The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

We all fall into this pattern. We fish for affirmation. We center our needs, nudging away the needs of others. We seek what activists call “cookies,” acknowledgments of our good intentions, even when the impact is costly to the cookie giver.

When we feel guilt, we feel as if “I did something wrong”; it is less about the self and more about the behavior.

‘This contest is not for me’ or ‘They’re not gonna get my perspective.’”

I am not always the person I mean to be,

while they may be big names, they were not necessarily big draws for everyone, or big names everyone could see themselves in.

America is not always the country it means to be.

Bounded ethicality is the psychology of “good-ish” people. Good-ish people are sometimes good and sometimes not, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, like all of us. This model of bounded ethicality challenges ways of thinking and talking in which you are either a good person or not, a racist or not, an unethical human or not. We argue that t

organizational scholar Debra Meyerson on “tempered radicals.” Tempered radicals are insiders in organizations who do not present as rebels and are often successful in their jobs. They are catalysts for change by challenging the status quo in small, cautious ways.

Sarah was processing her self-threat while Gita was feeling seen and heard.