Creativity is usually thought of as internally motivated — a response to a deeply felt personal urge to challenge convention, push boundaries and explore. But newly published research suggests that, at least in the business world, the link between inspiration and ingenuity is strengthened by focusing on the needs of others. Writing in the Academy of Management Journal, Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and James Berry of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report “intrinsic motivation is most likely to be associated with higher levels of ... Read More
Brain’s Indiana Joneses Search for Empathy
August 4, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
In 1759, long before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he outlined the ways in which one person feels what he called "sympathy" for another's suffering. In his oft-quoted introduction, he wrote, "By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether ... Read More
Power Reduces Compassion
January 5, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
As the philosopher Mel Brooks once remarked, it's good to be king. But does being king make you good? Two new studies suggest power tends to make people less compassionate — with the exception of one specific situation. Power may or may not corrupt, but it definitely dulls our emotional response to other people’s suffering. That’s the conclusion of a paper published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science. A group of scholars led by psychologist Gerben van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam assembled a group of undergraduates who, after filling out a ... Read More
