Editorial note: This series presents Psychological Engineering, an original framework developed by this site’s authors. It is a perspective piece exploring ideas at the intersection of psychology, systems thinking, and everyday life — not an established psychological theory or academic standard.

Psychological Engineering

Preface: The Problem with Modern Psychology

The laws described in modern psychology theory tend to be surface-level and scattered. The laws in the natural sciences arise from the abstraction of information at the concrete level, and can then explain, attribute causes to, and predict information at the concrete level.

A good theoretical system is one whose laws are built at the underlying level and which therefore has a strong breadth of explanation for surface-level information; a poor theoretical system is one whose laws are built at the surface level and which therefore has a weak breadth of explanation for surface-level information. A great many of the laws of modern psychology are built at the surface level—explanations of isolated phenomena.

Next, much of the work done by modern psychological theories is in essence the clustering of appearances, without any description of deeper mechanisms. The various defense mechanisms and classic personalities in psychoanalysis, for instance, are precisely a clustering of psychological representations; yet there is no very clear and convincing account of the mechanisms and psychological significance lying behind these defense mechanisms and classic personalities.

If a natural-science theory merely classifies appearances and lacks an understanding of the underlying mechanisms that give rise to them, then the theory at best can produce identifications of this sort: "this client probably has a severe schizoid personality and habitually uses dissociation for defense." But because it lacks a precise mechanism for explaining appearances, its interventional power can only come from experience.

We believe that the reason modern psychological theory can still play some role in psychological intervention is that it contributes little in theory and much in experience. This feels rather like traditional Chinese medicine: the treatment protocols formed from experience are effective in many cases, but not in all. And the improvement in the effectiveness of practice does not come from an underlying mechanism, but from more experience.

Of course, this experience leads practitioners to create yet more surface-level laws for the sake of explanation. If these surface-level laws are built on new clusterings, they create new concepts. This is exactly what we see in many psychological theories—a proliferation of obscure vocabulary. When people use these terms with only a half-understanding, modern psychological theory comes across as complex and abstruse, whereas the reality is that it is not a complete theory of the underlying mechanisms of appearances.

In the practice of psychoanalysis, the counselor masters a large number of cases and forms a great many abstractions of classic personalities. We find that most of these personalities form a continuum from healthy to pathological; even a healthy person bears the traces of many classic personalities, some strong and some weak, some expressed overtly in the present environment and some tendencies hidden.

If we abstract only from cases, it is very hard for us to see clearly how these personalities coexist within a single individual and how they function in different environments. It is also very hard for us to give precise and clear intervention recommendations that carry cognitive insight. A human being is never something that can be explained by a simple model.

Returning to our claim: we wish to reorganize the concepts of modern psychology and attempt to form an engineering perspective on the psychological system. That is to say, we will clarify the underlying mechanisms of the human mind and how they generate the surface psychological phenomena. We will take explanatory power, predictive power, and interventional power over the surface layer as the basis for testing the truth of a mechanism.

We believe that a sound theory that explains surface appearances through underlying mechanisms has the following characteristics:

It possesses a fairly complete mechanism layer that explains the various surface appearances.
The mechanism layer can become more complete in practice.
The foundational assumptions of the mechanism layer are simple, embodying the truth that "the greatest truths are the simplest," as the Creator made this world.
The foundational assumptions can clearly deduce the entire mechanism layer.
The mechanism layer has universal explanatory power over appearances.
When the mechanism layer explains appearances, it can generate interventions, and these interventions prove effective in practice.

The Science of Thinking — the Origin of Psychological Engineering

From my exploration of the science of thinking, I have formed a unique perspective on the human mind. At the very least, these perspectives can offer some inspiration for the development of modern psychology; going further, perhaps they can be developed into a theory with a fairly complete underlying mechanism, one that explains human psychological representation. The mechanism can tend toward completeness in practice, so that the theory becomes more effective at the level of intervention.

Let us next discuss these perspectives brought by the science of thinking. In thought engineering, we call the system that forms psychological representations the emotion system.

Like the evolutionary view in traditional psychological theory, we hold that the emotion system, too, is a product of evolution. The formation of emotion mechanisms therefore follows the principle of maximizing the individual's survival and reproduction, in order to achieve "approaching benefit and avoiding harm." For the genes that created an emotion system satisfying these two conditions were preserved.

Compared with modern psychology, we believe that the original causal mechanism is not built at the level of emotional experience. For emotional experience does not directly contribute to survival and reproduction; rather, it is the various decisions associated with emotional experience—whether to flee or to attack when encountering danger, whether to give up or to invest more effort when facing difficulty, one's attitude toward each kind of person, one's attitude toward each kind of thing…—that directly contribute to the individual's chances of survival and reproduction.

And emotional experience (conscious awareness and the unconscious)—the principal level on which many modern psychological theories are built—is merely a byproduct of the decision-making mechanism of the emotion system.

In summary, the mechanism of the emotion system is formed for the sake of decision-making, and many nodes in the operation of the mechanism are accompanied by the felt emotional experience. The unconscious of modern psychology is a hypothesis: because conscious awareness cannot explain many things, its existence is hypothesized. Here we shall for the moment disregard it.

But in thought engineering there is a stream-of-consciousness structure like that of humans. Information in the stream of consciousness can be remembered, and thus can be reflected upon; there is also information that is computed outside the stream of consciousness, and because it is not remembered, it cannot be reflected upon. This should be the plain definition of the "unconscious."

The science of thinking, in grasping the laws of human thought and emotion, provides psychology with an entirely new perspective—one that can reorganize much of the existing knowledge of modern psychology. The discipline of Psychological Engineering will offer three values:

It provides a more systematic and unified explanation of surface psychological phenomena, while guiding more refined and effective interventions, so that psychological intervention no longer derives only from experience but has a solid theoretical basis.
Once the underlying mechanisms are engineered, they create a platform for psychological experimentation. Any local state hypothesis can be initially set in a thought-engineering prototype (a human-like AI), and the experimenter can observe the prototype's continuous evolution of emotion, cognition, behavior, thought, and expressive patterns as a result of this modification, and what stable state it ultimately forms. Thereby a better insight into the human mind is gained, so as to guide more effective interventions.
It can clarify the response patterns of human psychological counseling and guidance, so as to reproduce on AI the response patterns and capacities of the human counselor.

Of course, the work we have done so far is still very limited, and we look forward to more people joining in the exploration of the science of thinking in the field of psychology.

Psychological Engineering Centered on the Utility Model

We believe that behind the creation of human psychological phenomena there are concrete systemic mechanisms. Setting aside how the physical layer supports them, at the information layer this system has a definite engineering structure. Second, we believe the evolutionary formation of this system has its evolutionary significance. All evolutionary selection is preserved because it is favorable to survival and reproduction; this is a mechanism of natural filtering.

We see that psychological emotion is always connected with decision and choice, and that decision and choice directly contribute to the individual's survival and reproduction. Thus we have found the evolutionary basis of the psychological emotion system: its direction of evolution is to give the individual choices that are more favorable to its own survival and reproduction.

From an evolutionary perspective, in Chapter 1 of this book we describe how the primitive emotion system, in order to make better decisions, evolved "one relation and two operations," thereby creating the foundation of human cognitive function. A very interesting conclusion: "the cognitive system is a byproduct of the evolution of the emotion system."

As for decision-making, any decision arises from the competition of considerations across different dimensions. Take, for example, reviewing for an exam versus playing games: each choice has its own advantages and disadvantages. A single choice arises from the competition of different dimensions—this is the foothold of the utility model.

The utility model says: when a person makes a choice, they evaluate the utility of that choice along each dimension, form a total utility, and compete it against the other candidate choices. In Chapter 2 of this book we describe this utility model.

If we accept that for social animals, natural selection is based not on the optimal retention of individual genes but on the optimal retention of group genes, then we can understand why directional emotions such as liking, aversion, and respect evolved.

First, these directional emotions are related to decision-making. Whom to protect, whom to harm, for whom to make sacrifices, and so on—these choices and decisions are obviously directly tied to directional emotions. Reasonable attitudes toward different objects create a cooperative order within a group, affecting the group's survival and the retention of its genes.

Any decision will compete with others; thus directional emotions, by playing a role within the utility model, participate in the formation of decisions. We discuss directional emotions in Chapter 3 of this book.

Having discussed the utility model, we have the underlying-mechanism framework of human psychology that we want. But this underlying mechanism is deduced from deeper-level assumptions, rather than abstracted from appearances at the concrete level. Therefore, in Chapter 4 of this book, we use the utility model to explain some common psychological phenomena, including some that psychoanalysis has classified as defense responses.

In the competition of the utility model, because there is competition there are winners and losers. A decision satisfies the motivations that support it and suppresses the motivations that oppose it; this becomes a source of anxiety.

The total utility may be the same, but if in one decision every motivation is supportive, while in another there is a great split between two motivational positions, then a person's feeling is different, and the subsequent emotional response is different as well.

For example, a child who suffers bullying at school: if fleeing can dispel the negative utility brought by being bullied, fleeing also brings the negative utility of being scolded by the parents. Dispelling the bullying and avoiding parental scolding are two motivations with split positions.

Although it fails in one competition, the suppressed motivation will seek other means of self-resolution. In this process, the psychological mechanism often endows it with greater energy, to break through difficulties similar to those before. This greater energy brings greater desire and stronger anxiety, which we call the offensive response.

If it fails many times, the psychological mechanism will judge that further investment of psychological energy is likely wasteful, and will in turn relieve desire and anxiety. This is the origin of the various defense mechanisms. We can see that both kinds of response have their evolutionary rationality. We discuss the offensive response in Chapter 6 and the defense response in Chapter 7.

In Chapter 8 we discuss some typical personalities. We examine what the roots of these personality appearances are, and what early-life experiences created these roots and thereby created the personality. What motivational profiles and what emotion regulation profiles these personalities have—the analytical framework we adopt is discussed in Chapter 5.

In Chapter 5 we summarize the aims and analytical framework of the discipline of Psychological Engineering.

In this discipline we do not pass judgment on an individual's motivations, whether altruistic or self-serving. We hold that if an individual can realize their own motivations well without incurring other troubles they do not want, then their mind is coordinated in supporting the realization of motivation; if, when facing various negative emotions, the individual can well release them through defense mechanisms, yet at the same time preserve the driving force that negative emotions exert on reasonable motivations, then we consider the individual coordinated in emotion regulation.

These two points also constitute the aims of Psychological Engineering in guiding practice—to help individuals better realize their motivations and to help individuals better regulate their emotions.

It is hard for us to evaluate an individual's capacity to realize their motivations by whether their current situation is smooth. In times of war, a general with excessive aggression is coordinated with the surrounding environment; he will be recognized by others and by himself. But such aggression, in times of peace, will be seen by those around him as a threat and a nuisance.

It is also hard for us to evaluate an individual's capacity for emotion regulation by their current psychological state. In favorable circumstances, anyone's emotions are good.

Therefore, the evaluation of an individual's capacity to realize motivation should examine whether the individual can change their own state in a changing environment so as to realize their motivation. And the evaluation of an individual's capacity for emotion regulation should examine whether the individual can maintain emotional stability in an adverse environment without diminishing their initiative toward achieving their motivation.

In fact, every individual has their own characteristics in realizing motivation and regulating emotion, adapting to some situations and not to others.

When studying the motivations of a certain kind of individual, we investigate according to the following analytical framework:

What drives are the motivations of this kind of individual.
Whether the motivations are rational, or in what circumstances they are rational and in what circumstances they are not.
In what manner this kind of individual generally realizes this motivation.
Whether the means of realization are effective, or in what circumstances they are effective and in what circumstances they are not.
How durable is this kind of individual's offensive persistence of motivation, and in what way they strengthen and sustain motivation; and in what way they dispel motivation.
Whether this durability is rational, or in what circumstances it is rational and in what circumstances it is not.
Whether some negative driving emotion arises behind the motivation.

When studying the negative-emotion regulation mechanism of a certain kind of individual, we investigate according to the following analytical framework:

What defenses this kind of individual habitually uses to discharge particular negative emotions.
How this defense response is formed.
When this defense response exerts a negative influence on the offensive response that ought to be present.

Psychological Engineering

Table of Contents

Preface: The Problem with Modern Psychology

The Science of Thinking — the Origin of Psychological Engineering

Psychological Engineering Centered on the Utility Model