Social Dilemmas and the Science of Cooperation

Check out the baseline of the handwriting. Besides collecting several samples, you will need to go a step further by making sure they're not written on lined sheets. Often, folks won't write in a straight line if there are no lines on the paper. Using a ruler-straight across your collection of handwriting samples, you can compare the angle of each written sentence. According to graphologists, writing upward shows a happy, upbeat, optimistic mood. Writing downward could mean fatigue or plain discouragement. If the writing is wavy, meaning up and down, it could mean the writer is uncertain, unstable, or unskilled. Notice the letter sizes. When the writer uses small letters, it might mean they are introverted, reclusive, or thrifty. Large letters imply an outgoing, friendly, and extroverted nature. I then have to be able to wean off, to separate myself from this relationship and make my energy available to another patient. I think the art is not how not to get involved, but how to get deeply involved and be able to switch gears again. I feel sad when they die, but not depressed. Would you please tell us how you feel about your own death; How long did it take for the stage of acceptance and living each day as it comes to become a part of your own personal attitude and that of your family? I think this takes years. I grew up in Switzerland, which is a much less death-denying society so that I was perhaps a little bit ahead. Working with dying patients gradually eliminates your own fear of death, and without your conscious awareness you become much more like your dying patients in their last stage of acceptance. Exactly when this happened is very hard to evaluate, but I'm sure it took me years of working with dying patients. If you feel like crying when you are with a dying patient, do you cry with them, or how do you respond?

In contrast, the more differences are based on categories not related to the task at hand or on deeply held values, the more diversity is expected to hurt team performance. Of course, variables can interact in many different ways and correcting for most of them is challenging. In certain fields, these differences can even prove insurmountable. Based on data from more than 2,000 management teams from several different organizations in the equity mutual fund industry in the United States from 1996 to 2003, differences indeed hurt team performance: homogenous teams significantly outperformed mixed-sex teams. Every team's job was to manage an equity fund, with expectations clearly defined and performance easily measurable based on fund returns. High fund performance was rewarded by compensation and promotion. Many teams worked together for several years, optimizing team performance and developing relationships. With only about 10 percent of fund managers being female at the time of the study, homogeneity basically meant all-male teams. Only 2 percent of the teams consisted of women only. With such little variation, the researchers had to measure gender diversity with a dummy variable that took the value of one if the teams consisted of men and women, and zero if they were exclusively male or (much more rarely) exclusively female. Look at the space between words and letters. If the handwriting makes use of all the space it can, keeping things close together, then graphologists say the writer could be introverted or conscious about themselves. If they drag out the letters, it means they're independent and generous. As for the gaps between words, the closer they are, the more the writer likes crowds. Larger gaps apparently mean they have organized and clear thoughts. Pay attention to the way the letters connect. Graphologists are of the opinion there is a wealth of information to be gleaned from the way a writer connects their letters. The trouble is, there are so many ways people write cursive, so it's hard to conclude on that. However, here are things which graphologists say: Writers who use garlands (curves shaped like cups, open on the top) are warm and strong; Another Way to Analyze Handwriting

I have had many tears with many of my dying patients and I'm not ashamed of them, nor do I feel that this is not professional. How has this work with dying people affected you? It has made my life much more meaningful and much richer. How do you, if you do, protect yourself emotionally in your relationships with terminally ill patients? I dare to get emotionally involved with them. This saves me the trouble of using half of my energy to cover up my feelings. With all your background, can you say that you are willing to accept your own death? How do you emotionally cope with the loss of patients you have grown close to? You say goodbye to them knowing that this is the last goodbye, as you learn to say goodbye to people at the railroad station or an airport when you know that they are going far away and you don't know for how long or if you will ever see them again. When I first found out about my terminal illness I realized that my future had been taken away from me. Furthermore, if a team was diverse, in almost all cases female managers constituted a small minority of a team. In this heavily skewed micro- and macro-environment, the study showed that heterogeneity did not pay. Organizations pondering how to best create teams should focus on critical mass. A seminal paper that my colleague Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School wrote in 1977 suggests that one of the key factors determining team performance is the relative share of people from different demographic categories represented, or a group's critical mass. Having studied American corporations in the 1970s, she observed that the relative numbers of socially and culturally different people in a group were critical in shaping interaction dynamics in group life. In groups dominated by one social type, as in the mutual fund industry, members of the minority group are likely to be treated as tokens among their peers. Their minority status makes them visible and easily reduced to their demographic characteristics. Regarded as symbolic representatives of their social category, they may be unable to fully contribute their complementary expertise. Many of you have likely experienced what it feels like to be the obvious outlier in a group, perhaps due to your sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexual or political orientation. The Hispanic accountant is very often considered the spokesperson for Hispanics rather than the expert in accounting and the Chinese professor of computer science teaching in the United States becomes the go-to person on all things Chinese.

Graphology isn't the only way to study handwriting. You can also make use of forensic document analysis, which is often mistaken for graphology. With this method, you can sometimes get hints about the person's sex, age, and other things like that, but it's not about figuring out their personality. What it's used for is to figure out forgery cases and compare handwriting with things like ransom notes or other evidence. You must get all the samples you need voluntarily, with the same ink and the same paper. When you're practicing your analysis, you'll need your friends to write out the same, long text. Let them write it at least two times on two pieces of paper. When you're done collecting them, shuffle them together, and then you can go ahead with the methods that follow to match each pair accurately. Forensic Document Analysis in Practice Criminal investigators will use no less than three samples when dealing with a full letter, or they will use over 20 samples if they're working with a signature. Would you have similar feelings? I am sure that most of my patients who realized for the first time that they had a terminal illness had a feeling of agony and anguish and viewed it as a deprivation of their future. This is a very normal reaction and usually does not last long. Then they begin to concentrate on the now and the here and begin to live more fully, with more awareness, more depth, and more intensity every day because they do not have much of a future. A few years ago I would have reacted the same way. Deep down do you believe that you are immortal? I believe that our bodies die but the spirit or soul is immortal. How is your program funded? Would you always recommend that death and dying services be without charge to the patient? My programs are not funded.

Tokenism of this sort is uncomfortable and can easily undermine the group member's credibility. Differences tend to be stressed, sometimes compelling the token member to adopt the majority's style and opinions. In addition, tokens may feel the need to overachieve to prove their worth. What often is referred to as the queen bee syndrome, describing the lonely woman at the top, can be the result. Rather than pave the way for those who follow them, token members look up to their majority peers, and assimilate and distance themselves from new entrants of their own social category. This seems particularly true for first-generation women in counterstereotypical roles. In more balanced groups, stereotypes lose their importance and minority members are regarded as individuals rather than just token representatives. While the exact tipping point from scarcity to balance is hard to determine, it appears as if equal representation is not required to change experiences and team performance. Many argue that a critical mass of one-third in relative terms and at least three in absolute numbers is required to move groups from being haunted by the dynamics of social categorization to being able to seize the benefits of diversity. A decade after Rosabeth Moss Kanter's article, the political scientist Drude Dahlerup applied critical mass theory to politics. Do the same. Begin by looking for the differences among the letters. It's often a rookie mistake to start off looking for similarities, and then assume that it's the same writer without carrying out any further investigation. So, your first task is to look for all how the letters are different before you move on to looking for similarities. Check out the baseline alignment by using the paper's line or a ruler under the writing when working with unlined paper. Some writers write below the line, while others write above. Some keep it level throughout, while others are up and down. Track the space between each letter. This is the most objective way to make your comparisons. You'll need a ruler with a millimeter measure so that you can measure how much space is between words and letters.