The Place You Are In Shapes How You Act
He followed people through their days and argued each setting pulls its own behavior from us, so change the setting first.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard · Angela Duckworth #3 (on bringing out your best)The place you are in shapes what you do.
Angela Duckworth, a psychologist and author of a book on grit, says she fell down a rabbit hole studying Roger Barker, a psychologist she had never heard of, who, in her words, "coined the term behavior settings."
Barker started from the usual idea that people are goal directed. He trailed people through their whole day to learn what inner difference made one person different from another. What he concluded instead surprised him: people were responding to where they were.
Duckworth summed up his conclusion this way: "when you're in a drugstore, you behave drugstore" and "When you're in a church, you behave church." She added his wider version: "when you're in Montana, you behave Montana, and when you're in Wisconsin, you behave Wisconsin."
In Duckworth's reading, that means we pick up how to act from the place we are in. Barker illustrated it with himself. He said he did not like pork but moved to a part of the country where everyone eats it in every form, including ham, bacon, pork chops, and sausage, and now he eats it too, partly just because it was the only food around.
Duckworth says she asked colleagues whether they had taught Barker and looked in the indexes of introductory psychology books, where Sigmund Freud and Daniel Kahneman appear but Barker does not. She says the world first treated his idea as revolutionary, then turned away from it decades ago because the thought that surroundings can control us clashed with a belief in personal agency.
Duckworth says Barker's last written words made the point that seeing clearly how much a setting shapes you brings real power, because you can change the setting first. In her phrasing, you gain more agency, not less, by choosing the setting before it chooses you.
Questions people ask
What counts as a behavior setting in everyday life?
A behavior setting is a public place plus its usual activity, like a drugstore during shopping hours or a church during a service. Each one has regular people, physical props, and understood rules, and newcomers tend to adopt the expected behavior without being told.
Does this mean we have no free will?
No, in Barker's account as Duckworth presents it. He argued that seeing how much a place shapes you lets you exercise choice earlier, by picking where to spend time and what cues to keep nearby. The control moves to selecting the environment.