Michael Lewis on luck and entitlement

[abelenkpe]

Michael Lewis on luck and entitlement

http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com/2012/06/michael-lewis-on-luck-and-entitlement.html

Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. ...

I now live in Berkeley, California. A few years ago, just a few blocks from my home, a pair of researchers in the Cal psychology department staged an experiment. They began by grabbing students, as lab rats. Then they broke the students into teams, segregated by sex. Three men, or three women, per team. Then they put these teams of three into a room, and arbitrarily assigned one of the three to act as leader. Then they gave them some complicated moral problem to solve: say what should be done about academic cheating, or how to regulate drinking on campus.

Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn't.

(more at link)

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[nilram]

1. read it yesterday, really worthwhile.

[dkf]

2. Funny we always leave the last one...

It's part of our Asian culture and often extends to the office where everyone tries to offer it to the other guy.

[abelenkpe]

4. ..

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. "In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie.

For all I know, you may. But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't."

Very good. Thank you.
K&R

[renate]

5. very interesting! this article is kind of fun as well:

But new research in political science and psychology has provided a novel explanation for why leaders and managers regularly let their followers down and resort to the kind of "layoffs and pay cuts are good for you" talk that defines absurdity. These studies show that leaders often emerge from communities not because they are ruthless, but because they are skilled at managing social relationships.

Something happens to people once they acquire power, however, and the transformation appears to be psychological. Adam Galinsky, a social psychologist at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, recently had volunteers describe either a situation in which they had power over someone else or a situation in which they felt powerless. Those asked to remember a situation in which they felt powerful were made to feel even more powerful by being given control of the distribution of goodies, whereas the volunteers asked to remember a powerless situation were further reminded of their powerlessness when they were asked to estimate how many goodies they expected to receive.

When Galinsky and his colleagues asked all the volunteers to draw the letter E on their foreheads with a marker, those who had been made to feel powerless were three times more likely to draw the E so that it was legible to someone facing them. Those made to feel powerful, however, drew the letter so that it looked correct from their internal perspective but was a mirror image from the point of view of someone facing them.

Galinsky's point, which he noted in a study published in the journal Psychological Science, is that volunteers made to feel powerful, even in a trivial laboratory experiment, almost instantly lose the ability to see things from other people's points of view.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501236.html

[abelenkpe]

6. Wow!

Thank you.

[surrealAmerican]

7. Interesting.