NON PSICOLOGICA

Sito di contenuti sul funzionamento

della mente umana

                                   Social Approval and Validation

(By Alberto Bonizzato – Behavioral Coach)

The Matrix of Subordination to Consensus and the Pathology of Normalcy

The Genesis of Performance-Driven Conditioning: The Bound Attention Circuit

To comprehend the mechanics of subordination to consensus, one must isolate a typical etiological sequence within the family nuclear structure. Consider the case of a child who receives affective investment and attention from the parental entourage exclusively upon the execution of a high-performance output (whether academic, athletic, or behavioral). This environmental input triggers an early process of self-training: the child’s core identity structure anchors itself entirely to the continuous production of measurable results.

However, the family system is subject to a phenomenon of kinetic habituation. As the child evolves and develops their capacities, the entourage becomes desensitized to the extraordinary nature of their skills. Consequently, to secure the exact same quota of attention and biological feedback, the performance baseline must undergo a progressive, hyperbolic escalation.

The child thus learns to regulate their autonomic arousal indices and ensure relational survival through the systematic fulfillment of presumed parental expectations. On their end, the parents misinterpret this repetition of performance as a sign of the child's spontaneous well-being and happiness.

We are witnessing a monumental relational misunderstanding, predicated on a mutual and deep mechanical unawareness.

[Environmental Demand for Performance] ──> [High-Performance Execution] ──> [Affective Investment]

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           [Habituation] <──────────────────────────────────── [Threshold Elevation]

With the onset of adolescence and early adulthood, this dynamic crystallizes into a severe category confusion: the subject loses the functional capacity to separate their deep individual identity—along with their intrinsic skills and worth—from the extrinsic value of their externally recognized "cleverness." The circuit that once guaranteed gratification undergoes a reversal of polarity: the family system, now fully habituated, ceases to deliver the enthusiastic feedback of the early stages.

Paradoxically, the individual remains trapped in the obligation to perpetuate performances that they internally experience as coercive and oppressive, but which the entire entourage now demands as an ordinary baseline.

The Expansion of the Setting: The Transition Toward Collective Stereotypes

Once this relational matrix becomes automated, the subject is compelled to seek its replication on a macro-social scale. Unable to draw from the restricted audience of the primary family unit, they project their presumed need for validation onto the cultural, social, and collective stereotypes provided by the contemporary environment.

The individual scans the social landscape to identify the expressive channels carrying the highest persuasive efficacy and launches their performance-driven ascent. The objective expands: applause and reassurance are no longer sought within the parents' gaze, but in the ability to captivate, seduce, and control an audience of strangers—be it a broad professional stage or a single intimate interface.

Core self-worth, hooked exclusively onto the recognition of performance, converts into an inextricable psychological noose. We are standing before the mechanism of subordination to social consensus: a perverse loop fueled by the intrinsic systemic negation of judgment. Any evaluation, whether encoded in positive terms (praise) or negative terms (censorship), exercises an hetero-directed power that rigidly aligns and binds the individual's behavioral tracks, castrating their emotional autonomy.

The Misconception of Self-Esteem as a Measurement of Deficit

This submission to external feedback exposes the intrinsic fallacy of a widely abused construct: self-esteem. In standard psychological literature, self-esteem is treated as a catch-all concept within which heterogeneous mental representations are combined in a confused and unsystematic manner: the perception of one's skills, the dynamics of fear, the projection of personal success, and somatic self-image.

From a strictly mechanical perspective, self-esteem (derived etymologically from estimare, meaning to measure or quantify) constitutes a synthetic indicator completely devoid of empirical objectivity. It is formulated through arbitrary, parched metrics that are, ultimately, functionally useless for the individual's well-being.

The fundamental technical error invalidating this process resides in its chronological sequence:

[Critical Event / Proven Failure] ──> [Activation of Self-Evaluation] ──> [Consolidation of Distress]

Self-evaluation never triggers in the presence of fluid, homeostatic functioning; if an individual's actions register real-world success, the neuro-system feels no need to compute its own worth. Self-esteem intervenes, in objective fact, always "after" a negative critical event. It does not operate as a motor of behavior, but as a summary measurement of relational or performance-driven failures that have already occurred.

Attempting to alter behaviors or disarm limbic reactions through the cognitive processing of self-esteem is a failed operation. No intellectual construct holds the power to disrupt character matrices or deep emotional sequences. On the contrary, self-esteem operates as an ex-post rationalization of the deficit: by explaining the root of distress through a judgment of inadequacy, the mind merely validates and chronicizes the internal malaise.

The Paradox of Consolidation

The more actively an individual engages in the cognitive search for a solution to their internal problem (evaluating themselves, measuring themselves, attempting to "boost" their self-esteem), the more they confirm to their limbic system a structural incapacity to resolve the ongoing emotional conflict.

The Aberrant Construct of "Normalcy" and the Autocatalytic Loop

From the dramatic realization of one's impotence to generate real change, the mind evokes a second comparative parameter, as widespread as it is biologically aberrant: the idea of normalcy.

Within the socio-cultural fabric, normalcy is weaponized as a moralized stereotype to which one must conform, parcellized behind the rhetorical justification of "many different normalcies." The systemic danger does not reside in civic or legal norms themselves, but in the structuring of an internal identity norm. When an individual internalizes a standardized model of normalcy, they instantly abdicate their emotional individuality. Their behaviors and objectives are reoriented exclusively toward achieving the social status required to secure external approval.

The norm acts as a pre-packaged suit, entirely severed from the subject's authentic emotional drives and biological needs, who accepts it out of a pure spirit of defensive over-adaptation.

There are, naturally, various gradients to this submission: many "normal" behaviors do not trigger immediate, acute suffering, but the mechanical law remains constant. Every time an individual executes a behavior that is not authentic, they enter the dimension of self-negation. This fracture between real needs and social execution establishes a chronic victimistic posture. In this perspective, "normalcy" ceases to be an index of psychological health and reveals itself as an actual symptom of functional alienation.

The Circuit Short of Mirror Neurons and Identity Fragmentation

The human being is an organism driven deeply by imitation. This ecological characteristic, when inserted into contemporary hyper-complex societies, yields unexpected pathological outcomes.

In primitive or low-density anthropological cultures, the behavioral models available for imitation were unified, stable, and coherent with survival. Today, within a contradictory, fragmented social context saturated with divergent messages, the mirror neurons system—evolutionarily designed for the rapid acquisition of skills through modeling—undergoes a functional short-circuit.

                  [HYPER-COMPLEX / CONTRADICTORY SOCIETY]

                                     │

                                     ▼

                     [DIVERGENT BEHAVIORAL MODELS]

                                     │

                                     ▼

                   [MIRROR NEURONS SYSTEM IN A LOOP]

                     (Frustrated Imitative Drive)

                                     │

                                     ▼

                    [STRUCTURAL ABNORMALITY ANXIETY]

                     (Dramatization of Identity)

The individual is immersed in a jungle of stimuli where identifying behaviors that are truly integrated and "socially accepted" becomes an operation of extreme complexity. The imitative mirror system continues to push for alignment with the other, but the lack of a coherent model transforms imitation into a source of deep adaptive suffering.

This triggers the anguish of one's own deviance: "Am I normal, or am I not?". The conception of one's identity becomes highly dramatized, lived in a state of perpetual strain and chronic apprehension (elevated arousal). This is fueled by a concept of "normalcy" which, by its fluctuating and projective nature, has become entirely ungraspable. Blind imitation, executed in plain sight before everyone, thus reveals itself as the final defensive barrier of an identity that has lost its biological compass.