Michele Gelfand: belief

Transcript context

…How did academia become such a tight culture? Is it that it feels under threat? Does it have some notion of population density but in intellectual space? Or what’s the transmission mechanism? It’s a great question. I would share, by the way, disciplines vary in terms of their tightness. I wouldn’t say that we can define all academia as tight. I think that because of the tenure process, because sometimes the demands of the task can actually cause tight or loose to evolve. . . . When you need to get tenure, when you are being evaluated and monitored, that tends to produce a tight mentality. It tends to produce some elements of risk aversion. That, again, could limit creativity. Of course, now I’m a full professor, but even when I was just assistant professor, I thought, “If I’m going to be in this job, I want to do something that’s risky, that’s interesting.” I try to encourage my students to do that, to think big, to not be inhibited by the journal space or what might be expected. That incremental contributions are not nearly as interesting as big contributions, even if you failed a lot, which we all do. [laughs] Now, you’re well known for your work on negotiation. Why are women worse negotiators than men, if indeed they are?…

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