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In browsing through the “people to watch” I came across someone I find inspiring. This someone is 25 year old Tammy Tibbetts who was featured in Meet The Change Generation. She founded She’s The First in 2009, bringing together ideas and experimenting with creative ways to raise money. This money is used to fund girls in the developing worlds be the first in their family to graduate.
I am supremely interested in the manner psychology affects the way that we construe situations and events. In this realm, my primary area of interest is social psychology, a part of psychology that causes more problems in the business-world than solutions. Social psychology focuses on the psychological impacts that a group has on one individual. Within this domain, there are many phenomena that contribute to the material that we cover, but I will focus on a couple core theories that directly relate to our cases thus far. These phenomena are obedience, groupthink, and deindividuation.
A psychological concept that is relevant to Enron’s demise is obedience. Obedience is represented by one’s willingness to disobey his or her personal values when in the presence of an authority figure asking him or her to do so. Such a phenomenon occurs even when there will be no repercussion to the individual if he or she does not comply with the authority’s demands. Stanley Milgram portrayed this concept in action by performing a study in which a subject was asked to shock a confederate of the experiment whenever this confederate answered a question incorrectly. The machine that the subjects used to shock the confederate counted up in 15 volt increments to 450 volts, past where the label above the voltages indicate a “Danger: Severe Shock” sign. As the confederate continuously got answers wrong, the subject was told to punish him incrementally by doling out higher, more dangerous shocks. Despite the labels above the voltage, cries from the confederate, and the subject’s own inhibitions, twenty-six out of forty subjects continued with the experiment until the highest shock was given to the confederate. Such an example shows the extent to which an authority figure controls underlings, regardless of their respective values and beliefs. This experiment is shown below: Continue reading
After skimming through many successful young entrepreneurs, Christy Liu caught my eye. According to Fast Company, Liu is one of eleven that is a part of the change generation. Liu is a cofounder of the travel site Wanderfly (check it out!). Traveling is something that I wished I had the time and money to do more often. After checking out the site, I was immediately interested in knowing more since the site offered me ways to budget the future traveling that I want to do.
Wanderfly is designed to plan travel for people that are on a budget. The site is very simple and organized, unlike many of its competitors, and allows a user to find a trip that meets many of their requirements. The user of the site will fill in where they want to leave from, where they want to go, what interests them (landmarks, nightlife, luxury, adventure, entertainment, family, watersports, eco, romance, shopping, outdoors, islands, beach, singles, history, food, art, and extreme), their budget per person, when they want to travel, and for how many days. After filling in their information, the traveler will be presented with multiple trip options. Each option includes a description of the place, pictures, things to do there, and hotels and flights that can be booked immediately. Continue reading
Planet Money Podcast where CDS are “invented” by JP Morgan, complete with fru-fru cocktails. Newsweek article on same topic.
History Timeline of Credit Defaults
More Enron Resources (on Pearltrees, an online sharing tool).
Even More (Kept on Diigo, a tool I used more and has more stuff, both good and random).
business government society 2 