🪨 Sticks and Stones 🪨
And the words that hurt us...
“[People] are more likely to change if they feel free not to.” -Difficult Conversations
Do you support genocide?
Do you support apartheid?
Do you support terrorism?
I guess your immediate answer to each question is “no.”
And I believe you.
No one should support any of these things.
Hard as it is to believe, I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning thinking of themselves as a villain.
But as we continue to apply some of our Moneyball concepts to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all of us know of examples where individuals lob verbal grenades, making the case that “Those who support Israel doing X are complicit in genocide” and “Those who support Palestinians doing Y support terrorism.”
In my heart, I believe that if someone saw themselves as complicit in genocide or terrorism, they would change their behavior. But few do because the people whose opinions you abhor rarely, if ever, feel the same about themselves as you think of them.
And the reason few of them do is this week’s big idea.
Self-Perception Theory
If we assume that people label themselves in the most favorable light and resist attempts to do otherwise, the question becomes how they reach such conclusions. This process begins with this week’s big idea: self-perception theory.
Daryl Bem of Stanford University developed self-perception theory based on a robust yet straightforward principle: “Individuals come to "know" their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior.”1 When I make conclusions about someone else, I do it based on what I observe. However, while I may have more access to information about myself, the conclusions I draw about my behavior still come from my observations about myself.
Naturally, this is where the trouble starts.
Since our internal narrative typically favors us and our intentions, we will explain our actions, good or bad, in a manner that paints us in the best possible light, even if our explanations conflict with how everyone else sees us. When we raise the stakes, we understand why people on all sides of a conflict may not consider themselves the villains others believe them to be. Most importantly, while there are some effective strategies for helping people see the impact of their behavior on others, calling them names is not one of them. And yet, that’s the strategy people employ most often.
To draw away from focusing on Israel-Palestine but still in the realm of serious conflict, let’s take journeys to Rwanda and Germany:
Rwanda: Clint Smith of The Atlantic recently wrote a fantastic piece on how the Rwandan genocide informs daily life in a country where “the perpetrator and the victim continue to walk past each other every day.” When Rwandans are forced to live among those who “protected their neighbors and people who brought machetes down on their neighbors’ heads,” one can only imagine how this dynamic affects how people explain their actions.2
Germany: While my primary relationship to the Holocaust has been through the horrors experienced by the Jewish people (for obvious reasons), this piece in The New Yorker by Burkhard Bilger was the first time I considered how subsequent generations of German citizens, mainly those known as the Kriegskinder (“children of war”). Bilger describes what it is like as a German to grow up when “family history is an uneasy topic” and “a sense of guilt by association hangs in the air,” even for people who had no involvement in the Holocaust.3 No child is born into the world wanting to perpetrate genocide, yet what was the impact on young children who watched their parents do it?
Put yourself in the shoes of the people Smith and Bilger introduce and ask yourself how they make sense of the tragedy in which they lived. Regardless of their role, it’s easy to see how labels like “perpetrator” or “victim” can take on a complicated valence, even more so when you raise the temperature and start using words like murderer, killer, terrorist, etc.4
Returning to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, most people on either side of the divide are advocating for a position based on core values and communities of origin. When a person who supports Israel is called a supporter of genocide, or a supporter of Palestinians is called a supporter of terrorism, those labels make an intellectual leap about that person far away from how this person sees themselves. In that context, is it any wonder that labeling each other in this context only results in more anger and violence?
Most of us are not the central actors in a global conflict, but it’s easy to imagine how even those central actors devise ways to justify who they are and what they did. While we should not condone their actions just because of their cognitive dissonance, much can be gained by showing more grace to people on the periphery. To start that process, let’s turn to our weekly book recommendation.
Humble Inquiry
Just a hunch, but I think that one of the worst ways to get someone to understand your perspective is by telling that person what they are (i.e., “you support genocide,” “you are a terrorist,” etc.) But when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we do that all the time. And my, what a success that has been…
If we want to try a different approach, we must shift away from our culture of telling, as described by Edgar Schein in this week’s book, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. In his introduction, Schein provides a powerful explanation of what is wrong with a culture of telling:
“Telling puts the other person down. It implies that the other person does not already know what I am telling and that the other person ought to know it. Often when I am told something that I did not ask about, I find that I already know that and wonder why the person assumes that I don’t. When I am told things that I already know or have thought of, at the minimum I get impatient, and at the maximum I get offended.”5
Telling sends the message to someone that you’ve already figured them out (even if you haven’t.) And just like none of us would want someone to draw that kind of conclusion about us, we always do it to others. I love how this dynamic is captured in this scene from Good Will Hunting:
Returning to the conflict at hand, even if we may be accurate in understanding what actions a person might support, we have yet to learn why they support them unless we ask them. Given the current state of affairs around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, telling someone else why they support what they do is a recipe for precisely the dynamic we see today.
Schein argues that a culture of telling remains so powerful because, deep down, “many of us believe that if you are not winning, you are losing.”6 Given how easily that dynamic plays out in workplaces, families, and friendships, it becomes depressingly apparent that no one wants to cede rhetorical ground to the other side when we raise the stakes. And so, the cycle continues.
If you want to learn the skills Schein described in moving from a culture of telling to a culture of asking, you must read Humble Inquiry. But, in the meantime, do a brief self-assessment of all the ways you’ve contributed to a culture of telling around Palestine and Israel. This may not be great for your self-perception theory, but it may be more accurate. And that’s a start.
Talks at Google
154 Million
A study in The Lancet and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates vaccinations have saved 154 million lives over the past 50 years.
I shudder that we need reminders about this, but here we are.
What I Read This Week
The Age of the PIP: Have you ever been put on a PIP? Have you ever put someone else on a PIP? Did you enjoy either experience? Good, you came to the right place.
How to Build a Nonprofit Dashboard: Although many people make them out to be, dashboards do not need to be expensive or complicated. Bridgespan provides a great introduction to the subject.
Are You Overreacting?: Maybe? I’m not sure. Maybe that’s the point?
Blunders and the Mental Game: Maria Konnikova is still crushing it.
The 10 People You Meet on LinkedIn: Giggling.
By the way, this includes situations where you are right about your assessment. Pol Pot was a murderer and perpetrated genocide, and we’re better off that he no longer walks this earth. But unless we understand that he did not see himself as a villain, we will never figure out how to stop the rise of the next genocidal maniac.
Ibid., 60.