At Ethical Systems, we're studying how companies are navigating political pressures, social media craziness, and gen Z issues. Not well, as Alison Taylor describes:

In real conversations, speakers who frequently spout anger, contempt, insults, and obscenity are shunned. On Twitter, they are amplified. Twitter is not a public conversation, it’s a public coliseum. Elon Musk, please rethink the social incentives.

When I visited New Zealand universities in 2019, I found the same trends as in USA, only a few years behind. A new study finds NZ has caught up: nearly the same pattern of fears of speaking up in class:

Political violence is back in the spotlight following the appalling attack on Paul Pelosi.

In a The Monkey Cage (TMC) piece in the The Washington Post, Joe Mernyk, Sophia Pink, & I describe recent research on ways to increase Americans’ opp to partisan violence:

washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

❤️ #CalvinandHobbes

Wish your kids were happier or more social? The solution may be simpler than you think! Join our free webinar November 16, 12:00PM EST to learn how to kick the over-parenting habit!
Register at bit.ly/nmcdermott

What kids are DESPERATE for...& not getting.

One graph says it all. A school asked kids to choose an after-school activity. The smaller wedges are adult-led activities that are fun & enriching!

But kids are gasping for something else:

letgrow.org/kids-desperate…

#Education
#SEL

Here's a beautiful new book out today, 'How do we know ourselves,' by the man who wrote the Intro Social Psych text that drew me into social psychology in 1982, David Myers

amazon.com/How-Do-Know-Ou…

Here's my blurb for it:

'I raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor. Here's the 'unpopular' parenting rule I always used on my kids'

Mom of YouTube and 23andMe CEOs says kids need some unsupervised time! cnbc.com/2022/10/29/i-r…

Very excited to see this in-depth coverage of the Strengthening Democracy Challenge in The Atlantic! When you have a chance, please check out this piece written by the outstanding David A. Graham

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

If you want to read a great book about a great man who was the moral leader that America desperately needed, read John Avlon's moving bio of Lincoln's last weeks, and the long reach of his early death.

Here's my Amazon review of it:
amazon.com/Audible-Lincol…

My conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg on how everything got so stupid. New podcast episode from Aspen Ideas Festival.

aspenideas.org/podcasts/are-w…?

Here is Ravi Iyer on how 'The Solutions to Ethical issues with Generative AI will be Social'. An important point, that social psych needs to be part of the solution to the social problems that AI is likely to exacerbate.

psychoftech.substack.com/p/the-solution…

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did a talk in Chicago tonight hosted by Roosevelt University. She was asked how she maintains relationships with judges she disagrees with — Clarence Thomas, in particular. Here’s what she said:

'If we suffer from 'undersociality' and the remedy is talking to strangers, we will have to update our parenting practices.'
Yup. Stop teaching stranger danger!
GREAT LETTERS TO EDITOR ABOUT TALKING TO STRANGERS!
nytimes.com/2022/09/14/opi…

A 🧵 about an important and amazing paper by Ro'ee Levy, my MIT Sloan School of Management colleague Alexey Makarin and Luca Braghieri on:

The *Causal* Link between Social Media Use and Mental Health... Now forthcoming in AER.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

A massive new study of over 400,000 college students finds that #Facebook exposure increased depression, especially among those who were most susceptible to mental illness, and reduced academic performance, by fostering unfavorable social comparisons. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

How to escape the toxic addiction to political outrage. My latest article in TIME

time.com/6222633/second…

Trigger warnings are not given (and do not work) to protect vulnerable people. They are given to display the ideology and virtue of the warners.
This is why Broadway gives trigger warnings for plays about the founding fathers, but not about Nazis.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…