How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress

Appendix

Transforming the Enemy

Our desires shape the data our brains generate. If we decide someone is a jerk, our brains cooperate and filter out facts that disagree with our prejudice. We selectively filter memories and perceptions that support our beliefs about someone, or something, even if we believe we are reviewing all of the pertinent details.

Thomas Kuhn concluded in The Nature of Scientific Revolution that even scientists don’t “see” data that are inconsistent with current beliefs about their field of study. Max Planck, a physicist, wrote, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar ...