Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World for Success and Influence by Heidi Grant Halvorson Ph.D. & E. Tory Higgins Ph.D
Author:Heidi Grant Halvorson Ph.D. & E. Tory Higgins Ph.D. [Halvorson Ph.D., Heidi Grant]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-17T14:00:00+00:00
“There’s a real perception among some Americans right now that immigration is suddenly at their front door,” said David A. Shirk, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “They are not used to it. They are not convinced that those groups are going to effectively assimilate. And they are very concerned that our way of life in the United States is going to have to change as a result of that.”6
Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2008
Throughout human history, minority groups have been viewed as threats to the majority. From the Jews in Europe to the Christians in the Middle East to gay men and women just about everywhere, minorities have been labeled as dangerous and destructive and thought to be actively plotting the majority’s ultimate demise. We can see evidence of this kind of thinking in some Americans’ attitudes toward our own growing Muslim minority:
More than a dozen American states are considering outlawing aspects of Shariah law. Some of these efforts would curtail Muslims from settling disputes over dietary laws and marriage through religious arbitration, while others would go even further in stigmatizing Islamic life: a bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”
Supporters of these bills contend that such measures are needed to protect the country against homegrown terrorism and safeguard its Judeo-Christian values. The Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has said that “Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.”
—Eliyahu Stern, Yale professor of religious studies and history7
It turns out that majority thinking tends to be a lot more prevention-focused than you might expect it to be. The majority is worried, because it basically has nowhere to go but down. And the status quo is working well for them . . . so well that they want to maintain it. So members of the majority often become highly motivated to hold on to what they’ve got. It’s actually minority group thinking that is promotion-focused. Because they lack power (relatively speaking), they have nowhere to go but up. The status quo is not working well for them, so they want change that will advance their position in society. The journey to getting power, to making progress, is a promotion journey, but once you’ve arrived, staying in power is all about preventing other people from taking your power away.
There are times, however, when members of the minority group shift and aren’t so promotion-minded. Being treated unfairly because you belong to a minority, or even being reminded of your stigmatized social status (i.e., that your group is thought of as somehow inferior), can create a state of threat, which increases your prevention focus. This happens not only to members of minority racial and ethnic groups when dealing with majority whites, but to women working in majority-male environments (or really anyone working in any context in which they feel their group is outnumbered and undervalued).
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