Difficult Actions: How or Why?

John McClure asks, “when people explain difficult actions, is the causal question how or why?” As climbers, we’re no strangers to difficult questions. Nor are we unfamiliar with asking ourselves what we’ve gotten ourselves into. As it turns out, there are many ways to explain difficult actions. But what type of explanation is most interesting to us? McClure et al. find through empirical results that when participants are asked what type of information best explains a difficult (obstructed) action, they prefer to ask “how?” These results are attributed to participants seeking information that is most “surprising” or “abnormal.” However, I want to push back on this assumption that asking “how” is most surprising or abnormal. In fact, I propose that asking “how” should really always be secondary to asking “why.” I don’t challenge McClure’s empirical results, but rather the generalizability of the conclusions they’ve drawn from them.

McClure et al. studied this phenomenon by comparing an extreme action, going on an expensive vacation, across two different population groups: wealthy and poor. The wealthy and poor groups are distinguished by either possessing or lacking the necessary preconditions for taking the action (members of the wealthy group can be assumed to possess enough money to take the vacation whereas members of the poor group can be assumed to lack the sufficient money to take the vacation). As such, it is quite intuitive that when asked which explanation they’d prefer for each group’s actions, participants chose “why” (what was the goal) for the wealthy group and “how” (what were the means) for the poor group. McClure et al. proposed that asking these questions provide the most interesting answers, which makes sense in the case of the wealthy group. Asking “how” a wealthy person took an expensive vacation probably won’t provide an exceptional answer given that they didn’t have to do anything to take the vacation other than decide to do it (hence “why?”). However, in the case of the poor group, it isn’t necessarily clear why asking “how” is more interesting than asking “why.” They claim that “this finding reflects what is abnormal or surprising about an action,” though I don’t quite feel the force of this conclusion (348). Perhaps it is clearer in the case of the expensive vacation, where participants can assume that the expensive vacation is obviously appealing to anyone, but McClure et al. hope to generalize their results to the entire category of “obstructed” actions. If a poorer person took exceptional steps to gather the means to take an expensive vacation, it seems that asking “why” would provide meaningful information about the choice of using time and money to go on vacation rather than use the money for anything else. My curiosity about McClure’s results is both methodological and epistemological.   

Perhaps their assumption that participants choose the “how” question because it is more surprising or abnormal is not the only possibility. Participants were specifically asked to choose the type of question “they would be more likely to ask to gain information about a group of actors’ behavior” (344). In the obstructed scenario, it was indicated that “the necessary condition to accomplish the action was unavailable in that the target group lacked the money” (344). The first question participants were asked was “if you wanted someone to explain these people going on luxury holidays, which of the two questions below would you be more likely to ask them? (a) How did they get to take the holidays? (b) Why did they take the holidays?” (344). I can’t help but question whether the framing of the two options makes (a) the only reasonable answer for an obstructed action. It seems that by pointing out the lacking preconditions required to take an action, and then subsequently sharing that the action was taken anyway, the question pulls on cognitive dissonance. If you shared with me that you only had $2 left in your bank account, and then I watched you walk across the street and swipe your debit card on a $2000 necklace, my first thought would be “how did they just do that?” However, if you shared with me that you had $2 left in your bank account and then I watched you go get a job and work until you had made $2000 and then you walked across the street and bought the necklace, surely, I would ask “why the hell did they just do that?” However, what differentiates this example from the study done by McClure et al. is that the participants in the study were not explicitly told that the poor person somehow acquired the preconditions before taking the action (which I assume they did). Rather, the question is framed such that the poor person took the vacation despite not having enough money to pay for it.

An obstructed action is one in which the actor lacks the necessary preconditions, and thus they cannot immediately take the action. To settle which explanation of an obstructed action is more interesting, I would like to expand on my line of reasoning above and wonder what the path is towards taking the action. One possibility is that in order to take the action the actor must first acquire the prerequisite resources and then they must acquire the motivation to take the action. A second possibility is that in order to take the action the actor must first acquire the motivation to take the action and then they must acquire the prerequisite resources. It seems most plausible that obstructed actions are taken via the second path, where the action is first desired and then made possible because of such desire. After these two steps are taken, the actor may finally make the decision to act. On the first construction, it would be confusing why and how the actor acquires the preconditions before their desire; how do they know what they need? Thus, I assume the second construction. Intrinsic to the decision to take a difficult action is the knowledge that the action will be difficult and that significant resources will have to be gathered to make the action feasible. To me, this makes the “why” question more generally appealing for both groups. However, this might be a matter of semantics. Were the participants considering that the poor person had to take prior actions to gather the money to take the vacation before taking it? Perhaps this is what their “how” refers to. However, were the participants also considering that the poor person decided to put their energy towards gathering money for the vacation knowing it would be difficult? Maybe not, but this is an unintended result of the chosen difficult action (why question someone’s desire to take a nice vacation?).

I propose an additional condition on the first step in the process. When the actor first comes to desire taking an obstructed action, they know the action is obstructed (because they can’t immediately decide to take it once it becomes desirable). Thus, they desire the obstructed action in spite of it being obstructed. In the case of something other than an expensive vacation, this desire seems to me to be quite interesting. The process looks something like:

1.     Actor simultaneously desires difficult action and recognizes that they lack the means for taking the action.

a.     Actor decides to follow their desire in spite of lacking the means.

2.     Actor acquires the means to take the action.

3.     Actor takes the action.

In this formulation, step 1a is the source of the “why” question and step 2 is the source of the “how” question. I don’t see why step 2 is automatically more surprising, abnormal, or interesting than step 1a. However, the examples that make 1a exceptionally interesting are perhaps related to the idea of praxis discussed in last week’s post. Let me frame an example using my own climbing.

In August 2023, I had climbed a total of two 5.13s. I decided to start projecting Proper Soul. I wanted to try a climb that I could just aimlessly throw myself at so I wouldn’t have to worry about the stress of chuffing/sending. It very much was a praxis. In October, I sent Proper Soul. By that time, I had only climbed a total of four 5.13s. By most reasonable standards in our sport, I lacked the necessary preconditions to climb 5.14, and thus the action of climbing it was obstructed. If you asked a random climber which explanation they’d prefer to hear about my action of [sending proper soul] despite lacking the prerequisites (such as having climbed 5.13c and 5.13d), they’d probably ask “how?” And this is quite an interesting question given the circumstances. However, I view [sending proper soul] as an incidental consequence to the real intentional action I took, which was [try proper soul both days every weekend for eight weeks straight]. If you ask a random climber which explanation they’d prefer to hear about my action of [trying proper soul both days every weekend for eight weeks straight] despite lacking the prerequisites, they’d probably ask “why?” You might object that the former action is the type of action McClure et al. are trying to get at because a completed action (ex. sending a climb) requires much stricter prerequisites than an ongoing action (ex. trying a climb). However, there are certainly ongoing actions (i.e. attempted actions) that have reasonably necessary preconditions. Further, my intention with Proper Soul was first and foremost to try it, and thus that is the action that would be worth studying. A much more obvious example of an attempted action with reasonably necessary preconditions would be if I decided to go try to climb Mount Everest. This would certainly be an obstructed action even if my only objective was to try.

On the one hand, perhaps I can conclude that when obstructed actions are taken, asking “why?” might be more interesting than “how” when the action is done for the sake of the action (when the action is a praxis), which includes attempted actions and ongoing actions. This is because the actor knows the action will be difficult given that they lack the preconditions and yet they decide to take the action purely for the sake of taking the action. In my mind, this begs the “why” question much more than “how.” On the other hand, these sorts of actions might go beyond the framework McClure et al. intended to study given that these actions can be taken without going through the preconditions first. I can’t buy a car without having enough money to buy a car. However, I can try 5.15 regardless of whether I’ve climbed 5.14b, 5.14c, or 5.14d. In the case of climbing Mount Everest, whether I can try to climb it still doesn’t seem to rest on my experience with mountaineering. Nothing is stopping me from just starting to walk up the mountain, even if I won’t make it very far.

Even though these sorts of attempts might not fit McClure et al.’s intended category of obstructed actions, I propose that they are obstructed actions in another way. Deciding to attempt something which you lack the preconditions for is essentially deciding to do something which you have reason to believe you will not be able to do. In this way, these actions are obstructed by the seriousness and rationality of our decisions (the preconditions for a difficult action being belief rather than resources). To put this construction back into McClure et al.’s initial inquiry, the question would be framed as such:

 Several new climbers* have decided to attempt a 5.15. If you wanted someone to explain these people making this decision, which of the two questions below would you be more likely to ask them?

(a)   How did they get to make this decision?

(b)  Why did they make this decision?

* “new climbers” is used rather than one single new climber to avoid participants thinking they’re studying the behavior of one exceptional individual.

Interestingly, using their exact wording of “how did they get to…” seems to make the question collapse into “why.” However, even when the question is framed around the attempt, rather than the decision, “how” and “why” start to seem incredibly similar:

 Several new climbers are attempting a 5.15. If you wanted someone to explain these people taking this action, which of the two questions below would you be more likely to ask them?

(a)   How did they get to take this action?

(b)  Why did they take this action?  

Perhaps when these questions are asked about attempted actions, whether the action itself or the decision to act, “how” and “why” become increasingly interrelated. When asking “how” about an attempted or ongoing action, rather than about a completed action, the question applies to the process more than the result (for what is the result of a presently ongoing action?). Because there’s no final outcome for the subject of “how,” “how” comes to mean “how are you continuing to do this?” Of course this could be answered in terms of the inputs required to keep going; “I got to attempting this 5.15 because I have a good belay partner and I live at the crag and …” However, this doesn’t seem to be more interesting than “I’m attempting this 5.15 because I want to know how much work I have to do to progress in climbing.”

This discussion brings me to a final question about the way we conceptualize our rock climbing endeavors. We can ask ourselves

• How do I climb?

• Why do I climb?

  but how are these questions related?

To me, these questions seem incredibly intertwined. The way we climb often reflects the reasons why we climb. For example, I climb because I love going deep in the process. I love finding the mental and physical flow, especially through a difficult sequence. I climb because I enjoy devoting myself wholly to a single objective. And because these are the reasons why I climb, how I climb tends to reflect them. For example, I often choose mega projects over climbs I can complete in a single session. I get on climbs I know I won’t be able to do right away, and I try the same things day after day, week after week. However, I don’t think its commonplace in climbing, especially at higher levels of performance and commitment, to critically examine why and how we climb on a personal level. For many climbers, it’s quick and easy to say they climb because they want to get better. But why do you want to get better? And why climbing and not any other sport?

Recently I’ve found myself at the tail end of lots of “should” and “would.” You should do volume. You should build your base. You should go do every 5.13- in the gorge. You should do more onsights. If I were you I would…

My response is that if you think that’s what I should do, why don’t you go do it?

These ways of climbing, regardless of how they might affect my performance, aren’t aligned with why I rock climb. At least not right now. That may change next week or next year, and when it does, I’ll change how I climb. But until then, I find joy in climbing in the way that fulfills the reasons why I do it. And I think we might benefit from asking “why” more often.

As the study reflected, we’re quick to ask “how” when we hear a tale of someone taking an obstructed action. Interviews and Instagram comments often ask professional climbers “how” they’ve climbed v16 or built insanely strong fingers or onsighted 5.14. But perhaps there’s a more fundamental question we might want to ask. If we ask [why do you climb?] we might get a deeper understanding to [how do you climb?] both of others and of ourselves.

Mcclure, John & Hilton, Denis & Cowan, Jodie & Ishida, Lucyna & Wilson, Marc. (2001). When People Explain Difficult Actions, is the Causal Question How or Why?. Journal of Language and Social Psychology - J LANG SOC PSYCHOL. 20. 339-357. 10.1177/0261927X01020003004.