Not too long ago, I learned from reading Malcolm Gladwell about the importance of a Canadian boy's birthdate to his likely success as an adolescent and even professional hockey player. This morning, I'm back because I've recently learned a completely different, yet compelling, reason why some hockey teams bring home the stainless Stanleys and others don't. And, as hockey season officially kicked off recently, it felt like a timely topic.
Oh yes, and, as with the Malcolm piece, there may be some political implications to be drawn from this particular insight as well.
Please join me for the Jen Ratio of Hockey below the fold.
Dacher Keltner
Berkeley professer, Dacher Keltner, has published a book. The title of this book is Born To Be Good. In it, he introduces the concept of the Jen Ratio.
Now, Professor Keltner was once a post-doc researcher studying with Paul Ekman. Dr. Ekman is famous for his studies of the universality of human expressions of emotion, on which are based both the evening drama Lie To Me and the very successful Secret Service training that empowers its agents to be among the best people in the world at determining when people are lying to them. Merely from watching them. No machines, no sodium pentothal, just a heightened awareness and familiarity with human emotion and its expression.
The Jen Ratio
Dr. Keltner combines a professional history in western science and a family history including appreciation of Confucianism in creating the innovative Jen Ratio. This is interpretable in different ways, one of them is as an attempt to measure the difference between the number of positive emotional incidents and negative ones in a person, group, or nation's life. Simply place the number of positive acts or emotional incidents in the numerator position, the number of negative ones below it in the denominator position, and divide good by bad. The result is the Jen Ratio.
If, at the grocery store, I see someone help someone else reach something on the top shelf, another person pick up a box someone else dropped, and the cashier walk someone to the location of a mystery item rather than just telling her "It's in aisle 3," that's a numerator of 3. If on the way home someone is seen running a red light and another person fails to hold a door for the elderly lady entering behind him, that's a denominator of 2. The Jen Ratio, 3 divided by 2, is 1.5. Keltner gives a counterbalanced example of violent video games where tens if not dozens (or, in my experience) hundreds of negative moments occur with 0 positive ones. That's a Jen Ratio of 0, and and far less desirable than 1.5.
An Even Greater Good
But, I mentioned that the Jen Ratio can also be interpreted in other ways. Ways, which I think, are far more important and valuable both to us as individuals and as members of communities.
Jen, as Keltner points out on his blog linked to above, is the Confucian concept that a person:
"wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others,” and “brings the good things of others to completion and does not bring the bad things of others to completion.”
I absolutely love this idea of bringing "the good things of others to completion." What a powerful, even transformative thought. If the Jen Ratio is the number of these moments compared to the number of the other (bringing bad things of others to fruition) kind, I'm all for building as positive and high a Jen Ratio as possible.
Hockey Time
You Devils fans and Flyers fans and Rangers' types have not read this long in vain. Just this past week I read an article in Wired magazine (well, their website), that discussed the importance of certain team-based elements in the success of hockey coach Peter Laviolette. The author, Bret Hedican, details his coach's use of ropes courses to build team communication and interdependence in 2006 when he coached Hedican and others to a Stanley Cup win.
In October, 2009, Philadelphia hired the ropes course-coach. Except, instead of stringing his players up in the trees, he brought them and their families together with food and malted hops and barley and had them learn about each other by spending time together. It turned out they didn't each others' wives' names, or how many children their teammates had. Laviolette began building team cohesion and chemistry not by taking these men away somewhere for them to learn to depend on one another, but by bringing their families together, by putting a larger community in access to itself. By letting a little Confucian Jen grow from a few purposeful seedlings.
After winning only 2 of the first 10 games after their new coach moved into his office, the Flyers, for those who don't remember or didn't know, finished as Stanley Cup runners up to champions Chicago. They broke more than a few records and team-bests along the way.
What I Wish Paladino and Other Politicians Would Learn From This
One thing Professor Keltner does not flesh out to my satisfaction in his book is why so many seem to find success increasing the bad things some people do to others, and increasing the presence of negative emotions like hate, fear, and anger in other people and in society in general. His book is titled "Born To Be Good" but I also wonder about those who appear to me to be "Hellbent on Fomenting Bad."
While Mr. Paladino is off giving speeches legitimizing and bringing out the intolerance, misunderstanding, and intentional misrepresentation of entire categories of his neighbors, there are others out there doing their best to balance the Jen Ratio by reminding not just gay adolescents, but all teens, that It Gets Better.
Putting more negativity into the world is not what makes the world better.
What I Have Learned From This
I consider it my personal responsibility to put as many positive Jen events in the world as possible. If I'm not willing to be adding digits to the numerator, in as many different ways as I can think of and am able to do, then I'm partially responsible for allowing the Jen Ratio around me to possibly tilt towards the Paladinos and Becks and Angles in the world.
I love the idea of bringing the good things of others to completion. Here are some specific groups working to do just that:
Donors Choose
The Trevor Project
Whatever It Takes (Athens, GA)
If you know of others, please link them in the comments. If you see something interesting to you, please click. If you're able, please, in whatever way works for you, think of the Jen Ratio in your life today, and what you can do to tip it towards a positive balance.
Thanks for reading.
TWLTW
- There have been 8 Medals of Honor awarded in Afghanistan since the inception of that war 9 years ago. 7 of them have been awarded posthumously.
- In addition to Dr. Ekman's lie-telling detection training by reading emotional micro-expressions, new research also shows that asking people to draw pictures of the story they're telling can give away those who lie from those who tell the truth. Details here.
- I know this is a short list this morning, and there are actually others, so I think I'll put them in the comments and publish rather than hold this up any longer...:-}
What Did You Learn This Week?