The "slippery slope", reciprocal determinism, and the need for personal standards

Welcome to the September 2025 edition of the Your Listener Counselling newsletter! This month, we are explaining why having personal discipline and standards is important not just for obtaining the most from life, but also for optimising mental health. We will be introducing some concepts fundamental to this issue, most notably reciprocal determinism and the "slippery slope" phenomenon. Unfortunately, these ideas are often used in political propaganda, obscuring the significance. Here, we will discuss them objectively. Let us first establish them.

"Reciprocal determinism" was made prominent by psychologist Dr. Albert Bandura. It teaches that our thoughts, emotions, actions, and the events in our environments can interact in complex ways to influence how we function. A related phenomenon is that the relationship between these factors is not uni-directional; for example, while our thoughts and emotions influence our actions, our minds also appraise our actions in deciding how to think and feel. This is why my clients and I often discuss "changing their narratives" via behavioural modification. The "slippery slope" can be defined as the gradual change in how we think, feel, and behave, due to recurring instances of accepting new ideas. It occurs because when deciding how to address a given situation, our minds unconsciously refer to information about similar ones; this often involves an established standard of what is acceptable or expected. When we accept a new standard, we use it in the future when making similar decisions. Hence, if those standards change gradually but constantly, then over time, we may respond in ways significantly different to how we would have some time ago. In itself, this is neither positive nor negative, but a product of how our minds use information to navigate the complexities of life. However, these tendencies often do not function in our best interests, hence we are best served by recognising and attending to them. Let us apply these concepts to an example.

Consider a person feeling depressed because they believe that their body is unattractive and that as a result they will never gain social favour. They attempt to make themselves more attractive, deciding to attend a gymnasium five times per week and abide a diet. They immediately face difficulties: their attempted exercises are physically taxing, they are quickly bored of the diet, and they feel exhausted from attempting to maintain the routine. They suppose that they are attempting to accomplish too much for their current abilities, hence they decide to only attend the gymnasium four times per week, perform easier exercises while there, and allow themselves some extra comfort foods. They maintain this for some time and begin to see and feel positive change, but the routine is still taxing. They now allow themselves to only attend the gymnasium on three days per week and consume extra snack foods, reasoning that it should not greatly impact their progress. Their body is still in the same approximate state, so to ease some of the burden of the routine, they decide to only attend twice per week, and consume more snacks still. After some time, they observe their body and are dissatisfied that it has not changed as they wished. They feel hopeless, thinking: "I did everything the right way, and still nothing changed. I will always be socially outcast and will never have the life I want." Because they believe that their efforts are futile, they dispense with their routine. As a result, their body never changes. In social situations, their mind is plagued by thoughts that other people must not find them attractive and that there is no purpose in attempting to socialise. When other people try to engage with them, they exude a sense of hopelessness which other people interpret as indifference and they are discouraged by it; our person interprets this as people rejecting them for being unattractive and thereby reinforces their belief.

Here, the person's actions (not persisting with their diet and exercise) contributed to the situation (their body not changing), which influenced their thoughts and emotions (feeling depressed because they believed that they were unattractive), which influenced other actions (not persisting, and appearing indifferent to others), which maintained the situation (having people apparently reject them, and their body remaining the same), which continued to exert influence. This is reciprocal determinism. The "slippery slope" contributed when they became increasingly lax in their routine. The immediate consequences of each change were imperceptibly minor, but after some time they were salient. Note that none of this is to suggest that the self-deprecation was justified, however this is a separate matter.

The mind needs a certain amount of structure to function optimally. From an evolutionary perspective, our minds are constantly trying to make sense of a world in which information abounds; to be able to make quick decisions given this, our minds organise information in to structures, and take mental shortcuts known as "heuristics". We can actually help our minds by deliberately providing structures, order, and boundaries within which they can work — this usually means meeting obligations which we set for ourselves regardless of whether we feel "in the right mood". This allows us to live our lives with greater thoroughness and efficiency, which can reduce stress attributable to an otherwise apparent lack of time available, while also providing us more time for our pursuits and enjoyment. We rarely recognise just how powerfully the mind acts on its own, completely outside of our awareness. People often stress about managing the demands of life and make compromises or neglect needs, when they are often capable of meeting those needs, but have not been taught to develop and maintain a routine — and you would be surprised at how much efficiency this facilitates. However, this is also fundamental in our mental wellbeing and constructiveness on both the individual and societal levels. How we behave and speak of ourselves sets tone for the narratives of our lives. If we do not set standards for ourselves and inadvertently fall subject to habits such as procrastination, apathy, and self-deprecation, then those will become part of our ethos and we will accept them as being normal, leading us to then behave in accordance with them. When others do not respond well to our resulting attitudes, those responses reinforce our inadvertent beliefs that we are of these qualities.

But this is not an excuse to degrade the human species, nor fear-monger, nor to argue that society or its constituents should be beholden to oppressive rules. Human psychology has been affected by similar flaws throughout history, but the good news is that we are more capable than we are led to believe — and as I have observed previously, one of our great societal flaws is not working to make this as widely known as possible. Human life is virtuous and we are worthy of helping ourselves and being helped. With conscientiousness, we can make better choices for ourselves, as well as help others to recognise their own virtues and be the best that they can be. We can not control all that happens in the world, but we can always strive for personal betterment. And even if we do not achieve all that we desire, we will often be pleasantly surprised at what we can achieve when we strive.

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Thought of the month

Instead of resentfully justifying that we cause others to suffer because we had to suffer, why do we not instead contribute to a world in which each of us is less likely to suffer?