According to Vickers, day-to-day life is a continuously changing flow of interacting events and ideas. As people encounter events and ideas, they make judgments about reality and its value, deciding what is good or bad based on previous experiences. He argued that those judgments eventually lead to “action judgments,” or decisions to act, which in turn affect future events and ideas. Thus, in an appreciative system, people’s judgments of something’s value or worth dictate their actions. If they frame perceptions and judgments appreciatively, or as something valuable, they also act in a way that reflects reality’s positive value.

Second Model of AI by Geoffrey Vickers (1894–1982), an English bureaucrat-turned social scientist

Appreciative Intelligence: Seeing the Mighty Oak in the Acorn