More Learning: Freedom and Power

Early in my life I learned that I didn't have the power to change anything important to me. Nobody meant to teach me that, and it wasn't true, but that didn't stop me from learning it, as Langer would say, in a single-minded way. And while I learned other things that contradicted those beliefs on an intellectual level, it wasn't enough to change what I believed on an emotional level.

...most of what provokes emotion is learned...generally learned in a single-minded way...emotions rest upon premature cognitive commitments. We experience them without an awareness that they could be otherwise. (Langer, 1989, p. 175)

Langer (1997) says that "in general young girls are taught to be 'good little girls' which translates into 'do what you are told'" (p. 21). I was told that "little girls are meant to be seen and not heard" and I learned to take my curiosity to the library and stifle my sense of adventure while making my brothers' beds and folding their clothes. Several of my references for this study contain the word "power" in their titles—a fact I didn't notice right away—and I'm quite sure that it's because, as a child in the 1940's, I learned that I didn't have any power.

...premature cognitive commitments...[are] mindsets that we accept unconditionally, without considering or being aware of alternative forms that the information can take. (Langer, 1997, p. 92)

I had no power to decide, no power to choose, no power to disobey anybody—the consequences could be too painful. And I think I was quite young when I "learned" that others could decide what I would do, even what I would say. "Tell Mom you did it or we'll beat you up." Now, there's a dilemma—a beating from your brothers if you tell the truth or punishment from your mother if you lie well enough to be believed. Apparently I learned to lie very well under duress, because I generally received the punishment. I had no power to avoid it.