By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
HBO’s Game of Thrones is one of many shows that play on the ambiguity of characters who are not clearly good or evil. The Jaime Lannister who pushed young Bran Stark off a tower to his expected death on the stones below is the same Jaime Lannister who risked his life to rescue Brienne of Tarth from the bear pit. That same mix of kindness and evil colors other characters, like the Hound and Petyr Baelish…. Okay, I watch too much Game of Thrones. But that tendency to mix up the positives and the negatives has, not just a long history in literature and drama, but a long history in the real stories that make their way through our courtrooms. It is relatively rare when your client is able to wear the white hat without a spot of black, and equally rare when the other side’s black hat doesn’t at least contain a few shades of gray.
Some people have a problem coping with that kind of ambiguity and some don’t. A recent study (Lomranz & Benyamini, 2015) gives a name to that coping ability and a scale to measure it. “Aintegration” is defined as “The human faculty to bear cognitive and emotional complexity, complex worldviews, to conceive and live with inconsistencies, discontinuities, incongruence, relativism, asynchronization, the absurd and paradox.” It contrasts with “integration,” which is a central part of the way we think, working our way through the world, relying on our ability to combine a very diverse set of stimuli into one coherent, consistent, and complete view of the world. It is what we’re making when we are making sense. Only that tendency varies based on attitude and life experience. Some cope by wrestling those disparate facts into a (sometimes false or wishful) consistency (Jaime Lannister is really good…or bad), and others are okay simply living with the incongruence (Jaime Lannister is a complex character). Those with the later tendency are measurably higher in aintegration. Now, I have to confess that I am not sure whether you pronounce that as “a-integration” or “ain’t-igration” — probably the former, though the latter has an appeal. But either way, this ability to hold contradictions without feeling tension is an attitude that is likely to bear on how jurors react to your case. In this post, I will take a look at the concept and share some thoughts on when you would want to look for it in voir dire.
What is Aintegration?
I have written in the past about the personality dimensions that lead some to prefer the simplicity of absolutism or authoritarianism. The concept of aintegration in some ways looks at the other end of the spectrum. The ability to reject the need for a single coherent narrative and to comfortably maintain the idea of inconsistencies and contradictions turns out to be a very adaptive attitude. Those who are high in aintegration, according to the research, are happier and better able to cope with traumatic events. They are more likely to see the positive in a negative event. The reverse is also true, but the net effect is greater satisfaction and acceptance of life.
The idea is important in a litigation context, where the parties, the facts, and the rules of evidence will often conspire to ensure that the narrative is incomplete or inconsistent in some ways: The sophisticated business client who was fooled anyway, the tested product that still failed, the “obvious” invention that no one had ever thought of. The ability to break out of “either/or” thinking and resist a need for perfect consistency helps jurors bring a more sophisticated and understanding reaction to some cases.
When Do You Want Higher Aintegration?
I can think of a few general scenarios where the litigant might want a panel with higher than average levels of aintegration:
- When you need or want to admit to large parts of what the other side is saying
- When there are bad facts that cannot be adequately repaired
- When a key witness has been inconsistent
- When you need to argue for alternate damages while also contesting liability
- When you are asking jurors to side with a party or a witness who is likely to have low credibility
- When there are parts of the story that will likely never be answered for jurors due to the rules or evidence or a gap in the factual record
How Do You Measure It?
The aim of the study was to create and to validate an instrument, and they seem to have made a good start at it. the measure, the Aintegration Questionnaire or AIQ, relies on responses to a number of short vignettes. The direct way to measure aintegration would be to incorporate all or some of these questions into a juror survey.
When that is difficult to do, either because there is no juror questionnaire or because the judge is loath to allow inquiry into attitudes, you can measure aintegration more indirectly.
The authors noted a few reliable tendencies. Aintegration is:
- Higher with age
- Higher with education
- Higher among the nonreligious
- And higher among those who have had complicated life experience, such as a divorce or separation
All of this suggests that aintegration is something that is forged over time, the result of successfully growing up, you might say. And maybe that is the difference between intelligence and wisdom: The latter admits multiple perspectives, and the former doesn’t necessarily. “Do I contradict myself?” Walt Whimtan asked, and gave probably the best aintegrative answer: “Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
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Other Posts on Mental Style:
- Complex Case? Beware of “Low Effort Thinkers”
- Be Relatively Cautious With Absolutist Jurors
- Look Out for the Authoritarian Personality
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Lomranz, J., & Benyamini, Y. (2016). The Ability to Live with Incongruence: Aintegration—The Concept and Its Operationalization. Journal of Adult Development, 23(2), 79-92.
Image credit: 123rf.com, used under license