Let's have a real dialogue about the "perspective problem"


Speaker


Abstract

During our time together, I would like to have a real dialogue about some aspects of what I generally call “the perspective problem”. To be clear, I will *not* give a typical lecture talk, but rather will simply spend a couple minutes teeing up two problems and associated questions for us to collectively discuss. The first question is, “How should we deal with the perspective problem in research? For examples, what should we do about the fact that meta-analyses on LMX suggest less than 10% overlap in a boss and subordinate's view on their relationship, or that courage from one person's perspective is often insubordination or stupidity or disloyalty to others. It seems to me that we mostly just ignore this in research by using one person's perspective in measurement. How can we do better theoretically and empirically? The second question is, “How can we deal most effectively with the incredible difficulty our students have in taking perspective in a meaningful way? What specific techniques (based on insights from research, ideally) can and should we be using to help students do more than argue unproductively in increasingly polarized ways about important issues?