Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the WorstUniversity of Chicago Press, 15 sep. 2008 - 336 sidor People—especially Americans—are by and large optimists. They're much better at imagining best-case scenarios (I could win the lottery!) than worst-case scenarios (A hurricane could destroy my neighborhood!). This is true not just of their approach to imagining the future, but of their memories as well: people are better able to describe the best moments of their lives than they are the worst. “In Never Saw It Coming, Karen Cerulo argues that in American society there is a ‘positive symmetry,’ a tendency to focus on and exaggerate the best, the winner, the most optimistic outcome and outlook. Thus, the conceptions of the worst are underdeveloped and elided. Naturally, as she masterfully outlines, there are dramatic consequences to this characterological inability to imagine and prepare for the worst, as the failure to heed memos leading up to both the 9/11 and NASA Challenger disasters, for instance, so painfully reminded us.”--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Swarthmore College “Katrina, 9/11, and the War in Iraq—all demonstrate the costliness of failing to anticipate worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming explains why it is so hard to do so: adaptive behavior hard-wired into human cognition is complemented and reinforced by cultural practices, which are in turn institutionalized in the rules and structures of formal organizations. But Karen Cerulo doesn’t just diagnose the problem; she uses case studies of settings in which people effectively anticipate and deal with potential disaster to describe structural solutions to the chronic dilemmas she describes so well. Never Saw It Coming is a powerful contribution to the emerging fields of cognitive and moral sociology.”--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University |
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... significant that the members' “blood ties” soon become apparent and unmistakable. A second key ingredient of concepts rests in the rules that relate or connect a concept's critical features. Such “similarity rules” help us to understand ...
... significantly across time and space. Different thought com- munities prioritize and attend to different categories of people, places, ob- jects, and events. But amid such differences, a significant majority of thought communities also ...
... significant events — whether it be the first day of school , a first date , one's first day on the job , marriage , or the birth of child — involve some form of anticipatory socialization . Rituals and routines prepare individuals for ...
... significant loss. Risky shift was first documented in the experimental laboratories of social psychologist James Stoner.110 During the past four decades, Stoner's work has been replicated in over three hundred experimental studies—stud ...
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1 | |
17 | |
3 Practicing Positive Asymmetry | 72 |
4 Positive Asymmetry and the Subjective Side of Scientific Measurement | 122 |
5 Being Labeled the Worst Real in Its Consequences? | 139 |
6 Exceptions to the Rule | 164 |
7 Emancipating Structures and Cognitive Styles | 193 |
8 Can Symmetrical Vision Be Achieved? | 233 |
Acknowledgments | 344 |
1 Whats the Worst That Could Happen? | 1 |
2 The Breadth and Scope of Positive Asymmetry | 17 |
3 Practicing Positive Asymmetry | 72 |
4 Positive Asymmetry and the Subjective Side of Scientific Measurement | 122 |
5 Being Labeled the Worst Real in Its Consequences? | 139 |
6 Exceptions to the Rule | 164 |
7 Emancipating Structures and Cognitive Styles | 193 |
Notes | 245 |
References | 279 |
Index | 315 |
Contents | 342 |
8 Can Symmetrical Vision Be Achieved? | 233 |
Notes | 245 |
References | 279 |
Index | 315 |
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Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo Begränsad förhandsgranskning - 2008 |
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo Ingen förhandsgranskning - 2006 |
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo Ingen förhandsgranskning - 2006 |