Beyond Either-Or Thinking: How Individuals and Systems Drive Social Change

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/14

Michael Brownstein is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at John Jay College, CUNY, and Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of The Implicit Mind, focusing on implicit bias and moral psychology. His research bridges philosophy, psychology, and social issues, highlighting the implicit processes that shape behaviour. 

Alex Madva is Professor of Philosophy at Cal Poly Pomona, where he directs the California Center for Ethics and Policy and co-directs the Digital Humanities Consortium. He coedited An Introduction to Implicit Bias and The Movement for Black Lives. His work examines race, identity, and the ethics of bias.

Daniel Kelly is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University, where he is also the Director of the Cognition, Agency, and Intelligence Center. His research focuses on issues at the intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, moral theory, and evolution. He is the author of Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust.

This conversation with Brownstein, Madva, and Kelly, moderated by Scott Douglas Jacobsen, about Somebody Should Do Something (MIT Press, 2025) explores the false dichotomy between individual and structural change, arguing that social progress is always the result of interactions between both. The authors highlight historical case studies, such as milk pasteurization and marriage equality, demonstrating how scientific discoveries, community advocacy, and systemic reforms converge to create tipping points. They emphasize the role of narratives, cognitive biases, and emotional responses, such as anger and solidarity, in shaping collective action. From parenting and masculinity to climate change and disinformation, the discussion underscores that change is unpredictable but possible—built through creativity, communication, and integrating personal responsibility with broader institutional reform.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we’re here to discuss the idea that somebody should do something. Why did you draw on social science, history, and case studies to make your argument?

Michael Brownstein: We wanted to write a book that was enjoyable to read. We examined the history of social change—both large movements and individuals who made a difference. We began by searching for compelling stories and organized the book around them.

All three of us conduct academic research at the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences. We tried to use stories to share what the research shows regarding what motivates people to take action, which kinds of action are effective, and what drives collective action.

Alex Madva: The three of us had been collaborating on academic papers for several years. We developed many of our ideas in that context, but few people ever read those papers. We wanted to reach a wider audience. From our own experience, narrative nonfiction is powerful for conveying ideas. We also included 150 pages of notes and references to document our sources (we brought receipts!), but we wanted the text itself to remain readable and engaging.

Daniel Kelly: One of the themes of the book is that it’s easy to fall into two camps when thinking about social change: structural or individual. One of our central messages is that this is a false dichotomy. We should move past it. Many people agree with that in theory, but few have done the hard work of illustrating how structures and individuals interact. We used stories to demonstrate that interaction repeatedly, and then supported them with research to analyze what happened in those stories and highlight the main messages we wanted to convey.

Madva: One thing that’s so valuable about the work you do at the Good Men Project is that you discuss the many different roles men play in their lives—thinking about positive images of masculinity and what positive roles people can take as fathers, employees, employers, and teammates to make a difference for social change. Instead of rejecting or downplaying our social identities, it’s about embracing our identities, including masculinity, in positive ways for social change.

Jacobsen: And to Daniel’s point about the dichotomy—that mythos definitely appears in the Canadian media ecosystem, whether in the narrative of the self-made individual or in the Pollyannish idea of “together we can,” without actionables. The integrative approach is helpful. Why did milk pasteurization and marriage equality hit their tipping points when they did in American history?

Brownstein: I’ll take a stab. It’s easy to look backward and say why things happened the way they did. But hindsight can be misleading. Unless we can run multiple histories and compare them, there’s always the risk of telling a “just-so” story. I don’t think any of us can tell you exactly why, but we can point to some of the factors that made a difference.

For those two stories, both contribute to the integration Dan was talking about—that’s at the heart of the book. The story we were raised with about milk pasteurization was that it was a scientific breakthrough showing the power of scientific inquiry to solve human problems. Louis Pasteur comes along, has a great idea, and then—so the story goes—lots of people are saved.

But the interesting part for us is what happens in between. Pasteur discovered the process of making milk and other drinks safe decades before it became popularized or accepted. 

Madva: He invented pasteurization around 1863, but the first US state, Michigan, didn’t require it until 1947.

Brownstein: What happened in that intervening time was the long work of getting people to change their behaviour, change their beliefs, and get comfortable with new practices.

There were all kinds of roles people could play. We originally had a large section of the book dedicated to Nathan Strauss, a philanthropist in New York City who spent decades working to make pasteurized milk available and acceptable. That section was mainly cut for length, but his work illustrated how individuals contributed to systemic social change.

What we saw in that history was the combination of many people doing individual things, connecting with others in their communities, linking with scientific discoveries, and aligning with systemic changes in the economy.

Part of the reason this became such a significant issue is that cities were expanding at the time, while farms were relocating farther away from urban areas. The problem of milk safety was getting worse. That background factor was humming along while people played their roles in implementing change. The interaction of individuals and broader systemic forces comes to the fore in the history of milk pasteurization.

Madva: Part of the issue was that people believed unpasteurized milk contained beneficial bacteria that were good for the gut. That view is still with us today. For example, Goop sells a raw milk cure to cleanse parasites, and the current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, is also a big fan of raw milk.

Even when the science was clear, superstition persisted around it. Some people disliked the taste. Distributors were worried. A whole set of social norms and attitudes had to change. People had to start thinking of pasteurized milk as a safe and appealing option.

In some ways, that took time. People had to drink it, get used to the taste, and spread new social norms. There was a complex interaction of individuals playing scientific, marketing, advertising, and everyday roles as consumers discussing pasteurized milk with others. Once we start thinking about the interaction between social norms, attitudes, and laws, that’s a good segue into progress around LGBTQ rights.

Kelly: Marriage inequality because of Will and Grace! (This is a joke.) In actuality, none of these big changes happen because of a single factor. To connect it back to the way you framed it, you asked why these tipping points happened when they did. Michael made the right point to start: even when we know that these tipping points happened, we don’t have counterfactuals in many of these cases to test against and control for one factor versus another to figure out exactly why they happened.

So even in retrospect, when we identify a tipping point, it isn’t easy to parse out the exact combination of factors that pushed something over the edge. That’s a point we emphasize in the book across. This is challenging work, and we need to approach it with epistemic humility, which means not overestimating how much we know.

That humility is especially important when we’re looking forward. Again, we know these kinds of social change tipping points happen. These systems have jumpy dynamics. But when the tipping points are going to be crossed and the jumps are going to happen is incredibly hard to predict in advance.

A lot of the advice we give isn’t predicated on any overarching formula or grand Theory of Change—“if you do this, then that will happen.” Instead, it’s: here are the ingredients that typically go into the stew, but how it will turn out, and when a tipping point or jump will occur, is hard to say. What we know is that we need to keep cooking.

Brownstein: When we were writing the book, we framed the story of marriage equality as a victory for liberal causes. We discussed how individual people and their communities changed their minds and attitudes, while institutions and laws also changed.

But since we wrote the book in 2020–2021, further changes have happened that weren’t predictable at the time. It remains a story of interaction between institutions and individuals—cyclical, back and forth, and nearly impossible to predict.

It’s also important to stress that when we consider the unpredictability of social change, it can be demoralizing. It can make people think, “Why bother? I’ll keep banging away for years, and nothing will happen.” 

Madva: The flip side is that change could be right around the corner, and we wouldn’t know it. The action you take today could be part of a tipping point that shifts things in a more positive direction. Framed this way, unpredictability isn’t just discouraging—it can also be seen as an opportunity. The action that feels like it doesn’t matter could, in fact, make all the difference.

Jacobsen: What about the emotional glitches we experience—where once we’ve gained something that feels good, but losing it feels far worse? Losses don’t feel equivalent to gains, emotionally. Emotions drive many of our life’s vectors, both individually and collectively. Can you bring that into the analysis?

Madva: The first thing to say is that we were mindful of this in the book. Although the book primarily focuses on two significant problems—the climate crisis and racism—one of which appears persistent and the other worsening— we attempted to provide a broader perspective.

Focusing only on those issues, it can feel like we’re losing ground, like everything is moving backward. However, looking back over the last 200 years, there has been incredible progress. For the first 300,000 years of human existence, the average human lifespan was approximately 35 years, primarily due to the high mortality rate among children under the age of five. We didn’t yet have innovations like pasteurization.

Since the early 1800s, collective efforts by individuals across all sectors of society have made a significant difference in driving positive social change. That long view is crucial. Even when we are losing in the short term, we may still be part of a larger project that is winning in the long term.

Kelly: In the abstract, your question wasn’t about any particular policy or even instance of social change. It was about the endowment effect.

Jacobsen: Yes. It’s a historical bias that produces negativity. If we perceive losses as more significant than gains, then even minor losses—or an occasional big one—will feel much more severe. That can be demoralizing.

Kelly: The endowment effect, more generally, is an asymmetry: losing something feels worse than gaining the same thing felt good – the negative experiences associated with having to give up something we have tend to be more extreme that the positive feelings we got from getting it in the first place. You’re right that it’s one of many factors that tends to reinforce the status quo.

Social change often requires giving up something familiar from the past, which is often annoying. It’s helpful to recognize the parts of human psychological nature that can resist change. Once we understand them, we can plan strategies to address them.

Brownstein: I’d add briefly that the psychologist Adam Mastroianni has an excellent paper showing how people always think things are getting worse. Even when they acknowledge evident progress, they tend to believe the moral heyday was around when they were 13 years old.

These sorts of cognitive glitches are part of what we discuss throughout the book. They can stymie practical efforts for social change. Another example is anti-incrementalism bias. If people set a threshold of success for a project—whether it’s a company pledge level, weight loss, or any goal—they often judge anything short of that threshold as failure, even if they came close.

Say one team gets 90% of the way but falls short, and another team gets only 40% of the way. People often judge both as total failures. That mindset discourages further effort or motivation. 

That applies to marriage equality, pasteurization, or any social change project—when in reality, the vast majority of the time, what you get is step-by-step progress toward a goal. However, if you think all is lost unless you reach the finish line, that mindset undermines your ability to persevere.

As Alex noted, the fact that you don’t know when you’re going to fully “get there” also means you could arrive in the blink of an eye. That’s part of the story.

Jacobsen: For any collective work, what about moral judgment? When should we lean on moral revulsion, and when is it unwise to do so, given the risk of a backfire effect?

Kelly: I wrote a previous book about disgust and how it informs moral judgment. There’s a case to be made—because I made it—that moral revulsion isn’t something we should rely on, even in the fight for social change and morally laudable causes.

Revulsion, rooted in the emotion of disgust, can infiltrate our thinking about social norm violations and members of other social groups. It can lead us to dehumanize other people. That dehumanizing effect can’t be separated from the intense motivational force disgust brings with it. My view is that invoking revulsion is always playing with fire.

Madva: We don’t defend moral revulsion in the book, but we do talk about another salient negative moral emotion: outrage at injustice. This is another area where we try to square the circle. On the one hand, anger is a powerful motivator—it gets people off the couch and into the fight for social change. On the other hand, it is dangerous.

If we want to make lasting positive change, we need to work together with people outside our immediate in-groups and build coalitions. Anger may motivate, but it can also become an obstacle to coalition-building. One of the arguments we present in the book is that we need to adopt an intersectional mindset —a kind of “both/and” thinking.

That means recognizing our specific social identities and roles, while also recognizing the shared common ground that unites us and that we need to fight for together. One of the contexts where we explore this in the book is in relation to call-out culture—when someone, even the President of the United States, says something racist, what is the appropriate response? Should you say, “Let’s all be colorblind, let’s pretend difference doesn’t exist”? Should you focus only on your own social group? Should you call out that person as an individual racist?

The call-out approach can be motivating for your in-group, but it can also backfire. People who don’t see the statement as racist may have a negative backlash against you. One of the social scientists we profile in the book, Ian Haney-López, argues for an intersectional approach where you call out people for being strategically racist.

That way, you are not saying, “I know what’s in this person’s heart,” as though it were a personal failing. Instead, you’re pointing out that they’re trying to divide people along racial lines to keep the one percent in power. The goal is to name racism, but to frame it as something being done strategically for political ends, and then pivot to saying: “This statement threatens to divide us, but we need solutions that work for everybody—universal healthcare, for example.”

Jacobsen: What about the different roles we play? Alex mentioned that one of the frames the Good Men Project has, under Lisa Hickey’s leadership, is the various roles men play in their lives—fathers, workers, managers, baseball coaches, and mentors. How can people lean on relatively standard roles they already inhabit in different domains of their lives to engage in both individual action and collective influence?

Madva: This is a question I’d like to put to Michael, because he’s the father among us, and his middle child is a son. I’m curious how he thinks about engaging with his son around masculinity and taking a both/and approach. Sorry to put you on the spot, but I’m genuinely curious.

Brownstein: It is a live question, because these days my son is into powerlifting and watching TikTok videos of men telling him how to get big and it’s anxiety-producing because I don’t know exactly what messages he’s receiving, and how much of the fitness stuff blends into the more troubling parts of the manosphere. So, the most honest way I can answer Alex’s question is that I try to talk to him—or rather, I try to get him to speak to me.

I share a lot about my own experiences. I remind myself of the vulnerability and insecurity pumping through my blood at fourteen, and I try to be transparent about those feelings. I hope that openness helps.

Another thing he’s clearly being exposed to is political ideas. That’s partly because he’s genuinely interested in politics and history. He’s at an age where he wants to test ideas—even the “wrong” ones. He knows his parents are dyed-in-the-wool progressives, so there’s a bit of an Alex P. Keaton vibe: “What can I get away with here?” Of course, he can get away with anything—he’s free to think whatever he wants.

Both the body-image content and the exploration of controversial political ideas come down, for me as a parent, to maintaining as many open avenues for communication as possible. Building trust so we can explore these ideas together—and potentially be open to changing what we think and feel.

That connects back to what I might have said to your question before Alex put me on the spot: one way we can play a role in social change is simply by being a friend who’s willing to talk about things that matter.

If you’re not an activist or a climate warrior, it can feel uncomfortable—or even awkward—to be earnest about your concerns. But whether it’s climate change or something else, one thing I’ve learned from research and conversations is how far honesty can go. Wearing your concerns, fears, and aspirations—for yourself, your community, and the world—on your sleeve really matters. And there’s evidence for that.

For example, when people in the United States are asked to estimate the percentage of the country that wants more action on climate change, they estimate about a third. In reality, it’s two-thirds. People get it very wrong—that’s called pluralistic ignorance. It allows political elites with different agendas to implement policies that conflict with what most people want.

One thing I can do—as a friend, teacher, or parent—is to discuss why I want those changes and why they matter. That connects directly to the community-building side of integrating individual and social roles for change.

Madva: The last section of our book is titled ‘Happy Warrior.’ We highlight Amy Wrzesniewski’s research on job crafting, which involves reframing one’s work as an opportunity to make a positive difference in people’s lives.

In one study, she profiled hospital cleaning staff. Some perceived their job as dreary, dull, and devoid of meaning. Others, with the same role, found it inspiring and took pride in it. The difference was that in the first case, people just showed up, mopped the floors, and went through the motions.

For the others, they thought about their role in helping patients have the best possible experience. For example, some cleaned the ceilings, considering the perspective of a patient lying in bed looking upward. They asked themselves: “What would my mother, father, sister, or brother feel if they were in this situation?” They wanted patients to be comfortable. They understood their role as supporting patients as part of the hospital’s broader mission. That reframing allowed them to find meaning and purpose in roles that might otherwise seem dreary.

Jacobsen: What has been the most significant critique of either your methodology or your framing? And what is an appropriate response to that critique?

Madva: We can get pretty academic here if you want. So, the three of us are philosophers. We’re not policy wonks. We don’t have a “how-to” manual for changing the world. What we do focus on are the problematic ways people think about and frame these problems.

Sometimes we come across headlines like, ‘I work for the environmental movement.’ I don’t care if you recycle. Or: Stop—going vegan won’t save the climate. Corporate polluters must be held accountable.

When you read those articles, they often make clear what not to do, but they’re much less clear about what to do.

A lot of that commentary comes “below the fold,” and it’s often super vague—something like, go out and vote or be political—but it’s totally unclear what that amounts to. So our reply in the book is: yes, it’s valid to point at structural issues, but we can’t lose sight of the role of the individual. Instead of falling into either/or thinking—either I change as an individual, or we change the system—we argue that we must think about how individuals can change to change the system, and how to redesign social systems so that they empower individuals.

Sometimes, when we make that point, the same person who just made the either/or statement will respond, “Well, of course, I know it’s both/and.” That happens all the time, in conversation and in print. One of the most significant objections we receive is that what we’re saying is obvious.

Here’s the tricky part: we hope we’ve written a clear book that people agree with, but we don’t want it to seem as though it was apparent all along. The mistake people make is thinking about individual action and structural change as two separate good things, each independently contributing to social progress. What we try to explain instead is that they’re fundamentally interconnected.

The same action can be both an individual choice and a structural change. For every structural reform you want, there are roles individuals must play to bring it about. Conversely, for every separate change you make or hope others make, there are structural changes needed to support those. Pinning down this cognitive mistake—misunderstanding how individual and structural dynamics interact—has been one of the biggest challenges.

Brownstein: I could add quickly: another common objection is that people concede that individuals matter, but then say, “At the end of the day, the most important thing is changing the institutions or the systems.” That pushback often comes from political scientists and economists, who study how to design institutions that incentivize individuals to make particular choices.

They’ll point to examples: “If we change this feature of tax policy, we know people will make different decisions. Isn’t that where the real action is, rather than persuading individuals one by one?”

The response is: yes, changing systems, institutions, laws, and policies is crucial. But please tell me how you’re going to do that. The answer invariably involves motivating coalitions, persuading individuals, creating voting blocs, pressuring politicians, and building momentum to enact those changes. And at that point, we’re right back in the reciprocal domain Alex was talking about.

Madva: I laughed when I heard Michael talking about that, because part of what’s funny is that some people respond, “Yes, of course, it’s both/and—everybody knows that.” Others respond by saying but really it’s structural, as Michael explained. But then other people respond by saying but it really comes, “Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” a quote attributed to Margaret Mead.

Jacobsen: Let’s make this the standard for every poster and paper recitation at every academic conference. Although the research has its limitations, what are the areas for further questions and research?

Brownstein: Well, we originally intended the book to have three prominent examples: climate change, racism, and political misinformation. I would continue to think more about misinformation and what people can do about it from both/perspectives. We will be presenting at a conference on polarization at MIT in December.

Madva: We also found either/or thinking there, where people would say, “If we want to combat polarization, we have to change political systems.” They’re not thinking enough about how the polarized, misinformed environment in which we live is the one within which we have to start making changes. We must persuade a whole group of individuals to work towards bringing about those social changes. I had won a grant to write the next book on misinformation and belief, but it was cancelled in April. The fight for that is ongoing.

Brownstein: It’s very much a case in point, right? Because you were saying, Dan, that whatever the policy changes are, they need to be created in the misinformed environment we’re living in. And here you are, someone ready to write a book about this problem—except you can’t get the book out there because your NEH grant has been cancelled.

Kelly: Yes. It’s a more extended conversation than this session allows—the media ecosystem, academia, and popular commentary all build together.

Jacobsen: Yes. I’ve been working on some projects as well. I took two trips to Ukraine in 2023 and 2024. I’ve got some conversational book projects with various experts and citizens. The Russian—properly the Kremlin—disinformation campaigns, and the subsequent misinformation that follows from them, are crucial.

Maybe just a side comment: the extreme forms that you might see in war—the way they use video games, the way they use accusations, the way they hire news outlets that are essentially state propaganda—all of that is central.

Madva: That’s a good question. Indeed, it makes sense that in a militaristic context, you need to rally your side, and people need to be rowing together in the same boat. So the impulse to tell lies to get people on board is contextual.

I’m actually working on a project on ethics and leadership with someone else, and I’ve read the book Extreme Ownership. It’s a leadership guide written by two former Navy SEALs. 

It was an interesting book. There was a great deal in the influential book, and it even influenced my perspective on my own role as a leader within my institution.

They emphasized personal responsibility, not just for oneself, but for the team as well. They described what it means to be in the middle of a hierarchy: if your boss tells you to do something, you are not being a responsible leader if you pass that order along to your subordinates without understanding the reason behind it. They stressed what they called “leadership up the chain,” where you have to keep pressing upward until you know the why. Then, and only then, can you communicate those reasons clearly to the people you’re leading.

There is a way in which they emphasize the importance of accurate information, even in a militaristic context. They gave examples of friendly fire and other disasters that occur when people follow orders without thinking critically or taking responsibility. The balance they tried to strike was between a tight, transparent chain of command and individual responsibility.

That’s a similar theme when we think about misinformation. Even in a militaristic or legal context, you don’t lose personal responsibility for finding out the truth.

Jacobsen: Any last thoughts? Let’s end with your reflections on Russia and the Kremlin’s use of misinformation and disinformation campaigns in the war, and how those concerns extend from the work presented in the book.

Brownstein: I’ll punt. I don’t have anything specific to say—it’s far outside my area of expertise. I suppose the thought that came to mind, connecting the question back to something we discussed earlier about unpredictability, is this: from what I’ve read about the war in Ukraine, one of the things that’s emerging is human creativity.

This isn’t precisely a misinformation question, but literally a warfighting one—the way Ukrainians have figured out how to fight against a much bigger, stronger enemy with drones and improvisation, for whatever reason, that stuck in my mind as similar to the way Zoran Mamdani in New York City is creatively figuring out how to use TikTok in an election.

So, I suppose that for any problem—even specifically for political misinformation and disinformation from bad actors—what will emerge is creative people devising counter-strategies that we couldn’t have anticipated from our vantage point. That’s what I’m looking for: to see what innovative solutions emerge when people are pressed into a corner.

Jacobsen: Any favourite quotes or chapters before we wrap up?

Brownstein: Well, we lead off at the beginning with a quote from Iris Murdoch. I’ll paraphrase because I can’t get it exactly right: man is the creature that creates pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.

In some ways, that’s the work I see us engaging in—changing the picture of what it means to be a person, and what it means to be a person living in a world beyond our control, yet still wanting to make a difference. If we can change the stories and narratives we use to define ourselves, that’s a significant step toward addressing the problems we see around us.

Jacobsen: Thank you so much for your time today and for an extended session.

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