When money is involved, then the adjustments might relate to our sense regarding “how much money is enough” and/or to the value we place on money relative to other important concerns in our life (such as time spent with our family or level of personal stress). One of my students once wrote an essay about money for a course assignment and declared in their essay that “enough money” always meant having one dollar more than they now have: this student’s monetary baseline was always being adjusted based on the amount of money they had in their pocket and checking account. Similarly, Jack Benny had to review and adjust his own monetary baseline as he was forced to consider the relative value to be assigned to his money and his life!
Predictions regarding the relative effectiveness of monetary actions to be taken are also being adjusted. Returning to the three-part analysis of threat, we might often be adjusting our monetary plans based on the intentions, strength, and level of activity associated with someone who can provide us with money or take money away from us. Our monetary scheme might lead us accurately or inaccurately toward the assumption that we have little to say about our money; hence, we choose not to act and to remain frozen and stressed out. On the other hand, our monetary scheme might be more positive, based on the assumption that our world is financially benevolent and we have nothing to fear from other people. We predict support (or at least indifference) from other people as we take advantage of an opportunity-filled deviance that our psychosocial template has detected.
Polystatic Action: We act on behalf of the new baseline of desired outcomes as well as our new predictions regarding the relative effectiveness of potential actions to be taken. In essence, Polystasis represents a dynamic, highly interactive interweaving of appraisal, adjustment, and action. Clear and accurate feedback is needed to determine appropriate levels of adjustment. Open channels for the flow of information between these three phases are critical.
Like Peter Sterling’s Allostasis, Polystasis contrasts dramatically with the traditional and long-dominant model of Homeostasis. Under homeostasis, daily adjustments are made via what I would identify as first-order change (Argyris, 2001). These adjustments require first-order learning, which is usually based on habitual ways of thinking. Such a model of stasis might effectively operate in a highly stable monetary world. However, our mid-21st century world of money (and most other psychosocial sectors) is operating in a rugged and perhaps even moving (dancing) landscape that looks nothing like a flat, stable plain (Miller and Page, 2007). There is no return to a previous state. Rather, as Sterling proposes, adjustments are made based on what we predict will be the next setting of this dancing environment. These adjustments require shifts in the interpretation of environmental meaning and anticipation of specific environmental challenges. These shifts, in turn, require second-order learning and second-order change (Argyris, 2001).
All of this may seem mechanistic and abstract; however, Polystasis comes alive when we recognize that this recursive process moves quickly. Polystasis is often not amenable to the slow thinking described by Daniel Kahneman (Kahneman, 2013) nor to the reflective practice of Don Schön (1983). Polystasis also comes alive when we apply it to real-life situations. For example, while my fear about loss of money might be assuage by a bank loan I have just received, my heart rate and level of anxiety might not return to “normal” if I am anticipating unpredictability in the stock market. A new “normal” is quite fluid–for I continue to appraise, adjust, and act (moving through a dancing, monetary landscape.
