Consider the concept of affordance: what exactly is an affordance and why should you care? I think I could write an article on all the different definitions of affordance. In fact, I would be surprised if someone hasn’t already done that. So instead of first defining the word, let’s begin with my cats.

When I adopted Naima (pictured above) in November 2010, she was three months old, and the apartment complex where I live did not require cats to be either leashed or kept inside. My previous cat, Tashi, a California transplant, had decided early in life that she was an indoor/outdoor cat. Her petite size was misleading. Back in California, she acquired a series of formidable panther boyfriends and regularly hung out with the small herd of deer on the hill below.

For one unforgettable 30-day period in 2008 I had to keep her indoors while she recovered from a near-death experience. I barely survived the ordeal. She wouldn’t stop yowling to get out. She even attempted to excavate a tunnel underneath the closed cat door.

I was determined that Naima would be strictly an indoor cat. Given that she was also an only cat—and I was her only person—I endeavored to make the environment cat-friendly and appealing while maintaining certain boundaries.

 

Preparations for her arrival included the purchase of cat basics: carrier, litter/litter box, food/food bowls, lots of toys, and a bed. They also included a 72” tall cat tree for the living room with a perch on top, a shorter but wider cat tree for my bedroom, and a few smaller scratching posts.

Cats and kittens of all sizes, including tigers and lions, like to climb. Tashi climbed trees in the yard and, when inside, the eight-foot-tall bookcase. Naima began using the cat trees right away, although they didn’t immediately stop her from climbing or trying to climb other pieces of furniture. She eventually got the message, but my dresser still bears the scratches from her tiny sharp claws.

Cats also like to play with their prey. Sadly, the only toy I could ever get Tashi interested in were those bouncy foam balls that look like miniature soccer balls. She could play fetch better than some dogs. She preferred to toy with birds and mice outdoors, bringing one in occasionally (either dead or alive: quite exciting for everyone involved). To be fair, she sometimes took one of her balls outside to play with. Also, she tended to munch on them. Naima, on the other hand, loved her toys, especially the roller-ball track and a certain brand of catnip mice. She would hide and then hunt the mice. She also loved to chase the bouncy soccer balls.

A Chair Affords You an Opportunity for Sitting

A bookcase offers me a place to keep my books, of which I have a few, as well as some photos or keepsakes. For my cats, the bookcase offered something to climb in order to see what’s there and get a better vantage point. Maybe find a good spot for a nap.

For Tashi (on the right, looking very focused), trees offered something to climb, as well as a hiding place, a lookout, and a possible source of food. There were no actual trees in Naima’s environment. But the manufactured cat trees offered her everything but a food source.

Another word for “offer” is “afford.” Bookcases, real trees, and cat trees are all affordances. When it comes to climbing, both indoor and outdoor cats have access to a number of affordances in addition to those just mentioned: cabinets and counter tops, refrigerators and other appliances, curtains, walls, fences, screens—they excel at figuring out how to get wherever you don’t want them to be. I once watched live video of a kitten whose eyes hadn’t yet opened successfully climb a wire enclosure meant to keep her safely contained in order to get to her mom on the other side.

The concept of affordance was developed by a psychologist, James J. Gibson, in the 1960s and 70s. Gibson was a proponent of the theory of direct, as opposed to indirect, perception, which is just a non-starter for me. Direct perception is an unscientific idea for which there is no supporting evidence. At this point, we know too much about how the brain works to take this idea seriously. (Meaning doesn’t reside “out there” in the environment or in objects in the environment. The brain has to supply meaning by interpreting the sensory data it receives and processes based on our mental model of the world.)

Nevertheless, I’ve been attracted to the possibilities of this concept, so I’m trying to determine whether or not there is something useful in it within the context of behavior change. One task has been to sift out the direct perception nonsense and see what remains. Another task is to wade through some painful verbiage related to so-called “ecological psychology,” which was also the brainchild of James Gibson.

If I sound dismissive, it’s because I’m frustrated. Affordance is used in many different areas (several branches of psychology, design, communications, AI, etc.) and lots of people have added their own spin to it. That makes it difficult to pin down. Maybe that’s OK, though. This fluidity may be the nature of the beast—better viewed as dynamic rather than static. And, well, I seem to be veering toward doing the same thing: defining—or redefining—affordance as it applies to behavior and behavior change.

My current working definition:

An affordance is an action possibility available to an agent within an environment.

As a definition it seems straightforward, if quite dry. But it just scratches the surface. There are different types of affordances, and understanding those differences is key to applying the concept to behavior change. The possibilities are intriguing and anything but dry. In fact, they’re potentially very juicy. More to come!