Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the WorstPeople—especially Americans—are by and large optimists. They're much better at imagining best-case scenarios (I could win the lottery!) than worst-case scenarios (A hurricane could destroy my neighborhood!). This is true not just of their approach to imagining the future, but of their memories as well: people are better able to describe the best moments of their lives than they are the worst. “In Never Saw It Coming, Karen Cerulo argues that in American society there is a ‘positive symmetry,’ a tendency to focus on and exaggerate the best, the winner, the most optimistic outcome and outlook. Thus, the conceptions of the worst are underdeveloped and elided. Naturally, as she masterfully outlines, there are dramatic consequences to this characterological inability to imagine and prepare for the worst, as the failure to heed memos leading up to both the 9/11 and NASA Challenger disasters, for instance, so painfully reminded us.”--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Swarthmore College “Katrina, 9/11, and the War in Iraq—all demonstrate the costliness of failing to anticipate worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming explains why it is so hard to do so: adaptive behavior hard-wired into human cognition is complemented and reinforced by cultural practices, which are in turn institutionalized in the rules and structures of formal organizations. But Karen Cerulo doesn’t just diagnose the problem; she uses case studies of settings in which people effectively anticipate and deal with potential disaster to describe structural solutions to the chronic dilemmas she describes so well. Never Saw It Coming is a powerful contribution to the emerging fields of cognitive and moral sociology.”--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University |
From inside the book
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... center of a conceptual category—the ideal prototype—and works its way outward. If an observation lacks all of the concept's critical attributes, the brain will likely exclude that observation from membership in the category. If the ...
... Center in 1993 with a truck bomb, and the guy who did it tells us he had also wanted to slam a plane into the CIA, but we still couldn't imagine some- one doing just that to the Twin Towers on 9/11.8 A failure of imagination—it was an ...
... center of her father's visual field : “ No , he was like , ' Here's 360 bucks . Go have fun . ' ” Another mother , after viewing a tape of her nearly naked and very drunk daughter , was asked for her reactions : mother : I don't approve ...
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Contents
1 | |
17 | |
3 Practicing Positive Asymmetry | 72 |
4 Positive Asymmetry and the Subjective Side of Scientific Measurement | 122 |
5 Being Labeled the Worst Real in Its Consequences? | 139 |
6 Exceptions to the Rule | 164 |
7 Emancipating Structures and Cognitive Styles | 193 |
8 Can Symmetrical Vision Be Achieved? | 233 |
Acknowledgments | 344 |
1 Whats the Worst That Could Happen? | 1 |
2 The Breadth and Scope of Positive Asymmetry | 17 |
3 Practicing Positive Asymmetry | 72 |
4 Positive Asymmetry and the Subjective Side of Scientific Measurement | 122 |
5 Being Labeled the Worst Real in Its Consequences? | 139 |
6 Exceptions to the Rule | 164 |
7 Emancipating Structures and Cognitive Styles | 193 |
Notes | 245 |
References | 279 |
Index | 315 |
Contents | 342 |
8 Can Symmetrical Vision Be Achieved? | 233 |
Notes | 245 |
References | 279 |
Index | 315 |
Other editions - View all
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo Limited preview - 2008 |
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo No preview available - 2006 |
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst Karen A. Cerulo No preview available - 2006 |