Friday, December 17, 2010

quick test-maybe you'll flunk it, too


Write the letter 'E' on your forehead using your index finger.
Don't read any further, just do it!  Capital 'E' on forehead.

Note how you drew  the 'E'.'  Was it facing right or left?
How many of you wrote it facing your right?
How many of you wrote it facing your left?
  -from Leonard Sweet, "How Beautiful"  p.146 here, or  page 14 here

Now that I have this new quick "sensitivity to others" test to offer to classes/seminars
(I have been using my own :"In England, they drive on the________ side of the road" for years now, see this),

I have to start by confessing that I flunked it.

This  new one is likely more accurate...as I didn't come up with it myself.
That I love the one I came up with myself is actually the core of the problem.  (:

Professor Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University has discovered that those of you who wrote the “E” facing left are more group-oriented, and those of you who wrote the “E” facing right are more individualistic. The group-oriented among you have a default position that adjusts to another person’s perspective … you made it automatically legible to others, to an alternative perspective. Those of you who wrote facing right tend to be in high-power situations, and are used to having others adjust to your perspective. In fact, those in high-power groups are almost three times as likely to
rawl self-oriented “E’s” as those in low-power groups.   -Sweet, p.146 here, or  page 14 here

How self-centered is that?  I drew my 'E' so I could read it myself!
Well, at least I drive on the right side of the road (:
And I am proud of my humility..


More:

In England, why do they drive on the wrong side of the road ...

 Adam Galinsky: The "E" and "Fan" Experiments

 

and:

 

 

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Hey, thanks for engaging the conversation!