we can’t seem to understand. There’s this fellow who files his travel advance a day before his trip. Or an official who proclaims support for the project but instructs his staff not to do anything about it. How do you deal with these folks?

I come from a school that thinks influencing the behavior of key actors is the key to reform. This premise presupposes rationality - that people do things for a reason. When a key actor’s behavior can’t be explained, we would not know what to do to get him to adopt another behavior.

Another school of thought says that people always make the best decisions and choose the best behavior, given the resources at their disposal at that time. Afterwards the decisions may turn out to be wrong, but at the point that it was made it was the best possible choice. 

In other words, as Toix Cerna (one of my mentors) reminds me, there is no such thing as irrational behavior. You just have to dig deeper to understand the reason behind the behavior - what Toix calls “the logic of practice.”

Once we know this logic, we can make sense of the behavior. Then we can explore better ways of communicating and relating with the key actor.

But how do we discern this logic? Empathy is one way - try to see things from the actor’s perspective. What personal or institutional incentives are driving him? What pleasures are attracting him? What kind of painful experience is he moving away from?

Economics usually has something to do with the underlying logic of practice (Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics provide many fascinating cases of how seemingly irrational or unlikely behavior is based on people’s consideration of material benefits).

Remember though that people also give value to non-material or non-physical benefits. They also consider things like feelings, religious beliefs and spiritual values.  Behavior stemming from these can be most baffling - until you put yourself in the actor’s shoes. That’s why they say only those who have been in love can understand lovers’ ways.

Apparently many MRT commuters get paid on a daily or weekly basis (that includes Job-Order employees and consultants). They don’t have enough extra cash for a Stored Value Card, but enough for the day’s trip (anything extra goes to other needs).

The panhandler has more cash in his pockets. The few coins in his can are intended to trigger the passers-by’s altruistic impulse.  After more coins are dropped into the can, these are moved to the guy’s pocket. Again just enough coins are left in the can.

Street vendors keep most of their stocks out of sight and carry only a handful to make buyers think “if I buy this bunch of mangoes, this kid can go home and rest.”  I’m one of those who think that way, so I buy.  Of course after I leave the vendor goes back to his stocks to get another bunch to sell to the next driver.

So what about the guy who asks for travel advance a day before his trip? Or what about DPWH’s practices? Or voter behavior?

These are still mysteries to me. But I trust Toix when she says there’s underlying “logic of practice” behind these too.