[Link] Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?

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From the Harvard Business Review, an article entitled: "Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?"

By: Greg McKeown
Posted: June 12, 2012

Summary:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police attempt a program where they hand out "Positive Tickets"

Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies or to a local youth center. They gave out an average of 40,000 tickets per year. That is three times the number of negative tickets over the same period. As it turns out, and unbeknownst to Clapham, that ratio (2.9 positive affects to 1 negative affect, to be precise) is called the Losada Line. It is the minimum ratio of positive to negatives that has to exist for a team to flourish. On higher-performing teams (and marriages for that matter) the ratio jumps to 5:1. But does it hold true in policing?

According to Clapham, youth recidivism was reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut in half. And it cost one-tenth of the traditional judicial system.

This idea can be applied to Real Life

The lesson here is to create a culture that immediately and sincerely celebrates victories. Here are three simple ways to begin:

1. Start your next staff meeting with five minutes on the question: "What has gone right since our last meeting?" Have each person acknowledge someone else's achievement in a concrete, sincere way. Done right, this very small question can begin to shift the conversation.

2. Take two minutes every day to try to catch someone doing the right thing. It is the fastest and most positive way for the people around you to learn when they are getting it right.

3. Create a virtual community board where employees, partners and even customers can share what they are grateful for daily. Sounds idealistic? Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mind Valley, a new generation media and publishing company, has done just that at Gratitude Log. (Watch him explain how it works here).

From the Harvard Business Review, an article entitled: "Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?"

By: Greg McKeown
Posted: June 12, 2012

Clicky Link of Awesome! Wheee! Push me!

Summary:

Royal Canadian Mounted Police attempt a program where they hand out "Positive Tickets"

Their approach was to try to catch youth doing the right things and give them a Positive Ticket. The ticket granted the recipient free entry to the movies or to a local youth center. They gave out an average of 40,000 tickets per year. That is three times the number of negative tickets over the same period. As it turns out, and unbeknownst to Clapham, that ratio (2.9 positive affects to 1 negative affect, to be precise) is called the Losada Line. It is the minimum ratio of positive to negatives that has to exist for a team to flourish. On higher-performing teams (and marriages for that matter) the ratio jumps to 5:1. But does it hold true in policing?

According to Clapham, youth recidivism was reduced from 60% to 8%. Overall crime was reduced by 40%. Youth crime was cut in half. And it cost one-tenth of the traditional judicial system.

This idea can be applied to Real Life

The lesson here is to create a culture that immediately and sincerely celebrates victories. Here are three simple ways to begin:

1. Start your next staff meeting with five minutes on the question: "What has gone right since our last meeting?" Have each person acknowledge someone else's achievement in a concrete, sincere way. Done right, this very small question can begin to shift the conversation.

2. Take two minutes every day to try to catch someone doing the right thing. It is the fastest and most positive way for the people around you to learn when they are getting it right.

3. Create a virtual community board where employees, partners and even customers can share what they are grateful for daily. Sounds idealistic? Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mind Valley, a new generation media and publishing company, has done just that at Gratitude Log. (Watch him explain how it works here).

I had a recent flash of inspiration about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Would it be reasonable to generally consider the exercise of power over others as somehow toxic?

There are many, many examples through history of pathological behavior resulting from the exercise of power absent feedback mechanisms to safeguard the desires and wellbeing of the ruled. To define behavior resulting in the loss of human dignity and human life as pathological seems reasonable to me.

It can be shown that feedback loops in the brain can malfunction given stimuli they weren't designed to handle, leading to addictive behavior and overstimulation of these mechanisms to such an extent that this results in measurable changes in brain structure. I wonder if the exercise of power in contexts far removed from those in village or family groups also results in such changes in the brain? There's certainly a great deal of anecdotal evidence indicating stress involved in the exercise of power.

Perhaps exposure of individuals to the exercise of power should be limited, in the way modern armies try to limit an individual's exposure to combat stress? Also note that modern armies take steps to mitigate combat stress soldiers are exposed to. In the same way, perhaps there should be a study of the toxic effects of the exercise of power, and organizations which must expose individuals to such stressors should take steps to mitigate the toxic effects of power.

A power available in modern environment = superstimulus? That makes sense. At least it would explain why powerful people sometimes do things that don't give them an evolutionary advantage (such as killing most of their relatives, and having the few remaining ones predictably killed after their death by opponents).

Question: What position in a modern society is a power equivalent of an ancient chieftain? (The highest non-superstimulus power level.) I don't know how exactly to measure it, because the environment is so different. Even using Dunbar's number, sh... (read more)

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[Link] Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?

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[Link] Can We Reverse The Stanford Prison Experiment?

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