A member of a group I’m working with to develop a logo and marketing slogan for court-connected dispute resolution services just sent us all a link to “The Art of the Dispute“, an American Express ad that’s been airing during the U.S. Open.

Starring former tennis professional John McEnroe, remembered not only for his virtuosity on the tennis courts but also for his fearsome temper, the ad lauds the advantages of American Express cardmember dispute resolution services.

You can view either the commercial or a lengthier video clip. It’s a clever ad, regardless of what you may think about either McEnroe or American Express–and no matter what, it doesn’t hurt the mediation field that dispute resolution — with its promise of “less arguing” — gets placed squarely in front of the attention of the television-viewing public.

Educators and parents have long accepted the notion that introducing children to art fosters creativity, builds cultural literacy, and makes for well-rounded human beings.

Art education however may in fact achieve far more than that: namely, help children develop important skills and habits necessary to the work they will ultimately do as adults, according to a recent study described in a Boston Globe article, “Art for our sake: School arts classes matter more than ever - but not for the reasons you think“. Two researchers with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, describe the surprising results of their study and the implications they hold for the future of education.

They discovered that art teaches children key “studio habits of mind”, including persistence, expression, and the ability to make clear connections “between schoolwork and the world outside the classroom”–in other words, to see real-world applications for the lessons learned in class.

Researchers noticed something important at the very beginning:

The first thing we noticed was that visual arts students are trained to look, a task far more complex than one might think. Seeing is framed by expectation, and expectation often gets in the way of perceiving the world accurately. To take a simple example: When asked to draw a human face, most people will set the eyes near the top of the head. But this isn’t how a face is really proportioned, as students learn: our eyes divide the head nearly at the center line. … Observational drawing requires breaking away from stereotypes and seeing accurately and directly…Seeing clearly by looking past one’s preconceptions is central to a variety of professions, from medicine to law [emphasis added]. Naturalists must be able to tell one species from another; climatologists need to see atmospheric patterns in data as well as in clouds. Writers need keen observational skills too, as do doctors.

The authors conclude:

For students living in a rapidly changing world, the arts teach vital modes of seeing, imagining, inventing, and thinking. If our primary demand of students is that they recall established facts, the children we educate today will find themselves ill-equipped to deal with problems like global warming, terrorism, and pandemics.Those who have learned the lessons of the arts, however - how to see new patterns, how to learn from mistakes, and how to envision solutions - are the ones likely to come up with the novel answers needed most for the future.

How well did your own education prepare you to master those habits?

(Photo credit: Carlos Paes.)

In impressing on their students the importance of acquiring negotiation skills, trainers will often say, “You may not realize it, but you’re always negotiating. It doesn’t matter whether you’re asking your boss for a raise or figuring out where to have dinner with your spouse. You’re negotiating, my friend.”

I know–I’ve said this to rooms full of people myself. Judging from the numerous heads nodding in agreement, many people accept this as true. However, I don’t think anyone ever acts as if they really believe it.

But what if in fact that were the case? What if you truly believed that everything–and I do mean everything– is open to negotiation?

Author Tom Chiarella decided to test this premise during the course of a three-month experiment. He writes about his experience in “Haggling for Hot Dogs“, an article that appears in Esquire. Lessons learned include “Never let them know how much you have to spend. Draw people into your life. Show your personality. Learn people’s names. Work your way up to the person who has a stake in the sale and the power to make a deal.” Also, don’t “think of money as the only thing…to offer. I found that trading favors proved relatively easy.”

Every once in awhile, if we are fortunate, we meet an individual that intuition tells us is destined for great things.

My friend Ashok Panikkar is one of those individuals. Ashok, who left Boston and returned to his native Bangalore two years ago, founded Meta-Culture, Bangalore’s first center for dialogue and conflict transformation. When I interviewed Ashok in July 2005, he described his goals for Meta-Culture:

Meta-Culture is in the process of creating India’s first integrated conflict management group. The vision is to help people develop skills of discourse that are non-adversarial and built around the principles of dialogue rather than debate (even though there are situations where, for instance, Socratic debate can play a very useful part in helping to clarify ideas and challenge the mind). In doing so we can change the climate and culture of discourse so that individuals, organizations and societies can respond to differences with understanding and skill instead of doing so from anger, ignorance, fear, animosity or misplaced righteousness.Our mission is to engage in or promote activities that can help advance this vision. To this end we are engaged in consulting, research and education in the areas of ADR, especially mediation; facilitation; coaching; design of conflict and dispute management systems; and consensus building. Right now our focus is to establish Meta-Culture as a sustainable consulting practice. Very soon we will be setting up a separate division that will service the NGO and governmental sectors.

Unsurprisingly, Meta-Culture today is thriving, keeping Ashok and his staff busy. One of its projects, Meta-Culture Dialogics, a non-profit trust, recently attracted the attention of India media.

The purpose of this project has been to promote dialogue among Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Buddhist groups to discuss matters of importance over the course of 10 sessions. These sessions were not designed to get people “holding hands and singing Kumbaya” in the hopes of simply sweeping differences under the rug, as Ashok told me in a recent phone call.

According to Ashok, who was interviewed by The Hindu, “We are not into preaching peace, tolerance and harmony. Instead, we provide a platform for communities to talk about what is bothering them the most about the other community” and to ask each other the hard questions to give issues the healthy airing that honest dialogue can produce.

You can read more about this “Inter-faith dialogue for conflict resolution” as reported in an online edition of The Hindu.

Raising criticisms or concerns can often be a heroic act, even within a group whose members know each other well (a reality familiar to anyone who has tried to offer constructive feedback to a sensitive family member or friend.) Pity then the group’s newcomer, who can expect even brilliant suggestions to meet harsh resistance.

So how to counter that resistance? What’s a newcomer to do to gain greater influence in a group?

The Situationist reports on a newly published study that has some recommendations for newcomers seeking to gain acceptance of ideas:

When they criticized their current group, newcomers who distanced themselves from their previous group won over more agreement for their criticisms than did newcomers who embraced their previous group. This effect emerged regardless of how long participants themselves had been members of the group. Consistent with predictions, where there was a positive effect of distancing from the old group, it came about because the distancing strategy was successful in increasing perceptions that the critic was psychologically attached to his or her current group identity.

The report can be downloaded for a brief time only in PDF. Link good at time of posting.

Canadian psychologists have found that when people are primed with religious concepts they behave in more altruistic ways.

Secular humanists need not fear–the same results were produced when participants were instead primed with concepts relating to civic responsibility. Researchers used word games to surreptitiously introduce these concepts to their subjects. Interestingly enough, exit interviews revealed that participants were unaware that they had been primed.

What I find fascinating about the study is the extent to which human behavior can be so readily influenced. And it certainly raises intriguing possibilities for the mediator’s opening statement, already important for the extent to which it can shape the negotiations to follow, as attorney-mediator Christopher Annunziata discussed recently at CKA Mediation & Arbitration Blog. All the more reason for mediators to carefully consider the words they choose to frame the conversation.

(Via Boing Boing.)

They say that honesty is the best policy.

But given the lengths to which people will go to avoid confrontation or tough conversations, honesty may be the first casualty in human interaction.

Besides, is lying really always wrong? What if it serves noble ends? Isn’t deception just a social lubricant, allowing us to get along? Shouldn’t we lie to prevent harm to another? If lying is always wrong, then are studies in human behavior ethically indefensible? What about undercover police work? Or the bluffing, puffery, and lowballing that can characterize negotiations? (And let’s not even get started on deception in mediation.) Despite what we tell our children about lies, deception may be indispensable.

But a movement known as Radical Honesty proposes instead that the truth will set us free: it calls for no-holds-barred, “direct, open and honest conversation” as the best way to build meaningful relationships.

Journalist A.J. Jacobs recently took up the challenge. In “I Think You’re Fat“, an article from the July issue of Esquire, he describes his experiment in Radical Honesty and its impact on his work and personal life. Jacobs discovers one upside: “One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I’m saving a whole lot of time. It’s a cut-to-the-chase way to live.” The downside? Radical Honesty can be downright cruel. An acquaintance recovering from a recent tragic loss seeks Jacobs’ professional advice on poetry he’s written. Jacobs cannot bring himself to tell the truth: the poetry stinks. When faced with a choice between honesty or compassion, Jacobs opts for compassion.

Read Jacobs’ essay and ask yourself what choices you might make yourself. It’ll leave you thinking–and that’s no lie.

It’s been a tough month for the American legal system and American lawyers.

First an attorney with drug-resistant TB travels to Europe and back, potentially exposing his fellow air travelers to a dreaded illness. Then an administrative law judge goes to court to recover $54 million dollars from his former dry cleaner over a pair of lost trousers. Finally, a North Carolina district attorney is disbarred for violating numerous rules of professional conduct in his prosecution of a controversial rape case.

Events like this only seem to confirm the worst suspicions that the American public harbors toward its legal system and the legal profession. The images on the five o’clock news tell the story: greedy plaintiffs, overreaching lawyers, justice in chaos.

This month’s issue of the American Association for Justice’s Law Reporter paints another picture. In a print article, “Family of slain journalist agrees to nonmonetary settlement with city to improve emergency services, ” it reports on the unexpected outcome of a lawsuit stemming from the death of a prominent journalist as the result of alleged deficiencies in the District of Columbia’s emergency services.

According to the family’s lawyer, their goals in litigation shifted from obtaining monetary compensation from the defendants to instead finding ways to ensure that other families would be spared a similar experience. In exchange for the family members dismissing their claims against the District, the District agreed to establish a task force to investigate the circumstances surrounding the response of the District’s Fire and Emergency Medical Service and to issue a report of recommendations for improving the delivery of emergency medical services.

The family’s attorney observed, “I hope that the example set by the Rosenbaum family will prompt other attorneys to consider creative resolutions to cases where the focus shift from an entirely monetary settlement to a resolution that has a broader impact than just on the litigants in the case.”

Mediators of course will nod their heads in recognition–this is a story familiar to all of us. It’s too bad it’s not a story familiar to the public. Lawyers and mediators alike need to do a better job of telling these stories–stories which reveal the creativity and change that justice can produce.

Nothing is more divisive in America today than its politics.

But it’s not the lines in the sand we should worry about. The Redistricting Game, an online game developed for the USC Annenberg Center for Communication, shows us that it’s the lines that define congressional districts that should concern us. According to the web site,

The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting. Currently, the political system in most states allows the state legislators themselves to draw the lines. This system is subject to a wide range of abuses and manipulations that encourage incumbents to draw districts which protect their seats rather than risk an open contest.

By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system.

(With a hat tip to The Map Room for the link.)

American lawyers by now may be inured to media attacks on the legal profession. We expect it from Fox News. But this week lawyers drew fire from an unexpected source: a National Public Radio broadcast.

On Point, a week-day radio news magazine produced by NPR member station WBUR in Boston, broadcast a show this week titled “Verdict on American Lawyers“. From the show’s description:

America’s legal profession is based on ideals: on standards of education and admission to the practice, ethics regulation, a disregard for commercialism and on working on behalf of the public good. The legal system is rooted in the belief that all should have access to justice. But Yale Law Professor and legal historian, [sic] says it’s not so. The profession is hardly professional anymore. He says lawyers today are out for their own economic self-interest…

Instead of providing what could have been a rich discussion about the present and future of the legal profession, with points and counterpoints from a spectrum of voices, On Point succeeded in reinforcing for its listeners virtually every negative stereotype that exists about American lawyers today. It perpetuated the myth that all lawyers work for large firms on behalf of shady corporate interests and are members of an Ivy-educated elite motivated solely by self-interest and greed.

The show’s greatest defect was its failure to accurately and fully depict today’s legal profession in all its diversity. This one-sided portrayal of a legal profession in moral decline ignored the numerous efforts that have contributed to the improvement of law and the institutions that serve it. And it disregarded the movements within the profession that seek to deliver justice better and provide effective mechanisms for the resolution of disputes.

There are plenty of attorneys today who are trailblazers, breaking new ground through movements like collaborative law and restorative justice. These attorneys are bold architects of new ways of serving the public and justice better.

And how can a show that purported to examine the legal profession and access to justice fail to discuss one of the most important revolutions in the courts and in the practice of law: the widespread availability and institutionalization of alternative dispute resolution?

As an attorney who no longer practices traditional law but has spent the past decade as a mediator helping people resolve disputes both within and outside of the legal system, I have many colleagues in the bar who are committed to these kind of innovations in the practice of law and the resolution of disputes. Many are outspoken advocates of these new ways of thinking and work to transform and reinvigorate the practice of law.

Many of them strive to illuminate for the legal profession as well as the public the art and creativity within the practice of law and to help attorneys reclaim the dignity and meaning in what is still an honorable profession.

You may hear “Verdict on American Lawyers” in a number of formats at the On Point web site and judge for yourself.

An ongoing fascination for me is the way in which maps reflect our understanding of the world around us, reveal our cultural biases, record human history, or chart the geography of conflict.

If you share my fascination, then allow me to recommend to you strange maps, a blog which collects unusual maps portraying places that are real or exist only in the cartographer’s imagination. A recent posting included this one depicting a “culture wars” battleground: where and how evolution is taught in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Bill Warters at Campus ADR Tech Blog links to “Baghdad: Mapping the Violence,” a BBC News animated map depicting the violence in Baghdad since May 2003 when the U.S. declared the end to major combat operations.

Having written about bystander nonintervention just last week, I have my own bystander experience to describe to you.

She swayed unsteadily on her feet, leaning hard against the door to the subway car. In swollen red hands, she clutched a bottle of Dr. Pepper and a plastic shopping bag. Her fingers fumbled clumsily at the handles of the plastic bag, try to shift its weight off her wrist. She tried to lift a stubbed-out cigarette butt to her lips, but there was something wrong with her aim–she kept missing her mouth until finally she gave up.

A row of nickel-plated rivets marched up the sides of her bellbottom jeans. She was about the age of my 20-year-old son.

And that’s when I realized that she was high.

As the train sped along, her eyes closed as she leaned back against the door, rocking with the motion of the car. Slowly, slowly, her head nodded and then fell far forward. Just as the rest of her was about to follow, she snapped her head up, waking in time to pull herself up. Her mouth hung open.

All the way past Maverick and Airport she swayed, her head falling forward, eyes shut tight, nodding off and losing balance, then jerking upright. Just when I thought she’d collapse in a heap on the subway car floor, some internal force would shake her and pull her up. The other passengers either ignored her or pointed at her, laughing quietly among themselves. The woman next to me met my eyes and shook her head in disapproval.

I was about to stand to offer her my seat at least, insist she sit down, when some homing instinct alerted her that her stop was next. The train stopped, the doors slid open, and she stumbled outside onto the platform. As the doors closed, and the train pulled away, she stood looking dazed as if uncertain where she was and thinking was too great an effort. She leaned against a metal fence and sank to the platform, her eyes closed. That was the last I saw of her.

I was the only one who watched her leave.

For the rest of the ride home and well into the evening, and even now, days later, I asked myself what I should have done. I had sat there, watching as this woman, this girl really, my son’s age, placed herself in harm’s way. I had sat there, wondering what to do, paralyzed by indecision. A thousand things went through my mind. Did she need medical attention? How would she get home? Did she even have a home? Despite the rough-looking hands, her nails bore signs of a recent manicure and her eyebrows were painstakingly plucked. She must have had a home. But would she get there safely? In that state she was vulnerable–to sexual assault, physical abuse, worse. I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.

And to tell you the truth, I was afraid. If I’d offered to help somehow, would she have turned angry, violent even? What if somehow I made things worse?

But this was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. There but for the grace of God go any of us or anyone we love.

At what point should we cease being bystanders? At what point do we take responsibility for others? At what point do we get involved?

And why do I feel the need to assert my own anti-bystander credentials in telling you this story? I am the kind of person who stops at accident scenes on highways to render aid and give the homeless along Park Street money, coffee, and food. I have come to the rescue of lost toddlers in shopping malls and runaway dogs in the street.

So why was this different? Why did I do nothing this time? And what will I do next time?

What about you? What will you do?

Will you stand by? Or will you stand up?

Respected dispute resolution scholar and pioneer Carrie Menkel-Meadow recently posed an important question for our field in her essay “Why Hasn’t the World Gotten to Yes? An Appreciation and Some Reflections” (downloadable in PDF).

In it Professor Menkel-Meadow pauses to consider the enduring legacy of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury’s influential work which laid out a common-sense approach for effective negotiation that stresses satisfaction of interests, mutual gains, joint problem-solving, and the use of objective criteria to create fair deals.

The full title of the book should be noted: “Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” (emphasis mine). In other words, this book does not stand for weak-willed capitulation. On the contrary. Principled negotiation is designed to prevent the exploitation of one side by the other. It encourages negotiators to keep their eyes wide open–to be trustworthy but not trusting–and prepares them to bargain from a position of strength.

Yet this model for negotiation remains widely misunderstood and even maligned, especially here in the U.S., where we are fond of asserting that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and the word “collaboration” evokes not teamwork but the Vichy regime.

Consider for example what conservative commentator Michelle Malkin had to say a couple of years ago about peer mediation:

The left-wing Kumbaya crowd is quietly grooming a generation of pushovers in the public schools. At a time of war, when young Americans should be educated about this nation’s resilience and steely resolve, educators are indoctrinating students with saccharine-sticky lessons on “non-violent conflict resolution” and “promoting constructive dialogues.”

As irrational as these objections may sound to those of us who work in the dispute resolution field, we dismiss them at our peril. They are widely held.

To understand these objections more fully, listen to a story that aired this weekend on National Public Radio, “Peace Proposal Rattles Small Town“. It describes the hell that broke loose when a women’s club in a small Minnesota city persuaded the city council to pass a resolution endorsing a proposed congressional bill that would create a United States Department of Peace and promote the use of conflict resolution and negotiation. Public condemnation of the city council vote came swiftly, and, in the face of mounting opposition, the city council rescinded the resolution following a heated public hearing.

So why the objections? Quite a few viewed the bill (which many had apparently never bothered to read) as an attack on U.S. sovereignty, believing it would place the United States under the full control of the United Nations. Some condemned the Department of Peace as an instrument of communism. Others claimed that a Department of Peace would signal to our enemies that Americans are weaklings afraid to fight–”wusses” in the word of one citizen interviewed by the NPR reporter.

Peace, in other words, is for sissies.

That is the challenge that our profession faces. Until we can persuade the skeptics that principled negotiation and conflict resolution are smart, tough, strategic choices, we’ll never get the world–or at least our neighbors right here at home–to yes.

You are probably familiar with the phenomenon known as bystander nonintervention. It’s a term in psychology which describes the failure of an individual to offer aid in emergencies when other individuals are present. The best known example is undoubtedly the case of Kitty Genovese, who in 1964 was chased by an attacker and stabbed to death on the street in Queens. Despite the fact that a dozen witnesses overheard some of the incident, no one responded to her cries for help.

Why do bystanders fail to intervene in situations like this? Studies suggest a number of reasons for this, including the fact that we take our visual cues from each other. We observe each other to help us ascertain how to behave or respond in a particular situation. If others around us do not behave as if help is required, we may assume that no help is needed and not offer it.

An episode from This American Life, a new television show based on the popular National Public Radio program, depicts a real-life twist on bystander nonintervention.

Through an animated cartoon, this episode explores what happens when a new craze takes hold at an elementary school: fifth and sixth grade kids create make-believe movie cameras out of found materials, which they begin to use to pretend to film events at school. Some even begin acting as TV news journalists “filming” and reporting on “live news stories” unfolding in front of them on the playground. These cameras ultimately transform the children from participants to bystanders, with unfortunate results.

It is possible, incidentally, to counteract the compelling propensity toward bystander nonintervention. Here are some ideas on how to be an active bystander in a workplace setting.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for the link to the video clip.)

“Change your thoughts and you change your world,” said Norman Vincent Peale. But he was obviously not reckoning on today’s political culture, which seems resistant to change–at least when it comes to minds.

Despite the results of the 2006 midterm elections here in the U.S., American politicians and pundits continue to laud the virtues of “staying the course” as sound strategy for political success–and not just when it comes to the Iraq war, but to all kinds of issues. Consistency, congruity, unswerving loyalty not just to people but chiefly to ideas and causes–these hold high value in American politics and culture.

There is no greater insult in America today than “flip-flopper”, a label anyone with political ambitions is eager to avoid. It’s as if the act of changing one’s mind as the result of reasoned self-reflection is somehow as shameful, as, say, lying about sex with an intern, rather than a mark of maturity and character.

Certainly anyone who changes their views with the prevailing wind as a matter of political expediency deserves our condemnation, as do those who fail to keep their promises, both political and otherwise.

But as a mediator I have to ask, what’s so great about consistency anyway? If you’re going in the wrong direction, what’s the problem with heading in a better one? When exactly did it get to be a bad thing to change your mind?

Maybe it’s because mediators see people change their minds all the time. A mediator, nudging disputants toward understanding, may help them walk around a problem, lift it up, turn it over, and examine it from all sides. We witness individuals gather new data, test their assumptions against that data, and reach very different conclusions from the ones they initially arrived with. We see them admit or address mistakes and make necessary course corrections. And watch how these acts open the door to new possibilities and greater gains.

As Charles Kettering once said, “Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.”

We mediators spend a lot of time helping people make decisions.

And not just any decisions–informed decisions. This is particularly important when you’re dealing, as mediators often do, with people whose decision-making ability may be impaired by the strong emotional response that conflict can produce. The desire to punish an opponent, exact revenge, or teach someone a lesson can override reason and trump common sense. Sometimes you have to spend time getting people to consider whether a decision they want to make today in the heat of the moment will be one they regret ten years down the road.

Mediators then may be interested to see this video of Penn and Teller’s recent experiment revealing how appeals to emotion over reason can sway people to commit themselves before they have all the facts–in this case to sign a petition banning “dihydrogen monoxide“–water.

(Via Boing Boing.)

During my first year of blogging I wrote one of my favorite posts: “More than we bargained for: does gender matter in negotiation?”

A meditation on gender, negotiation, and social behavior, this post began with a description of a Kia commercial depicting a husband and wife shopping for a new car, portraying the wife as bystander while the husband negotiates.

As it turns out, truth bears a striking resemblance to fiction. Here’s my story:

During the worst time possible–i.e., just one day before I was leaving for a long trip to the U.K.–my car expired. It did so in the most spectacular way possible–ignition, clutch, radiator, and exhaust system imploded simultaneously.

So the waning days of 2006 found me in the overflow lots of local car dealers hunting for end-of-year specials.

(For those of you who have not bought a car lately, recall that the negotiation begins the moment a member of the so-called “sales team” approaches you as you stand there peering hungrily into the window of a 2007 Mazda RX-8. This is the moment when the sales person attempts to gain your good will, earn your trust, and induce you to buy.)

On the first day my husband tagged along to keep me company. Even though I took the lead in the discussions and we both made it clear that the car was for me, sales staff (every one of them men) addressed most of their remarks and questions to my husband as if I’d been invisible. (I can only surmise that they they must have missed the memo that coverture is no longer the law in the U.S.)

I also noticed that they would point out certain features to him but not to me (the engine or the location of the spare tire and jack) or point out features to me but not to him (lighted vanity mirrors, cup holders in the backseat). This happened even when I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in backseat cup holders, it was engine performance, road handling, and fuel efficiency that I cared about. (Surely I can’t be the only woman who wants to see what’s under the hood.) This happened consistently from one dealership to the next.

The next day I decided to continue my search without my husband in tow. I figured it would be a lot less aggravating, and I was tired of being invisible.

The first day had been for looking only. I decided to devote this next day to test driving.

For me, manual transmission is a must. I’ve driven a stick since I got my license and enjoy the control it gives me over the car and the road. At every dealership I visited but one, car salesmen were amazed that a woman could actually handle a stick shift. At the conclusion of test drives, some even behaved as if they’d just seen a trained monkey perform a particularly good trick. Needless to say, this did not win any bonus points with me. One of them even commented, “Good girl!” (Lucky for him he did not try to pat me on the head. I would have beaned him with a cup holder.)

What was so deeply discouraging about this experience is how universally and openly held these beliefs about women’s competence seemed to be (at least at car dealerships in southern New England). Stereotypes die hard, even in the 21st century.

The behavior I observed was overt and obvious. It was impossible to miss or mistake.

Which led me to wonder about the extent of its covert manifestations.

If this is the tip of the iceberg that is visible, what lies below the water line?

If this is what it’s like at car dealerships, what’s happening in board rooms, on factory floors, in classrooms, in town halls and state houses–even, perish the thought, at mediation tables?

To what extent might any of us be complicit in perpetuating these archaic notions? What stereotypes do each of us still cling to?

America may have elected its first woman Speaker of the House, but it looks like it still can’t imagine a woman in the driver’s seat.

What we do has impact. Every deed, every word.

In just 90 seconds, the video “Children See, Children Do” shows how powerful that impact can be when it comes to the children whose lives we touch.

This video is part of a public awareness campaign of Child Friendly Australia, an initiative of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN).

If you want to make the world a better place (and who doesn’t), watch this short clip.

(Thanks to the blog Dumb Little Man for the link.)

In a joint study that may ultimately teach us much about the prejudices humans harbor regarding class and privilege, Harvard and Stanford psychologists have discovered that children as young as 5 prefer lucky people over the unlucky:

“Our experiments show the difficulties that confront youngsters as they make judgments of those touched by luck or misfortune… Young children express stronger liking for the beneficiaries of good luck compared to the victims of bad luck and generalize this preference to those who share membership in a group. Because the disadvantaged are more likely to experience negative events beyond their control - such as the tendency for the poor to be most impacted by natural disasters - this innocuous preference for the privileged may eventually grow more harmful, further increasing negativity toward the disadvantaged. Such preferences may, in turn, help explain the persistence of social inequality.”

(Via Boing Boing.)

With Conflict Resolution Day just around the corner (October 19, in fact), conflict resolvers may be interested to know that today marks the official release date of the video game Bully, produced by Take Two Interactive Software, Inc. under its Rockstar Games label.

Bully depicts the adventures of teenager Jim Hopkins as he stands up to the obstacles–social, educational, and physical–that await him at fictitious private school Bullworth Academy (motto: canis canem edit—dog eat dog).
(For a post last year from this blog that covered Bully and pop culture depictions of conflict, please read “Seeing ourselves: conflict and negotiation in popular culture“.)

Many months before its release, angry parents, lawmakers, and educators on both sides of the Atlantic denounced Bully and called for an outright ban on its distribution and sale in protest of its purported glorification of high school violence–before any of them had even seen the game first-hand. One attorney, Jack Thompson, a conservative crusader against violence and sex in the media, is currently seeking to have Bully deemed a public nuisance in violation of Florida law.

Surprisingly, however, media and gaming experts who previewed the game report that Bully in fact has little violence. Clive Thompson, author of the blog Collision Detection, had this to say about Bully in a recent article on Wired.com:

It turns out the game doesn’t glorify bullying at all.

Indeed, it’s almost precisely the opposite.

…Instead, most of your early missions involve you defending the helpless: Escorting weak-bladdered nerds past phalanxes of threatening athletes, or sneaking into the girls’ locker room to retrieve an essay that popular cheerleader stole from a helpless she-geek…

Bully, however, may be subversive in ways that its opponents didn’t anticipate. According to Thompson, Bully functions as no-holds-barred polemic on the rigid social hierarchies and daily injustices that high school life is susceptible to:

Peel back the hood on the ludic violence, and Rockstar’s games have a surprisingly consistent moral view: Those with power will inevitably abuse it. It is a conclusion that would not displease Thomas Hobbes, or even Thomas Jefferson.

That’s why Bully is, in many ways, the ultimate Rockstar game. By turning to high school, the designers have found the perfect locale for exploring the cliquishness, unfairness and brutality of everyday society.

Which proves once again that things are not always what they seem.