1 My thoughts about the transportation revolution versus the communication revolution were inspired by Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 354. My thinking was extended by Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), pp. 7–9. Please note that communication includes verbal and written (or typed) modalities throughout the book unless otherwise specified.
2 Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), p. 186.
3 Theo Emery, “In Tennessee, Goats Eat the ‘Vine That Ate the South,’” New York Times, June 5, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/us/05goats.html.
4 Recent books marshaling evidence of collateral damage from the digital revolution include Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2013); Larry Rosen, iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Clay A. Anderson, The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly: 2012); Elias Aboujaoude, Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the e-Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011); Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010); and Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010). Earlier books that sounded the alarm include Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1997); John L. Locke, The De-Voicing of Society: Why We Don’t Talk to Each Other Anymore (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998); and Patricia Wallace, The Psychology of the Internet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Other books on this topic appear in the Recommended Reading.
5 Unless otherwise specified (e.g. phone conversation, face-to-face conversation, e-mail conversation), conversations are defined expansively to include verbal and written (or typed) communication.
6 See J. Gregory Trafton and Christopher A. Monk, “Task Interruptions,” in Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics, ed. Deborah A. Boehm-Davis (Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society), vol. 3, chap. 4; and Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008), pp.11–26. Additional sources appear in the Recommended Reading.
7 Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 35–60.
8 See Damian Thompson, The Fix: How Addiction Is Invading Our Lives and Taking Over Your World (London: Collins, 2012), pp. 1–24; and Daniel Akst, We Have Met the Enemy (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 153–154.
9 An early version of my thoughts about quick, cheap, and easy communication appeared on my blog at http://mouthpeaceconsulting.com on January 6, 2012. I started blogging weekly while writing Stop Talking, Start Communicating, and some of the ideas in this book first debuted on my blog. I’ve noted throughout the book where significant portions of my blog entries appear in the book.
10 Perspective taking is included in our definition of interpersonal communication to highlight that it’s not just the number of people you are talking to that demarcates personal, interpersonal, and mass communication. How you talk to your conversational partner, (e.g., I-based or we-based), is also a factor.
11 George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (Buki Editions, 2009), Kindle edition, chap. 29.
12 Pamela Paul, “Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You,” New York Times, March 18, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html. See also Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011), pp. 203–209.
13 Barbara L. Fredrickson, Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (New York: Hudson Street, 2013), p. 54 and Barbara L. Fredrickson, “Your Phone vs. Your Heart,” New York Times, March 23, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/opinion/sunday/your-phone-vs-your-heart.html.
1 Information about Ian Rowland and cold reading comes from Ian Rowland, The Full Facts of Cold Reading, 4th ed. (London: Ian Rowland Limited, 2005), pp. 134–155.
2 With the exception of Bernie in the next story, my niece, Iris, and my nephew, Felix, names of people, identifying information about companies, and minor details in examples have been changed throughout the book to maintain confidentiality.
3 For example, see Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), Kindle edition, chap. 7 and Barbara L. Fredrickson, Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (New York: Hudson Street, 2013), pp. 20–27.
4 Part of the disharmony was due to a company structure that hadn’t kept pace with the organization’s success, resulting in a work environment that was confusing for employees (“Who’s supposed to be doing the new work? I thought that was my job.”). This ambiguity generated interpersonal conflict (“Why didn’t this get done? Why are you doing my job?”) and required us to modify the company structure to reduce the task and role confusion. The restructuring eliminated many of the relational conflict issues, and the interpersonal conflicts that remained—where the problems really were about the people—stood out like sore thumbs and were quickly handled with frank conversations. We talk more about the role of structure on communication in Chapter 13.
1 I’m not the first person to use this phrase with respect to the digital revolution. A slight variation of it appears as the subtitle in Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
2 Schumpeter, “Slaves to the Smartphone,” Economist, March 10, 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21549904.
3 Maggie Jackson, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2008), pp. 75–86.
4 You can get a glimpse of how fragmented our communication preferences have become by observing how you receive messages on your birthday. Birthday greetings will come to you from every conceivable communication channel.
5 Yelling breaches the protective blanket of civility that safeguards most interactions. Furthermore, verbally aggressive behaviors reduce the (immediate) cognitive abilities of the recipient; see Anat Rafaeli et al, “When Customers Exhibit Verbal Aggression, Employees Pay Cognitive Costs,” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 97, no. 5 (September 2012), pp. 944–945, doi: 10.1037/a0028559.
6 For a general discussion of how leader behaviors impact organizational culture, see Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), pp. 228–253.
7 Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), pp. 100–111.
8 Mark L. Knapp and Anita L. Vangelisti, Interpersonal Communication and Human Relationships, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000), pp. 12–13.
9 John Medina, Brain Rules: Twelve Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), pp. 269–270. See also Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do About It (New York: Avery, 2012), pp. 187–188.
10 Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson, Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils’ Intellectual Development (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), pp. 65–66.
11 Ibid., p. 70.
12 Ibid., pp. 98–108.
13 Rosenthal and Jacobson’s experiment is discussed in detail in Pygmalion in the Classroom, pp. 61–120. The methodology used by Rosenthal and Jacobson has received some scholarly criticism; see, for example, Augustine Brannigan, The Rise and Fall of Social Psychology: The Use and Misuse of the Experimental Method, Social Problems and Social Issues (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 2004), pp. 74–90. However, a meta-analysis supports the existence of Pygmalion effects: D. Brian McNatt, “Ancient Pygmalion Joins Contemporary Management: A Meta-Analysis of the Result,” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 85, no. 2 (2000), pp. 318–320, doi:10.1037/0021-9010.85.2.314.
1 Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (New York: Free Press, 2004; first published in 1989 by Simon & Schuster), p. 101. Covey’s story uses workers and managers as characters.
2 George E. Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012), p. 54; see also George E. Vaillant, Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002), pp. 16–21.
3 Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience, pp. 393–394, 398–410.
4 Joshua Wolf Shenk, “What Makes Us Happy,” The Atlantic, June 2009, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439. The quoted passage is located on the third page online. Vaillant stood by this claim in his most recent book; see Vaillant, Triumphs of Experience, pp. 191–192.
1 Peninnah Schram, Ten Classic Jewish Children’s Stories (New York: Pitspopany, 1998), pp. 40–41. Permission granted by Peninnah Schram, copyright holder, to use this slightly modified version of a midrashic story, which comes from several Jewish sources, including Proverbs 18:21 and Psalms 39:2. Author’s note: This story contains verbatim sentences from Peninnah Schram’s work. The story, as it appears, is most appropriately considered as Schram’s story, which I have slightly modified, and which she has graciously given permission to use.
2 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, L.L.D. (London: John Sharpe, 1830), p. 367, http://books.google.com/books?id=2d0-AAAAYAAJ.
3 Marcial Losada and Emily Heaphy, “The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams: A Nonlinear Dynamics Model,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 47, no. 6 (2004), pp. 740–765, doi: 10.1177/0002764203260208; and John M. Gottman, What Predicts Divorce: The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), p. 331.
4 “Sunbeams,” Sun Magazine, January 2009, p. 48.
5 John Daly taught me to think about communication like this.
1 Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, “Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage,” in Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics, ed. John J. Gumperz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), vol. 4, pp. 59–62.
2 Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (New York: Other Press, 2010), p. 109.
3 I posted an early version of this list on my website at http://mouthpeaceconsulting.com on January 23, 2012.
4 John Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), pp. 22–23. Gottman and Silver use the term repair attempt to describe containment during an escalated conversation.
5 The line from the movie, about down-on-their-luck salesmen, is always be closing.
1 Confucius, Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean, trans. James Legge (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 250.
2 My thinking about how easy it is to spot dumb statements in the digital age, but how hard it is to erase them, was spurred by Schumpeter, “When Stars Go Cuckoo,” Economist, March 3, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18277161.
3 John Suler, “The Online Disinhibition Effect,” Cyber-Psychology and Behavior, vol. 7, no. 3 (2004), pp. 321–322, doi:10.1089/1094931041291295.
4 Thanks to Mark Knapp for pointing out the redirection strategy.
1 Gaston de Lévis, Maximes et Réflections sur Différents Sujets de Morale et de Politique (Paris, 1810), under Maxim XVII, available online through Google books.
2 See Steven A. Holmes, “James Stockdale, Perot’s Running Mate in ’92, Dies at 81,” New York Times, July 6, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/politics/06stockdale.html. See also “Vice-Admiral James Stockdale,” The Telegraph, July 7, 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1493505/Vice-Admiral-James-Stockdale.html.
3 Charles J. Stewart and William B. Cash, Interviewing: Principles and Practices, 10th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), pp. 56–57.
4 Note that statements like “Please tell me more about your idea” and “Please describe the Gatorville account proposal” are technically punctuated with periods, but in practice they function as queries.
5 Stewart and Cash, Interviewing, pp. 57–59.
6 Ibid., p. 61. What Stewart and Cash call nudging probes I simplify to nudges. Also note that the terms leading questions and loaded questions from earlier in the chapter are commonly used by researchers (including Stewart and Cash, pp. 65–68) and others in question classification schemes.
1 I use the terms strategic conversation and important conversation interchangeably, since a strategic conversation is an important one and vice versa.
2 An early version of GAS appeared on my blog at http://mouthpeaceconsulting.com on April 2, 2012.
3 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), pp. 380–381.
1 “Internet 2012 in Numbers,” Royal Pingdom (blog), January 16, 2013, http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/, and “Internet 2011 in Numbers,” Royal Pingdom (blog), January 17, 2012, http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/01/17/internet-2011-in-numbers/. See also “Key Statistical Highlights: ITU Data release June 2012,” ITU World Telecommunications/ICT Indicators Database, June 2012, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/material/pdf/2011%20Statistical%20highlights_June_2012.pdf, and “Internet 2010 in Numbers,” Royal Pingdom (blog), January 12, 2011, http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/.
2 Dominique Jean Larrey, Memoir of Baron Larrey: Surgeon-in-Chief of the Grande Army (London: Henry Renshaw, 1861; facsimile edition produced by Kessinger Publishing, 2010). See also Jose M. Ortiz, “The Revolutionary Flying Ambulance of Napoleon’s Surgeon,” U.S. Army Medical Department Journal, October–December 1998, pp. 17–25, http://cdm16379.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15290coll3/id/527.
3 Sheri Fink, “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” New York Times Magazine, August 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html.
4 You should be the one to determine if you are dealing with a time-sensitive problem. The person presenting the issue is predisposed to think that it’s a time-sensitive issue.
5 If any of these people bring you problems constantly, see the Trouble with the A Team section from Chapter 3 for suggestions.
6 Incidentally, Larrey’s triage system worked so well for the Grand Armée that Napoleon bequeathed Larrey 100,000 francs in his last will and testament. Napoleon wrote, “He is the most virtuous man I have ever known” (Larrey, Memoir, p. 256).
1 Lee Ross and Craig A. Anderson, “Shortcomings in the Attribution Process: On the Origins and Maintenance of Erroneous Social Assessments,” in Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1982), pp. 135–138.
2 I’m recommending quick apologies to take advantage of the amnesty period that is often available immediately after an error, especially when the error is relatively small, like a verbal slip or minor transgression that doesn’t touch on an identity issue. As the magnitude of the error increases, there’s some evidence that people prefer a bit of time to pass so they feel “ready” for the apology; see Cynthia McPherson Frantz and Courtney Bennigson, “Better Late Than Early: The Influence of Timing on Apology Effectiveness,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 41, no. 2 (2005), pp. 205–206, doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2004.07.007. Crucially, Frantz and Bennigson’s research finds that any apology—early or delayed—is better than no apologies, reinforcing our preferred strategy of apologizing immediately following a transgression. If the other person isn’t ready for the apology, you can always apologize again later. For a good general discussion of timeliness in apologies, see Aaron Lazare, On Apology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 170–203.
3 Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), pp. 52–55.
4 Steven J. Scher and John M. Darley, “How Effective Are the Things People Say to Apologize? Effects of the Realization of the Apology Speech Act,” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, vol. 26, no. 1 (1997), p. 132, doi: 10.1023/A:1025068306386.
5 Ibid., p. 136.
6 Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 207–208.
1 Josh Peter, Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, and Bull Riders: A Year Inside the Professional Bull Riders Tour (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2005), pp. 78–79.
2 “Tuff Hedeman & Bodacious Clip - A Promise to a Son,” YouTube video, 4:35, posted by rwillie22, July 10, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRKb0Q5Nj9s, and “Tuff Guy: Bull Rider Hedeman Endures Injury, Grief to Stay on Top,” CNN Sports Illustrated, October 7, 1997, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/rodeo/news/1997/10/07/tuff_hedeman.
3 “Tuff Hedeman & Bodacious Clip - A Promise to a Son,” YouTube video, 4:35, posted by rwillie22, July 10, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRKb0Q5Nj9s.
4 “Staff,” Championship Bull Riding (CBR) biography of Tuff Hedeman, accessed April 21, 2013, http://www.cbrbull.com/staff.html?people_id=13.
5 Roland Lazenby, Mindgames: Phil Jackson’s Long Strange Journey (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2001), pp. 207–210.
6 Dennis Rodman, Bad as I Wanna Be, with Tim Keown (New York: Delacorte, 1996), pp. 253–254.
7 See Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty, Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior (New York: Hyperion, 2006), pp. 43–58 and 97–112.
8 Ibid., p. 168.
9 We discuss two other common types of difficult people, verbally aggressive (bullies) and excitement addicts, in Chapters 12 and 15, respectively.
1 Harry Haymaker is definitely a pseudonym. I still see Harry at my college reunions, and in light of his boxing technique, I don’t want to upset him.
2 It turns out that the ability to pretend I was fighting would serve me well during my service in the peacetime army. I would use the skill again during Ranger School, where I augmented my fake fighting skills with bloodcurdling screams in a spectacle that would make a professional wrestler blush. When I arrived at my first army unit in Hawaii, I assumed that fake fighting was comfortably behind me. Imagine my surprise (and dismay) when I learned that my unit was going to implement a combatives program—combatives being a euphemism for punching and kicking each other during morning physical training. For a third and mercifully final time, I dusted off my skills, screamed like my hair was on fire, and pulled my punches (as did everyone else) during the combatives training. As I have repeatedly told my wife, if we ever get mugged I might not actually be able to save us, but it will surely sound like I am saving us.
3 Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (New York: Bantam Dell, 2007), pp. 230–232.
4 Two books provide excellent overviews and practical advice based on Gottman and colleagues’ research: John M. Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999), and John M. Gottman, Julie Schwartz Gottman, and Joan DeClaire, Ten Lessons to Transform Your Marriage (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006). The claim about predicting marital success or dissolution with 90 percent accuracy is found on page 2 of The Seven Principles and page 1 of Ten Lessons. Gottman’s research methodology is explained in detail in John Mordechai Gottman, What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship Between Marital Processes and Marital Outcomes (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994).
5 I posted an early version of this list on my blog at http://mouthpeaceconsulting.com on May 28, 2012.
6 Mark L. Knapp and Anita L. Vangelisti, Interpersonal Communication and Human Relationships, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000), pp. 12–13. See also Barbara L. Fredrickson, Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become (New York: Hudson Street, 2013), pp. 21–27 and Goleman, Social Intelligence, pp. 30–35.
7 Mark L. Knapp, John A. Daly, and Laura Stafford, “Regrettable Messages: Things People Wish They Hadn’t Said,” Journal of Communication, vol. 36, no. 4 (1986), pp. 48–49.
8 Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, trans. Alan R. Clarke (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), p. 156.
9 In your personal life, you might decide to grant blanket verbal clemency to elderly family members. As a general communication principle, as people get closer to the end of their life, it’s smart to be increasingly forgiving of anything they may say.
1 James O. Prochaska, Carlo C. DiClemente, and John C. Norcross, “In Search of How People Change: Applications to Addictive Behaviors,” American Psychologist, vol. 47, no. 9 (September 1992), pp.1102–1105, doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.47.91102. For Prochaska and colleagues’ practical guide to behavioral change, see James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross, and Carlo C. DiClemente, Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward (New York: Avon Books, 1994).
2 Philip Zimbardo, “Pathology of Imprisonment,” Society, vol. 9, no. 6 (1972), pp. 4–6, doi: 10.1007/BF02701755.
3 The bad apple-rotten barrel analogy is widely used by teachers discussing ethics; for example, see Linda K. Trevino and Katherine A. Nelson, Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How to Do It Right, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), p. 19.
4 John M. Darley and C. Daniel Batson, “‘From Jerusalem to Jericho’: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 27, no. 1 (1973), pp. 104–105, doi: 10.1037/h0034449. Note that it was being in a hurry that influenced (reduced) helping behavior, not the topic of the speech.
5 Howard Giles and Nikolas Coupland, Language: Contexts and Consequences (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991), pp. 60–74.
6 For a review of research on the impact of situational factors on leader and follower behaviors, see Bernard M. Bass, “Environment and Organizational Effects,” chap. 25 in The Bass Handbook of Leadership, with Ruth Bass (New York: Free Press, 2008), pp. 716–755. For a general discussion of situational influences on ethical organizational behavior, see Trevino and Nelson, Managing Business Ethics, pp. 18–19. For a discussion of how situational factors influence prosocial behaviors, see Trevino and Nelson, Managing Business Ethics, pp. 292–294.
7 Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (New York: Bantam Dell, 2007), pp. 31–35. See also Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice, 4th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001), pp. 100–111, and Giles and Coupland, Language, pp. 62–71.
8 If you find yourself on the receiving end of feedback, remember the rule of 10. People can avoid uncomfortable issues for a long time, so if someone is instigating a direct conversation with you to deliver negative feedback, assume your behavior is impacting more than one person and multiply the negative feedback by 10. If someone tells you that your pointed questions upset him, assume that at least 10 other people don’t like your questioning technique either. If a client says that you aren’t being responsive to her needs, infer that 10 other clients are probably having the same issue.
9 Focusing on the problem and not the person is a classic tenet of effective negotiation popularized by Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes, ed. Bruce Patton (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 17–40.
1 Mark Twain, Following the Equator (Hartford, CT: American Publishing, 1898; Project Gutenberg, 1996), part 3, chap. 20 epigraph, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2895/old/orig2895-h/p3.htm.
2 Daphna Oysterman, “Self-Concept and Identity,” in Self and Social Identity, ed. Marilynn B. Brewer and Miles Hewstone (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), p. 9.
3 Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 27 (2001), pp. 415–429, esp. p. 429, doi: 10.1146/annurev. soc.27.1.415.
4 Carl W. Backman and Paul F. Secord, “Liking, Selective Interaction, and Misperception in Congruent Interpersonal Relations,” Sociometry, vol. 25, no. 4 (1962), p. 335, doi: 10.2307/2785772.
5 S. Alexander Haslam, Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach (London: Sage, 2001), p. 53.
6 For a review of group polarization research, see Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, with Robert G. Cushing (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), pp. 63–70.
7 Don Richardson, ed., Conversations with Carter (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), pp. 56–57.
8 Ibid., p. 58.
9 Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (New York: Times Books, 1996), pp. 127–129.
10 Richardson, Conversations with Carter, p. 2.
11 For a good overview of identity and self-presentation, see Sam Gosling, Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 66–112, esp. pp. 66–85.
12 I posted a version of SLOW on my blog at http://mouthpeaceconsulting.com on October 22, 2012.
1 Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 245.
2 Karen S. Rook, “Investigating the Positive and Negative Sides of Personal Relationships: Through a Lens Darkly?,” in The Dark Side of Close Relationships, ed. Brian H. Spitzberg and William R. Cupach (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), pp. 376–377.
1 “Key Facts,” Facebook Newsroom, accessed November 7, 2012, http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts; and “Statistics,” YouTube Press Room, accessed November 7, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics.
2 John A. Daly and Anita L. Vangelisti, “Skillfully Instructing Learners: How Communicators Effectively Convey Messages,” in Handbook of Communication and Social Interaction Skills, ed. John O. Greene and Brant R. Burleson (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), pp. 881–882. For a general discussion of stories in business, see Daniel H. Pink, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006), pp. 100–115.
3 Daly and Vangelisti, “Skillfully Instructing Learners,” pp. 881–882.
4 There is a fine line between simplification and oversimplification. The goal of simplification, as Albert Einstein said when talking about theory, is to “make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.” “On the Method of Theoretical Physics,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 1, no. 2 (April 1934), p. 165, doi: 10.1086/286316.
5 John A. Daly, Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 264–268.
6 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007), pp. 63–64. See also Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), pp. 199–202.
7 See James Geary, I Is an Other (New York: Harper, 2011), pp. 5–16. See also Daly, Advocacy, pp. 280–286, and James Geary, The World in a Phrase (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), pp. 8–20.
8 This story by Ron Evans, referred to as “The Storyteller,” was recorded at the 1982 National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee, and later released on an audiocassette produced by the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling. Thanks to Peninnah Schram for bringing this story to my attention.