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Understanding the Psychology of the American Idea of Choice

Choice is a fundamental American value that often lies at the center of heated political discussions. […] Recent research suggests that thinking about our lives in terms choices may reduce our support for public policies that promote greater equality in society. By emphasizing free will over the situational factors that shape people’s life experiences, thinking about choice may lead us to view inequality as less bothersome.

The results from these studies may have something to do with how closely Americans associate choice with freedom. When Americans are made to think about choice, they may shift their attitudes in favor of policies that promote individual freedom rather than restrict it.

Unfortunately, they found that thinking about choice also had a downside: it led people to feel less empathy towards others who have experienced negative life events. For example, participants who had thought about choices, were more likely to blame people who had experienced car accidents, physical abuse, or a loss of their home due to a building collapse.

Source: Scientific American

choice psychology politics equality freedom empathy

blogs.hbr.org

The Imperfect Balance Between Work and Life

After years of observing individual struggles to achieve work-life balance — and of enlightened companies to provide it — I’ve concluded that one major hurdle is artificial images of perfection. Certainly institutional structures don’t make it easy to balance work and the rest of life. This is especially true in the U.S., where vacations are short, sabbaticals are rare, school schedules don’t align with office hours, and working parents cobble together their own costly support systems. But in addition, American culture holds up myths of perfection — the perfect body, the perfect job, the perfect child, the perfect lawn — that consume time, money, and attention. This plagues everyone, but especially women who are candidates for high-powered careers.

An important skill to learn is when and how to compromise.

Perfection myths have a do-it-yourself flavor. DIY might work well for hobbies, but for everything else, successful work-life integrators delegate like crazy, resources permitting. Arlie Hochschild’s book The Outsourced Self decries paying for services like dog-walking or babysitting (plus some California specials like dream-finders) but except for the most basic human interactions, like a family member in the hospital, or strategic decisions only you can make, why not find or hire others who specialize in that service and can fill gaps? Only subsistence farmers make everything themselves. The division of labor built modern society.

“Best is the enemy of good,” it’s often said. A cultural shift to get out of the perfection trap can also free up time to work on the bigger changes needed to bring work and life into better alignment.

Something I’m still learning.

Source: Harvard Business Review

compromise delegation life perfectionism work psychology

neurobonkers.com

The Science of Bad Neuroscience

Oxford Neuroscientist Prof. Dorothy Bishop, or DeevyBee as she is known on Twitter has performed an amazing open access lecture focusing largely on the misunderstanding of neuroscience […]

The talk begins with a reasoned explanation of how and when we should be sceptical of neuroscience research, Bishop goes on to cite 4 key reasons why certain kinds of scientific research will inevitbaly [sic] result in false-positives:

“The four horseman of the apocalypse”

Maturation – People develop naturally over time. […]

Practice effects – when people keep doing the same test again and again, they get better at it. […]

Regression to the mean - a statistical artefact of longitudinal studies that is exacerbated if you select participants on the basis of a low score on a test (for example participants with developmental difficulties). […]

The placebo effect. This is the obvious consideration that continues to impact poorly designed research but according to Bishop, the three issues listed above could actually be having an even greater impact than the placebo effect.

The Solution?

Bishop explains that a control group is vital in order to achieve valid findings, but a control group alone is not enough, we should also be asking questions such as:

• Are the groups randomly assigned – or is there some other factor at play?

• Is the control group given an alternative treatment? If not, why not?

• What causes drop out? People don’t tend to drop out at random and this can have a very big effect on results.

Like all branches of science, it’s important that the scientific method is applied appropriately.

Source: Neurobonkers.com

neuroscience

counselheal.com

Learning a Second Language can Improve a Child's Memory

In a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Pascale Engel de Abreu of the University of Luxembourg and colleagues examine the effects of speaking two languages on the executive functioning of low-income children.

While experts have noted that learning an instrument can have altruistic and positive cognitive affects on children, and while previous research has shown that being bilingual enhances executive functioning in middle-class children, researchers are curious as to how it affects lower income populations.

Specifically, being bilingual has a positive influence on the ability to direct and focus attention, and experts hypothesize that in children living in low-income households, learning a second language can have the added effect of encoding and structuring knowledge in memory.

Source: Counsel & Heal

psychology language memory cognition

spring.org.uk

Memory Enhanced by a Simple Break After Reading

Psychologists have found that brief resting periods after learning aids memory. In studies, when people take a little rest after learning, say, a string of numbers, they do better in recall than other people who’ve been given another task straight away.

It is thought that this little rest helps consolidate the memory, making it easier to retrieve. On the other hand if you go straight on to another task, the memory doesn’t have a chance to solidify.

[E]ven after 7 days people’s memory was enhanced when they took a 10-minute break after reading the story. In fact, 7 days later people who’d taken a break were as good as those trying to recall the story just 15-30 minutes later, but without the break.

So perhaps this helps explain why I have a clearer memory of books I’ve read on trains.

It also shows that one of the pleasures of reading—pausing to let it wash over you—is not only agreeable but also helps you remember what you’ve read.

Source: PsyBlog

reading memory relaxation

creativitypost.com

Why Morning Routines are Creativity Killers

As several recent studies highlight, the way most of us spend our mornings is exactly counter to the conditions that neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists tell us promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Take that hurried wake-up, for example. In a study published in the journal Thinking and Reasoning last year, researchers Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks reported that imaginative insights are most likely to come to us when we’re groggy and unfocused. The mental processes that inhibit distracting or irrelevant thoughts are at their weakest in these moments, allowing unexpected and sometimes inspired connections to be made.

Your commute filled with honking cars or sharp-elbowed fellow passengers doesn’t help, either. The stress hormone cortisol can harm myelin, the fatty substance that coats our brain cells.

And while we all should read up on what’s going on in the world, it may be better to put that news website or newspaper aside until after the day’s work is done. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science found that subjects who watched brief video clips that made them feel sad were less able to solve problems creatively than people who watched an upbeat video. A positive mood, wrote researcher Ruby Nadler and her co-authors, increases “cognitive flexibility,” while a negative mood narrows our mental horizons. The segment that made participants feel worst of all? A news report about an earthquake.

The only thing most of us do right in the morning, in fact, is drink coffee. Caffeine not only makes us more alert, as we all know — it also increases the brain’s level of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that influences feelings of motivation and reward when we hit on a great idea.

So what would our mornings look like if we re-engineered them in the interest of maximizing our creative-problem-solving capacities? We’d set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead (with a pen and paper nearby to jot down any evanescent inspirations). We’d stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower, dismissing task-oriented thoughts (“What will I say at that 9 a.m. meeting?”) in favor of a few more minutes of mental dilation. We’d take some deep breaths during our commute instead of succumbing to road rage. And once in the office — after we get that cup of coffee — we’d direct our computer browser not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the Web has to offer.

This column originally appeared on Time.com. Annie Murphy Paul is the author of the forthcoming book “Brilliant: The New Science of Smart.”

Source: The Creativity Post

creativity cognition neuroscience coffee

theemotionmachine.com

The Psychology of Customer Service

At their core, psychology and business have a lot in common. Both seek to understand human being’s needs, desires, choices, and behaviors.

What do people really want? What motivates people to make the decisions that they do?

These are the types of questions that any psychologist or businessman should be asking themselves on a daily basis if they want to be successful.

And any good psychologist or businessman doesn’t have to search long before they realize the importance of relationships in our everyday life, in our everyday choices, and especially in terms of business.

Because I had such a positive experience with Apple’s customer service, I didn’t hesitate to buy the next Macbook once I was ready for a new laptop. I will probably continue to buy products from them so long as they are around, because I know if anything goes wrong they will be there to support me.

Creating this relationship with your clients is key. Not only does it retain current customers, but it attracts new customers, because it builds a solid reputation for you and your business.

When people have a positive experience with you, they are likely to talk about it with others. And if they have a bad experience with you, they are likely to talk about it with others too.

Customer service is all about having a positive influence on the customer’s experience.

The remainder of this article is going to describe the most important ways we can improve customer service – ie, “the customer experience” – whether as a business owner, employee, or even just an educated consumer (who knows when they are being treated right vs. when they are being treated wrong).

Here are the author’s tips:

Be available
Be polite
See the situation from their point-of-view
Apologize for any mistakes
Amend any losses
End on a positive note
Accept that you might not please everyone

Source: The Emotion Machine

psychology business customer service

forbes.com

Why Being Busy Can Keep You From Getting Ahead

There’s an argument that says staying busy is good. It means you’ve got a job, and one that’s important enough that your boss needs you. It means you’ve got friends who want to spend time with you. It means you’re leaving your mark, and, hey, that takes work.

But a life that’s too busy is a double-edged sword, and it can affect more than just our sanity. Experts have found our frenetic pedal-to-the-metal mentality also could cause us to stall out in our careers. If that comes as a surprise, take a closer look at some of the implications of falling into the “busy trap.”

1. We Don’t Prioritize Well
With too many commitments spinning us into a tizzy, we can find ourselves short on the capacity to prioritize—a skill that’s absolutely invaluable in the workplace. With a million and a half assignments, it’s easy to want to start with the simple, no-brainer stuff, and just knock it all out. And that works. Sometimes. But that mode of operation also leaves you with little time for the more complex, time-consuming, or less-desirable work on your plate.

2. We Lose Sight of the Big Picture
It seems contradictory, but maintaining a certain level of busyness also has a stilling effect. We get too bogged down in the details to spend time on the big-picture, strategic plan that we want for our careers.

3. We Impair Our Creativity
In a post he titled “The Busy Trap,” New YorkTimes’ Tim Kreider argues that creating blank mental space is critical for vision and ingenuity. Being idle allows you to take that step back, make unexpected connections, and find inspiration.

4. We Slow Down Our Brains
Finally, when you’re busy, there’s a good chance you’re sleeping less than you should, and not getting the mental rest you need. And that slows down your brain.

Source: Forbes

productivity thinking creativity

farnamstreetblog.com

“Books are the training weights of the mind.”

From Sharon Lebell’s translation of Epictetus’ The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

Source: Farnam Street

books reading

theage.com.au

Science awakes to benefits of Yoga

PRACTISING yoga is just ahead of Australian rules football in the list of the most popular physical activities among the citizens of this country — at least according to surveys. Researchers have also found that yoga and meditation can assist a range of health problems and medical conditions, including chronic pain, lower back pain, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, while also reducing the need for pain-relief medicines.

New research at RMIT University has found that yoga can help older people overcome insomnia and improve their mental and emotional health. The study found that practising yoga for at least 25 minutes a day for 12 weeks improved the sleep patterns of the volunteers taking part and enhanced their psychological and emotional wellbeing.

Source: The Age

health yoga relaxation exercise science psychology