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Outline: Our mind & our institutions
Cognitive specialists
Rationality (decisional
mechanism)
Cooperation (main ambit of interest)
Institutions
Modular mind
InstinctiveCo-opt instincts
Maladapted mind
EcologicalFill adap-tation gap
Applications to projects?
1. Ideas & beliefs
2. Career
3. Expectations
4. Women & men
5. Contracting financial services
6. Reforming public services
7. Reputation of business
8. Online universities
9. Institutional reform
Which sport is tougher?
▪ Psychologically?
▪ In which is more painful to lose?
▪ Chess, why?
▪ Because there are not referees
▪ What’s the moral?
Are smarter, better-educated individuals better at avoiding the traps of unreasonable beliefs?
▪ The power of rationalization♦ Individual examples: perhaps the most prominent, on our
own performance: examples? E.g., next slide?
▪ The power of socialization♦ Social examples: collective killings (Nazi Germany) and
suicides (from Numantia to Jonestwon) ♦ How do we react when friends who stop believing / start
thinking differently?
▪ Big risk: we all suffer it… in different areas▪ How to cure or prevent? I.e., how to grow up from
beliefs into ideas?♦ Diverse socialization: How homogenous are our groups?♦ Dilute stereotypes by knowing different persons, groups
Example
▪ How to calibrate accusations that a teacher ♦ “constantly despites students”? (E.g., “crosses
the line of critique into scorn, jibe, sarcasm”)
▪ Hypotheses—how to test, verify?♦ Teacher does despise students♦ Students in denial rationalize their own failures
▪ What are the effects of soft versus clear criticism? Do we prefer to be told we do well even we do not? Have we?
▪ ***** Application to course projects *****
Deflecting hard questions
▪ Proposal: ♦ “Identify the particular challenges of men and women in
pursuing their professional careers ”
▪ Project: ♦ Emphasis on how the environment must or can be changed
▪ Triple deflection: ♦ Only women♦ Changed to make our lives easier♦ Avoid hard personal questions
▪ Risk: work hard self-justifyng
Deflecting hard questions
▪ Proposal: ♦ “think strategically about professional career
development”, “identify challenges from the environment, assets and possible deficits in emotional intelligence or technical competencies”
▪ Project: ♦ “How firms must adapt to young grads’ emotions”♦ Example: “Puppies’ rebellion” (ES)
http://ow.ly/kXRdH —any changes since 2007?
Trained to deflect criticism?
▪ The “best educated generation” ever: ♦ myth or reality?♦ Averages and statistical distributions♦ Quantity and quality: intangibles
▪ Education = aptitude + “attitude”♦ Aptitude: knowledge, general abilities, etc.♦ “Attitude”—crucially: ability to productively accept
criticism
How do we react to criticism?
▪ Defensively: taking it as personal attack
▪ Rationalization: producing excuses♦ Why do brilliant people often under-perform? Use their
higher mental power to produce better excuses
▪ Advice: ♦ No excuses: your default should be “the critique is right, in
some way”, and you must discover that way♦ Take critiques as signals of failure, not as solutions:
• e.g., in correcting texts, teachers shouldn’t provide alternatives but just mark mistakes. When seen that the alternative is worse, students tempted to think there was no problem
♦ Distance yourself from your work you do not like it