Our behavior when skiing is considered to be an organized and structured conduct characterized by our experiences of thoughts, attitudes, and affectivities within a dynamic process depending on our personality and the environmental context.
The study of behavior has followed several paths that have been supported by different psychological schools. According to psychiatrist and psychoanalyst José Bleger, our behavior refers to the observable or detectable psychic or mental manifestations that originate through actions conducted or guided by our mind. In our case, “behavior” is our internal or external actions that arise to satisfy our needs resulting from skier-environment relationship.
Ariel Bianchi, professor of evolutionary psychology, states that conduct, or behavior, refers to the processes that we experience when interacting in a given environment and that this establishes a modifying element of our actions.
The sociologist Pierre Parlebas sustains two aspects of motor interaction with the environment related to uncertainty: one associated with the physical environment and one associated with the behavior of others. In the first aspect, the mountain environment conditions our behavior or, in other words, the stimuli of the environment affect our determination. In the second, our motor behavior depends on the actions and reactions of other people on the slopes who are also trying to execute their own motor task, which also condition our behavior.
According to general and dynamic psychology professor Albino Ronco, the three phases of behavior are the tendential phase in terms of our aspirations and tendencies; the informative phase in terms of knowledge of the environment; and the operative phase made up of the possibilities of action and the threats of the environment.
The psychologist Norman Maier classifies behavior in motivated behavior, which leads to adaptation through the plasticity of our individual actions that become means to a particular end. This type of behavior is selective, i.e. we may or may not carry it out. Moreover, it is rational and organized through sequences of adaptive actions and the achievement of our goals produces satisfaction. Reactive behavior is rigid, difficult to modify, and has an end in itself insofar as we must perform it since it does not provide freedom of action as it is compulsive. This type of behavior does not pursue any particular objective except that of reducing inner tension. It is emotional and disorganized and often destructive.
Psychologists Mowrer and Kluckhohñ, in their proposed Dynamic Personality Theory, argue that behavior is functional, i.e., it has the purpose of reducing tension. They state that behavior implies conflict or ambivalence which allows understanding the context in which it occurs and that every individual is prone to maintain a functional balance.
Psychiatrist Enrique Pichón Riviére proposed that behavior manifests itself in three areas: our mind in terms of mental processes, our body through movements, and the external world through acting in the environment.
In psychology, behavior (the response or reaction to a situation or context) was considered to originate in our mind. Conscious actions that correspond to our body, such as moving our legs or arms, are produced from an act of our will that can be mentally prepared (planned, anticipated).
There are behavioral contradictions between the three areas. For example, we decide to take a ski lesson to overcome an emotional conflict originated by a given contextual situation, but arrive late, which could be interpreted as a situation that we unconsciously do not wish to face (contradiction between the mental area and the external performance area). When participating in it, we are predisposed to pay attention but simultaneously feel tense (contradiction between the mental and the bodily area), or exhibit an impediment when acting openly in the environment (contradiction between the bodily and the acting area).
These contradictions led Freud to think of the existence of an unconscious mental structure that, together with the conscious one, derived in our concrete behavior. Thanks to the investigations initiated by Freud, it was determined that physiological phenomena are related to previous experiences of our life, postulating that underneath our conscious mind there is an unconscious mind constituting complex relationships between the two.
For example, when pretending to ski down a certain slope, we experience physiological alterations that make it impossible to do so and that are repeated each time we try to do so. Although we consciously wish to go down, we experience physiological disorders of tension and cramps as a form of bodily opposition, symbolizing the rejection of the task we wish to perform, transforming it into an unconscious desire not to go down. This phenomenon, which emerges just before facing a threatening situation, is called, according to Freud, ‘somatization’ or ‘conversion’, that is, the transference of a psychic conflict into a somatic one.
Returning to the purpose of our behavior, the objective would be to maintain an optimal balance of our organism by eliminating unnecessary mental or bodily tensions in the face of a given situation. This tension discharge through action produces a relief and allows a better regulation of our nervous, respiratory, and circulatory functions, among others, generating a pleasant state. In fact, we do not literally speak of discharge but of replacement of one behavioral structure by another. If, for example, we experience a certain degree of tension because we are waiting for the result of our performance, when we receive the result the tension ceases to exist because our organism changes its organization.
The goal, or the level of aspiration, we set out to achieve is the driving impulse that makes us reach our objectives through our behaviors. Through the tendency to surpass what has been achieved, this influences our behavior being a conclusive aspect. Expectations are influenced by the level of our aspirations, therefore, we increase our efforts to the extent that our behavior allows us to achieve our goals, but if this does not satisfy us, we may feel frustrated.
All behavior also has a relationship with an object (object relation), that is, it has a link through the association with an animate (person) or inanimate (external world) object. A therapeutic resource to modify the relationship with an inanimate object resides in confronting the situation that provokes the behavior that one wishes to dispense with, for example, the unpleasant sensation provoked by height.
This method consists of exposing ourselves to the provoking context so that it is gradually perceived as slightly threatening. Also, when we are facing a situation that we must overcome individually, we may adopt a ‘natural’ behavior but, for example, when participating in a ski lesson we will feel observed, therefore, that ‘natural behavior’ would no longer exist since we feel conditioned by the observer(s).
There is no natural behavior for all situations. We may participate in a lesson and demonstrate a certain skiing behavior, but outside the lesson we may present another behavior and this is so because it is part of our personality.
Generally, we believe that most of the decisions we make when skiing are driven by our own judgments, but in reality, this is not exactly the case. The behavior of others has a great influence on us at every moment of skiing. The perception of a pleasant slope changes if we hear that other skiers think it is challenging. This ‘social influence’ leads us to behave not only by imitating other skiers but also, in certain cases, in an antagonistic way, i.e. not behaving like them simply because they are doing it.
