Pierce J. Howard's Blog

What predicts who survives a major crisis? Jared Diamond, UCLA professor and author of several award-winning books—including the Pulitzer in 1997 for Guns, Germs, and Steel—has identified twelve factors found among individuals and nations who survive

[image error]“The sky is falling!” by Brintam. CC BY-NC 2.0

major crises. Along with his wife, clinical psychologist Marie Cohen Diamond, they reviewed the family crisis literature to identify factors that predict successful resolution of major family crises. In his Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis (2019), Diamond applies these twelve predictors to seven nations and how they fared on the twelve dimensions: Australia, Chile, Finland, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, and the U.S.A. I highly recommend this read for all clinicians, on the one hand, and all national political strategists, on the other.

As an organizational psychologist, my interest is in applying these dozen factors to organizations. From the smallest unit of a family to the largest unit of a nation, I go in between for a look at organizations—corporate, religious, non-profit, educational. Below I define each of the twelve predictors, and offer a brief example of evidence that the predictor is present or not. I do not attempt to be exhaustive, but rather to spark thought and discussion.

Acknowledge you’re in crisis. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Like escalation of commitment, whereby organizations pour good money after bad, blind optimism doesn’t bode well for an organization in major crisis (hostile takeover, a major recall/quality problem, a bleeding bottom line, menacing competition, shrinking markets, and so on). Evidence this predictor exists: A consensus of leaders makes a public statement that the organization is in a crisis.
Accept responsibility. Don’t blame others or wallow in self-pity—prefer to accept willingly and eagerly the need to make necessary changes. Evidence: Public statements focus on goals, methods, and assignments without language of blame or suffering.
Selective change. Fence off what is OK and focus on needed changes. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water—keep the baby, but fix the water. Evidence: Public statements identify what is working well and will continue, while identifying what is under scrutiny.
Seek and accept help. Trying to go it alone risks doing the same old, same old, with the same results. Check outside the normal sources to identify helpful models, processes, and approaches. Evidence: Let it be known where you are looking—competitors, related industries, other countries/cultures.
Use others’ models. Sometimes you need to take someone else’s model and adapt it for your own needs. Evidence: Give credit to the source of your borrowings.
Embrace your organizational culture. Embrace the organization’s culture. Stress its uniqueness, its traditions, its story—therein lies ego strength through a sense of identity and pride. Evidence: A clear vision statement.
Face facts. Exhaustively search for relevant information to use in your problem-solving, decision-making, and planning. An honest self-evaluation means getting all the facts and evaluating them objectively. Evidence: All stakeholders are tapped for information and opinion—owners, workers, managers, customers, suppliers, competitors, industry data.
Celebrate past successes. Pointing to incidents in the organization’s past when crises were successfully addressed is a confidence builder and an indication of continuing ability to thrive. Evidence: Internal (as in newsletters) and external (as in media pieces) communication of the organization’s record of successful crisis management.
Patience. Crisis management is complex. Quick fixes are the enemy of long-term success. As Peter Drucker asserted, time spent now is saved later. Evidence: Willingness to experiment, test, engage in trial runs, engage in in-depth discussions and analyses.
Flexibility. Knowing there is more than one way to address a problem. Evidence: Open consideration of alternatives, including sources not previously considered or trusted.
Core values. Cling to organizational values that remain adaptive, but eschew outdated ones. Evidence: Updated values statement.
Freedom from constraints. Regulatory requirements, market trends, major competitor advantages—all can hamper recovery. Evidence: Bright outlook for the industry.

Whether your organization comprises two  or two million—or somewhere in between, these principles should guide leadership’s behavior in times of a major crisis.

During this winter of our discontent, Robert Frost’s poem about a fence between a pine tree farmer and an apple orchard farmer is eerily timely. Time for a fresh rereading of this classic:

Mending Wall


BY ROBERT FROST




Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

[image error]drink the cool aid, torbakhopper, 2012, CC BY 2.0

Yuval Noah Harari is a 42-year-old, Oxford-educated, Israeli historian. In his 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), he sets out to state the meaning of life. I summarize the 21 lessons here for two reasons: to encourage you to get the book and go into depth with him, or, for non-readers, to get a taste of his feast and be nourished by it. These 21 lessons are sequential, like a lesson plan, and lead to a profound climax.

#1: Liberal Democracy is in Danger. The liberal dream of justice, liberty, equality, and democracy is dead. To avoid catastrophe, a new social ideal must emerge.

#2: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Jobs.  The advances of AI and biotechnology are eliminating some traditional jobs (e.g., pilot), but creating many others (e.g., drone operator).

#3: AI and Freedom of Will. We must be vigilant in preventing AI from dictating our lives. Even though we are largely influenced by our memory banks, we still have some degree of free will and must preserve it.

#4: Data Ownership. Increasingly, who owns the data determines the degree of equality throughout the globe.

#5: Intimate Communities. Social capital has decreased. Can social media reverse the trend, or must we make offline time for others?

#6: Paradox of Civilization. We are growing more alike in our basic assumptions—in medicine, music, physics, art—but wrestling with protecting our differences as nations/cultures.

#7: Nationalism. The world’s nations have three common enemies—climate change, nuclear war, and technological disruption. We must find common vehicles to address them that do not disregard our separate national cultures.

#8: Religion. Religions, which Harari describes as shared fictions, are effective at driving mass (i.e., national) cooperation, but not at supporting global problem solving (as in climate change and technological domination).

#9: Immigrants. We must find a way to respectfully allow strangers in our midst while expecting them to live peaceably within our cultural norms.

#10: Terrorism. Terrorism is theater that creates fear fed by publicity. The press needs to resist dramatization of terrorism, and government must emphasize undercover operations (i.e., out of the spotlight).

#11: War. We are in the age of limited wars, as successful large scale wars are impossible/unthinkable. To keep it that way, we all need a dose of humility—whereby neither my culture, my country, nor my religion is superior to yours.

#12: Humility. No culture is intrinsically superior to another—the capacity for morality, science, and art is in our DNA and is spread throughout the planet. Those proud of monotheism fail to see its association with bigotry/intolerance, while polytheism is intrinsically more tolerant of other religions.

#13: God. We cannot know what God wants, so do not invoke God to justify our wants. That is taking the name of God in vain. Morality—or reducing misery—is a universal need. Any definition of God that supports morality is OK, while any definition that encourages immorality, or violence, is not OK.

#14: Secularism. Secularism has six core virtues: truth over belief; compassion for suffering; equality of different cultures; freedom to think, create, act; courage to address wrong; and accepting responsibility for the state of things (i.e.,by not deferring to a super power to do so). A religion, if it embraces these six, is essentially secular.

#15: Ignorance. We know less than we think we do, and it takes time that most don’t have to find the truth. You must have the luxury to be able to “waste” time—explore, experiment, test, verify, read, compare, converse, pursue multiple sources. No single individual can know it all—truth is a group effort.

#16: Justice. It is impossible for any one person, or even one group, to know how our actions affect everyone in the world. To buy shoes could condone a remote sweat shop. The world is too complex to see the whole truth.

#17: Post-Truth. One cannot wield power without a fictional base (Harari’s example is “God is with us”), but some fictions are more harmful than others (Jews are the chosen people vs. Jesus is the Anti-Christ).  Embrace informative sources and embrace non-hurtful fictions. But remember, from conspiracy theories to promises of paradise—fiction sells!

#18: Science Fiction. The future presents the challenge of the empowered elite versus the unempowered masses, not humans versus AI machinery.

#19: Education. Change is constant—jobs, world views, and identities evolve. Educate not for facts and skills—people can pick them up and they will change in importance, relevance, and nature. Educate for life adaptation skills—critical thinking, communication, cooperation, and creativity. And get to know your core!

#20: Meaning. For a story to have personal meaning, it must 1) have a role for me, and 2) involve me in something bigger than myself. Go for stories/fictions that do not cause suffering. But remember, all stories are man-made and fictional. Most people embrace multiple stories—American, Christian, feminist, vegetarian, etc. But one does not have to have a story to have meaning. All one must do is observe, search for truth, and be to true to one’s self—to one’s dharma.

#21: Meditation. Make time to just observe—your breathing, your sensations, your perceptions. There lies truth.

Note: “Being true to one’s self” is the business purpose of Paradigm Personality Labs. Our consultants and assessments purport to help individuals define their core and build upon it. Even though I retired in April, I’m still gunning for the gold—I am working on a curriculum resource for developing Harari’s four adaptation skills of critical thinking, communication, cooperation, and creativity.

Every once in a while scholarly journals devote an entire issue to single topic. When the Journal of Personality came out in February with an issue devoted to trait theory—that on which my career is based, you can understood that it got my attention!

Thomas Kuhn made the point in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, The University of Chicago) that every field of knowledge is based on a set of assumptions, and that when one or more of those assumptions is proven invalid, that field experiences a crisis and the way they do “business” changes.

As I read through the nine articles in this special issue, I looked for evidence that might challenge any of the major assumptions of trait theory, which are:

the structure of personality is comprised of traits
these traits account for differences both within and among individuals
they can be measured and exhibit orthogonality—that they are relatively independent of one another. “Ortho” meaning straight, like teeth (orthodontist), grass (Ortho week killer), or religion (orthodox)
that the level of a trait–e.g., very extraverted, or not very extraverted (i.e., introverted), or somewhere in between (i.e., ambiverted)–is consistent, both moment-to-moment and day-to-day, and over the lifespan, subject to the influence of life events that nudge (or force) one into temporarily adapting
that behavioral traits stem from biological structures and processes with a strong genetic origin
that the same traits appear in all cultures

And the answer is? Affirmation for all six assumptions. Yes, as one’s biology changes (such as levels of hormones, density of the brain, levels of neurotransmitters, and so forth), so do levels of our traits. And, yes, life events can increase or decrease one’s levels of a trait—especially “beginnings.” Chaim Potok wrote that “beginnings are hard.”  So hard that they affect trait levels. For example—starting college or a new job tends to

[image error]Come Hell or High Water, by Michael Pinsky. 2006. CC BY 2.0

increase cooperation (called Big Five Accommodation, or Agreeableness), discipline (Big Five Consolidation, or Conscientiousness), and curiosity (Big Five Originality, or Openness). In another arena, starting a romantic relationship tends to increase outgoingness (Big Five Extraversion) and sensitivity to others (Big Five Accommodation, or Agreeableness).

 

Having affirmed the assumptions that undergird our mission in life, that is no reason to rest on our accomplishments and our accustomed ways of doing things. We must be ever vigilant in scanning the landscape for serious challenges to our assumptions, our infrastructure, so that our beach property doesn’t sink as the sand succumbs to rising waters.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying change is unwelcome—I just want to make sure that we recognize the need for change. In the past we have experienced the death of several assumptions that had driven our business:

In the 1970s-80s, the four factor Myers-Briggs Type Indicator informed the paradigm for personality assessment. Research by the Baltimore Longitudinal Study demolished that assumption and urged the Five-Factor Model. We were eager, glad, and able to make that shift.
In the early 1990s, we learned that first-person questionnaire items (as in “I enjoy talking”) and 1-to-5 Likert scales were less robust than third-person questionnaire items (as in “Enjoys talking”) and -2 to +2 Likert scales, and we made both changes.
In the late 1990s, we could see that paper administration of our tests and surveys was “buggy whip” technology and needed to yield to computer-based, online administration. We made those changes.
In the mid-2010s, we realized that our brand did not reflect our business purpose. We initiated a rebranding process that started with soul-searching and resulted in Paradigm Personality Labs.

We stand now like Janus, with a proud head gazing on our past and an exploring head constantly scanning for weak assumptions that need attention. Some of the future challenges that we have in our planning portfolio:

The use of DNA samples to measure baseline levels of traits.
The use of monitors/chips to measure changing daily levels of traits.
The expansion of personality assessment to include more than traits. (We have already expanded in the assessment of values, and are preparing for measuring cognitive abilities, physical characteristics, and experience)
Dynamic, personalized, and interactive formats for reporting and publications.
Alternatives to Likert-type scales, such as conditional reasoning, rater only formats, situational judgment tests, rapid response measures, and others.

As the Caravan moves away from intolerable homes in search of civilization, I have just closed the door on two books that present to our planet the case for opening doors.

Pakistani novelist (b. 1971) Mohsin Hamid gave us Exit West last year (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017). The story begins with a Middle Eastern boy-girl meeting in the midst of civil war. The country being nameless makes it read like a parable, and the delicate, poetic style gives it the ambience of a symphonic tone poem (He studied with Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison).

The couple open the door on their romance and new careers in this unnamed city only to

[image error]Door, by Rody09, 2013. Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. –Alexander Graham Bell. CC BY-SA 2.0

find the doors soon bombed shut. They trust a go-between with their money to transport them across the Mediterranean, this door opening in Greece. Soon, still unsettled, they find another door that opens in London. After initially feeling safe, they fear an imminent attack by an uprising of local racial purists. Writes Hamid:

But a week passed. And then another. And then the natives and their forces stepped back from the brink.

Perhaps they had decided they did not have it in them to do what would have needed to be done, to corral and bloody and where necessary slaughter the migrants, and had determined that some other way would have to be found. Perhaps they had grasped that the doors could not be closed, and new doors would continue to open, and they had understood that the denial of coexistence would have required one party to cease to exist, and the extinguishing party too would have been transformed in the process, and too many native parents would not after have been able to look their children in the eye, to speak with head held high of what their generation had done. Or perhaps the sheer number of places where there were now doors had made it useless to fight in any one. (p. 166)

That mob retreated, perhaps reluctant to kill off the ghetto, perhaps shamed at the thought of how their grandchildren would regard them. It seems that they listened to their better nature.

Khaled Hosseini, born in Afghanistan in 1965 and now practicing medicine and writing novels in California (The Kite Runner—Riverhead, 2003; A Thousand Splendid Suns—Riverhead, 2007; And the Mountains Echoed—Riverhead, 2013), has followed on Hamid’s tone poem with a poem of his own. Sea Prayer (New York: Riverhead Books, 2018) was Inspired by the 2015 story of a three-year-old Syrian refugee who perished as his family tried to enter Europe by crossing the Mediterranean Sea. This thin volume is thick with meaning, as Hamid’s verse is accompanied by visual moods in water color. He prays that the world will open doors, will listen to their better natures, will see the humanity in misfortune in this closing plea:

All of us impatient for sunrise,

all of us in dread of it.

All of us in search of home.

I have heard it said we are the uninvited.

We are the unwelcome.

We should take our misfortune elsewhere.

But I hear your mother’s voice,

over the tide,

and she whispers in my ear,

“Oh, but if they saw, my darling,

Even half of what you have,

If only they saw,

They would say kinder things, surely.”

 

This, as troops form a wall on the southern border. Surely we can find a better way. Said Graham Greene (in The Power and the Glory, 1940), “Hate is a lack of imagination.”

In an earlier post (“Typing Is So Twentieth Century”), I addressed the practice of using

[image error]Can Do–Four Personalities. Roy Blumenthal. 2008. CC BY-SA 2.0

combinations of traits to create personality types. Type theorists propose that everyone falls into one type out of a set of two or more—as in you’re either a morning person or a night person. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator famously has 16 such types. That model has been sufficiently discredited. In my earlier post, I pointed out that the 16 MBTI types leave out 80% of the population! What do the rest of us do? Wander the dessert without an identify? Of course not! Eschew such “typing.”

But, alas, researchers persist. In recent articles in Scientific American and The Washington Post, among others, journalists have reported on new research that yielded four water-tight personality types based on an impressive sample of 1,500,000+ subjects. These articles for the general public were based on the scholarly article published by a research team from Northwestern University: Gerlach, M., Farb, B. Revelle, W., & Amaral, L. A. N. (2018). A robust data-driven approach identifies four personality types across four large data sets. Nature Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0419-z .

Their research proposes four types. I give the name of their types in the first column, then the levels of the Big Five associated with each type, and then a translation of the trait level symbols into adjectives:

Name of type

Associated Big Five traits

Descriptors


Reserved
N-E-O-A+C+
resilient, solitary, traditional, adaptive, disciplined


Role Model
N-E+O=/+A+C+
resilient, outgoing, moderate/progressive, adaptive, disciplined


Average
N=E=O=A=C=
situationally resilient/reactive, ambiverted, moderate, negotiator, situationally disciplined/casual


Self-centered
N=E+O-A-C-
situationally resilient/reactive, outgoing, traditional, aggressive, spontaneous

The researchers claim age and gender effects—that the Role Model is more common among females over 40, and that it increases with age; that males are underrepresented in the Average type; and that the Self-centered type is more common in teen boys, decreasing with age. However, because of the overrepresentation of females and 20-somethings in the sample (see below, Crtique #4), I am doubtful of these findings.

The study used four web-based data sets of 100,000-500,000 each. Each sample was factor analyzed with the hope of similar results:

IPIP; 145,388 respondents to 300 items (a version of the NEO-PI-R)
Johnson-120; n=410,376
myPersonality-100; n=575,380
BBC-44; n=386,375

All four studies converged on the same solution (except O is borderline mid to high for Role Model)—an impressive, even convincing, achievement. However, my critique that follows suggests cautions for interpreting and using their results.

My Critique:

Applicability. While the clusters are real, they cover a small portion of the population. It is as though we used four regions—say, Scandinavia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and New England—to cover the entire globe. In addition, the number in each sample who fit the cut points are not included, so we do not know if the four types represent 90-100% of the total, or only a smaller percent. I went to my norm group of July 16, 2008, a group of 7,459 U.S. adults who had taken our WorkPlace Big Five Profile in English as a part of programs conducted by members of our Big Five consultants’ network. I counted the number of individuals who exhibit all five trait levels for the four types. For example, I counted the number of “Reserved” by looking for the number of individuals who scored N454545
Reserved = 22
Role Model = 48
Average = 0
Self-centered = 2

That’s 72 individuals out of 7,459, or .9%–just a hair under 1%–who exhibit the four types found by this research. What about the rest of us 99%. I question the utility of such a model!

Comparison to MBTI. In my earlier blog, the 16 MBTI types comprised closer to 20% of the sample. Why was it larger? Because a) the MBTI types used only four elements (E/I, S/N, T/F, and J/P) for each of the 16 formulas, and b) the MBTI used 16 types while this study used only four. If we were to adjust for these differences, the percentage of the sample accounted for by the types in each model would be close.
Unclear cut points. They do not mention how they set cut points in determining whether to assign someone to a type or not. I suspect they use the midpoint, whereas we recommend using .5 SD above/below the mean.
Biased sample. They report gender and age frequencies as fractions and age brackets, not real numbers. That said, it appears that 18-25 year olds are vastly overrepresented, with those over 40 disappointingly low, such that age inferences are unreliable. Females appear to outnumber males by about two-to-one. This could have been remedied by balancing their samples. I would not trust either their gender- or age-effect conclusions. I wonder how the factor analysis might have been different with a sample balanced by age and gender. Females and 20-somethings are determining the outcome, and we know that significant changes occur during that first decade of adulthood. At Paradigm, we balance our norm groups based on the current U.S. Census.
No theory. While the Big Five are not based on a theory of personality, but rather simply describe the structure of personality, type theories are generally based on a theory. The MBTI is based on Jungian theory. The ARC-type model is based on Karen Horney’s theory or moving against/toward/away from others. This set of four types has no such theoretical underpinning. They put far more emphasis on their statistical procedures than on explaining their results. Perhaps this should be expected from a research team comprised of three engineering “types” and only one psychologist. They do compare their findings to those of the ARC-type model, which comprises three types: Resilient (N=E=O=A=C+), Overcontrolled (N=E-O-A=C=), Undercontrolled (N=E=O=A-C–). While there is an affinity of their four types to the three ARC-types (Role Model is similar to Resilient, Reserved is similar to Overcontrolled, and Self-centered is similar to Undercontrolled), they do not explain the departures, nor where future research should lead/explore.
Linear bias. Personality researchers are finding that many traits have curvilinear relationships to other variables. For example, the A/Accommodation/Agreeableness trait has a curvilinear relationship to leadership effectiveness, which is a similar construct to this study’s “Role Model” construct. That means that while lower scores on A are associated with effective leadership, if they get too low on A, the effectiveness begins to decrease rather than increase linearly. However, the Northwestern model does not allow for such non-linear connections.

Role models are good, depending on what kind of role you wish to model. If you want to model leaders, then perhaps this study’s model is noteworthy. However, if you want to model research scientists or long distance runners, you might look to other role models. Also, knowing that “self-centered” occurs with such infrequency—only 2 out of 7,459—is gratifying! In short, we need many more “types” if we want to address the population at large. I say abandon such typing—the Big Five already covers everyone! Learn how an individual’s levels of the various traits contribute to their uniqueness and suitability for specific kinds of work, play, and relationships.

For those curious about how this count compares to what we would expect to find, we would expect 1/3 of the sample to score below 45 on N, E, and O, and 1/3 to score above 55 on A and C , to get the expected frequency for Reserved. That would be 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3, or about .4%–about half a percent. Using the same formula for the other three “types,” we would expect them to cover 4 x .4, or 1.6%, of the population. In the analysis of our norm group above, we found .9%. That’s a rather close result for actual versus expected.
See Connellan, M. B., & Robins, R. W. (2010). Resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled personality types: Issues and controversies. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00313.x .

Ted Grabowski, a lawyer, friend, Big Five student, and general critic of society at large, posed this question: “Are all the subtraits adaptive from the perspective of evolutionary psychology?  If yes, I wonder what adaptive challenge ‘arrogance’ solves.”

Or, said differently, according to evolutionary theory of personality psychology, no trait would prevail in the “survival of the fittest” process over thousands of years unless that trait gave folks a survival advantage. Traits disappear that do not provide an advantage for survival. Most of the traits—and even their opposites–we see today have obvious survival value—sociability (to form alliances), solitude (to get the job done), perfectionism (to build high quality, durable structures), and its opposite—casual standards (to get something done quickly in an emergency, as an impending storm). Pride drives one to show one’s best side, which has advantages in sales, courtship, alliances, and so forth. Arrogance, an excess of pride, is helpful when one is trying to call another’s bluff.

But as the ancients warn us—both Sophocles and the writer of Proverbs, pride goes before a fall. This suggests that pride/arrogance does NOT have a survival advantage. What’s going on?

The difference between a trait that is helpful and one that is not has to do with rigidity.

[image error]U.S. Department of Agriculture CC BY 2.0

When one uses a behavior and never uses its opposite, that behavior is said to have become rigid. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) said it best in The Prince when he warned leaders to back away from their strengths from time to time. That a leader should be tough–yes, but on occasion they should back off and be its opposite—tender. That a leader who never lets up on their strength was to be feared and hated, not admired and respected.

He was not the only thinker to observe this truth. In his play Antigone, Sophocles ( c. 497-406 BCE) has Haemon, son of the King of Thebes, speak

No, though a man be wise, ‘tis no shame for him to learn many things, and to bend in season. Seest thou, beside the wintry torrent’s course, how the trees that yield to it save every twig, while the stiff-necked perish root and branch? And even thus he who keeps the sheet of his sail taut, and never slackens it, upsets his boat, and finishes his voyage with keel uppermost.

Then there was Confucius (551-479 BCE), who pronounced that “The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.” And certainly we should recount Aesop’s (620-564 BCE) fable “The Tree and the Reed”:

“Well, little one,” said a Tree to a Reed that was growing at its foot,

“why do you not plant your feet deeply in the ground, and raise your

head boldly in the air as I do?”

“I am contented with my lot,” said the Reed. “I may not be so grand,

but I think I am safer.”

“Safe!” sneered the Tree. “Who shall pluck me up by the roots or bow

my head to the ground?” But it soon had to repent of its boasting, for

a hurricane arose which tore it up from its roots, and cast it a

useless log on the ground, while the little Reed, bending to the force

of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.

And certainly many other thinkers from many continents and cultures have urged appropriate backing off. I read once that the behavior most appreciated in men by women was the capacity to say “I was wrong” and “I am sorry.” Failure to hold a job and failure to stay in a relationship are evidence of a personality disorder, and such disorders are characterized by one or more traits that have gone rigid, like the oak in the hurricane. The proud who are never humble show Narcissistic Disorder. The submitters who never stand their ground show Dependent Disorder. Extraverts who never shut the door for quiet, private time show Histrionic Disorder. The conscientious people who never, ever cut corners show Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. And so on. Behavioral rigidity = personality disorder. Such rigidity is not inherited—it is not in one’s genes. The extreme trait is inherited, but we are not born being unable to back off an extreme and show its opposite. So, Ted, the answer to your question is that arrogance in-and-of itself, while offensive to some, has value in some contexts. It is when arrogance goes rigid and can never bow down that it loses is evolutionary adaptive value.

The image of the oak tree facing a hurricane is strikingly personal today as 1) we face the ravages of Hurricane Florence and 2) we daily encounter politicians who are unyielding in the face of the storm known as the 2018 midterm elections.

My mother raised this toast at every wedding I attended with her: “To the lovely couple, I offer, with apologies to Ogden Nash, the hardest of all advice—When you are wrong, admit it; when you are right, forget it!” Indeed!

 

Why do some care less than others? Are folks who don’t place high importance on values such as art, ethics, power, or spirituality built differently from those who do?

The short answer: yes. The passionate have more dopamine in their veins, while more

[image error]Cooling with Juice. Ananta Bhadra Lamichhane. 2007. CC BY 2.0

quotidian folks have less. We inherit our dopamine levels in two ways: our brain’s capacity to manufacture the chemical, and the number of receptors that recognize, receive, and transmit its message—pleasure in searching. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that, when released and transmitted, causes us to feel curious, to question, to imagine, to move about, and to feel pleasure in so doing. The thrill of the hunt. Game on. It takes both the neurotransmitter and its receptors to get the full effect. The two in tandem are often referred to as key (neurotransmitter) and lock (receptor), with only one kind of receptor friendly to its dedicated neurotransmitter—in this case, dopamine. I like to think of it as juice (i.e., the chemical, liquid form of dopamine) and a mouth/esophagus (i.e., the destination of the liquid). Folks with big mouths (more dopamine receptors) and less juice (less dopamine) experience less passion than do folks with both big mouths and lots of juice. Similarly, folks with smaller mouths and more juice experience less passion than those with both large mouths and lotsa juice. And those with less juice and small mouths get the least high, as it were. Having more juice than capacity is a waste of juice, and having more capacity than juice leaves one unactivated.

From an evolutionary perspective, we need the full spectrum. Those of us who are more juiced up are the leaders, the inventors, the artists, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, while those of us less juiced up are the doers, the implementers, the engineers, the craftsmen, the quality control inspectors, the assemblers. If either extreme lacked survival value, it would be long gone—unfit for survival.

I am a researcher. Researchers ask questions and set out to find answers. Questions typically arise when I encounter a pattern I can’t explain, and I want to find the cause of the pattern. At Paradigm Personality Labs, we focused on developing comprehensive assessments of personality for use in the workplace. Two of our instruments—the WorkPlace Big Five Profile and the WorkPlace Values Profile–measure kinds of behavior (sociability vs. solitude, for example) and strengths of values (e.g., how important is achievement to someone). In total, we measure five supertraits (each with its own set of subtraits) and 16 values. Over time, I noticed that many individuals lacked a value with a standard score above 55. Or, these folks placed only moderate importance or less on each of the 16 values—achievement, activity, beauty, competition, health, helping, independence, intellect, justice, pleasure, power, relationships, spirituality, stability, status, and style. They didn’t feel strongly about any of these values. Whereas, I score above 55 on six! This question formed in my mind: “Do those who lack strong values have a distinctive trait profile?

I found a set of 145 individuals who had taken both assessments. I sought whether any traits distinguished the small group who scored below 55 on all 16 values. Paydirt! Several weak contributors emerged, but there was one strong supertrait that reared its head proudly: O, for Originality, or Openness to Experience. Folks who didn’t warm up to any of the values were folks who scored low on O. O measures level of imagination, love of complexity and variety, comfort with change, and a preference for the big picture. These individuals with moderate to low scores on all 16 values were practical, down-to earth, fond of simplicity, comfortable with the status quo, and found satisfaction in taking care of the details. The two strongest correlations were low imagination and love of details. And wouldn’t you just know it—levels of O are associated with levels of

[image error]ilovewecan, Mariana Mansur, 2005. Rosie the Riveter. CC BY 2.0

dopamine.

While this primary effect was statistically strong and significant, there were several other traits that had somewhat weaker associations with the low values scorers. For instance, they tended to be somewhat more introverted, somewhat more accommodating/agreeable, somewhat less ambitious, somewhat more methodical, and somewhat more resilient.

So what? All God’s children have worth. We need people with strongly held values to lead and innovate, but we also need people who don’t get distracted by the urge of strongly held values to follow and to maintain. We need our Martin Luther King Jr.’s, but we also need our Rosie the Riveters.

He’s the darling of Ted Talks and the academic with cred. Jordan Peterson, University of Toronto professor and cultural philosopher, has condensed his immense learning about life into twelve maxims in his 2018 Random House book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. If you’d like to skip all of the theory, research, and case studies, I have further condensed his twelve chapters into twelve admonitions with definitions. At the end, I have added four of my own.

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The wise pug named Petunia looks out to the future. Matt Wiebe, 2018. CC by 2.0

Stand tall. Be homo erectus, not homo slumpus. With head up, shoulders back, and chest out, you get more oxygen to your brain with accompanying improvement in mood and effectiveness.
Reverse golden rule. Do unto yourself what you do in caring for others. Research shows that we tend to be more diligent in nurturing others—take your medicine, do your homework, eat your greens, and so forth—than we are in nurturing ourselves.
Prefer supportive friends. Don’t spend time with people who constrain your attainment of goals and performance of roles.
Self as yardstick. Don’t compare yourself to others—rather, upon mastery of something, set higher performance goals for yourself. Resting on your laurels risks boredom. And, long term, dementia.
Establish discipline. Be a parent with those for whom you are responsible. Have rules (but not too many) and consequences (that are more helpful than harmful).
Be a positive force. Corollary of #2—look at yourself and fix before blaming others. Be a force, a model, for beauty, truth, and goodness. Clean up your act—change yourself rather than cursing fate.
Prefer process. Don’t go for short-term rewards—delay gratification. It is the search that will make you free, not the destination.
Tell the truth. Be open to new evidence—truth is a process. In the spirit of continual improvement, we will never know it all. Only lie, as Swedish-American philosopher Sissela Bok stipulates in Lying, when stakeholders in your decision to lie would approve, as in Miep Gies lying to Nazis about the Frank family hidden in her home.
Listen. Corollary of #7 and #8. Assume everyone knows something you don’t. Asking open-ended questions is a form of listening. As James Redfield suggests in The Celestine Prophecy—there are no coincidences, only opportunities for learning. I recall striking up a conversation with a stranger in Queenstown, New Zealand, while awaiting a bus to the fjords. Turns out she was the barber of the son of my mother’s best friend—an apple grower in West Virginia. She gave me his name and number, and I called him, age 90, upon my return to Charlotte. No coincidences?!
Strive for accuracy. Corollary of #8. The goal of critical thinking is to describe the world as accurately as possible. Why? So that our plans, decisions, and problem-solving may be based on the best possible information. Say what you mean while striving for accuracy in your speech and writing.
Let strivers strive. Celebrate risk-taking and unrelenting pursuit of goals and competencies—don’t make them play it safe. This goes for family, friends, and co-workers.
Illegitimi non carborundum. Corollary of #9. In the midst of bleakness, despair, failure, and hard times, grab what good stuff is available—Peterson calls it “Pet a cat when you see it on the street”—or, stop and smell the magnolias, hold a baby, enjoy a joke, savor a chocolate…

Based on my own research as presented in The Owner’s Manual for Happiness (2013), I would add three more guidelines for keeping engaged in life.

Say no. Corollary of #4. Know-it-alls are tiresome. William James encourages us to focus on fewer areas of expertise rather than more. I remembered this injunction when leaving Singapore’s National Orchid Garden. The gift shop had an enticing starter kit for orchiding. I was so close to buying it, until I realized the other things in my life that would have to move aside were I to spend time on orchids. That made it easier to say “No.”
Play to your strengths. Set goals based on your salient personality traits, mental abilities, values, experiences, and physical strengths—not on your weaknesses. For example, I set goals based on my high value for Learning, not on my low value for Power—I would write another book, rather than run for political office.
Take inventory periodically. Corollary of #14. Are you leaving out a strength you’d like to express? You may need to de-emphasize or discontinue a strength so to do. If I want more time to read, I may need to spend less time trying to learn calculus. If I want to have more money for books, I may need to spend less on eating out.
Be of service to others. Regardless of our temperament, it feels good to act unselfishly on others’ behalf, whether raking an elderly neighbor’s leaves or serving as a teacher’s aide in a school.

 

In a time when incivility, rudeness, extremism, intolerance, and self-righteousness dominate in the media and on the street, David Brooks pleas for equipoise (“In Praise of Equipoise,” The New York Times, September 1, 2017).

Huh? Equipoise? What’s that? Equal poise across situations. The concept appears to have originated in the East. Something like Buddhist non-attachment. Civil engineer and writer Dr. Krishna Murari Soni, in his Lord Krishna and his Leadership (Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd, 2015), writes, if somewhat stumblingly: “Kind hearted person equipoise to friends and enemies, neutral and mediating persons, envious and saintly persons, and well wishers and sinners, is a great person (equipoise to all). Brooks smooths this baffling language this way: “It’s the ability to move gracefully through your identities—to have the passions, blessings and hurts of one balanced by the passions, blessings and hurts of several others. The person with equipoise doesn’t find attachments less powerful but weaves several deep allegiances into one symphony.”

As a 20-something in graduate school, I found small patches of leisure to make chamber music with three professors—harpsichord, violin, ‘cello, and recorder (me). My linguistics professor hosted the sessions—he owned and played the harpsichord. We reveled in Bach, Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi, and Loeillet. Beginning around 7:00 on a Saturday evening, we would play until about 9, then pack up. Why no longer? The harpsichordist was a toper, and by mid evening he’d passed out. It was good while it lasted, then we other three retired to continue our evenings soberly, alone, at our various homes, with a good book. When I shared this narrative with an associate, he was astonished. “How could you use someone like that? That’s immoral. You know you’re enabling his alcoholism?! You only play with him because he owns a harpsichord! If he didn’t, you wouldn’t give him the time of day.”

I wish I had known about equipoise 50 years ago! Practicing equipoise in relationships means knowing that each of us has many different personas, roles, passions, or hats we wear. Some of our hats are noble (I volunteer), some are aesthetic (I make music), some are physical (I walk), some are intellectual (I read), some are entrepreneurial (I create products), some are political (I support sustainability candidates), some are unmentionable (sh-h-h-h-h!!!)…. I could go on. In order to have me as a friend, you do not have to enjoy or approve of all of my passions, but you do have to accept them. Once you begin judging one of my roles, you’ve begun judging the whole me. The same is true of me toward others: To have someone as a friend, I must be able to accept all of their passions—even the ones that I personally disagree with, disapprove of, or find distasteful. If you’re a wine connoisseur, I’ll go along (but not build a cellar). If you like rock and roll, I’ll go along (but not attend).  If you like science fiction, I’ll listen to your occasional enthusiastic book review without judging (but not go buy the book). If you like Scriabin, I’ll not laugh behind your back. Practicing equipoise means treating others as if they were a symphony orchestra, but not necessarily an orchestra comprised of your favorite instruments. I don’t care for saxophones, but I won’t find fault if you listen to Gershwin. Having a friend is accepting all their passions without making all of them your own. A pastor friend of mine quotes his Princeton professor: “Love is the non-possessive delight in the particularity of the other.”

I have a friend who went to prison. Must I discontinue the friendship because I disapprove of one (illegal) role he has played? I have a friend who supports a political candidate I think is evil. Must I terminate my association?

During the first day an exchange student from France was getting to know our family, the French teenager said she loved the music of Prince, while our daughter opposed that choice by preferring the music of Michael Jackson. They immediately judged each other as unlikeable—locked horns, as it were. They were unable to accept each other’s assortment of orchestral instruments because of one difference.

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Be Different, Walt Stoneburner, CC BY 2.0

A corollary of accepting all of an individual’s qualities is not identifying that same individual by any single quality. My friend is a composite, not a piece, just as my orchestra is a set of instruments, not just a bassoon. To identify an individual by one quality, or passion, and to ignore their other qualities, is opening the door to prejudice. A person is more than their ethnicity, their sexual orientation, their gender, their handicap, their kind and level of intelligence, their career choice, their sport, their car, their special abilities, their clothes, their weakness(es), their hobby. One of my favorite words is synecdoche—referring to something by one of its parts. “Look at those wheels!” refers to a car. “Look at that blonde!” refers to a whole person.

From my 76 years of reading philosophy, living life, sitting through sermons, sharing late night wine and wisdom with friends, auditing pundits, and reading the world’s great (and not-so-great) literature, I conclude that one can take a stand with society by being judgmental, activist, outspoken—with violence as a last resort. Sometimes war is necessary in the face of implacable evil. But friends are not society at large. One must make a personal decision as to whether one can compartmentalize the ugly part of a friend and embrace the remarkable remainder, or whether one must shun the friend for their warts.A college friend, Knox Abernethy, is now Brother John in an isolated Greek Orthodox monastery off the coast of Greece. He once quipped that, “Tolerance is the virtue of people who don’t believe in anything.” This was during the days of the Freedom Riders and Sit-Ins in the South. This was a time to take a stand. What would Knox, or Brother John, say about equipoise. I don’t know and can’t find out—he has taken a vow not to communicate with the outside world.

For my friends who have a passion I cannot approve of, I can respond with equipoise or discounting, with concern or with contempt, with curiosity or judgment. I can engage or disengage. How do I respond to a friend’s passion when I feel a need to disapprove, discourage, or warn against, while still communicating acceptance, even love?

Examples of equipoise:

“Have you considered the consequences of this way of thinking/behaving? On yourself, your family, on our relationship?”

“What has led you to think the way you do?”

“Aren’t differences among us interesting? It would be interesting to know which ones are more genetically or more environmentally influenced.”

“What are other ways of thinking about this issue you have considered? How could you modify your thinking to soften its consequences?”

“What are other options for you to accomplish your goal/meet your need in this area?”

“What are you doing to educate yourself in this area?”

“I resonate to your love of good food, your book choices, your love of classical music, the time you spend at the homeless shelter, and your sense of humor. I overlook your enthusiasm for the Forum—our relationship will be all the smoother for that topic not coming up—with others, fine, but not with me!”

“I love you like a brother, because you are my brother! But are you aware of the current research on sugar in the diet?”

Examples of discounting that are absent of poise and risky for the relationship:

“You are disgusting! You can’t really believe this is pleasurable/helpful/productive.”

“I’m embarrassed to be seen with you. You’ve brought shame to our group.”

“How can you be so savvy in other areas but so ignorant and misguided in this one?”

“How could you stoop so low?”

“That’s a really naïve thing to say?”

“My IQ is so much higher than yours! I have the highest IQ of all. You’re so sad.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself—offering sugar to your children.”

“When are you going to outgrow your taste for pulp novels?”

“Why aren’t you more like me?”

And then there was James Houlik, one-time saxophone instructor at N. C. School of the Arts, who kept the notoriously argumentative Phillip Hanes at bay by quipping, “I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.” While amusing, such insults are the absence of equipoise and are used when one does not wish to continue a relationship.

George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers), is credited with the assertion that there is “…that of God in everyone.” (Actually, every “man,” but equipoise suggests the broader term.) Two centuries later on this side of the pond, philosopher/poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) wrote that “Every individual nature has its own beauty.” (Nature, 1836) Both statements stem from eastern thought and have at their core the notion of appreciating the finer aspect of a person (or animal, or season of the year) and accepting (if possible) the warts.

Mohammad said it in several ways, under the subject of compassion:

“A kind word or even a smile is a form of charity.”
“Allah has no mercy for him who has no mercy for his fellows.”
“’I have ten sons and have never kissed any of them.’ The Holy Prophet looked at him and said: ‘He who has no compassion will receive none.’”

Fox, Emerson, and Mohammad are all speaking variations of the Golden Rule (or Silver Rule—“Don’t treat others the way you don’t want to be treated.”), or reciprocity in relationships.

Equipoise is not just about relationships. It is about an attitude toward oneself—accepting one’s symphony of attributes, even though some suffer by comparison to others. My late sister Nancy once thought less of herself because she lacked the musical, literary, artistic, athletic, and business talents of her siblings. Searching for her strength, she dubbed herself “The Responsible One.” And so became the glue that held the family together.

I have a friend who is a climate change denier. Apart from that view, she is a force for good in the world: loving mother, civil servant, savvy attorney, pillar of the church, velvet-throated singer, graceful with words, engaging sense of humor. I don’t want to lose her friendship, but I cannot let her think that I approve of her denial (it is not just a river in Egypt!). How could I maintain the friendship while nudging her toward sanity, climate wise? As though in answer to my dilemma, I received in the mail my enrollment gift from having joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science—a high-tech water bottle emblazoned on one side with “I am a force for science.” Bordering on the passive-aggressive, I now take this water bottle with me when in meetings that we both attend, and I subtly aim my message toward her. Nothing said—just a silent nudge. [My wife read this and commented that my behavior in this instance is not equipoise. Hmm… What do you think?]

David Brooks concluded his op ed plea for equipoise with this challenge to leaders: “Show me a person who can gracefully balance six fervent and unexpectedly diverse commitments, and that will be the one who is ready to lead in this new world.”