One of the strongest obstacles to positive change is narcissism: our proclivity to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, based on the feeling that nice people like ourselves couldn’t possibly be doing bad things. In the public arena, this is especially easy to see if you follow the way our leaders use the word …
One of my consulting clients is a group called Global Kids. I’m helping with its Newz Crew project, which involves high school-age kids in online dialogues about global issues. Each time a group starts, the kids are given an article to discuss, and one of my tasks is to formulate questions about the article. This …
In 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in which Stanford students played the roles of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison in redecorated labs and a boarded-up corridor of the Psychology Department. They were all healthy male students who’d passed psychological tests and given informed consent about the deprivations they might experience. …