美国国家公共电台 NPR Adam Galinsky: What Drives Us To Speak Up?

 

GUY RAZ, HOST:

What do you think explains, like, this force inside of us that, you know, like that sometimes compels us to, you know, to speak out?

ADAM GALINSKY: Yeah. I mean, I think it's something that psychologists call moral conviction. We are as human beings moral beings. We believe in principles. We are driven by values.

RAZ: This is Adam Galinsky.

GALINSKY: And that is a very compelling and motivating force for people to want to speak up. It's not just that I have a strong attitude or I believe in something. It's that I really feel that it's morally right, and because of that, that's when people will speak up and do the right thing even when they've objectively analyzed¹ the situation and know I'm going to suffer a lot of punishment and backlash for doing so.

RAZ: Adam's a social psychologist at Columbia Business School, and he's kind of an expert on this stuff.

GALINSKY: I study the dynamics² that help determine what are the context in which people feel comfortable speaking up and then, second, the how of speaking up to create the least amount of resistance, the minimal³ amount of punishment.

RAZ: Adam says besides moral conviction, there are two other motivating factors that compel us to speak up.

GALINSKY: When we feel that we have expertise⁴, when we feel that we have some particular insight or knowledge and when we feel like we have social support and allies - more conviction, plus expertise, plus allies, the combination of those three are really the equation that produces people taking that step forward to speak up.

RAZ: And Adam figured out this equation after interviewing thousands of people on all kinds of issues - big and small. Here's Adam Galinsky on the TED⁵ stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

GALINSKY: I've asked people all over the world about this dilemma⁶ of speaking up when they can assert themselves, when they can push their interest, when they can express an opinion, when they can make an ambitious ask.

And the range of stories are varied⁷ and diverse, but they also make up a universal tapestry⁸. Can I correct my boss when they make a mistake? Can I confront my co-worker who keeps stepping on my toes? Can I challenge my friend's insensitive joke? Can I tell the person I love the most, my deepest insecurities?

And through this experience, I've come to recognize that each of us have something called a range of acceptable behavior. And this range of acceptable behavior is when we stay within our range we're rewarded, and we step outside that range, we get punished in a variety of ways. We get dismissed or demeaned or even ostracized⁹ or we lose that raise or that promotion¹⁰ or that deal.

RAZ: Have you ever been in a situation like that?

GALINSKY: Absolutely. Just as one example I'll give you from way back in 1992, I was a research assistant with a professor at Harvard, and he and his research coordinator¹¹ were planning their trip to go to London to write a case study of the London Symphony Orchestra. And I jokingly said when should I buy my ticket? And he laughed and the next day said if you want to come to London, you can come. And then that became my first publication that I ever had and really helped my career in a number of different ways.

And so, you know, I spoke¹² up, and I was rewarded for doing that. But sometimes other people will speak up in that exact same situation, and they might have been punished. They might have been seen as who do you think you are, you know, asking for this thing?

RAZ: Yeah.

GALINSKY: And sometimes I have misread situations, and I've spoken up. And you can immediately see that that was the wrong thing to do by everyone's expression and reaction in the room.

RAZ: And Adam says that's what makes speaking up so difficult because your range of acceptable behavior isn't fixed¹³. It changes based on the context of each situation.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

GALINSKY: And there's one thing that determines that range more than anything else, and that's your power. When we have lots of power, our range is very wide. We have a lot of leeway in how to behave. But when we lack power or range in the areas, we have very little leeway. And the problem is is that when a range narrows, that produces something called the low power, double bind¹⁴. And the low power, double bind happens when if we don't speak up, we go unnoticed. But if we do speak up, we get punished.

Now, many of you have heard the phrase the double bind and connected it with one thing, and that's gender¹⁵. Women who don't speak up go unnoticed and women who do speak up get punished. Oftentimes, you see reaching a man and a woman or men and women and we think biological 'cause there's something fundamentally different about the sexes. But in study after study, I found that a better explanation for many sex differences is really power. What my research has shown over the last two decades is that it's not really a gender double bind. It's really a low power, double bind. And what looks like a gender difference are really often just power differences in disguise.

And this isn't just true for women. It's true for minorities. In fact, there is an old phrase for, you know, an African-American to speak up being uppity. Right? That represents this double bind. Lower social class people aren't allowed to be - speak up without getting punished, low power people in organizations. And so that happens in any situation in society when a group or an individual doesn't have as much power. They have a narrower range of acceptable behavior. They have little leeway in how they can behave. When I have power, I have a wide range of acceptable behavior. I have a lot of leeway. And so part of what I do in my research is help people with low power - how do you expand that range and give yourself a little bit more leeway?

RAZ: Yeah. How do you do it?

GALINSKY: So in one of the great examples of overcoming the gender double bind is that women don't get punished in negotiations¹⁶, and they feel more comfortable negotiating fiercely when they're negotiating on behalf of another person. This is called the mama bear effect, right? Psychological distance matters a tremendous amount. We always get constrained¹⁷ by our own fears and anxieties and perspective, and we need help from other people to see the larger picture.

And so speaking up on behalf of others both makes me feel more comfortable because I have a little psychological distance, but I'm also less likely to get punished 'cause people don't see me as self-interested, but they see me as actually being, you know, pro-social and other-oriented. And so I think this really solves both problems - my psychological level of confidence and anxiety and other people's tendency to accept my behavior versus¹⁸ punishment and backlash.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: And Adam says another way to expand your range is to show you understand the needs of the people you're trying to convince. And that tactic¹⁹ has been effective from asking for raises to asking for equality.

GALINSKY: You know, when we think about Martin Luther King, he had incredible capacity to take the perspective of other people. And so I think when you look and you see some comparisons to him and some of the other voices from the 1960s that were a little bit more forceful than him, he understood that to get people on board he needed to use a language of morality and justice. And he needed to do it in a way that was least threatening to the power structures that be. And so the nonviolent protest is sort of part of that.

But, you know, just take his famous quote - right? - which is that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." That's telling people that we're going to get to a just place in the world, but it's going to take time. It's going to take effort. And we have to work together to do that. And so I think he understood for me to have an influence for me to have an impact, I have to get outside the defense²⁰ mechanisms²¹ of other people who are going to see any expression of equality as a threat.

RAZ: OK. So Martin Luther King Jr. clearly an exceptional case. But when it comes to you and me trying to do this in our everyday lives, there's a small problem.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

GALINSKY: Perspective taking is hard to do. So let's do a little experiment. I want you all to hold your finger, put it up. And I want you to draw a capital letter E on your forehead as quickly as possible. OK. It turns out that we can draw this E in one of two ways. And this was originally designed as a test of perspective taking.

I'm going to show you two pictures. And you can see over here, that's the correct E. I drew with the E so it looks like an E to another person. That's the perspective-taking E because it looks like an E from someone else's vantage point. But this over here is the self-focused E. And we often get so focused.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GALINSKY: In just a moment, Adam Galinsky explains why it's important to not be self focused when speaking up and why that can actually save your life. Today on the show, Ideas About Speaking Up. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, Stories And Ideas About Speaking Up. And for social psychologist Adam Galinsky, who we were just hearing from, the decision of when and how to speak up is all about context - even in a crisis. Here's Adam on the TED stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

GALINSKY: I want to tell you about a particular crisis. A man walks into a bank in Watsonville, Calif. And he says, give me $2,000 or I'm blowing the whole bank up with a bomb. Now, the bank manager didn't give him the money. She took a step back. She took his perspective. And she noticed something really important. He asked for a specific amount of money. So she said why did you ask for $2,000? And he said, my friend's going to be evicted²² unless I get him $2,000 immediately. And she said, oh, you don't want to rob the bank. You want to take out a loan.

(LAUGHTER)

GALINSKY: Why don't you come back to my office and we can have you fill out the paperwork?

(LAUGHTER)

GALINSKY: Now, her quick perspective taking diffused²³ a volatile²⁴ situation.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: Wow, I mean, in one sense, this woman was able to think quickly in a crisis. But in another sense, I mean, she must have had a lot of courage to even speak up.

GALINSKY: Yes. Speaking up effectively doesn't necessarily require courage because if you've analyzed the situation correctly and taken steps to present the information in a way that's most digestible to other people, you have lowered the risk of speaking up. Which means courage is a less important ingredient in that. What we think of as courage is when I've analyzed a situation, I know there's cost for speaking up, and I'm willing to do so anyway. That's what courage is.

And so courage is certainly a part of this. What I try to do is I try to get people to the point where they don't need as much courage because they've understood the situation and they've been able to speak up with the least resistance possible.

RAZ: And it seems like a lot of it has to do with just finding the right balance, right?

GALINSKY: It's exactly right, you know, finding the right balance between, you know, speaking up successfully and getting punished or not speaking up. When we lack power, there's a burden that's placed on us. And we can fight against that burden defiantly²⁵. And sometimes that's the appropriate thing to do. But we can also fight against that burden by finding, you know, which path down the stream to go so I don't crash into the rocks.

We still get down the stream. It's just we have to be a little bit more careful about making sure we get into the middle of that rapid. And so finding those ways to signal less contestation is a powerful way to get what you want without creating resistance and punishment.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RAZ: Adam Galinsky. He teaches at Columbia Business School. He's also the co-author of "Friend & Foe²⁶: When To Cooperate, When To Compete, And How To Succeed At Both." You can watch his talk at ted.com

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

1 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 dynamics   

n.力学，动力学，动力，原动力；动态

参考例句：

• In order to succeed,you must master complicated knowledge of dynamics.要取得胜利，你必须掌握很复杂的动力学知识。
• Dynamics is a discipline that cannot be mastered without extensive practice.动力学是一门不做大量习题就不能掌握的学科。

3 minimal   

adj.尽可能少的，最小的

参考例句：

• They referred to this kind of art as minimal art.他们把这种艺术叫微型艺术。
• I stayed with friends, so my expenses were minimal.我住在朋友家，所以我的花费很小。

4 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

5 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

6 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

7 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

8 tapestry   

n.挂毯，丰富多采的画面

参考例句：

• How about this artistic tapestry and this cloisonne vase?这件艺术挂毯和这个景泰蓝花瓶怎么样？
• The wall of my living room was hung with a tapestry.我的起居室的墙上挂着一块壁毯。

9 ostracized   

v.放逐( ostracize的过去式和过去分词 )；流放；摈弃；排斥

参考例句：

• He was ostracized by his colleagues for refusing to support the strike. 他因拒绝支持罢工而受到同事的排斥。
• The family were ostracized by the neighborhood. 邻居们都不理睬那一家人。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

10 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

11 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

12 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

13 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

14 bind   

vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬

参考例句：

• I will let the waiter bind up the parcel for you.我让服务生帮你把包裹包起来。
• He wants a shirt that does not bind him.他要一件不使他觉得过紧的衬衫。

15 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

16 negotiations   

协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过

参考例句：

• negotiations for a durable peace 为持久和平而进行的谈判
• Negotiations have failed to establish any middle ground. 谈判未能达成任何妥协。

17 constrained   

adj.束缚的,节制的

参考例句：

• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。
• I feel constrained to write and ask for your forgiveness. 我不得不写信请你原谅。

18 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。

19 tactic   

n.战略，策略；adj.战术的，有策略的

参考例句：

• Reducing prices is a common sales tactic.降价是常用的销售策略。
• She had often used the tactic of threatening to resign.她惯用以辞职相威胁的手法。

20 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

21 mechanisms   

n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用

参考例句：

• The research will provide direct insight into molecular mechanisms. 这项研究将使人能够直接地了解分子的机理。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He explained how the two mechanisms worked. 他解释这两台机械装置是如何工作的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

22 evicted   

v.（依法从房屋里或土地上）驱逐，赶出( evict的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of tenants have been evicted for not paying the rent. 许多房客因不付房租被赶了出来。
• They had evicted their tenants for non-payment of rent. 他们赶走了未交房租的房客。

23 diffused   

散布的，普及的，扩散的

参考例句：

• A drop of milk diffused in the water. 一滴牛奶在水中扩散开来。
• Gases and liquids diffused. 气体和液体慢慢混合了。

24 volatile   

adj.反复无常的，挥发性的，稍纵即逝的，脾气火爆的；n.挥发性物质

参考例句：

• With the markets being so volatile,investments are at great risk.由于市场那么变化不定，投资冒着很大的风险。
• His character was weak and volatile.他这个人意志薄弱，喜怒无常。

25 defiantly   

adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地

参考例句：

• Braving snow and frost, the plum trees blossomed defiantly. 红梅傲雪凌霜开。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• She tilted her chin at him defiantly. 她向他翘起下巴表示挑衅。 来自《简明英汉词典》

26 foe   

n.敌人，仇敌

参考例句：

• He knew that Karl could be an implacable foe.他明白卡尔可能会成为他的死敌。
• A friend is a friend;a foe is a foe;one must be clearly distinguished from the other.敌是敌，友是友，必须分清界限。