Category: Uncategorized

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 12 November 2025 Throughout a fairly long series of articles, we have looked at many of the psychological mechanisms that lead to difficulties for those who constitute a minority in different contexts, according to Social Identity Theory. But what hasn't been explored is how those who become the object of...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 31 October 2025 A lot has been written and said throughout history about challenging systems. And even in recent times, there has been a lot of system criticism in Norwegian media. Not surprisingly, there is a growing realisation that the status quo does not necessarily work particularly well. So the question...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 22 October 2025 There are quite a few things that can feel crucial when working with diversity. We talk a lot about systemic and strategic considerations, and the research behind the challenges that arise. But if we look down to the individual level, the psychological concept of "mentalisation" is a key issue....

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 3 September 2025 Something that has been on my mind ever since I stuck my nose into the field of diversity is that it is very much characterised by individual stories and feelings about certain issues. In that sense, it's also a victim of something you see in many other social science organisations: It's terribly...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 6 August 2025 A question I occasionally get asked when teaching about stereotypes and prejudices is "where do they come from?". In purely neuropsychological terms, we will always experience a reaction to anything the brain observes as different, but that doesn't mean that you have a specific conviction about the group you assume...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 30 July 2025 A relatively common occurrence in the field of diversity is that different claims are made with varying degrees of credibility. At the least relevant end, you have individual stories, often with a lot of emotion and little generalisability. At the more interesting end, you have studies where the inferential statistics are...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 20 June 2025 When it comes to the science of diversity, it's relatively okay to communicate various findings from psychology, sociology, political science and so on. It's relatively easy to hear "fun things research shows that we can take with us". But something that constantly emerges as a challenge is the understanding...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 11 June 2025 The subject of diversity is a kind of continuous consideration of in-groups and out-groups, and how it affects being part of one or the other. But when it comes to organisational and team research in particular, it's very important to understand the concept of fault lines. To start off light and easy with...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 4 June 2025 By now, most people have probably heard of the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect, originally described by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. The idea is simple in that when you know little about a field, you often don't have the self-awareness to realise how little you...

Jakob Sverre Løvstad CTO, Seema 28 May 2025 Today's article is based on one of my favourites in psychological research, the recently deceased Bob Altemeyer (or Robert Anthony Altemeyer, for the pedantic). Altemeyer spent his life researching authoritarian personalities, initially called "right-wing authoritarians" (RWA). This is in the tradition of a number of researchers...