When bad things happen, we want to know why and often search for all the wrong things
Psychologists sometimes use the phrase “proportionality bias” to describe how people tend to think that big events must have big causes.
The 9/11 attacks are an example of a big event that, for some, seemed impossible to chalk up to a handful of terrorists with box cutters. Some people find it hard to accept that such a massive, world-changing event could stem from such a small tool.
Psychologists argue this kind of cognitive reductionism helps some people feel better simply because it reduces the difference between “what happened” and “what they believe should have happened.” In the case of 9/11 people gravitate toward conspiracy theories, that it was an inside job, or something else must have been wrong.
Early German psychologist and neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel had another word for how we reduce big, complex things: monocausotaxophilia, or “The love of a single cause that explains everything.”
Further, humans naturally want a villain. We want the simplicity of knowing, “That guy did it for that reason!” But sometimes things just don’t fit neatly into that line of thinking.
For instance, some people apply monocausotaxophilia to drug, alcohol, and substance abuse more frequently and more broadly than other situations.
When we see someone get addicted to a substance, or think more broadly about addiction in our community, it’s easy to say things like:
“It’s just too dangerous a drug!”
“It was the pill-mill doctors over-prescribing drugs!”
“Their addiction is because of bad morals!”
“Everyone’s addicted because everyone’s traumatized by something!”
“Their addiction is genetic and hereditary!”
No matter your background, political leanings, religious affiliation, or personal history, you can likely find a comforting monocausotaxophilia cause to explain the addiction and opioid epidemic that feels more or less “right” to you.
The reality is that sometimes many things can be true at once.
- It can be true that Purdue Pharma used aggressive and well-honed marketing techniques for OxyContin, a pill they thought was a truly great painkiller.
- And it can be true that OxyContin was wildly too successful in market penetration and also caused a slew of addiction problems.
- And it can be true that they knew it was becoming an addictive epidemic, but couldn’t extricate themselves from their own addiction to the profits.
The dislocation theory of addiction and society’s wounds
Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander has described his “dislocation theory of addiction”, which says the most important cause of addiction is not its biological effects on someone or some inborn vulnerability to substances, but rather “a society’s wounds”.
A society’s wounds sound abstract, but these “wounds” can be localized within a small town, such as after a tornado. Or, wounds can be regional or even national, such as an economic downturn, a pandemic, or a significant decline in quality of life.
Alexander notes this psychological dislocation can be extremely toxic. Some people experience this dislocation and wound after being removed from a routine or culture after a move, losing freedom of movement from age, losing autonomy after a car wreck, or lacking opportunities for joy or self-expression.
Some of these psychological dislocations are likely more tangible to you. Perhaps you’ve been unemployed before or grew up in poverty and understand how a lack of opportunity can be incredibly debilitating. Perhaps you moved schools when you were a kid, and the culture shock has stuck with you. Maybe your favorite place or church has closed, leaving you without a sense of “home”.
Within this context, you can begin to understand how the complexities of various factors add up and all this dislocation may drive some people to substance abuse. You can also begin to recognize that you can’t have monocausotaxophilia toward a person addicted to some substance. We often can’t reduce someone’s addiction to one single, neat cause, like assuming they “must have been abused,” or “never were very strong”. Addiction stems from many overlapping dislocations.
We know from The Addict’s Wake that people are still surprised when a person suffers addiction. Like the story of a Brown County, Indiana, preacher’s son who dies from a drug overdose.
Even those of us not suffering a tangible deprivation today surely recognize we’re not immune. One car wreck, one sudden job loss, one failed marriage, one sudden death or disease diagnosis might be all it takes.
“Yes, the loss of my spouse would be devastating,” you think. “But I wouldn’t start taking pills or get addicted!”
But the reality is more complicated. No one wants to become addicted to anything. Complicating life factors lead people to proportionality bias.
Situations like “My wife died because of an unexpected drug interaction at the hospital” can result in a chain of blame. “If only I had helped her more, she wouldn’t have been late, and the car wreck that forced her into the hospital wouldn’t have happened.” This search for proportion can deepen the wound and can compound with societal wounds, resulting in complex, overlapping factors.
In truth, big events sometimes have big, complex causes, but often they’re just unknowable, unforeseeable, or not understood until they happen.
That’s why monocausotaxophilia and our love of a single villain or simple cause for problems mislead us. Life’s challenges rarely have one villain. Grace begins when we accept the complexity.
