The Courage to Actively Care ― Cultivating a Culture of Interpersonal Compassion

The lead character in this realistic story, a safety professional for a large manufacturing company, is bullied by her boss, and she searches to find the courage to confront him. In her search she learns from Dr. Pitz ("Doc") the five person-states that influence one’s propensity to actively care for the safety, health, or welfare of other people. With her coworker, Jeff, Joanne entertains ways to enhance these five person- states: self-esteem, self-efficacy, optimism, belongingness, and personal control. With this profound knowledge she eventually confronts her boss and teaches him how to be an actively caring for people leader.

E. Scott Geller, PhD, is an Alumni Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech. For 47 years, Professor Geller has taught and conducted research as a faculty member and Director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems in the Department of Psychology. He has authored, edited or co-authored 36 books, 82 book chapters, 39 training programs, 259 magazine articles, and more than 300 research articles addressing the development and evaluation of behavior change interventions to improve quality of life on a large-scale. All of this scholarship reflects this mission of applied behavioral science, as does his most recent 700-page textbook: Applied Psychology: Actively Caring for People, published this year by Cambridge University Press.