What then does it mean to be whole-headed as well as whole-hearted. I have suggested in my essay on Carol Gilligan (Bergquist, 2023c) that it is partially a matter of accepting multiple ways in which emotions are expressed and invitation to connect are delivered. I built on Gilligan’s focus on voice when identifying one mode of expressing emotions and inviting connections. I have also suggested that sometimes actions can speak “louder than words”—especially for men. An offer to help change a tire or bake a cake can convey love just as much as can a statement that “I love you.”
We can observe “true” emotions being exhibited at a football game just as we can find that someone really does have emotions when they express sadness at their son leaving for college. We need to be observant of and appreciative of all forms of emotion. We must similarly accept an offer to take our dog for a walk when we are on a business trip as an invitation to connect just as much as we accept a statement that “I want to work with you on this project” or “I don’t agree with you but still want to meet every week to talk about our disagreements.”
Kahneman and Tversky: What Did They Teach Us?
We can look beyond the Bach family, Abaham Lincoln and Carol Gilligan to learn about ways in which to work with someone who in many ways is quite different from us. Whole-hearted and whole-headed connections, despite personal differences, are exemplified in the productive and revolutionary relationship that existed between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (two of the founders of the emerging field of behavioral economics).
Deep connection in the midst of diverse styles was fully evident in the insight-creating conversations of Tversky and Kahneman. Though neither Tversky or Kahneman were economists, they won the Nobel Prize for Economics having impacted in a major way on the focus of economic analysis. They brought psychological perspectives to bear on the “economic” decisions being made by consumers, psychological diagnosticians, politicians and a wide range of other people.
It is hard to imagine two human beings who were more different from one another than Twersky and Kahneman. One of them truly came from Mars and the other from Venus. Michael Lewis (2017) described their remarkable working relationship midst personal differences in The Undoing Project. Kahneman was “a nervous scholar” who always doubted the value of his own contributions, whereas Tversky was a confident, self-assured risk-taker.
Furthermore, their differences were not kept in the shadows. There were on full display in the hollering that took place when they were working on a new essay. However, this hollering was inevitably accompanied by laughter. Humor (especially self-humor) has a way of making the hollering more tolerable. (Lewis, p. 154, p. 158) It was a bit like Sid Caser’s writing room – though probably there was a higher proportion of laughter than hollering when Tversky and Kahneman got together.
Appreciation Midst Status Concerns
Along with laughter (and hollering) there was shared appreciation. Much as in the case of Spectrum analysis there were many moments when one of these two behavioral economists acknowledged and built on the strengths of the other person’s ideas. Lewis (2017, p. 180) reported this observation made by Kahneman: “I would say something and Amos [Tversky] would understand it. When one of us would say something that was off the wall, the other would search for the virtue in it. We would finish each others’ sentences and frequently did. But we also kept surprising each other.”
