![]() Nerdish excitement and the ability to focus is esssential to scholarship, but the behaviour which can result is easily misinterpreted as intense, abstract and strange, even by other nerds. If this was ever true, I don’t think it is anymore. People with an impaired ability to form coherent theories of mind, and the emotional states that go with it, are called ‘autistic’ and considered to have a profound disability.Īcademics are famous (or infamous) for being emotionally stunted. Theory of mind is based, in part, on the ability to experience empathy, a ‘fellow feeling’, where we feel in our body what we imagine others to be feeling in theirs. Theory of mind enables us to understand and predict how a person will react to us in literally split second increments. Emotions help us to work with other people – or not.Įmotions are key to being able to form ‘a theory of mind’. For instance, interest, curiosity, boredom and similar emotions help inform what and how we read. There are many emotions involved in the way we work as scholars, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. Why do I offer the key party as an analogy for research collaborations? We know that building good research collaborations is hard but, sometimes, I think we don’t give enough attention to how difficult it actually is, in an emotional sense. Later (presumably after large amounts of booze and whatever else), the other partner selects a random set of keys from the bowl and goes home with the person who owns them to…engage in certain activities.Īnyway, we’re all adults here so I don’t have to spell it out for you. ![]() One of the partners leaves their car keys in a bowl. ![]() Couples are invited to attend a party with a bunch of other couples. Stay with me here, because I think the swingers’ key party has a lot to tell us about why some research collaborations can go so terribly wrong. A key party, in case you missed this piece of 70s pop culture, was a way for suburban couples to engage in sexual experimentation, particularly swinging. The 1997 movie The Ice Storm (which I remember being rather depressing) depicts a 1970s ‘key party’. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |