Sommelier's Social Intelligence

Help Wanted: Must Love Wine, Compassion a Plus

by Eric Asimov, 11/22/2006

“It’s not just really talented, well-educated, eloquent people who are passionate about wine,” said John Ragan, the wine director at Eleven Madison Park in New York, “but also warm, unpretentious people who can convey that passion without uncomfortability. They’re both really different skill sets.”

What separates a barely competent sommelier from a great sommelier, Mr. Johnnes said, is his intuition as much as his knowledge. “It’s connecting with people,” he said, “being a bit of a psychoanalyst, knowing what their budget is, what they like.”

But too many sommeliers try to educate the world about what they like, or recite all they know, like a rock guitar soloist who doesn’t know how to leave space between the notes.

It’s a fine line between offering just enough intrigue to build interest in a new and unusual wine, and becoming a crashing bore.

“How do you get people who just don’t spout off what they know, the bookish side of wine?” Ms. Singh said. “You can memorize the ‘Oxford Companion to Wine,’ but do you have the personal skills?”

Moral Grammar

Building on Noam Chomsky's universal language theory, Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has proposed that people are born with a neuralogically based moral grammar. Hauser says that this morality resulted from the survival edge that it provided. It is an example of "group selection and is thought to have emerged during the hunter-gatherer phase of human development.

Examples of innate moral grammar are the "trolley problems" identified by moral philosophers

Suppose you are standing by a railroad track. Ahead, in a deep cutting from which no escape is possible, five people are walking on the track. You hear a train approaching. Beside you is a lever with which you can switch the train to a sidetrack. One person is walking on the sidetrack. Is it O.K. to pull the lever and save the five people, though one will die?

Most people say it is.

Assume now you are on a bridge overlooking the track. Ahead, five people on the track are at risk. You can save them by throwing down a heavy object into the path of the approaching train. One is available beside you, in the form of a fat man. Is it O.K. to push him to save the five?

Most people say no, although lives saved and lost are the same as in the first problem.

The distinction is refered to as foreseen/intended. And it is thought to be innate and not learned because most people can't articulate it.

Other examples of moral grammar:

• It is more acceptable to kill animals than people.
• Events that happen close to us carry more weight than events that occur in a distant place.
• Altruism within the group.
• Fairness.

People are generally unaware of this process because the mind is adept at coming up with plausible rationalizations for why it arrived at a decision generated subconsciously.

Link: NYT

Bob Sutton: Brilliant But Cruel

Bob Sutton: Brilliant But Cruel: "if you look at the evidence on the kind of people that we see as powerful and intelligent, that –- independently of how smart a person actually is –- when they act like an asshole, they are seen as smarter. This “Brilliant but Cruel” effect was demonstrated in a study by Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile. She did a controlled experiment with book reviews; some reviews were nasty and others were nice. Amabile found that negative and unkind reviewers were seen as less likeable but more intelligent, competent, and expert than those who expressed the same messages in kinder and gentler ways. She summarized her findings by noting, “Only pessimism sounds profound. Optimism sounds superficial.”"

"So, if you want people to think you are smart, apparently you can feed their stereotypes by demeaning others. In Barash’s case, the attack might have been justified, but there are other times when people turn cruel for no good reason, except perhaps for personal gain. I should also warn you that although unleashing your inner asshole may help persuade people of your intellectual superiority, we also show in The Knowing-Doing Gap and Hard Facts that the climate of fear created by such nastiness undermines team and organizational effectiveness. Potential victims become afraid to try (or even mention) new ideas and hesitate to report mistakes or problems out of fear that the resulting anger and humiliation will be aimed at them."