The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias is a work of nonfiction by Dolly Chugh, an award-winning social psychologist and management professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Interweaving stories and science, Chugh redefines what it means to be a good person, focusing not on the binary categories “good” and “bad” but instead on being “good-ish,” or receptive to learning. Grounded in scholarship, while using accessible language, voice, and examples, Chugh’s book has been widely lauded inside and outside academia, serving as a Common Read selection for incoming students at several universities, as well as featuring in numerous corporate reading clubs, including those at Visa and JP Morgan.

This guide refers to the 2018 edition published by Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Content Warning: The source material addresses racism, sexism, and discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Summary

The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias comprises an introduction and four parts each divided into several chapters. In the Introduction, titled “Good-ish People,” Chugh lays the groundwork for the book’s content and structure, combining anecdotes and science to describe her main argument, namely, that being “good-ish” is more realistic and enabling than trying (and failing) to be good all the time.