Psychological Science at Work
The indispensable research blog on the science of the modern workplace, covering everything from leadership and management to the behavioral, social, and cognitive dynamics behind performance and achievement. 
Think Fast to Stay ‘Up’
You wake up. Your phone blinks. You touch the screen, slide your finger, and chills shiver down your spine. “See me tomorrow,” says the email your boss sent at midnight. Your thoughts accelerate. “What does she want? Why did she write so late? Am I in trouble? The company is in trouble. This down economy! I’m getting fired. Why me? Where will I work? I have skills. There are other companies. I have no skills. Where will I apply? Can we move? How will the kids react to changing schools? I can do this. We can do this. No matter what.”
We think. It helps us. Errands, plans, and goals require thought. Synapses fire. Action potentials race down axons. Chemicals bathe our brains with neurotransmitters. Thoughts guide action, from ordering a coffee to avoiding predators. What we think matters. But according to…
Tags: Emotions, Happiness, Stress | No Comments »
Your Choice of Friends Can Help You Improve Your Focus
Having trouble disciplining yourself to hit the gym rather than joining colleagues for happy hour? Unable to stop chatting with your friend in the next cubicle even though a deadline is looming?
Many of us struggle to resist temptations—even fighting to keep from checking Facebook when we’re trying to finish a report to the boss. The remedy may be developing close working relationships with people who exhibit a high degree of self-discipline, according to a recent study.
Psychological scientists Catherine Shea, Gráinne Fitzsimons, and Erin Davisson of Duke University hypothesized that people with low self-control prefer associating with others who have high self-control as a way of making up for skills they themselves lack. To test this prediction, they had participants watch a video. They experimentally manipulated the participants’ self-control by asking one group to avoid reading words that flashed on the…
Tags: Attention, Motivation, Personality/Social, Social Behavior, Social Interaction | No Comments »
What to Remember Before a Job Interview
It’s easy to feel nervous and awkward when applying for a new job. Unless you’re already working and a potential employer is trying to poach you, you’re essentially at the mercy of a recruiter looking at your résumé and talking with you about your qualifications. That can instill a profound sense of vulnerability.
But new research has identified a possible strategy that can help job candidates improve their confidence and communication skills during the interview process. An international team of scientists recently found that you can more effectively impress recruiters by merely recalling a time when you felt powerful.
It should come as no surprise that confidence, optimism, and self-possession are assets in a job interview. It turns out that power arms us with these same attributes. Feeling powerful not only makes us feel – and appear – more competent, but it…
Tags: Memory, Social Behavior, Social Cognition | No Comments »
Cheatin’ Hearts
This month marks the 5th anniversary of the historic collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings, which precipitated the global financial crisis now known as the Great Recession. The economic devastation resulted from a culture of risky lending practices, speculative mania, and lax regulations. Investigations into the cause of the meltdown revealed a shaky state of ethics on Wall Street,—and in society in general. New research suggests that the free market principles that serve as the cornerstone of many western economies may serve as a sturdy foundation for fraud and deception.
Citing earlier studies showing that students’ penchant for cheating leads to professional dishonesty, psychological researchers Caroline Pulfrey and Fabrizio Butera, of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland set out to determine whether cheating has any relation to individual adherence to neoliberal capitalistic values. Their findings will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological…
Tags: Academia, Ethics, Morality, Motivation, Personality/Social, Psychological Science, Social Behavior | No Comments »
The Perils of Being the Decider
Making business judgments, like forecasting the weather, always entails an element of uncertainty. Sound decision-making about when to spend capital – or, analogously, when to prepare for an incoming storm – requires assessing the degree of uncertainty and gauging whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
Susan Joslyn, resea
rcher at the University of Washington, studies how we make decisions when outcomes are unclear. In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Joslyn and co-author Jared LeClerc examine which factors lead to better (or worse) decision-making in uncertain situations.
In one experiment, participants had to choose whether to salt the roads in preparation for a cold night. In one case, the forecast was a 90 percent chance that the roads would freeze. Other times, it was presented as a 10 percent chance the…
Tags: Current Directions in Psychological Science, Decision Making, Judgment | No Comments »
