One Sunday (October 23, 2016), I was glancing through the Los Angeles Times and came upon an article by Robert Cialdini, a behavioral scientist and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion published more than thirty years ago. He has published a new book entitled, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to [Read More]
Once again, The Economist published an interesting study on “why posh people spend less time noticing others.” In an article entitled “Your Class determines how you look [sic] your fellow creatures” in the science and technology section of the October 11, 2016 issue, the unnamed author recounts the experiments of [Read More]
I attended the California State Bar Conference a few weeks ago. One of the panels, entitled Ten Common Mistakes in Mediation and How to Avoid Them, was presented by several speakers including Steve Mehta and Doug Noll. Both Messrs. Mehta and Noll discussed the neuroscience/ psychology involved in what it [Read More]
In March 2012, I posted a blog about “restorative justice” after reading a concise 65-page book entitled, “The Little Book of Restorative Justice” by Howard Zehr with Ali Gohar (Good Books 2002). In this tome, the author emphasizes that “restorative justice” is not about forgiveness or reconciliation nor is it mediation [Read More]
I stumbled across an article in LiveScience.com which referred me to the actual article on theconversation.com entitled “Freaks, geeks, norms and mores: why people use the status quo as a moral compass” by Christina Tworek, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The article discusses a series [Read More]
I read an article today in the New York Times that I cannot get out of my mind. Entitled “A Rabbi’s Enduring Sermon on Living Your Last Five Minutes” by Samuel G. Freedman (October 1, 2016), it is about Rabbi Kenneth Berger delivering a sermon on Yom Kippur in 1986 [Read More]
The California Law Revision Commission met once again on September 22, 2016 to discuss its Study K-402- Relationship Between Mediation Confidentiality and Attorney Malpractice and Other Misconduct. At its prior meeting, the Commission (or CLRC) requested Barbara Gaal, Chief Deputy Counsel to address the issue of requiring a certification on [Read More]
Recently (as part of a book club), I read The Psychology of Conflict by Raul Randolph (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London 2016) who is a barrister and mediator. His approach is to use existentialism as the vehicle through which to discuss the psychological aspects of mediation. Although some participants of mediation [Read More]
