To paraphrase (again) the British politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay: People always think that life has been improving — up until their own time, that is. Somehow they don’t expect ...

In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on zero-sum thinking, namely the widespread belief that economic, social, or political gains for one group can only be achieved at the expense of ...

Patricia Andrews Fearon and Friedrich M. Götz from Stanford University and the University of Cambridge have published an important article entitled “The Zero-Sum Mindset”, in which they present the ...

I didn’t put a stake in the ground when my cofounders and I started DMi Partners and proclaim that our company was not going to be built on a zero-sum culture. At some point in the last few years, ...

Some situations in life are zero-sum. On Super Bowl Sunday, two teams take the field but only one will emerge victorious, Vince Lombardi Trophy in hand. In a presidential election, only one candidate ...

Zero-sum thinking has spread like a mind virus, from geopolitics to pop culture. Credit...Photo illustration by Pablo Delcan Supported by By Damien Cave Damien covers global affairs. He is based in ...

LOOK at the news or social media these days, and you might see a pattern. Stories are about groups in conflict, competing for limited resources, with the gains for some framed as losses for others. If ...

This is the introduction to Blighty, a weekly, subscriber-only newsletter in which our correspondents turn their gaze on the latest developments in Britain. Sign up for Blighty. Matthew Holehouse, our ...