Don Schön (1983) has cautioned us about these reactions. We are in demand as a physician, psychologist, or urban planner. Under these professional demand conditions, the dynamics of Polystasis might leave us breathless. We have little time to reflect on our professional practices. Daniel Kahneman (2013) would join Schön in urging restraint. Fast thinking should be avoided when operating in a dynamic polystatic manner. Kahneman may suggest that Polystasis and the formulation of psychosocial templates are vulnerable to the inappropriate uses of heuristics.
We often use simplistic and outmoded heuristics when shifting our template, changing our baseline, and making predictions in a dynamic environment. We might, for instance, apply a Recency heuristic. Adjustments are the same as the last time we faced this environmental shift. Polystatic adjustments can also become habitual. A heuristic of Habit is applied. Then there is the matter of Primacy. The first action taken when facing a challenge remains with us. We messed up the first time and learned to avoid this situation at all costs.
Given this potential vulnerability of recency, habit, and primacy, we must ask: How do we adjust to a new or changing baseline? Adjustments will operate differently when we face a critical challenge and when motivations (and anxiety) are high. We are inclined to think very fast and be especially noncritical when the stakes are high. Emotions are intense. Furthermore, we might always imagine a threat when we are tired or distracted—we indeed become “trigger-happy.” Anxiety becomes a common experience. Retreat and isolation become common polystatic actions.
All of this means that we need to be careful about the assumptions we make and the heuristics we apply under specific conditions of anticipation. Many conditions in mid-21st-century life hold the potential of threat. It is in these conditions and at these moments that we must be particularly vigilant and reflective. We must ask ourselves: Is this situation really like the last one? Can I do a better job this time in coping with this challenging situation? If this is truly important, then perhaps I should get some assistance. I might have to consider differing points of view. Is this genuinely threatening, or am I imagining that it is threatening? In short, Polystasis might be an essential adaptation given the aforementioned conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, turbulence, and contradiction (VUCA-Plus) (Bergquist, 2025). However, this process can also lead us astray. We must indeed be vigilant and reflective.
The Dynamics of Anticipation
The Polystatic process involves intricate and intimate relationships between perception and behavior. Anticipation is the primary bridge that brings these two fundamental elements of human performance into close alliance. Given this close alliance, performance can be viewed from both ends of the Polystatic process.
Perception
From the perception end, one can take an Intrascopic Perspective on performance. Polystasis can be viewed as operating from the inside out. Anticipation produces behavior. Our assumptions regarding what is about to occur if we perform in a certain manner will influence subsequent behavior. We can push even further.
The Intrascopic Perspective can focus on the even deeper state we experience as a feeling. This feeling may be rooted in an emotion that lingers in our psyche. We change our anticipations based on the emotions we are feeling. A state of fear provides anticipations that are quite different from what we anticipate if we are enthusiastic or suffering from a state of shame. At an even deeper level, our psychosocial template (and eventually our somatic template) might not seem “right.” We can “feel it in our bones.”
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