Revealed Choice Theory and Self Defense

Actions say a lot more than words do.

Let’s pretend you wanted to figure out a person’s pizza preferences. How would you go about discovering this information? You could ask their friends what they liked, or send the person a pizza survey. However there’s another way you could find out; just observe what pizzas the person chooses from a varied menu and record that behavior.

Every moment of your conscious life, you are making choices. Choosing to stay in bed versus prepare food, choosing to work versus hanging out at the mall, choosing to plant broccoli versus planting carrots in a given patch of soil. You can’t escape this; even now you are making the choice to either continue reading my words vs clicking off the article to do something else.

This is the basis of Revealed Choice Theory: the idea that people reveal who they are through their choices. It’s a powerful idea! You can already see it in action with systems like the FICO credit score, the smoothie shop punch card, and in serious scenarios like ceasefire treaties and mutually assured destruction. You see it in credit scores, parole boards, and probationary periods. People reveal their choices (or choices reveal themselves!) at every layer of society.

I practice a mixed martial art called KaJuKenBo (some choreographed self defense measures are pictured above for your viewing pleasure). It’s a synthesis of intense work by 5 masters, four of which were drafted into the Korean War. This left Adriano Emperado as the founder of the martial art. When I was a kid and just started out with sparring, there were “tells” or certain patterns I absorbed and relied on in order to gauge an opponent’s skill, stamina, power, speed, and maneuverability. This learned behavior, this “sizing up” was revealed choice theory in live action. Based on a few hundred milliseconds, I could gauge how tired, aggressive, or dehydrated my opponent was moving based on how flat-footed they were, or how energetic they seemed. Even though I didn’t have a name for it then, this was Revealed Choice Theory in action.