Irrational Interactions

Abstract

So far I have portrayed the procedure of participation as a matter of creating horizons of participation where participants can freely choose whether and how to behave, though they will do so within limits based on the resources and dispositions they bring from previous experience. I have also suggested that manipulation can take place through withholding information about the procedure, and that the perception of risk might lead a potential participant to refuse an invitation, or might create enough anxiety to make participation unattractive. But there are many other influences on a participant’s state of mind at the point of invitation, which become potential tools of the procedural author. Procedures that create excitement of some kind could be considered manipulative, if that excitement means people join in who otherwise would not. Some states of mind can be said to overwhelm the conscious decision making of individuals, and make them susceptible to guidance from a crowd or from a performer. This idea of ‘state of mind’ is also largely misleading, as changes in the mind are often initiated and evidenced in changes in the body — and as I shall show, a clear distinction between mind and body is fallacious in the first place.