Word: powerlessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...less likely to make on-the-job errors - like administering the wrong medication to a patient. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the study suggests that people at the bottom of the workplace totem pole don't end up there for lack of ability, but rather that being low and powerless in a hierarchy leads to more mistakes. It's a finding that surprised even the study's authors. "I'll be totally honest. When we started this research," says Adam Galinsky, a co-author and a social psychology professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, "we first...
Here's how the study worked: volunteers, Dutch university students, were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups. Researchers "primed" each group at the outset - using a variety of psychological devices - to feel powerful, powerless or neutral. In one priming exercise, students were asked to form sentences using specific groups of words. The powerful group got words that implied high power, like "authority" or "dominate." The powerless group were given words such as "subordinate" and "obey." The control group got power-neutral words. After completing the word tasks, participants were tested for what Galinsky refers to as "executive function...
Sounds familiar? Think of Iraq, where a U.S.-backed government is bunkered down in the Green Zone, fighting fitfully against Shi'ite militias. Or of Palestine, where despite U.S. support and aid, President Mahmoud Abbas is powerless against the Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza. When dealing with internecine Arab conflict, the Bush Administration has never been able to back the winning team; it invariably attaches unrealistic expectations to moderate parties and underestimates extremist groups. The lesson, says Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Brookings Institution, is that "you can't pick sides in a civil...
...homemade reality TV shows. Broadcasters were smashing taboos as quickly as they could find the staff: Women read the news, male and female DJs joked together on the radio, and would-be rock stars vied for attention in a nation that once banned music. Social conservatives grumbled, but appeared powerless in the face of insatiable demand that saw Tulsi garner an estimated viewership of some 10 million - one third of the population - according to broadcaster Tolo...
...With the opposition apparently powerless to enforce the democratic victory it claims to have won at the polls, much attention has shifted to Zimbabwe's neighbors, foremost among them South Africa, on which the country remains economically dependent. But the South African leadership is internally divided since the ruling African National Congress mutinied against President Thabo Mbeki last December, and chose his arch rival, Jacob Zuma, as party president. And that split may be playing out in South Africa's response to events in Zimbabwe. On Saturday, Mbeki visited Mugabe in Harare and declared that there was no crisis...