100. Dolly Chugh – Looking Back to Move Forward

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“There’s a relationship between psychology and history, how the mind works and how it perceives things that have happened in the past.” — Dolly Chugh

“Nostalgia is a specific form of history. It’s a sentimental personal form of history…that gives us a sense of belonging and that feels good, there’s nothing wrong with that…The challenge, however, when we think about a country that has massive racial disparities on almost every meaningful outcome, health, economic, education, housing, …the problem is, if our nostalgic view of the past limits our ability to understand where those disparities are coming from, it will limit our ability to address them today and fix them tomorrow.” — Dolly Chugh

Guest Bio:

Dolly Chugh (she/her, hear my name) is a social psychologist and management professor at the New York University Stern School of Business where she teaches MBA courses in leadership and management. Dolly is well-known for her teaching and facilitation skills. She was one of six professors chosen from thousands at New York University to receive the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020 and one of five to receive the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Award in 2013.

Dolly’s research focuses on “bounded ethicality,” which she describes as the “psychology of good people.” Her work has been published in the leading psychology, economics, and management journals, and cited by many books and authors. She has been named an SPSP Fellow, received the Academy of Management Best Paper award, been named one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics by Ethisphere Magazine, and received many other research honors.

Her first book, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias (HarperCollins, 2018), has received rave praise from Adam Grant, Angela Duckworth, Liz Wiseman, Billie Jean King, and many others. It has been covered on The TODAY Show, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, the 10% Happier Podcast, the goop Podcast, NPR, and other media outlets.

Dolly’s TED Talk was named one of the 25 Most Popular TED Talks of 2018 and currently has almost 5 million views. Recently, she launched the popular newsletter Dear Good People, a free monthly email offering bite-sized, evidence-based, zeitgeisty tips on how to be the inclusive person you mean to be. Her next book, A More Just Future: Psychological Tools for Reckoning with our Past and Driving Social Change, will be released by Simon & Schuster in October 2022.

Prior to becoming an academic, Dolly worked at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Sibson and Company, Scholastic, and Time Inc. Dolly attended Cornell University where she majored in psychology and economics for her undergraduate degree and Harvard University for her MBA and PhD.

R.O.G. Takeaway Tips:

Audit what influences you:

- Take whatever content you like to consume (podcast, social media, books, video games) and look at what voices are represented.
- Audit the last five. What are the patterns?
- In the next five, make it a different pattern.

Values Affirmation:

- Affirm your values. What are the values you hold dear? What do you care about?
- Reflect on those values. Allow them to anchor you.
- Read history and pay attention to how things are framed through a lens of, “How has the author of this story shaped it? What else is/ may be missing?”
- Stick with it.
- Do the work.

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