Altercasting

“Here’s another quick example. If you say to someone who’s texting, “Wow, you’re a really fast texter,” you’ve altercasted them as a fast texter. They’ll then embrace that role and want to text more quickly.”

*— excerpt from *How to have impossible conversations

We label each other very often to place ourselves in well-defined mental structures that help us navigate the world and distinguish friends from foes. This practice is part of our inherent inability to see through and fully process the complexity that undermines the human condition and the world around us.

In particular, in the friends and family circles, we are constantly renegotiating and adjusting our identities through actions and words, and the process of change can be especially difficult when the degree of openness to experience within those groups is low. That’s because changing one’s stubborn habits and patterns of being is a process that also requires validation and support from the people around you, to differing extents depending on your level of conscientiousness and openness to experience.

The people around you have an impact on the shape of your identity; they can make it stagnate to where it was at a certain point in the past, or aid you in adjusting your behaviors and ways of showing up in the world with conviction. The former case is often more prominent, in my experience, also because we inevitably feel threatened by change and find repair in the soothing feeling of keeping the status quo.

That is also why one widespread advice in the self-help ecosystem is to choose carefully the closest people you surround yourself with. Those people make a difference in your identity, and if you believe that this does not apply to you, consider rethinking such thought, unless you are part of a very small group of individuals with psychopathy or sociopathy.

Each of us is inevitably nested within a group, however small it is, and that group is nested in larger groups within society and the world (e.g., your family, the local community, the whole town, the state, etc.). Due to the social nature of humans, those groups have an influence on each other trickling down the multiple strata all the way to the individual.

One way we keep each other under control — that is, we adjust and negotiate each other identities to locate friends and foes — is through altercasting. This is often subtle and covert, and yet it has a sizable impact on one’s identity, particularly for children and growing young people, whose identity is under intense development and prone to a large degree of influence from the environment. Altercasting is the practice of casting a person in a specific role to steer behavior change.

This often uses fixed language - e.g., you are a very athletic person - which is by definition used to describe one’s identity. The person receiving altercasting can then feel a sense of validation for their identity—if seen positively by them—and will likely be more prone to continue pursuing that activity to validate and keep their identity.

In how to have impossible conversations, the authors list altercasting among the methods to nudge someone toward changing their minds and reduce their degree of stubbornness. By placing a specific part of their identity in a good moral light, they may open their mind more, which facilitates the chance of change.

Altercasting is an interesting concept, to me, because it can happen often in conversations, and I believe it is a dangerous element for the receiver because it can create a sense of attachment and identification with a specific way of being. This can foster a fixed mindset (as opposed to a growth mindset), which I consider dangerous in life because it can get you stuck at a certain point in time and close your mind to evolution and change, which is constantly and inevitably occurring. Such a fixed mindset can then negatively impact your overall sense of happiness and well-being because you are stuck in the past, and maybe you do not even notice it.

Being aware of altercasting (which often happens involuntarily, rather than being used by people to intentionally influence behavior) is a valuable step toward preventing it from affecting your sense of self. Whatever you *are *right now will change. Whatever you *were *in the past has evolved. What you will be in the future is significantly influenced by your choices, and keeping that sense of personal agency over your daily decisions can make for a higher-quality existence.