We hear about competition all day long.
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Mina Cikara's research on intergroup competition (among others) documents that under competition conditions, the empathy gap between us and them can flip into something measurable as pleasure at the other side's failure. People surrounded by narratives of intergroup conflict are more likely to justify violence toward outsiders, and feel more schadenfreude at their misfortune.
We have powerful systems in our minds for empathy, but we also have systems that dampen empathy during threat.
If my memory serves me right, part of what was done during the implementation of the neolib ideology through the 70's was to change the mind of population. Basically they knew neolib was impossible to implement in the social/psychological conditions that existed at the moment as a more collectivist social order was present. They needed to create this self made man in order to make it work. And that implied a lot of what you present here.
In the end, competition is not more natural than mutual aid and that allows us to create a society with the kind of interactions we want just by re arranging the ambiental pressures and the like. That is both terrifying and liberatory... Nothing is fixed in that regard, but at the same time it can be hacked for the worst
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Loyal dissenters, as studied by Dominic Packer, are people who strongly identify with their group but *are also capable of dissenting with their group's norms.* They are key agents of reshaping and moving groups toward better. They are, as he calls them in a delightful paper title, "rebels with a cause."
Disrupting the empathy dampening is absolutely possible, and the more you cultivate habits of empathy, the more you become willing to point out hypocritical groups, the more you play this role
@grimalkina “rebel with a cause” - I feel seen
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@grimalkina “rebel with a cause” - I feel seen
@sandorspruit exactly why I thought this was an important one to put in the book. I know y'all are out there 🫶
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@grimalkina my bf works in sales. About 3 times a week they do individual or group competitions with money prizes. I hate them so much
@sondra final boss of competition cultures for sure
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Loyal dissenters, as studied by Dominic Packer, are people who strongly identify with their group but *are also capable of dissenting with their group's norms.* They are key agents of reshaping and moving groups toward better. They are, as he calls them in a delightful paper title, "rebels with a cause."
Disrupting the empathy dampening is absolutely possible, and the more you cultivate habits of empathy, the more you become willing to point out hypocritical groups, the more you play this role
I'm actively working to disrupt this behavior with one of the high-performing members of my team. He's great, but falls too easily/regularly into the trap of perceived conflict with partner groups and individual stakeholders.
Just one more reason I'm looking forward to your book.
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@sandorspruit exactly why I thought this was an important one to put in the book. I know y'all are out there 🫶
@grimalkina @sandorspruit I read the loyal dissenter post to my wife because I immediately saw myself in it.
Thank you.
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Mina Cikara's research on intergroup competition (among others) documents that under competition conditions, the empathy gap between us and them can flip into something measurable as pleasure at the other side's failure. People surrounded by narratives of intergroup conflict are more likely to justify violence toward outsiders, and feel more schadenfreude at their misfortune.
We have powerful systems in our minds for empathy, but we also have systems that dampen empathy during threat.
@grimalkina I am still horrified by the disdain many software developers have for the people who use the systems they develop.
Whenever I got to work alongside the people using stuff I had a hand in developing I always learned a lot about both the world the software was used in and how misaligned my notions were with the reality.
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Every single chapter in the book has its own FULL reference list, so if I'm calling out interesting scientists and studies you want to learn more about, trust that you will have a guide in your hands with this book!
@grimalkina can’t wait; I’ve got our library set to order it as soon as it can
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@sondra final boss of competition cultures for sure
@grimalkina @sondra What was that George Carlin quote. "Full of bullshit, businessmen. And the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other! When a businessman sits down with another businessman to negotiate a deal, the very first thing he does is assume the other guy is trying to fuck him on the deal. So he has to fuck the other guy a little bit harder and a little bit faster."
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@grimalkina @sondra What was that George Carlin quote. "Full of bullshit, businessmen. And the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other! When a businessman sits down with another businessman to negotiate a deal, the very first thing he does is assume the other guy is trying to fuck him on the deal. So he has to fuck the other guy a little bit harder and a little bit faster."
you want to know who comes out of deal negotiations with everyone winning? business WOMEN
Corinne Low's work is a good start on this: https://www.corinnelow.com/research
Men use overly aggressive tactics against male negotiators, leading to worse outcomes for all:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268122002645
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you want to know who comes out of deal negotiations with everyone winning? business WOMEN
Corinne Low's work is a good start on this: https://www.corinnelow.com/research
Men use overly aggressive tactics against male negotiators, leading to worse outcomes for all:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268122002645
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And the specific thing competition does to your brain, once you know about it, is hard to unsee.
We literally *stop being able to fluently access empathy* when our cognition is pointed at grouping the world into opposing sides. The more we see people as not as the complex individuals they are but as a flattened part of a rival group, the stronger these effects. The more we interpret group conflict as the stage for individual actions, the more our minds inhibit empathy.
@grimalkina This might explain why the founder of aikido explicitly banned competition.
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@grimalkina @sondra I mean, somebody's got to. It wasn't like he was talking out of his ass. From what I understand that's his whole point.
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you want to know who comes out of deal negotiations with everyone winning? business WOMEN
Corinne Low's work is a good start on this: https://www.corinnelow.com/research
Men use overly aggressive tactics against male negotiators, leading to worse outcomes for all:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268122002645
@grimalkina @x0 everyone pretends to be shocked
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@grimalkina @x0 everyone pretends to be shocked
@sondra @grimalkina Makes perfect sense to me even though I can't actually read the papers. Ties back to that empathy thing she was talking about. If you empathize with the fact that you're negotiating a deal for *both sides* to benefit, don't you use that empathy to arrive at a deal that both sides truly benefit from?
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@sondra @grimalkina Makes perfect sense to me even though I can't actually read the papers. Ties back to that empathy thing she was talking about. If you empathize with the fact that you're negotiating a deal for *both sides* to benefit, don't you use that empathy to arrive at a deal that both sides truly benefit from?
@sondra @grimalkina And like, it makes good business sense too from where I'm standing. If the other parties at the table come away genuinely liking your deal, that builds stronger business ties in the human sense not just the financial sense, which means extending that deal or opening up new negotiations with that partner is likely to also benefit everyone, no? A good negotiator knows you keep everyone happy. Which is why political negotiation is so freaking hard, because everyone can't be happy.
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@sondra @grimalkina And like, it makes good business sense too from where I'm standing. If the other parties at the table come away genuinely liking your deal, that builds stronger business ties in the human sense not just the financial sense, which means extending that deal or opening up new negotiations with that partner is likely to also benefit everyone, no? A good negotiator knows you keep everyone happy. Which is why political negotiation is so freaking hard, because everyone can't be happy.
@sondra @grimalkina This is why I love Mastodon. Me, just some random person, can get into random conversations with the coolest people and quote George Carlin and get back actual scientific references on women in the business world. How cool is that!
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But we can disrupt this zero-sum competition frame, and the healthiest groups learn how to do this. Some concrete strategies that work across the research:
- making people aware that groups are not monolithic in their social connections
- finding cross-cutting ties between members of "different" groupsand,
- invoking a group's own values against a harmful set of actions and holding one's group to a higher standard --> this one is a particularly fun area of work on "loyal dissenters"@grimalkina On the "not monolithic" front, https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 remains one of the more insightful things I have ever read on the internet (in both the "via" and "about" senses)
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Loyal dissenters, as studied by Dominic Packer, are people who strongly identify with their group but *are also capable of dissenting with their group's norms.* They are key agents of reshaping and moving groups toward better. They are, as he calls them in a delightful paper title, "rebels with a cause."
Disrupting the empathy dampening is absolutely possible, and the more you cultivate habits of empathy, the more you become willing to point out hypocritical groups, the more you play this role
@grimalkina I am in this picture and for once I *do* like it
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We hear about competition all day long. Win goals, win games, win business, win against the other applicant, win against the other team.
I've been in a lot of workplaces where the dominant messaging about how we should all act was that competition is what delivers the sharpest knowledge work, and I'd bet a lot of you have heard this too.
But the science of group problem-solving tells a different story
@grimalkina Alvin Toffler wrote about this at length.
