Mark: What if the very thing stopping you from becoming a better person... is your desire to be a "good person"? Michelle: Ooh, that’s a spicy take. Go on. Mark: That's the provocative idea we're exploring today. The belief that you're already one of the "good guys" might be your biggest blind spot. Michelle: I’m intrigued. It feels like a paradox. The effort to be good is what makes you… not so good? Mark: Exactly. That's the central challenge posed in The Person You Mean to Be by Dolly Chugh. Michelle: Right, and Chugh isn't just a philosopher. She's a social psychologist at NYU's Stern School of Business, and her work is grounded in some fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable, research. Her TED talk on this exact topic became one of the most popular of the year for a reason. Mark: Precisely. She's not just telling us to be better; she's showing us the psychological wiring that makes it so hard. And it all starts with this idea of being "good-ish."

Michelle: Okay, "good-ish" sounds a bit like an excuse. What does she actually mean by that? It sounds like something I'd say after eating a whole pint of ice cream. "I was good-ish today." Mark: It’s a fair question. But Chugh’s point is that thinking of ourselves in a binary—as either a "good person" or a "bad person"—is incredibly paralyzing. When our identity as a "good person" is threatened, we get defensive. We shut down. We can't learn or grow. Being "good-ish" means accepting that you're a work-in-progress. Michelle: A permanent beta-tester for your own morality. Mark: That’s a great way to put it. And she has this perfect story to illustrate the trap of the "good person" identity. It’s about a guy named Rick Klau, a successful partner at GV, the venture capital arm of Google. He would have told you, and believed it, that he was one of the "good guys." He was a champion for equal opportunity. Michelle: I know this type. The person who says, "I don't see color," or "I hire the best person for the job, period." Mark: Exactly that. So, his boss mandates that all the partners take unconscious bias training. Rick goes in, skeptical, thinking it’s for other people. During the training, they take the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, which measures unconscious biases. Rick, the "good guy," discovers he has a moderate-to-strong bias associating men with career and women with family. Michelle: Oh, that's a gut punch. To see the data on your own life laid out like that must be brutal. Mark: He said it "literally changed his life." He was floored. So he goes home and does an audit. He looks at who he follows on Twitter, who's in his professional network, who he meets with. And the data was stark. His network was overwhelmingly male. His actions didn't match his stated beliefs. His identity as a "good person" had blinded him to his actual behavior. Michelle: So his identity as a "good guy" was the very thing preventing him from seeing the problem? Because if you're already good, you don't need to look for flaws. Mark: You've hit the nail on the head. Chugh calls this a feature of "bounded ethicality." It's the psychology of good people who, because of cognitive biases and blind spots, do things that are ethically questionable without even realizing it. The shift to being "good-ish" is a shift to a growth mindset. It’s saying, "I know I have blind spots, and I'm committed to finding them." It’s the difference between saying "I am good" and "I am trying to be better." Michelle: That feels much more active. It’s not a static identity, it’s a verb. It’s an ongoing process. Mark: Exactly. And that openness is crucial, because as Chugh points out, many of the biggest problems aren't about individual bad actors. They're about invisible systems—what she calls headwinds and tailwinds.

Michelle: I love that metaphor. Headwinds and tailwinds. It’s so simple and clear. Some people are running into the wind, and others have it at their back. Mark: And the person with the tailwind often doesn't even feel it. They just think they're a really fast runner. This is where Chugh gets into why it's so hard for people to see their own privilege. She talks about this fascinating psychological study on what she calls the "Hard-Knock Life" effect. Michelle: The Hard-Knock Life effect? Sounds like a musical. Mark: It might as well be. Researchers took a group of white participants and reminded them of the systemic advantages of being white in America—in housing, jobs, healthcare. Then they asked them to describe how difficult their own childhood was. Michelle: Let me guess. They said their life was harder? Mark: Significantly harder! Compared to a control group that wasn't reminded of their privilege, this group "rewrote their personal histories" to emphasize their own struggles. It's a psychological defense mechanism. When our sense of earned success is threatened by the idea of unearned advantage, we instinctively highlight our personal hardships to balance the scales. Michelle: Wait, that's wild. So telling someone they have an advantage makes them double down on their own struggles? Why does that happen? Mark: It’s a self-threat. The idea that you didn't earn everything 100% on your own feels like a challenge to your identity and your hard work. Chugh uses a blended case study of a woman named Colleen to show how this plays out. Colleen grew up with the classic American "bootstrap" narrative. Her family worked hard, overcame obstacles, and succeeded. Michelle: The American Dream story. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Mark: Right. But then Colleen becomes a teacher in an underserved community and starts seeing the systemic barriers her students face. The bootstrap narrative starts to crack. So she does a thought experiment: what if my family, with the exact same work ethic and values, had been Black? Michelle: And that changes everything. Mark: Completely. She starts looking at history. Her grandfather bought a house in the 1950s thanks to the GI Bill. But she learns that of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the GI Bill in some areas, fewer than 100 went to non-whites. The system was explicitly designed to create a white middle class. Her family's "tailwind" was the direct result of a "headwind" deliberately placed in front of Black families. Michelle: Wow. So the tailwind is invisible to the person who has it, but its absence is a massive headwind for someone else. And you can't see it until you consciously, willfully, try to look for it. Mark: That's the core of it. It’s not about guilt. It’s about awareness. It’s about understanding the system you’re a part of. Michelle: Okay, so we've established we're "good-ish" and we're trying to see the invisible headwinds. But what do we do? How do we move from just being a "believer" in equality to what Chugh calls a "builder"?

Mark: That's the million-dollar question, and it's where the book becomes incredibly practical. A "believer" is someone who holds the right values. A "builder" is someone who actively does something to construct a more equitable world. And often, the building happens in very small, ordinary moments. Michelle: Not necessarily marching in the streets, but something you can do in a meeting or a conversation. Mark: Exactly. Chugh tells this wonderful story about two authors, Sarah Weeks, who is white, and Gita Varadarajan, who is an immigrant from India. They were collaborating on a children's book. For years, Sarah, a successful, well-meaning author, never once tried to say Gita's last name, Varadarajan. Michelle: Oh, I know this feeling. The fear of getting it wrong, of sounding stupid or offensive. Mark: She was terrified of offending her. So she just... avoided it. She'd call her "Gita" or "my colleague." One day, they're working on their book, which is about a boy named Ravi whose teachers and classmates won't try to pronounce his name. Gita is talking about the characters in the book and says the reason they don't try is "Arrogance. I don’t think they care." Michelle: And that must have landed like a ton of bricks for Sarah. Mark: It was a lightning bolt. She realized she was that character. She was the well-meaning person whose fear was having the same impact as arrogance. So she finally, humbly, asked Gita, "Will you teach me how to say your name?" Gita taught her, syllable by syllable. Sarah practiced all week. The next time they met, she said it. Imperfectly, but she said it. And Gita told her it was the first time a colleague in America had ever tried. Michelle: That's so powerful because it's such a small, ordinary moment. It's not a protest, it's a conversation. It's about using your 'ordinary privilege'—in this case, just being a colleague who is willing to be corrected and look a little foolish. Mark: That's exactly what Chugh means by "ordinary privilege." It's the unearned advantages we have that can be used for good. And the research backs this up in surprising ways. Studies show that when women or people of color advocate for diversity, they are often rated more poorly by their bosses. They're seen as self-interested. But when white men advocate for diversity, they're not penalized at all. Michelle: So their voice carries a different weight. It's heard as objective, not self-serving. Mark: Precisely. There was even a fascinating experiment on Twitter. A political scientist created bots to confront people using racial slurs. The bots had different identities—white, Black, high-status, low-status. The only bot that had a measurable effect on reducing the harasser's use of the slur was the one with a high-status white male identity. Michelle: That is both infuriating and incredibly useful information. It means that if you hold that kind of privilege, your silence is a wasted resource. Your voice is a tool. Mark: It's a tool. And being a builder is about learning how to use that tool, even in small ways. Like learning to say someone's name.

Michelle: So when you put it all together, the book is really arguing that true allyship isn't a declaration of moral purity. It's not a destination you arrive at. It's a series of small, conscious, and sometimes awkward actions. Mark: Precisely. It's moving from a fixed mindset about our own goodness to a growth mindset. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about being present and willing to learn. Dolly Chugh's work shows that the goal isn't to be a 'good person' who has no bias, but to be a 'good-ish' person who is willing to see their bias and do something about it, however small. Michelle: It’s about choosing to be a builder, not just a believer. You have to pick up the hammer, even if you’re clumsy with it at first. Mark: And you have to be willing to be taught how to hold it correctly. It's about humility and action. Michelle: It really makes you think... what's one 'ordinary' moment this week where you could shift from being a passive believer to an active builder? Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.