It is sometimes unbelievable to discover how quickly time goes. For instance, last time I posted here was almost nine months ago! Long enough to have a baby- and yet no book reviews.

Instead, I will post some points from the webcast I was listening to with Prof Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University social psychologist who was broadly talking about the themes covered in his new book The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life (Paperback). Instead of this specific webcast I recommend Prof Zimbardo’s talk on this topic at Commonwealth Club available on FORA.tv

Perhaps the best recommendation for the learning opportunity that his talk offered is my return to this blog just a few hours after hearing what Prof Zimbardo had to say. He has developed a scale which looks into past, resent and future orientation which can be found at his website along with some reading resources. It is instructive to take it and reflect on the results in conjunction to the optimum.

I was impressed by his generosity to share with the us, his unseen audience. Lovely and alive person though he is 76y old!

Vor einigen Monaten fragte der Spektrum Verlag an, ob ich Interesse hätte, Philip Zimbardo zu seinem demnächst erscheinenden Buch, The Time Paradox, zu interviewen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass dies der Autor des wohl ersten Werkes ist, dass ich sowie fast jeder andere Psychologiestudent als Erstsemester in den Händen hält, ist dies eine Aufgabe, die ich überaus gerne annahm. Der Artikel zum Interview erschien in der Zeitschrift StudPsych und ist hier erhältlich (© Springer 2009).

Das Buch The Time Paradox von Philip Zimbado und John Boyd handelt von der Bedeutung der Zeit im Leben des Menschen. Die ersten acht Kapiteln enthalten einen Überblick über die Erkenntnisse aus den letzten 30 Jahren Forschung in dieser Domäne. Hier wird in anekdotischer Weise ein Themenfeld dargestellt, das sich weitgehend abseits vom Mainstream der Sozialpsychologie gebildet hat. Die Grunderkenntnis ist, dass jeder Mensch eine Orientierung in der Zeit besitzt. So machen wir uns über unsere Zukunft Gedanken, wir nutzen die Vergangenheit, um Entscheidungen zu treffen und manchmal leben wir einfach voll in der Gegenwart und sind im Hier und Jetzt. Das bemerkenswerte an unserer Orientierung in der Zeit ist, dass wir uns dieser selten bewusst sind. Zugleich hat sie jedoch nach Ansicht von Zimbardo und Boyd einen maßgeblichen Einfluss auf unser Fühlen, Denken und Handeln. Dies bezeichnen die Autoren als Paradox der Zeit.

Jeder Mensch nutzt seine zeitliche Orientierung Zeit unbewußt als Brille, durch die er die Welt wahrnimmt. Es sind somit die Perpektiven seiner Wahrnehmung in Bezug auf die Zeit, die Zimbardo und Boyd als Zeitperspektiven bezeichnen. Empirisch lassen sich hierbei sechs Zeitperspektiven unterscheiden. Neben den drei basalen Kategorien Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft konnten die Autoren mit Hilfe des Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory aufzeigen, dass weitere Verfeinerungen dieser Basisdimensionen existieren.  Wie stark ein Mensch dazu neigt, die einzelnen Perspektiven einzunehmen, ist stark unterschiedlich. Interssanterweise stehen diese Unterschiede oftmals mit einer Reihe von Erlebnis- und Verhaktensweisen zusammen. Es sei nur eines von vielen Beispielen genannt:  Eine mittlere bis starke Nutzung einer zukunftsorientierten Perspektive ist z. B. tendenziell eng mit Gewissenhaftigkeit sowie einem geringen Depressions-und Aggressionsniveau verknüpft.

Bei der Nutzung der Blickwinkel, die wir einnehmen, zeigt sich, dass die meisten Menschen dazu neigen, einige Perspektiven stärker zu nutzen als andere. Diese systematische Verzerrung in der Wahl der Perspektiven ist nach Auffassung der Autoren ein Hindernis zu persönlicher Entwicklung. So ist der zweite Teil des Buches konsequenterweise als Ratgeber verfasst.  Denn Zimbardo und Boyd treten mit dem Ziel auf, den Leser bei der Entwicklung einer optimalen Beziehung zur Zeitlichkeit zu unterstützen. So enthält das Buch eine Reihe von Übungen und Selbsterfassungsbögen, um die eigene Nutzung der Zeitperspektiven ins Bewußtsein zu heben und diese ggf. zu verändern.

Ich selbst habe das Buch mit Gewinn gelesen. Besonders der erste Teil des Buches ist in seiner erzählerischen Weise eine leichte Kost und ist inspirierend. Der Akademiker sollte hier keine wissenschaftliche Abhandlung erwarten. Es ist eher eine angenehme Urlaubs- oder Nachtlektüre. Als besonders eindrucksvoll empfand ich, ohne mir eine abschließende Meinung dazu gebildet zu haben, die Belege für den systematischen Zusammenhang zwischen Perspektiven und Persönlichkeitseigenschaften. Auch ist es spannend, einen Eindruck über die eigenen Zeitperspektiven zu gewinnen. Hierzu kann das o.g. Inventar online ausgefüllt werden.

Im Folgenden ist das komplette Interview vom 05.07.2009 abgedruckt. Der Audiomitschnitt des Interviews kann hier angehört werden.

MH: Welcome Phil, thank you very much that you found the time for this interview, as I know you are very busy. I heard you just came back from Aspen yesterday, spend one day at home in California now and tomorrow you come over to Europe to the European Congress of Psychology in Oslo. So, is it the case, that time is quite sparse in your life?

PZ: Yeah, Time moves very fast in my life, too fast for me.

MH: In my life as a student this is not so much the case. And there we have a difference when it comes to time and our relation to time between you and me. This already takes us straight to the contents of your new book The Time Paradox you wrote together with Dr. John Boyd. Could you maybe briefly explain what your new book is about and what the title means?

PZ: Okay, I will do that. I am Philip Zimbardo. I am a professor emeritus at Stanford University in the Psychology Department and emeritus means I am retired, but still working for no money. The Time Paradox is a book that has been incubating since 1972, right after I did the Stanford Prison Study, because the Stanford Prison Study made me very much aware of the complex role that time plays in our life. Because in that study time got distorted, so that a day felt like several days. In part because the prison went 24/7, different guardships came in every eight hours, the guards woke the prisoners up every few hours during the night, so the prisoners, their sleep patterns were messed up. And I was always on call, that I’d go to sleep and then they’d wake me up and say, you got to come and help a prisoner is having a breakdown. So it just made me aware of time. Then also, we had hidden microphones in the cells of the prisoners. And when we analyzed what they talked about when they were alone, almost everything they talked about was of the present. How bad the food was, the good guards, the bad guards, escape plans. And they almost never talked about their past or their future. And what that meant was, the image that the prisoners had of each other was a very negative one, because they never inquired what was the background of the students. They knew they were all college students, what were they going to do after the study was over. And all they knew about each other was the negatives that they saw, each student getting emotionally disturbed or acting like a zombie obeying all commands. And so I began to think about time in my own life, because it played a critical role, as I was born in poverty from a Sicilian background in which everyone lived in the present or the past. And that is a recipe for failure. And I was very much influenced by my teachers in the early grades, who pushed me towards the future, settings goals and sub goals, immediate goals and essentially I became a high achieving child and a high achieving adult. And so The Time Paradox is a book about the way each of us lives in multiple time zones and that we are often unaware of the powerful influence they desert on us. So The Time Paradox is the assertion, that one of the most powerful influences on all of our decisions and our actions is something that we are unaware of, the fact that we have a biased time perspective.

MH: So, you say that we all live in different time zones. That means we perceive the world through our own personal time perspective or set of perspectives. Could you give an example, what kind of time perspectives exist and how they influence our life?

PZ: In general the big three are past, present and future. But over the years I have developed a scale called the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). And this scale which is highly reliably, demonstratively very valid. It is really demonstrated over several decades, where we kept altering the items and trying to increase the power of the test. And what the test finally reveals is that most people have six different time zones that they can live in. The obvious ones as I said, are past, present and future, but what we have uncovered is a refinement of these big three categories. So there are some people whenever they have to make a decision they make their decision based only on things in the immediate present: what it smells like, what it looks like, what it tastes like, what other people in the situation are doing, what their emotions are at that moment, what their biological urges are. Let me call those people present-oriented. But if they focus mostly on the pleasure, then we got to call them present-hedonist. Other people also live in the present, but they are present-fatalist. That they believe nothing I do makes a difference, my life is fated, whatever will be will be. And so the present-fatalist, they take very little joy in life. Other people in the same situation focus not at all on the present but on the past. They try to say: how is this situation now similar to what I experienced in the past. And there you can be past-positive or past-negative. Then you can focus on the good things in your life, the friends, the family, favorite birthday, the awards you won. Or you can be past-negative and for you the past is abuse, rejection and failure. And those are totally different ways to be stuck in the past. Now the future-oriented is usually people who are settings goals and as we said sub goals. When they have to make a decision they always begin by cost-benefit-analysis. What will it cost me, what will I gain? If the gain outweighs the cost, then I’ll do it. If the cost outweighs the gain then I don’t do it. But, there are some people who are focused on what we call the transcendental-future, that is, life begins after death. Some religions lead people to believe that this life that you are living now, your mortal life, is transient and you have to live a good life because the important thing is what happens after you die. After you give up your mortal body and you live a life in heaven or wherever. So your listeners can go online www.thetimeparadox.com and the scale is there. And you can take the scale and score and get a sense how you score on each of the six factors. Of course it’s in my book The Time Paradox. Not only the scale and how to score it, but obviously much, much more.

MH: So, what you are saying is, that people have those six different time perspectives, that you call present-oriented, past-oriented and so forth. When do people come about developing these perspectives, when in life does this happen? For example thinking about the experiments done by Walter Mischel ?

PZ: It is very interesting. We are all born present-hedonist, we are born, I think from evolution to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And so we are all present-oriented little bees. And over time, depending on our family, our culture, our social class, whether we live near the equator or not, we begin to develop both, a sense of the past and a sense of the present. So again, culture has a very big influence as has geography. The closer you live to the equator, where seasons never change, the more likely you are to always stay present oriented, it’s like you are living in paradise, you don’t plan for changes you don’t plan in the summer for the winter. You don’t put nuts away as squirrels do in the summer, knowing that there is going to be a winter without nuts. So, as you mentioned for example, in the study by Walter Mischel, he took four year old nursery school children and gave them a task. And when they succeeded he said you can have a marshmallow, but if you wait until I come back you can have two. If you like marshmallows you can eat it now, but if you really like marshmallows all you have to do is wait and you get two of the treats. Well it turns out that at the age of three no child waits, no child excepts that arrangement. They eat the marshmallow immediately. At the age of four, I don’t remember exactly but it’s about sixty percent can’t wait and forty percent wait, and as you get older more and more children wait. That is they learn to delay gratification. What Mischel found is, he went back fourteen years later, and the children who waited, the children who delayed gratification, were totally different in every aspect of their lives than the children who where impulsive. They scored many, many, many points higher on the Standard Achievement Test (SAT), they were better students in the school, they got in less trouble. So the argument is, learning to delay gratification is part of what it means to become future-oriented. And if you are future-oriented, you will succeed much more in school, you will succeed in business and succeed in life, because you do a cost-benefit-analysis, you do a causal analysis, you weigh your alternatives. And you discount things that have a short-term in gain in the pleasure in the present for a long-term more substantial gains. We have found that women for example tend to be more future-oriented than men, it’s more men live in the moment, they are more present-oriented. It varies with religion. Protestants are more future-oriented than Catholics everywhere in the world. And social class, middle class people are more future-oriented and lower class people are more present-oriented.

MH: So, does it makes a big difference for my life and they way I am whether I am future-oriented or not? And is there a configuration or set of time perspectives that is more favorable than other set?

PZ: It makes a huge difference. So the argument is that each of us has varying degrees or levels of those six time zones, positive and negative past, present-hedonistic, present-fatalistic, future-oriented or transcendental-future. It’s not all or none. We have some or a little bit or a lot of each of those. What John Boyd and I do in The Time Paradox, he is my co-author, we show that most people they develop a bias, that they overuse one of these and they underuse the others. So there are people who are future-oriented who never allow themselves to focus on the past or on the present. There are people who are present-oriented who never think about the future consequences of their behavior. And getting ahead of our story is, the main thing we do in this book, is we teach people how to develop a balance. Our mantra is, give up the bias and find a balance. That a biased time perspective in the long run is not healthy, it’s not in your best interest. But a balance, and a balance we found is being highly focused on the past-positive, moderately focused on a selective hedonism and moderately high but not extremely high on future. But always low on present-fatalism and low on past-negative. And in our book we say, well if you are future-oriented here is how to add more present to your life. If you are very present-oriented here is how to add more future. If you are past-oriented here is how to add more present and future. These time perspective zones are learned and therefore they can be modified.

MH: As you say, most of use tend to have a bias. We tend to overuse certain time-perspectives and underuse others. Concerning academics, say professors like you or students like me, is there something like a typical bias in our use of time perspectives?

PZ: Yes. Most students and most professors are future-oriented. The ones that succeed are. There are students that somehow get by being present-oriented, but we have found they always are in trouble, they always need extensions, they never get things done on time, they wait till the last minute to study and then if there is a party or some disruption, they go for it. And they are late for appointments, they don’t make reservations. They don’t arrange their lives in a reasonable pattern. That is by living for the moment, living for the day, they can have more fun than future-oriented people, but it’s more chaotic and more things are likely to go wrong.

MH: Your theory about time perspectives is quite a broad theory as it affects so many parts of life. How does it connect to certain fields of psychology, for example to the clinical field?

PZ: Well, it connects to many, many, many things as you say. For example the concept of achievement motivation does not exist unless you have the prior conception of future-orientation. The concept of guilt is the relationship between an awareness in the present of something you did in the past. So again you need time perspective factors in order to experience guilt. Much anxiety is concerns or worries about the uncertain future. So time perspective does fit within a clinical framework. For example, many soldiers around the world suffer from PTSD, a posttraumatic stress disorder. Essentially, their problems is they have one foot stuck in the mud of their negative past that they experienced. Because they have seen killings, they have killed, they have seen rape, many of them may have raped. They have done really bad things. And as long as they keep replaying those negative scenarios they will never get better. And the problem is that when they go to therapy, most therapy does not really help get better, it just keeps it from getting worse. So they develop a present fatalism, nothing they do really makes a difference. So we have started an interesting therapy in Maui Hawaii with veterans, I am working with a clinical psychologist named Dr. Richard Sword. And what we are doing is something called time metaphor therapy. We are telling these veterans, your problem is you have one foot stuck in the mud of the negative past, one foot stuck in the mud of the present fatalism and unless you make a decision to change your posture, to move the foot from the past-negative into future orientation and the foot from present-fatalism into present-hedonism, you cannot be helped. And what we have found in pilot studies is miracle cures. Veterans who have had PTSD for years are now functioning well, giving up their guilt, giving up anxiety. And so we hope to set up formal double blind clinical trials to see: Can you really change PTSD not with drugs but with time therapy?

MH: So there might be quite big implications from the theory you developed. What interests me is that this theory basically evolved aside from the mainstream of psychology. At least there was no broad reception within the literature as for example in textbooks. Where do you see the benefits if the theory of time perspectives finally finds this reception?

PZ. If you look at almost any introductory textbook there is not an index point called time perspective or time orientation. Interestingly, since space and time are the most critical dimensions of human existence, it is interesting that time and time perspectives has really not been studied by psychologists very much. And I am hoping that the Time Paradox book will stimulate thinking by psychologist as well as the general public, as it is really written for the general public as well as for academics. And also stimulate new research into this very interesting phenomenon. Now, you mentioned I am going to Oslo tomorrow to the European Congress of Psychology and there are dozen young researchers from around the world who will be presenting research using Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory and all of them are getting highly significant effects on many, many different dimensions: on conservation, on sustainability, on retirement, on rehabilitation. And I am so excited because I feel like grandfather and these are my children, my grand children, young researchers from I think 24 different countries are represented. We have a cross-cultural research group that we have started using the web. And the scale is now translated in two dozen different languages.

MH: Another question that is basically very down-to-earth and affecting every day life is: What does it mean in terms of time perspective when someone is chronically late and what does it tell you about me, when I am always upset with that?

PZ: It means that you are future-oriented and you are dealing with people who are past or present-oriented. For some people being punctual is seen as a positive character trait. So if you make an appointment and you are a future-oriented person, you are going to write it down in your book, you got an alert on your cell phone or on your computer, on your to-do list. And you are going to be not only on time you are probably going to be there a little early. And if that appointment is with a present-oriented person or a past-oriented person, the chances they are being on time are slim. They are less likely to be on time because time is not important for them. Also, on the way from the house to the appointment place they get distracted, they will meet somebody or look at the store window and see something interesting that captures their attention. So that a lot of conflict between people are conflicts between people who are living in different time zones and we are unaware of that. So if that person comes late you see them as irresponsible, you say: you wanted this job, the fact that you come late, I think less well of you. And the person says: What difference does it make? I am here, ask me a question. What difference is a few minutes? Now, culture also plays a role. Because if you are from a northern country you going to experience that most people from southern countries are more often late because they are much more often present-oriented. And this is true in Sicily. People from the north say that about people from the south. In many countries they call it colored people’s time or Mexican time. There is an interesting expression in Mexico which is: mañana is the busiest day of the year. Because everything is put off, mañana, we’ll do it tomorrow. And, in fact, if you are present-oriented, you typically don’t make reservations, and if you make them or appointments you do not write it down, so you will forget. Now we had this. Student at Stanford have to be in six experiments if they are in introductory psych and so we give them our scale and it’s sure enough, the college students at Stanford who are present-oriented come late to the appointment more often than not, forget it, miss the appointment more often than not. If you are future-oriented you start the assignment a week earlier than other students who are present-oriented. So even controlling for general intelligence, you have to be intelligent to get into Stanford, because they take 1600 out of 16000 that apply. So it is the top ten percent in America or in the world who apply. But even so, if you get in and you are very smart but you are present-oriented you are a different creature than if you are future-oriented.

MH: So now basically you spent 30 years doing research in that field. During that time, what has changed for you personally, as yopu more and more – I suppose – became aware of your own time perspectives?

PZ: This is a very good point, Mark. The first issue is you have to become aware of what is your own time perspective, where is your misbalance. Am I excessively future-oriented, am I excessively focused on the past-negative, am I too much present-hedonistic? And once you become aware of that you begin to realize that a lot of problems you have in life is because of that. So if you are excessively future-oriented as I am, as I have been – so I have been very successful as a student, successful in my career, I published fifty books and more than 300 articles, I taught heavily big classes of a thousand, I taught sometimes ten to twelve classes a year, but, I sacrificed friends and family and most of all if you are excessively future-oriented you sacrifice personal fun. As soon as you get one thing done you say what’s next on my list and start to work. If you are present-oriented you never get anything done because there is always something, you always go for what is fun rather than what is work. So, many of these people are very creative and they are great as stand-up comics. For example, the greatest Jazz musicians, they are great where they can improvise. But they are not good where they have to sit down and learn something, sit down and read a lot, sit down and write a lot. So for me what happened is, as I got older and as I began to study this time perspective I realized that I had to put balance in my life. I have to be less future-oriented, I had to be selectively present-hedonistic, meaning that as soon as I got something done I needed to reward myself. And the reward could be to get a massage, get a hot tub, meet a friend in a coffee shop, have a really, really wonderful dinner with my wife, just take time, make time! But then also to connect to my past and take time to send emails to relatives or send pictures or call old friends. And so I’ve never felt better having this balance of being moderately future-oriented as I am traveling around the world giving lectures and still writing books, but I take time for myself to enjoy the present. And I take time to really think about and explore my past. Because your past is where your identity is. Your past is your roots. It links you to your family and your line. The present is where you get energy. I mean you live your life in the present and that’s the energy to do things, to explore. And the future is the wings to try new things, to try different things.

MH: So basically. What we as students can take along today is that we tend to be biased towards a future perspective and maybe we should put away our wrist-watch every once in a while after work is done, and just enjoy. So, Phil I thank you very much for this interview. Thanks that you found the time. It has really been interesting.

PZ: You are welcome, it has been a pleasure. I hope that the students will go to the website www.thetimeparadox.com. There is also some of my articles as well as taking the scale, but also to buy The Time Paradox book, because I think that everybody who has read it really likes it, it’s well written and has lots of, lots of interesting information.

MH: That’s what I think. It is a really nice book and will be published in Germany within a few weeks.

PZ: I hope so, hope so. And also I should mention, the translator is a friend of mine, Karsten Petersen, and he is a brilliant translator. He translated my Lucifer Effect book and everybody who read both said that the German edition is better than the English edition.

MH: Okay, interesting. So, thank you very much again that you found the time for the interview. And have a good flight to Oslo tomorrow!

PZ: Thank you so much. Bye, Mark.

MH: Ciao, Phil.

Im Internet sind einige sehenswerte Vorträge von Zimbardo (u. a.) vorhanden, die in die Theory of Time Perspectives und verwandte Themen einführen:

• Zimbardo at TED: ein kurzer, prägnanter TED Talk zur Einführung in Time Perspectives.
• Zimbardo at the Commonwealth Club: eine einstündiger, guter Vortrag zu Time Perspectives.
• Joachim de Posada at TED: Über das Marshmallow-Experiment. Eine sehr kurzweilige und unterhaltsame 6-Minuten-Einführung.

Philip Zimbardo, Mark Heckmann

dove

I received a message via my Youtube account today from someone who had just attended a talk by Dr. Philip Zimbardo during his speaking engagement in Croatia. Here’s a link to that message which is basically to thank me for my video “Echoes from the Square” which Zimbardo had shown as part of the presentation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMrf_sd3gkA

My understanding is that Zimbardo is focusing on coping and resilience for this tour. I’m sure he’ll be referencing the Stanford Prison Experiment and his book “The Lucifer Effect”. What is really thrilling to me is that he followed through with his plan of using my video, which tells a story of coping and rebuilding.

Dr Zimbardo had requested permission to use the video  about six months ago and I thought I might never know if he would actually end up presenting it or not. Thank you to Youtube user “TheAshes987″ for using the comment feature and letting me know

Phillip Zimbardo is an excellent scholar who has done a lot of fascinating work.  Of course, he is most well known for the Stanford Prison Experiment (the second Google result when you search “experiment”), but he has other interests as well.  Few people know that Zimbardo is one of the leading scholars in the field of studying how people understand time.

Zimbardo and John Boyd authored The Time Paradox, and I am about halfway through it right now.  So far, it is excellent.  I got it for a really good price at a Barnes and Noble a few months ago, but I just now started reading it; I should have started sooner.

One cool thing about reading psychology books is that they are usually interactive.  Psychologists are eager to involve their readers in the experiments and they usually engage readers, asking them to answer surveys and see how they fit in to the experimental studies.

The authors have developed the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory that rates how people relate to time on a variety of scales.  The scales are: past-negative, present-hedonistic, future, past-positive, and present-fatalistic.  Without too much explanation, you should be able to deduce what these labels mean and you should be able to see that some of them can coexist with others (past-negative and present-fatalistic go well together, for instance).

The ZTPI results aren’t purely academic, either.  The authors apply their results to numerous real life scenarios.  for instance, future-oriented individuals tend to succeed at life and past-negative individuals are more prone to believe fabricated bad memories.  Time perspective affects decision-making, planning, and interpretation of events.  It is one of the most core aspects of any person.

The authors also discuss some cultural aspects to time perspective, comparing the American/European view of time to the Latin American view of time.  That is really interesting, but that is as far as I have gone in the book so far.  I’ll be back with more thoughts later, perhaps.  It is a great book so far, especially for getting it so cheap!

Daniel Tencer at Raw Story offers a deconstruction of Cheney’s claims about CIA torture. Tencer spends considerable time debunking the former-Vice Presidents claim that the work of torture was done by professionals. It’s a stunning write-up and I recommend reading it in its entirety, but I’ll draw attention to x paragraphs:

“The procedures of the CIA program are designed to be safe,” Cheney told the conservative group. “They are in full compliance with the nation’s laws and treaty obligations. They’ve been carefully reviewed by the Department of Justice, and they are very carefully monitored. The program is run by highly trained professionals who understand their obligations under the law. And the program has uncovered a wealth of information that has foiled attacks against the United States; information that has saved countless, innocent lives.”

Yet some of those “highly trained professionals” had little more than two weeks of training on the job.

“With just two weeks of training, or about half the time it takes to become a truck driver, the CIA certified its spies as interrogation experts after 9/11 and handed them the keys to the most coercive tactics in the agency’s arsenal,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

“It was a haphazard process, cobbled together in the months following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington by an agency that had never been in the interrogation business,” the AP report continued. “The result was a patchwork program in which rules kept shifting and the goals often were unclear.”

There appear to be two dominant images of torturers: they are sadists whose violence expresses their crooked urges or they are dispassionate professionals whose violence is instrumental, calculated to extract the most information at the cost to the victim of the least pain. Neither image is particularly helpful when it comes to explaining torture. The excesses of torture, it seems, are frequently called out of a torturer by the social-psychological context; this is an enduring lesson of Zimbardo’s prison experiment.

The image of torture as professionally conducted and well-regulated also appears to be wishful thinking. In Torture and Democracy, Darius Rejali thoroughly refutes the possibility of the professional torturer, finding that torturers have yet to become scientific or professional. Human pain is difficult (and may be impossible) to increase incrimentally; victims bodies respond by responding less to violence; torturers respond to victims’ diminishing responses by intensifying their violence and haphazardly attacking victims’ bodies. In other words, regulations and the torture scripts written by civilian lawyers and officers break on the breaking body of torture victims. (Milgram’s lab is one of the few torture chambers where (the appearance of) pain was applied in an orderly, well-regulated fashion; yet to produce the indifferent torturer, Milgram had to physically separate the torturer from his or her victim.)

I guess Cheney’s not so falsfiable after all.

Hace poco hablamos del experimento de Milgram, en el que nos demostraba el enorme poder de la situación sobre la conducta de las personas. Veíamos como personas buenas y sin ningún problema psicológico, no dudaban en someter a tortura a otros iguales simplemente por la presencia de una figura de autoridad. En 1971, Philip Zimbardo, llevó a cabo uno de los experimentos más controvertidos que se han realizado dentro de la psicología, en el que demostraba de nuevo la fuerza de la situación en la respuesta conductual humana, esta vez sobre los efectos de los roles impuestos.

A continuación os pongo un fragmento de una entrevista que realizó la revista Kindsein, en el que Zimbardo relata el curso del experimento (nadie podría explicarlo mejor que él):

”(El experimento de la cárcel de Stanford) Fue mi intento para determinar qué ocurre cuando pones a gente buen a en un lugar malvado: ¿Triunfa la humanidad, o la fuerza de la situación puede acabar dominando hasta al más bueno de nosotros? Mis estudiantes de Stanford, Craig Haney y Curt Banks, y yo creamos un ambiente carcelario muy realista, una “mala cesta” en la que colocamos a 24 individuos voluntarios seleccionados entre estudiantes universitarios para un experimento de dos semanas. Los elegimos de entre 75 voluntarios que pasaron una batería de tests psicológicos. Tirando una moneda al aire, se decidía quién iba a hacer el papel de preso y quién el de guarda. Naturalmente, los prisioneros vivían allí día y noche, y los guardas hacían un turno de 8 horas. Al principio, no pasó nada, pero la segunda mañana los prisioneros se rebelaron, los guardas fre naron la rebelión y después crearon medidas contra los “prisioneros peligrosos”. Desde ese momento, el abuso, la agresión, e incluso el placer sádico en humillar a los prisioneros se convirtió en una norma. A las 36 horas, un prisionero tuvo un colapso emocional y tuvo que ser liberado, y volvió a ocurrir a otros prisioneros en los siguientes 4 días. Chicos buenos y normales se habían corrompido por el poder de su papel y por el soporte institucional para desempeñarlo que les diferenciaba de sus humildes prisioneros. Se probó que la “ mala cesta” tenía un efecto tóxico en nuestras “manzanas sanas”. Nuestro estudio de dos se manas tuvo que parar antes de tiempo después de sólo seis días porque cada vez estaba más fuera de control. El quinto día del experimento, una estudiante recién doctorada de Stanford, Christina Maslach, vio cómo los guardas colocaban bolsas en las cabezas de los prisioneros y les hacían desfilar con las piernas encadenadas, como zombies, mientras los guardas les gritaban barbaridades. Maslach salió llorando. Había empezado a salir con ella, y me gritó: «No estoy segura querer tener algo que ver contigo si esta es la clase de persona que eres. Es horrible lo que estás haciendo a esos chicos». Esa doble bofetada en la cara fue la catálisis para que me diera cuenta de que el estudio había funcionado demasiado bien y de que esa poderosa situación me había corrompido también a mí. Paramos el estudio al día siguiente.

En “El Efecto Lucifer” detallo por primera vez la cronología de los acontecimientos que tuvieron un efecto tan transformador sobre casi todo el mundo que estaba implicado. Creo que entenderlo nos pone en una mejor posición para apreciar lo que el Efecto Lucifer significa realmente.

“El Efecto Lucifer” es una celebración de la capacidad infinita de la mente humana para convertirnos a cualquiera de nosotros en amable o cruel, compasivo o egoísta, creativo o destructivo, y de hacer que algunos lleguemos a ser villanos y otros a ser héroes. Lo que mi investigación, junto con una gran cantidad de estudios psicológicos serios, ha revelado es el Poder de las Situaciones Sociales para llevar a mucha gente corriente, incluso buena, tanto niños como adultos, por el camino del mal.

[...] ¿Cómo podemos estar seguros de qué haríamos o dejaríamos de hacer en situaciones nuevas, diferentes de la que hemos encontrado hasta entonces? Desafío las nociones básicas de QUIÉNES creemos que somos, y lo bien que nos conocemos nosotros mismos y a otros durante nuestra vida. ¿Y cuál es nuestra capacidad de predecir lo que harían otros a los que creemos conocer bien cuando la presión de la situación les seduzca hasta el punto de violar principios morales o legales? Sólo nos conocemos nosotros mismos, a nuestra familia y amigos, a partir de pequeñas muestras de comportamiento en un número limitado de situaciones, en las que a menudo todos estamos jugando papeles concretos. Cuando tenemos la libertad de elegir las situaciones en las que entramos o que evitamos, normalmente nos dirigimos a las familiares, seguras, cómodas, donde nuestros hábitos aprendidos nos permiten desenvolvernos bien. Entonces [Cuando nos encontramos en situaciones completamente nuevas], los viejos hábitos o las características de nuestra personalidad ya no funcionan o no son relevantes y somos vulnerables a las fuerzas de la situación, tales como la dinámica de grupos para conformarnos, la dilución de la responsabilidad de nuestros actos, la deshumanización de otros, los sentimientos de anonimato y pérdida de necesidad de rendir cuentas, entre otros. Podemos entonces hacer cosas que nunca hubiésemos imaginado que pudiéramos hacer sin las influencias sociales de ese momento y lugar. [...]

¿Hay algún espacio para los niños en El Efecto Lucifer? Los niños no nacen malos, sino con plantillas mentales para hacer cosas buenas o malas dependiendo de las influencias del entorno, de los contextos de comportamiento en los que viven, juegan y trabajan. Los niños que crecen en guetos, en zonas de guerra, en familias maltratadoras, en las calles, o como milicias infantiles secuestradas por diversas fuerzas rebeldes, viven contextos muy distintos de los niños en entornos privilegiados, no porque tengan cerebros inferiores o personalidades patológicas, sino por las fuerzas negativas del entorno que actúan sobre ellos.

Incluso en ambientes menos hostiles, los niños buenos pueden empezar a hacer cosas malas por su grupo de amigos, que establece las normas para ser aceptados en el círculo mágico. Algunas veces eso consiste en molestar a otros niños, rechazarlos o incluso pueden acosar a los que se etiquetan como diferentes, como inferiores; difunden rumores, pueden arruinar la reputación de otros niños permanentemente. ”

Recientemente, en abril de 2004 dan el salto a todos los escalofriantes relatos de lo que sucede en la prisión de Abu Ghraib (Iraq). La noticia de que reclusos iraquíes están sufriendo abusos y humillaciones, pone a esta prisión en el punto de mira y no tardan en aparecer fotografías y vídeo s de las vejaciones a las que están siendo sometidos los prisioneros por parte de los soldados estadounidenses. Tras las denuncias provinientes de todos los sectores, comienza el juicio contra algunos de los soldados que participaron en aquellas aberraciones, y Philip Zimbardo llegó a ser una pieza muy importante,  actuando como perito judicial en el consejo de guerra contra uno de los acusados. El Dr. Zimbardo mostró como todos los factores psicológicos y situacionales que se desarrollaron en su experimento de Stanford, están presentes en la prisión iraquí:

”No me sorprendieron en absoluto. Yo había visto su paralelo en el sótano de Stanford, prisioneros desnudos, cabezas con bolsas, humillación sexual. Era un comportamiento inexcusable, pero no inexplicable. Mi sensación era de que había similitudes enfermizas entre la prisión de nuestro experimento y cualquier prisión real en medio de una guerra controvertida.”

Para acabar os dejo un video buenísimo en el que explica el Efecto Lucifer , habla del experimento de Stanford y muestra algunas de las imágenes a las que tuvo acceso sobre Abu Ghraib. Es una auténtica joya como explica las cosas este hombre, así que si tenéis 23 minutos libres es altísimamente recomendable. (En inglés y con imágenes de violencia explícita y desnudos).

Para saber más:

Zimbardo, Philip. (2008). El efecto Lucifer: el porque de la maldad. Barcelona.

Página oficial del experimento: ttp://www.prisionexp.org/espanol/1

Página del doctor Zimbardo: www.zimbardo.com

Hirschbiegel, Oliver (2001). El experimento. (película)

My introduction at the Heroic Imagination Project kickoff meeting with Phil Zimbardo.

Yes, I know it is an “old” story by now, but I feel it necessary to provide a complementary analysis of the Gates incident because I dislike how the current discourse on the issue has elided the element of power/authority. Most people are familiar with the details of the Gates incident: Sgt. James Crowley, a white police officer, arrested African-American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as Dr. Gates and his driver attempted to enter Gates’ home in a predominantly white neighborhood in Cambridge, Mass. It has been the president’s involvement, however, that has garnered national media attention. Obama criticized the Cambridge police department for “acting stupidly,” and then quickly backtracked on his comment and apologized for “ratcheting up” the incident. Obama’s sensitivity to the police department’s condemnation of his comments on the issue–that he did not have the facts straight and that, essentially, the officer knew best what to do–leads me to suspect that this incident is, at its core, an issue of authority (though of course with racist and classist elements as well).

Obviously racism was one of the key elements of the incident, and both Crowley and Gates said some embarrassing things regarding racism in law enforcement. For one, Sgt. Crowley reacted to charges of racism by saying that he had given mouth-to-mouth to the late Celtics player Reggie Lewis, thereby exonerating himself of any possible suspicions of racism. Professor Gates, on the other hand, said that the event prompted him to explore racism in police enforcement (as if that’s never been a problem before this incident).

Nevertheless, there remains the important issue of power and police authority in the Gates incident. Two things are clear about the incident: there was an ambiguity about who had power over whom in the debacle, and the police expressed solidarity with their fellow officer , a solidarity which crossed racial lines. When Crowley confronted Gates in his home, Gates argued with the officer and eventually showed him his identification. During this time, however, Gates yelled at the officer something along the lines of “do you know who I am.” This invocation of class seems to have ignited the tension in what was an ambiguous power relationship between Gates, the black ivy-league professor, and Crowley, the average white cop. Afterward, Crowley arrested Gates for allegedly causing a ruckus in public and ended that ambiguity. Lastly, Crowley’s co-workers, black and white, supported him in his handling of the situation.

There is a pretty straightforward argument to be made about the latter point: individuals in roles of authority may feel more entitled to use their authority even when it is not necessary. One simply needs to look at Zimbardo’s 1971 prison experiment in Stanford, in which he separated a group of male college students into prisoner and prison guard roles in an attempt to observe the power dynamics at play within a prison setting. It turns out that the prison guards frequently abused their power, especially in instances where the prisoners did not respect their positions of authority. Check out Zimbardo’s book, The Lucifer Effect, for an exhaustive treatment of the study.

While I do feel that the police officer did feel somewhat entitled to exercise his ability to arrest Gates, I think that the ambiguity of power between the two men was also significant. Here, I refer to Roger A. Gould’s work, Collision of Wills, in which he argues that conflict is most frequent in situations where power is not clearly defined. Although Gates believed himself to be a victim of racism, he certainly challenged Crowley’s authority on the basis of class in order to leverage something against him. Slighting Sgt. Crowley’s rank in this fashion may have caused him to react by invoking his authority in an effort to show Gates who had the upper hand.

Obviously, no one really knows what happened that day besides the men involved, but I believe that the power dimension had a great deal to do with the outcome.

“Suçlarla mücadeleyi nasıl başardın?” sorusuna Guiliani’nin cevabı: “Metruk bir bina düşünün. Binanın camlarından biri bile kırık olsa, o camı hemen tamir ettirmezseniz, çok kısa sürede, oradan geçen herkes bir taş atıp, binanın tüm camlarını kırar. Ben ilk cam kırıldığında hemen tamir ettirdim.

Bir elektrik direğinin dibine ya da bir binanın köşesine, biri, bir torba çöp bıraksın. O çöpü hemen oradan kaldırmazsanız, her geçen, çöpünü oraya bırakır ve çok kısa bir sürede dağlar gibi çöp birikir. Ben ilk konan çöp torbasını kaldırttım.

Bir sokağın suç bölgesine dönüşme süreci önce tek bir pencere camının kırılmasıyla başlıyor. Çevreden tepki gelmez ve cam hemen tamir edilmezse, oradan geçenler o bölgede düzeni sağlayan bir otorite olmadığını düşünüyor, diğer camları da kırıyor. Ardından daha büyük suçlar geliyor; bir süre sonra o sokak, polisin giremediği bir mahalleye dönüşüyor.

Bunu anlayan New York polisi, önce küçük suçların peşine düşmüş. Metroya bilet almadan binenleri,apartman girişlerini tuvalet olarak kullananları,kamu malına zarar verenleri, hatta içki şişelerini yola atanları bile yakalayıp haklarında işlem yapmış.
Polis bu kararlılığıyla “Küçük müçük, bizim için hiç fark etmez; bu sokağın, metro istasyonunun veya mahallenin suç üreten bir bölge olmasına izin vermeyeceğiz.” demiş. ‘Kırık Cam Teorisi’ ABD’li suç psikologu Philip Zimbardo’nun 1969′da yaptığı bir deneyden ilham alarak geliştirilmişti.

Zimbardo, suç oranının yüksek olduğu, yoksul Bronx ve daha yüksek yaşam standardına sahip Palo Alto bölgelerine birer 1959 model Oldsmobile bıraktı.
Araçların plakası yoktu, kaputları aralıktı. Ve olup bitenleri gizli kamerayla izledi.
Bronx’taki otomobil üç gün içinde baştan aşağıya yağmalandı. Diğerine ise bir hafta boyunca kimse dokunmadı.
Ardından Zimbardo ile iki öğrencisi ’sağ kalan’ otomobilin yanına gidip çekiçle kelebek camını kırdı. Daha ilk darbe indirilmişti ki çevredeki insanlar (zengin beyazlar) da olaya dahil oldu. Birkaç dakika sonra o otomobil de kullanılmaz hale gelmişti. “Demek ki” diyordu Zimbardo, “ilk camın kırılmasına ya da çevreyi kirleten ilk duvar yazısına izin vermemek gerek. Aksi halde kötü gidişatı engelleyemeyiz.”

http://www.tesbi.net/ sitesinden alınmıştır.

What is the greatest mistake the field of psychology has made?

Focusing for so long on the negatives in human nature, like mental illness, aggression, prejudice and antisocial behavior. Psychologists are optimists who believe that understanding the causal mechanisms in such phenomena they can begin to prevent, modify or change such negative states and behaviors. However, this focus on the Yin prevented most psychologists from recognizing the Yang — the positives about people and human nature. That focus on the negative is being corrected by the Positive Psychology movement, started by U. Penn. Professor Martin Seligman in 1998. Just this weekend that group held the first annual International Positive Psychology Association World Congress in Philadelphia, attended by more than 1,700 people from more than 30 nations. Their focus is recognizing and building human strengths and virtues, and doing so across the school curriculum, in business and the military and more. It is an exciting new field of scientific research, education and application.

Philip Zimbardo: Why ordinary people do evil … or do good

Philip Zimbardo prescribes a healthy take on time

One of the great thrills as an author is when someone you admire agrees to endorse your book. I was incredibly flattered by many endorsements for Be the Hero. One that holds a special place for me is the endorsement I received from Phil Zimbardo.

Zimbardo is best known for having devised and run the Stanford prison experiments, one of the landmark Psychology studies of how people respond to authority.

Having gotten my BA in Psychology Zimbardo was someone I always viewed as a giant of the field. It is with great pride and humility that I share his endorsement for Be the Hero.

“The world needs more heroes. That hero journey can best be started by absorbing the compelling messages in Be The Hero – a must read book for our troubled times.”

—Phil Zimbardo, Ph.D., author The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives.

Optimal Mind
• Past-Positive – High
• Future – Moderately High
• Present-Hedonism – Moderate
• Past-Negative – Low
• Present-Fatalism – Low

Remember clearly all the past positive achievements in your life, have a positive mindset for the future, be in the moment and learn from your surrounding events. Notice past bad experience and use current bad issues in life only as a contrast to what you really want in life. – Rongwen

Credits to Philip Zimbardo & TED

Vorbiţi despre lege, însă  voi sunteţi cei care o încalacă! Vorbiţi despre drepturile omului,  pe care tot voi nu le respectaţi! Vorbiţi de lupta împotriva discriminarii şi tot voi sunteţi cei care pot fii acuzaţi de xenofobie! Sub masca unor oameni responsabili, acţionati imoral in fiecare zi! Şi asta, pentru ca voi deţineţi puterea, iar comportamentul vostru este infuenţat uneori de “Efectul Lucifer” despre care vorbeşte Philip Zimbardo în lucrarea sa “The Lucifer Effect, Understanding How Good People Turn Evil “.
Aveţi libertatea să faceţi ce vreţi, atat timp cât ştiţi ca nu veţi fii traşi la răspundere. Noi însă, privim neputincioşi la acţiunile voastre şi trăim cu speranţa că într-o bună zi se va face dreptate. Dar cum ? Atât timp cât vor exista persoane îndoctrinate, sau persoane care de frică închid ochii la ceea ce văd sau aud! Indignare! Asta citim pe chipul românului de rând!

Cuvintele mele sunt cu siguranţa gloanţe oarbe, asupra unui sistem prea bine înţesat şi însetat după putere! Însa, aşa cum am mai spus-o cândva, libera exprimare e singura ce  ne-a rămas, ca drept fundamental al fiinţei umane!

(p.s. Probabil că, după ce am avut “nesimţirea” să îmi exercit acest drept, voi atrage asupra mea multă antipatie; însă, este riscul pe care mi l-am asumat! Am preferat să mă exprim în legatură cu acest subiect, fără includerea lui întrun context , însă asta să nu te facă să crezi că el nu ar exista !)

Atenţie! Materialul video conţine cuvinte licenţioase !

Dr. Phil Zimbardo has uploaded his video response to the online office hour questions that were posted last week.

My question was based on his writing in “The Lucifer Effect” that any theory of evil must go beyond individual attribution and look at complete systems (he says it’s not about bad apples but rather about bad barrels). I asked “what makes the bad barrel makers make bad barrels?” (well, my question also included a bit more complicated wording about attribution and infinite regression but the idea is encapsulated in the shorter phrase)

his answer is here:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=615467086863&ref=mf

It’s about the first four minutes of the eight minute video.

My summary, hopefully fairly accurate, is here:

Zimbardo starts with the Stanford Prison experimention – as an example to convey how it is possible for people to break other people just with words and a situation of learned helplessness.

Knowing that this is possible, and has been demonstrated, but realizing that it’s not “bad apples” (the prisoners and guards were randomly selected from a group of very normal young men) he says that it has to do with ideology — those who commit evil or cause it to be committed often start out with good core beliefs. E.g. Leaders who say their job is to protect from some outside threat.  But as they take on that role of protector, what are the means to that end? We see that in some cases, it’s torture and genocide. The individual actor is in a social context and we have to understand the system that creates and maintains the situations. Systems are legal, cultural, historical… and the system is where the power is. To create change, individual-focused options like therapy or imprisonment are losing propositions because they don’t change the system.

[my note here, if he had stopped at this point, I would have felt that my question had not bee answered because I still wouldn't have had a sense of how the environments get created]

Zimbardo then spoke of ethics in business as another example, referencing Bernie Madoff  and his particular brand of evil.  This part of Zimbardo’s answer looks at social psychology to help understand ethics. Once again his point is that the individual disposition framework alone doesn’t explain all… we need to understand details about the situation. What is the broader system behind the unethical behaviour? Is the system doing enough to discourage unethical behaviour or does it actually reward unethical behaviour?

[then something gets added that really helps me have an "aha" moment]

Christina Maslach (Zimbardo’s wife) has done research that show that its not overwork, but rather a sense of unfairness that leads to stress and burnout.  Perceived unfairness in the workplace is a mismatch between individual values and corporate values. This leads people to feel freer to engage in unethical behaviour as it somehow can be seen as correcting the mismatch. So Zimbardo’s final point here is that organizations need to take more responsibility to create conditions that do not promote unethical behaviour.

And here is my revised way of thinking about this, having heard Zimbardo’s answer.

- situations (not personal “badness” — there are no “bad apples”) are the reason for evil or unethical behaviours. Individuals act within the constraints of a system (the barrel), and a system, though in one sense created by individuals (the barrel makers), is also prone to embodying a set of values that can be a mismatch with the values of the individuals who exist within it (the barrel doesn’t meet the ‘needs’ of the apples). That’s when the stress of perceived unfairness can kick in, and the individuals may actually act against what their personal values would normally be, in an effort to correct things or reinstate perceived “fairness”.  The barrel makers wanted to make good barrels, but lack of understanding caused them to fail.

And this becomes an “aha” for me as I realize that all of it fits with something I’ve observed for a long time — when the watering hole gets smaller, the animals look at each other differently.

How I see this working is that the unmet needs and the unfairness of a diminishing “watering hole” will lead to stress, burnout and “animals” who stray from their basic values and ethical perspectives. No one wanted to deprive those animals of what they needed and nobody deliberately tampered with watering hole. But an uninformed system inadvertently creates unfairness. In fact it’s incredibly hard to create and maintain safe, fair environments, and often in trying to protect us from something unpleasant, the system (which *is* and *is not* us) generates consequences, perhaps not immediate, that ultimately expose us to things far worse.

So “the system” (a corporation, government, etc.) needs to know more about consequences, needs to understand what will be perceived as unfair and generally needs to be very very smart   — more education, information filtering and critical thinking perhaps…..

The Phil Zimbardo TED talk video (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html) is an excellent resource for anyone who want to understand the psychology of evil, and see how closely it is related to ordinary behaviour, then be inspired by the wonderful message that ordinary people can be heroes.

It inspired me to read his book “The Lucifer Effect” in which (among many other things) Zimbardo looks at the idea that heroic actions are related to an individual’s disposition — and challenges us to think about this differently. He states that anyone can learn to be ready to do something heroic when the situation arises. And he is concerned about the attribution error…. e.g. when societies “believe that dispositions matter more than situations” (p 212 of The Lucifer Effect). If we attribute heroism or evil to some rare and special disposition, we may think these things are not in our repertoire when really most of us seem to have the potential to be either. There are some pretty big implications for education if you take the viewpoint that we can learn to be prepared to do the right thing, resist evil, etc.

Research (e.g. Zimbardo’s, Milgram’s etc.) has shown the incredible power of situations above and beyond disposition and has also shown that de-individualization (mindlessly becoming a role) can lead to accepting or participating in evil. But it’s not about bad apples (individual disposition), it’s more about bad barrels and bad barrel makers. But because it can be so difficult to identify when you’re in a “bad barrel” and correct the situation, especially when those around you seem to comply, we need to educate people to be aware of moments that conflict with their values and react appropriately. A bit of this conversation has taken place on my Ning site (http://echoesfromthesquare.ning.com) which includes comments by Matt Langdon, whose work with Phil Zimbardo has led to a Hero’s Workshop curriculum. http://heroworkshop.wordpress.com/.  I’d love these conversations to go further with more voices added (here or on the Ning site).

One question that I have to wonder about is what makes the bad barrel makers make bad barrels? Sort of a timeless question…. and, as Jeff Severns Guntzel found out and shares in his analysis of Hitler’s Private Library  http://www.utne.com/GreatWriting/Hitlers-private-library/guntzel.aspx, not an easy question to answer.