The Constructivist Approach to Problem Solving sucks for monsters.
Imagine a Monster who is gentle, loving, empathetic walks into a room of white blonde women with blue eyes, long gowns, and debutant-approved heels.
That Monster is done.
Our brains work by ingesting sensory inputs from the world (environment) and quickly interprets and OUTPUTs --> an evaluation and a set of actions available to us.
The process of Cognition
George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory attempts to describe the process humans undertake in order to undestand the world around us. We have a set of objects and elements, and relational connectors (Neural networks), that help us understand how things are connected to each other and how things are "Constructed." I learned this basic modeling approach in my undergraduate studies when I was first introduced to OOP (Object Oriented Programming).
I didn't understand that what we were learning were the basic cognitive frameworks that humans use to make sense of the world. I was just thinking about creating programs that worked, and was more excited about getting the right outputs with my given lines of code.
Today, I'm much more fascinated by understanding the neuroscience behind the frameworks that were undergirding our Integrated Development Environments. Fuck, this shit is intense.
How to Make sense of all the inputs quickly? Hierarchical Decomposition to the rescue.
Cognition is a "Satisficing" process. When receiving inputs our brains are engaged in a "Search" process, which we call memory (recall). These recalls are based on our cognitions (cognitive constructs).
Sensory input needs an answer, it needs to be categorized. Ideally, it would be categorized appropriately in order to match objective reality as best as possible. But the brain does not require exactitude, it merely needs to be satisfied with the categorization. You're fucked if you're a hairy monster. Good luck at getting out of that negatively impacting categorization (unless you're searching for acting roles where you're a scary monster, in which case, you're hired!)
Holy shit, that's a lot of information to process and solve and categorize for. That's where hierarchical decomposition makes an appearance. This is the process by first deciding what models/objects/methods are available within a given context.
So, If I am in Mexico, then I, a brown mestizo male am expected in said context and have all of the rights and privileges of a MAN, not of a brown man, but of a MAN.
In contrast, being a Mexican man in the United States garners little sympathy. Given the context, I might conjur mental models of a rapist, an immigrant, associations with disgust, poverty, gardening, etc.
What's a monster to do? move to monsterville, I suppose.