Influencers of History: Zeitgeist Vs Great Man Theory/ Situationism Vs Trait Approach

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NGOs and other Associations

• The Zeitgeist Movement - http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/
  • Singapore Chapter - https://tzmsg.org/

Concepts of Zeitgeist and Great Man Theory In Philosophy

Examples and Applications of Zeitgeist and Great Man Theory

In Leadership

Psychological Approach: Situationism (Zeitgeist) Vs Trait Approach (Great Man Theory)

The Interactional Approach to Leadership

• Leadership is the interaction between the mixing of personality traists and the situation.
• Kurt Lewin's B=f(P,E)
  • B is Behaviour
  • P is Person
  • E is environment

In Psychology

• Errors of illusion are not readily apparent: the shared beliefs and assumptions of a particular era that support them come from the zeitgeist.
  • Henry H. Goddard and Lewis Terman:
    • 20th century consensus on existing psychology tests adequately measured basic intelligence in diverse groups of people. Because of the zeitgeist, the cross-cultural validity of existing tests was not questioned.
    • The more recent consensus is that "culture-fair" tests need to be developed
• Failure to question research findings that agree with prevailing political and philosophical ideology
  • A representation of the effects of the zeitgeist
• different models and metaphors chosen to describe behavior and consciousness.
  • The zeitgeist does not always have negative effects. It can stimulate new ideas and creative solutions to problems.
• Theory of Evolution
  • If Charles Darwin had not lived, his theory of evolution would still have been published as Alfred Wallace, had come to almost exactly the same theory as Darwin concerning natural selection.
  • They jointly presented their idea to the public. If Darwin had not lived there still would have been advocates for evolution produced simply by the zeitgeist of the time period and the spurring of new thoughts and ideas outside of the usual biblical explanations for differential species existence. The zeitgeist of the time shows that natural selection would still have been introduced to the public.
• The zeitgeist of the 1920s on logical positivism.
  • Great men of that time were able to impact psychology, such as Watson, Tolman, and Guthrie.
  • their work on behavioral psychology was able to work against eugenics as Before this time behavioral psychology was not able to impact the field since it did not fit with the spirit of the times.
  • For example, Twitmeyer wrote a paper on knee-jerk in 1902, but it came too early to have the impact it deserved.[6]
• B F Skinner being unseated during the cognitive revolution.
  • The zeitgeist was changing during this time, people wanted to show more interest in humans, and more people were becoming interested in personality psychology. However, in the 1950s his new experimental approach to psychology using inductive reasoning and descriptive behaviorism was seen as novel and practical. Especially in contrast with psychoanalysts, whose assertions and interpretations were largely immune to rigorous, empirical inquiry, thus making validation a rather problematic task.[6]

In Business

• Useful in understanding the emergence of industries, simultaneous invention and evaluating the relative value of innovations.
  • Malcolm Gladwell: Book: "Outliers" -
    • entrepreneurs who succeeded often share similar characteristics—early personal or significant exposure to knowledge and skills in the early stages of a nascent industry.
    • timing of involvement in an industry and often in sports as well affected the probability of success.
  • Peter Thiel, Alistair Davidson, Mac Levchin, Nicholas G. Carr, Vinod Khosla:
    • In Silicon Valley, much of the current (2014) innovation has been shaped by easy access to the Internet, open source software, component technologies for both hardware and software (e.g., software libraries, SaaS), and the ability to reach narrow markets across a global market.
    • Peter Thiel has commented: "There is so much incrementalism now."[8]
  • In a zeitgeist market, the number of new entrants is high, differentiation in high value products (the strongest predictor of new product success) is more difficult to achieve, and business models emphasizing service and solution over product and process will enhance success.
    • Examples include innovation in product experience, legal rights and bundling, privacy rights, and agency (where businesses act on behalf of customers)

OUTLINES

The Zeitgeist Movement

http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/

• Action
  • Chapters
  • Toolkit
  • Events/ ZDay/ ZFest/ Calendar
• Education: Orientation/ Press Releases/ Radio Show/ Blog/ Audio Video/ News Watch

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory