Tessa van der Willigen on Autonomy
Tessa van der Willigen is a visiting scholar at Georgetown University. She spent about 30 years in international macroeconomics, mostly at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she did country and strategy work and where she reached the position of Chief of Staff to the Managing Director. Originally from the Netherlands, she was educated in France and at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, first in zoology and then in economics. More recently, she completed a Master’s degree in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and trained as a mindfulness meditation teacher under renowned teachers Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Tessa is currently a Visiting Scholar working with Kosta Kushlev in the Psychology Department at Georgetown University, conducting research focused on autonomy and well-being.
Tessa on the web: LinkedIn | Hydrocephalus Association
By Kenneth Vail, Cleveland State University. October 22, 2022.
ISSEP: How did you first become aware of and interested in existentialism and existential psychology?
Counterclockwise from top right: Philosophers Albert Camus & Jean-Paul Sartre; IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde; Buddha.
Tessa van der Willigen: I was educated in the French system, which means I did a year of philosophy in my final year of high school, where I read Sartre, and Camus, and the like. So that's where I first encountered existentialism. But I turned elsewhere for my career interests. I first studied zoology. Then I spent several decades doing super intense work on international economic policy, mostly in crisis management at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and eventually became the Chief of Staff to two of IMF’s Managing Directors, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Christine Lagarde. All of this was in addition to starting and raising a family at the same time. I used all the opportunities the IMF provided for flexibility, even becoming the first person to work part-time at the managerial level. But nonetheless, I was working hard, trying to do something good in the world and at home, and I kind of forgot about the big existential concerns in people's lives.
Then, some years ago, I began to realize I'd become a human doing and decided I wanted to relearn how to be a human being. So, that's when I stepped out of my decades-long career, took early retirement, and told myself and all my friends I was taking a gap year. Of course, the gap became longer, because I just kept exploring and learning more and more about how I wanted to live my life. Mindfulness training played a part; Buddhist philosophy played a part; and eventually I found myself at the University of Pennsylvania doing a master's in applied positive psychology.
But then I got very interested in depth psychology—all the important processes happening beneath the surface. What started to interest me most is how people can create well-being despite what can amount to huge existential holes in their lives. I had read some of Irvin Yalom’s classic work, and loved it, but had not encountered anyone doing scientific research on those ideas yet. Eventually I discovered ISSEP, and it just felt like home.
ISSEP: You’ve been interested in the experience of autonomy; how did you develop that interest?
“I began to realize I’d become a human doing and decided I wanted to relearn how to be a human being”
Tessa van der Willigen: I got interested in autonomy by thinking about technology. I love tech, but we also hear so much about how it can mess with our autonomy—whether because it messes with our attention, or because it facilitates misinformation, or because the algorithms manipulate us, and so on, all of which (we’re warned) may eventually transform us into automata. I got really interested in that whole debate and wondered what psychological science would have to contribute. Surely it was possible to measure these things and determine the impact of impaired autonomy on well-being—possible, and also necessary from the point of view of formulating public policy. There’s an intersection with microeconomics here too, which is all about people’s choices. So, I began to study the confluence of technology, autonomy, and wellbeing—first at the University of Pennsylvania, and now at Georgetown University, with Professor Kostadin Kushlev. Technological demands have an influence on cognition, of course, but tech clearly also has important implications for deeper questions about what to do, who to be, how, and why. .
ISSEP: Interesting! Can you tell us about your work on the topic?
Tessa van der Willigen: Sure! My work so far is largely theoretical, and a good place to begin is to point out the difference between phenomenological and ontological autonomy. Phenomenological autonomy is about your perception of governing yourself, whereas ontological autonomy is about whether you are actually governing yourself. The sort of autonomy studied in psychological science is typically phenomenological. If you report feeling autonomous then you’re considered to be experiencing autonomy. There may, in fact, be important external influences on your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, but psych science research is often most concerned with whether you feel like you’re in charge of your life.
Phenomenological autonomy is important, of course, but so is ontological autonomy. Even if you perceive that you’re choosing the things you’re being and doing in life, there are so many external factors that may be the true causes of your experiences and actions—and they’ll have an impact on everything else, including your phenomenological autonomy and well-being.
Philosophers who have studied ontological autonomy make a useful distinction between autonomy of personhood and autonomy of choice. Autonomy of personhood is about who you are, whereas autonomy of choice is about what you do. We use this distinction to look at how external factors can impact your autonomy. Historical factors can undermine your autonomy of personhood by affecting your desires themselves, and whether they are authentic expressions of your true self; and whether you have the self-regulatory abilities necessary to make good choices. And situational factors can undermine your autonomy of choice by affecting the degree to which you are able to exercise those self-regulatory abilities; whether you’re pressured in one way or another; and whether you have the correct information necessary to make what are the right choices for you.
Each of these historical and situational factors can impact whether your choices serve your goals and your well-being. We think this model identifies meaningful ways researchers can begin to study whether tech—or any number of other forces—could impact ontological and phenomenological autonomy of personhood and choice, ultimately impacting people’s general well-being.
ISSEP: In what ways can your work on autonomy help us better understand the influence of recent social technologies?
Tessa van der Willigen: Well, tech can be wonderful, but it's a sea change in our environment. One of the unique changes is that it creates environments that are dynamically controlled by other agents. Beyond the individual “influencers”, tech platforms have incredible staff and resources devoted to collecting our personal data and using that information to make us do what they want us to do—to meet their goals, which may or may not be in line with our goals. That’s incredibly significant when considering the power of other agents over who we are and what we do.
One example of how tech can (intentionally or unintentionally) affect autonomy and well-being would be the way normative standards are presented in various media. Social media, for instance, tends to promote particular looks for women. Young girls may desire to meet those standards and they may even phenomenologically experience that desire as authentic—yet it might not represent who they really are or be conducive to their well-being. Thus, limited ontological autonomy, resulting from social media’s pressures to conform to particular standards, can derail an individual’s autonomy and well-being.
Another example might be that misinformation interferes with people's ability to know about their options, make informed decisions, and pursue goals that align with their authentic desires. Yet another example comes from the incredible explosion of options in, say, clothing, food, sources of information and entertainment, and so on. On the one hand, that greatly expands our potential for choice, but on the other hand it can at times be overwhelming and actually reduce our ability to make choices aligned with our goals. Again, technology’s influence on our ontological and phenomenological autonomy clearly has an important effect on our choices, personhood, and well-being.
ISSEP: What do you see as the most important next steps toward better understanding the way people experience autonomy?
Tessa van der Willigen: I believe just mapping out the channels by which external forces impact autonomy and well-being would be helpful. Another important next step would be to try to operationalize the more difficult constructs, such as the ontological authenticity of desires. Because these are ontological, rather than phenomenological, researchers can’t simply get at them through self report measures. We can measure phenomenological autonomy by asking whether people feel authentic, perceive a presence or lack of choice, or attribute behaviors to their true selves or to other external factors. But ontological autonomy is separate from perception, and outside of experimental manipulations (e.g., Kazen, Baumann, & Kuhl, 2003), it would require some sort of special instrument to systematically measure in meaningful and useful ways. Being able to measure these things would open new doors to learning about the confluence of ontological and phenomenological autonomy of personhood, choice, and well-being.
ISSEP: You’ve attended, and presented research at, our Existential Psychology preconferences; how has your experience been with those?
“Wherever you’re coming from — there’s room for you here”
Tessa van der Willigen: It was wonderful!. It felt like… coming home. It was amazing to find a community of people who are focused on all these issues that I had no idea where scientifically tractable. On top of that, I felt I was an odd duck but I received a registration award which made me feel welcome.
It’s also helped me to meet so many great people and resources. I came home and bought the handbook of experimental existential psychology, and I’m looking forward to a new edition coming out soon. I also got talking to with some great thinkers and researchers in the area—from Rich Ryan and Ken Sheldon who work on self-determination theory, to Becca Schlegel who works on authenticity and the true self—and those exchanges have been incredibly useful.
ISSEP: What is one piece of advice you would give to future students who have an interest in following in your footsteps?
Tessa van der Willigen: If you're outside of the field and you find yourself drawn to it—don't be afraid, because the people in this field are so friendly and welcoming. And if you feel like you don’t quite know as much as the renowned specialists in the field, remember that they’re simply representing their own unique expertise and that you can bring something new to the field as well. This field makes so much room for new contributions from different perspectives, so please know that – wherever you’re coming from – there’s room for you here.
Now, if you’re new to the field, I would recommend that you read widely. That might be difficult, what with the pressure to focus on publications and other activities with “tangible” products, but one of the most important things you can do is to block off time in your schedule for reading and learning. I believe the most important advances in this field will come from marshalling together ideas from across disciplines—psychology, but also philosophy, economics, the arts, and so on. So, reading widely will really pay off.
ISSEP: Can you tell us a little about yourself outside the research context?
Tessa is also a member of the Board of the Hydrocephalus Association.
Tessa van der Willigen: I’m married with two adult sons. My husband is an energy economist specialized in renewable energy and climate change. Our eldest son, David, was born with a condition called hydrocephalus, which involves a build-up of fluid in the brain. It occurs in babies but can appear at any time of life; there’s even a form that occurs in older people and is often misdiagnosed as dementia. Our experiences with David taught us so many lessons, and I became heavily involved with the national nonprofit—called the Hydrocephalus Association—which does some hugely impactful work. Nowadays, David teaches kids with intellectual disabilities and our younger son Jacob is in college with a dual political science and psychology major, so I guess those apples didn't fall too far from the tree. I’m very proud of my whole family!
Before all of that, I initially studied as a zoologist. I did my fieldwork in Tanzania, camping in the mountains for weeks at a time. I thought that was what I wanted to do in life, until I figured out that, no, it wasn’t! Later in life, though, when my sons were in their teens, we went back to Tanzania on a family vacation and we visited all my old haunts there. My younger son decided, at that point, that I was more interesting than I looked!
Check out William Kaufman’s From Shakespeare to Existentialism (1959).
Maybe by contrast, I’m also a huge theater buff, and I’m especially in love with Shakespeare. In recent months, I’ve been struck by how Shakespeare also explored so much of what is of interest to existentialism: “To be or not to be”, “To thine own self be true”, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so”, “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once”, and my personal favorite, “How unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would pluck out the heart of my mystery.” Isn't that just a stunning commentary on autonomy?
I'll tell you one more thing about my Shakespeare obsession: It actually originated at the same time as my then-six-year-old son's Shakespeare obsession. We grew up together in Shakespeare, and he's now 26, so that makes it 20 years. Every year since he turned seven, I’ve put on an abridged version of a Shakespeare play as a finger puppet play for him. So, I've done 20 shows for him now. I'm thinking it might be time to stop, because it's a huge amount of work, but I’m also very fond of our lovely tradition together.
ISSEP: A lot of us like to listen to music in the lab; what are you listening to lately?
I have pretty eclectic musical tastes, ranging from classical through to rock and pop, like Passenger and Ingrid Michaelson. My kids help keep me in touch with new music and they’re impressed that I really enjoy rap! As a family, we go see the Rolling Stones every single time they tour; they stopped touring for a long time but then they got the bug again, thank goodness. And Mick Jagger is a total inspiration; I mean, if I have half that energy at his age, I will be amazed.
While working, I don’t do well with interruptions and outside distractions. So, the music needs to be really low key with no lyrics. I love Philip Glass, and I use an app called Focus at Will which plays music that’s supposedly engineered to be distraction free. I've no idea what they do to it, but I can have it on and focus, so that’s great.
Outside of that, I’ve been listening to a lot of Kae Tempest recently. They’re a British poet and spoken word and rap artist. I noticed they keep tackling existential themes, and one of my favorite tracks is called A Bad Place for a Good Time. It's about the emptiness of life and how it's all meaningless at bottom. But there's a bit in the middle about a tree planted in a harsh city setting—it’s surrounded by concrete, gets peed on by dogs, and cars rumble its roots. Despite all that, it soaks up the water and sun, and it’s growing. It seems like a great example of how to deal with life by keeping an eye on the things that matter.