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Consequences of Behavior

Observers often draw a distinction between  effects that  a person creates intentionally (on purpose, deliberately), and effects that happen unintentionally (accidentally, incidentally) when a person acts. For example, in many cultures, at various times in history, people have said it is a serious offense for one person to end another person's life. However, in their laws, people often draw a distinction between a person whose actions deliberately end another person's life, and one whose actions do so accidentally. In nearly all cases, the intentional act ("murder in the first degree") draws a heavier penalty than the accidental result ("murder in the second degree"). On a less violent level, when a child disrupts the educational process in a school, educators often draw a distinction between deliberate disruption and unintended disruption.

Perceptual control theorists study the differences between intended and unintended consequences of a control system's actions. Here are four examples of our research on that topic:

R. Marken, "Intentional and accidental behavior: A control theory analysis." Psychological Reports. 1982, 50, 647-650.

R. S. Marken, "Behavior in the first degree." In Volitional Action, W. A. Hershberger (Editor), Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., 1989, 299-314.

W. T. Bourbon, "A control-theory analysis of interference during social tracking." In Volitional Action, W. A. Hershberger (Editor), Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., 1989, 235-251.

W. T. Bourbon, "Invitation to the dance: Explaining the variance when control systems interact." American Behavioral Scientist, 1990, 34, 95-105.

In his papers, Marken demonstrates how to identify intended and unintended consequences of a person's actions. I show how a person who acts deliberately to produce one effect can also produce unintended consequences that disturb another person's controlled perceptions, and I show how the second person eliminates the effects of those disturbances.

On Ed Ford's web site, in the section called,  Section on PCT, my document titled  Book One, Chapter 31, contains descriptions of the feedback functions for two students and a teacher, when the three of them interact in a classroom.