MIKEOLOGY
Introduction
mikeology (n) -
The Psychology of the Michael Scott.
Michael Scott. Ring a bell? He's the main character of The Office: the charming, sophisticated, humble, and efficient regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. He's popular with his co-workers, his subordinates, and most of all: the ladies.
I'm kidding. He's the complete and exact opposite.
Nevertheless he is one of the most loved characters that television has ever seen, because there's a lot more to Michael Scott than just his hilariously dumb and obnoxious personality. When you dig a little deeper you see a little more than the average SitCom character. You can find unique psychological elements of his character that you wouldn't find elsewhere, like his personality, which is obviously very diverse and one-of-a-kind, his social patterns as pertaining to conformity, his social patterns as pertaining to behavioral attribution, and finally his personality disorders,
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My goal is to make the ultimate guide to Michael Scott's character: breaking apart the psychology behind his personality, his behavior, his mind, and how he acts. I'll be asking this question throughout this guide; if he is such an obnoxious character, why do people like him so much? Is this unique personality attributed to nature (his genes), or the environment that surrounds him (the office in particular)?
PERSONALITY
You probably know Mike's Pretty WAcky
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But first let's see how we define personality in terms of psychology, because in psychology it's a bigger deal, and so it's a little complicated. (video by Crash Course Psychology [1])
Extraversion​
Most of you have probably heard the term "introvert". Extraversion describes the qualities that draw on openness to experience, and more specifically how talkative, energetic, or assertive someone is. Once again, Mike holds a very polarizing position in this spectrum. He is neither an introvert or an extravert: rather he shares some traits while lacking others.
The video talked about psychology in a lot of different ways. The most prominent one that they drew on was in relation to psychodynamic theory, but with Michael that isn't very relevant. What's more important that we will be applying is that acronym CANOE, or OCEAN, which stands for openness, conscientiousness,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. We're going to see where Mike lies on each of these traits, called the Big Five Traits, and what that means. [2]
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Openness
Openness describes the general curiosity, or the creativity and insight. Interestingly, Michael holds a very polarizing role in this spectrum, and that could be why people find him so obnoxious and lovable at the same time.
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Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is basically a fancy term for how organized you are. Obviously, someone like Michael is very low on this spectrum, but this is actually something a lot of us can relate to
Agreeableness​
Probably the most self-explanatory, agreeableness is (wait for it) how agreeable someone is: or more specifically how trustworthy that person is, or how cooperative that person is. Michael, yet again, holds a varying position. You can't confidently put your finger on a single point on this spectrum and say "that is Michael Scott."
Neuroticism
Neuroticism is emotional stability (you know that becuase when people say someone is neurotic, it means their crazy). This one, like conscientiousness, is easy. Mike's pretty emotionally unstable (his obsession with Ryan, his desperate search for friendship, and his inability to let go of Jane, even though his relationship with her is terrible).
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So, in the end, what was the point of that little analysis? Well, nothing yet. This mainly will help us in our future analysis of Michael. But note how I pointed how polarizing Michael is on most of these traits. We can draw the conclusion that this is what makes him so obnoxious and annoying, but so lovable and pitiful at the same time. In a weird, hard-to-believe way, we kind of relate to Michael.
Conforming and obeying
How does mike try to fit in...
... or conform to his surroundings? Or to his subordinates and peers? Does he choose to value his subordinates' life or obey his bosses (you'll hear him in the show dub them as "corporate") Here's another crash course video if you want to get a better idea of what we talk about as psychologists when we say conformity. (video once again from Crash Course Psychology [4])
In our mini study on the effects of conformity and obeying authority. we will be referring to the following scene from The Office.
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The workers in the union, after many years of receiving low wages, begin to unionize and demand Michael give them higher wages and better working conditions. Hesitant, Michael complies. Michael recieves a call from corporate, demanding that he control the situation. Once again hesitant, he does not comply. The workers are not phased by the message from corporate that they must stop, and they continue to protest. Finally Jane comes from corporate to the Scranton branch to confront the protest, and immediately Michael and the warehouse workers obey.
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Right off the bat there are two examples of the little rules of obeying and conforming that Hank mentioned in the video;
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When the workers unionize, in order to conform with the majority, Michael is hesitant to obey the instructions from his bosses and backs the workers.
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When Michael receives the call from Corporate, both he and the warehouse workers aren't phased, because of the rule of distance mentioned in the video; if the authority figure is further away, they are less likely to obey.
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When Jane from corporate comes down to Scranton to confront the union, it is immediately shut down, supporting the above statement.
Conformity and social patterns matter a lot when it comes to analyzing someone's behavior and character. Because these patterns or conforming and obeying are common denominators in almost all people, we can more importantly draw on the nature vs. nurture debate (a quick refresher: whether psychology can be atrributed to genes or environment), and these studies and this scenario certainly supports the idea that nurture, or the environment causes these behaviors.
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BEFORE YOU WATCH THE VIDEO:
Hank tends to talk a lot about stuff I won't be discussing so let's break down what we really need to know: Attribution theory (or, as Psychology Today calls it, explanatory styles, but essentially they are the same thing [5].)
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We attribute certain behaviors to either two things: disposition, or situation. Attributing something to disposition is essentially attributing it to your own strengths or faults, depending on the scenario, and attributing it to the situation is attributing it to that specific circumstance. You can continue to classify these two categories further into many different types of attributions, such as situation-stable or person-stable attributions to specify how often this attribution may occur.
see what attributional style you have
Attribution Styles
How does Michael Justify his actions...
Through disposition or situation? Here is what I mean: (video by Crash Course Psychology [4])
I hear you. How on Earth does this relate in any way whatsoever to Michael Scott or The Office?
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One thing that you will find with Michael is that he very rarely attributes his behaviors or scenarios to his own faulty dispositions. Rather, he uses a situational-unstable attribution, or an optimistic explanatory style, which puts the blame on the environment and / or surroundings rather than himself: "For example, if I fail a test it is the teacher's fault, which means that this kind of failure is unlikely to happen again. Plus, one test score can never encapsulate the uniqueness of me anyway." - Psychology Today [5]. That snippet from Psychology Today explains Michael's attributional thinking patterns. This now leads us to our original question: why do we love him so much? In this case, perhaps the answer is because he is so optimistic.
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BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER
I don't have a funny picture of Michael to go with this section, but I still have our good old Crash Course Video [6]! Enjoy!
Now once again, this Crash Course video goes over a lot of things that we do not need to know (though they are good to know), so we will narrow down what he has been discussing to Cluster B of the list of personality disorders: namely Borderline Personality Disorder.
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The National Mental Health Institute describes Borderline Personality Disorder as "a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships." [7]. i wonder who that sounds like.
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Now obviously Michael doesn't have a serious mental illness, but more and more you can see, through his relationship with Jane significantly, he has a desperate need to form relationships with people that most likely will be damaging for him in the future. The same is with his relationship with Ryan. Overall he definitely shows some symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Conclusion
Today, not only did you learn something new, but you got something new out of your favorite show (if it isn't your favorite show, I do not know what is wrong with you.
Now let's go back to that Nature vs. Nurture debate, because in psychology this is probably, hands down, the most important conflict that exists, because it is so important yet not a single psychologist can single-handedly prove either side. The psychologist, as a scientist backing a theory, can only provide significant evidence to support one side.
Through our analysis of Michael Scott and the psychological motifs and themes behind his character, we can safely assume that his behavior and thinking patterns can be attributed to his environment: as we analyzed his patterns of conformity, and how he acts when under authority (or when in a position of authority), these environmental factors are what influenced his patterns of thinking and observable behavior.
And of course, to answer the question of why Michael Scott is so lovable, it is obvious: we talked about his polarizing traits, and his unique relatability throughout the entire study. That is what made Michael so lovable: that in the most discreet way he is so relatable.