Age and Wisdom

Published on: April 6, 2010October 7, 2017 by Influint Category:Influence

In social dealings, being older is being wiser, study shows

Skill greater at handling disagreements

By Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — It turns out grandma was right: Listen to your elders. New research indicates they are indeed wise — in knowing how to deal with conflicts and accepting life’s uncertainties and change.

It isn’t a question of how many facts someone knows, or being able to operate a TV remote, but rather how to handle disagreements — social wisdom.

And researchers led by Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan found that older people were more likely than younger or middle-aged ones to recognize that values differ, to acknowledge uncertainties, to accept that things change over time and to acknowledge others’ points of view.

“Age effects on wisdom hold at every level of social class, education, and IQ,” they report in today’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In modern America, older people generally don’t have greater knowledge about computers and other technology, Nisbett acknowledged, “but our results do indicate that the elderly have some advantages for analysis of social problems.”

“I hope our results will encourage people to assume that older people may have something to contribute for thinking about social problems,” Nisbett said.

In one part of the study the researchers recruited 247 people in Michigan, divided into groups aged 25 to 40, 41 to 59 and 60 and older.

Participants were given fictitious reports about conflict between groups in a foreign country and asked what they thought the outcome would be.

For example, one of the reports said that because of the economic growth of Tajikistan, many people from Kyrgyzstan moved to that country. While Kyrgyz people tried to preserve their customs, Tajiks wanted them to assimilate fully and abandon their customs.

The responses were then rated by researchers who did not know which individual or age group a response came from. Ratings were based on things like searching for compromise, flexibility, taking others’ perspective and searching for conflict resolution.

About 200 of the participants joined in a second session, and a third section was conducted using 141 scholars, psychotherapists, clergy and consulting professionals. The study concluded that economic status, education and IQ also were significantly related to increased wisdom, but they found that “academics were no wiser than nonacademics” with similar education levels.

While the researchers expected wisdom to increase with age they were surprised at how strong the results were for disputes in society, Nisbett said.

“There is a very large advantage for older people over younger people for those.”

Lynn Hasher, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, called the study “the single best demonstration of a long-held view that wisdom increases with age.”

“What I think is most important about the paper is that it shows a major benefit that accrues with aging — rather than the mostly loss-based findings reported in psychology. As such, it provides a richer base of understanding of aging processes. It also suggests the critical importance of workplaces’ maintaining the opportunity for older employees to continue to contribute,” said Hasher, who was not part of the research team.

Lead author Nisbett, co-director of the University of Michigan’s Culture and Cognition Program, is 68 and his team of co-authors ranged in age from mid-20s to mid-50s.

The research was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, National Institute on Aging and the National Science Foundation Grant.

Pressing Ethical Issues

Published on: March 18, 2010October 7, 2017 by Influint Category:Influence

The following is an excerpt from the International Association of Chiefs of Police report on Ethcs Training In Law Enforcement. The question addresses the pressing ethical issues in law enforcement.

Question #69: What do you see as the more pressing ethical issues in law enforcement today?

The findings for this question are as follows, and reflect the perceptions of a very significant number of respondents.

Cultural diversity/racism/sexism
Corruption/gratuities
Public trust
Morals/personal values of officers/lack of values in new officers
Honesty
Abuse of force/abuse of authority
Decision-making
Code of silence
Off-duty issues/behavior
Poor work ethic of new recruits
Lack of a sense of responsibility
Lack of role models

Issues considered critical:

Honesty in official reports
Police unions supporting unethical officers
Fabricating evidence/honesty in official reports and embellishing testimony
Temptation to embellish testimony or belief that the truth needs help
Proliferation of drugs with money available to corrupt the police
Lowered standards
Professionalism
Respect
Loyalty
Media

The above offer a substantial reflection of the concerns noted in the surveys. In part, these are evidence of previous “case study” analysis, but they bring a greater level of reliability to the findings. Moreover, the responses reveal some interesting common themes. Those who responded mentioned the importance of a set of agreed-upon foundations for behavior and the need for involvement of supervisors and managers. Further, many of the respondents spoke of the importance of role-modeling in an agency and emphasis on the consequences of behavior.

You can see the full report at http://tiny.cc/7JiXm

Managing Conflicts of Interest

Published on: March 15, 2010October 7, 2017 by Influint Category:Conflict of Interest, Essays

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Want a barometer of a nation’s moral concern? Check out how frequently the word ethics appears in the news. Last Thursday, anyone counting would have scored a hat trick. On the New York Times front page that day, above the fold, were two sad and tangled tales of ethical lapses. In one, New York Gov. David Paterson quit his re-election campaign. In the other, New York congressman Charles Rangel relinquished the chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. A third piece, appearing in a box at the bottom of the page, involved Eric Massa, a freshman congressman from upstate New York, who resigned his position because of an ethics investigation.

Some readers rightly see these stories as additional nails in the coffin of our collective moral sense — proof that integrity is dead. Other readers, also right, see them as encouraging evidence that iniquity can’t be hidden — that the public cares enough about integrity to demand such exposure of unethical behavior.

But there’s a deeper significance here. Each of these stories is about conflicts of interest — which, simply defined, arise when people seek to exploit public positions for private benefit. The fact that these three public figures fell so easily into such conflicts reminds us that we’re not very good at training our leaders about ethics and integrity. Simply put, we give them few tools to defend themselves against three of the most corrosive influences in human experience — power, fame, and wealth.

These influences, if left uncontrolled, will generate an almost infinite number of conflicts of interest. But our public figures don’t necessarily come into their jobs prepared to deal with these conflicts. By the very nature of the democratic process, we push ordinary people into extraordinary positions — too often without the moral headlights to illuminate the approaching dangers. For all of the leadership training we do, we devote hardly a moment to discussing the conflict-of-interest issues that most easily could wreck their careers. Should it surprise us, then, that they run into the ditch or over the cliff with disturbing regularity?

Notice how it happens. Rep. Rangel did it merely by accepting personal gifts, including Caribbean travel, in situations apparently meant to influence his votes. Gov. Paterson accepted free tickets to the World Series, and tried to squelch an investigation of a top aide in a domestic violence case. Rep. Massa resigned after being accused of sexually harassing an aide. In each case, the positions these men held required of them an impartiality, a loyalty to the office rather than to the self, a judicious use of their influence for the common good. They were, in other words, trusted to do the right thing. When that trust evaporated, their reputations were shattered. It no longer matters that they are smart, savvy, sophisticated, or experienced. Being untrustworthy, they no longer are valued as leaders.

What lessons can we learn? Four come to mind:

These men each came to grief over issues that, in the grand scheme of things, were pretty small: a few days’ vacation, a couple of phone call, several free tickets, some suggestive language. Conflicts of interest rarely involve high-stakes gambits. Instead, they usually hinge on activities that seem, to the person doing them, to be innocuous, commonplace, even trivial.

Because of that apparent triviality, the last person to spot a conflict of interest is often the person engaged in it. Conflicts that are perfectly obvious to colleagues, friends, and acquaintances remain shrouded from the view of the actor himself. Such is the power of self-interest that we can see others’ faults far more clearly than our own.

Conflicts of interest come in two flavors: actual and perceived. The perception of self-dealing can be just as damaging to a reputation as the real thing. That fact can be a curse if the perception is false and the accusation unjustified. But it also can be a benefit if it warns a public figure of a pending conflict and gives her time to avoid it.

Conflicts of interest are inevitable. The people most suited to public leadership have extensive experience and wide personal networks, so they unavoidably will encounter situations where loyalty comes into conflict with truth. They’ll face dilemmas where their duty of fidelity to others stands at cross-purposes with their duty of integrity to their position. It’s not shameful to find oneself in such dilemmas. The goal is not to avoid conflicts of interest, but to manage these truth-versus-loyalty dilemmas so they do no harm.

How can they be managed? What’s needed is moral courage. To resist the seductive influences of power, wealth, and fame, our leaders obviously need to develop the moral courage to say no to temptation. More important, they need to encourage such courage in others. They need to surround themselves with colleagues who can point out the danger frankly and candidly before an apparent conflict becomes a real one. If Paterson, Rangel, and Massa simply had taken that last step, they might have remained effective leaders.