Author Archives: kathrynwelds

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About kathrynwelds

Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership and Career Coach | Thought Partner | Accountability Ally | Creating value by connecting people, information, and ideas, to accomplish strategic results Professional experience spans roles as an organizational psychologist, coach, consultant, leader in technology, healthcare, professional services, public sector.

Are you Situationally Aware?

Apollo Robbins

Apollo Robbins

“Inattentional blindness” is an example of distraction and unawareness of the present moment.
Apollo Robbins’ illustrated the potentially serious consequences of inattention in his interactive Las Vegas, USA show, “The Gentleman Thief.”

He tells “targets” in the audience that he is about to steal from them, then uses visual illusions, proximity manipulation, diversion techniques, and attention control, to complete his imperceptible heists.

Unlike in real life, Robbins returns belongings to owners.
Former US President Jimmy Carter’s Secret Service agents were among those who  reclaimed their belongings.

These illustrations help people improve perceptual capabilities.
This increased awareness can reduce traffic accidents, industrial mishaps, and security violations.

The U.S. Department of Defense deploys Robbins’ skills at its Special Operations Command research and training facility at Yale University.

Barton Whaley

Barton Whaley

Defense application of these perceptual manipulation skills were identified by Barton Whaley of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and Susan Stratton Aykroyd in their Textbook of Political-Military Counterdeception.

Their historical survey of deception and counter-deception practices noted that amateur magicians’ practices were more advanced than those used by U.S. political or military intelligence analysts in the 1970s.

Stephen Macknik

Stephen Macknik

SUNY Downstate’s Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde collaborated with Robbins on Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deception.

Their empirical results supported Robbins’s observation that the eye will follow an object moving in an arc without looking back to its point of origin.

This perceptual tendency enables Robbins to distract audience members and to remove their possessions from their bodies.

Susana Martinez-Conde

Susana Martinez-Conde

Perceptual errors in illusions can suggest diagnostic and treatment methods for brain trauma, autism, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s disease.

These conditions may improve when patients practice observing illusion performances because they learn to train their attention and to focus on the most important aspects of their environment.

At the same time, they can suppress distractions that lead to disorientation and “inattentional blindness” (intently focusing a single task while overlooking things in plain sight).

Richard Wiseman

Psychologist and illusionist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire demonstrated inattentional blindness when viewers failed to notice environmental changes while they focused on a card trick. 

Wiseman used these perceptual anomalies as a metaphor.
He suggested that people can recognise opportunities in life when they intentionally increase their attention.

Daniel Levin

Daniel Levin

Daniel Simons

University of Illinois’s Daniel Simons and Daniel Levin of Vanderbilt University demonstrated that observers were unaware of a person in a gorilla suit walking near people passing a basketball .

With Harvard’s Christopher Chabris, Simons reported that half of the observers said they missed this unusual detail when they focused on counting the number of ball passes by one team.

Christopher Chabris

Christopher Chabris

However, the same people easily recognized the gorilla when they were not asked to focus on a distraction task.

Edward Vogel

This finding shows that most people are unable to effectively “multitask” because they have limited ability to hold a visual scene in short-term memory (VSTM), suggested University of Chicago’s Edward K. Vogel and Maro Machizawa of Hiroshima University and separately by Vanderbilt’s René Marois and J. Jay Todd.

Gustav Kuhn

Gustav Kuhn

Gustav Kuhn of University of London collaborated with illusionist Alym Amlani and Ronald Rensink of University of British Columbia to classify cognitive, perceptual, and physical contributors in Towards a Science of Magic:

  • Ronald Rensink

    Physical misdirection by a magician’s gaze or gesture,

  • Psychological misdirection with a motion or prolonged suspense,
  • Optical illusions that distort the size of an object,
  • Cognitive illusions to prolong an image after the object has been removed,
  • Physical force and mental force influence “freely chosen” cards.

Rene Marois-J Jay Todd

Perceptual and cognitive illusions can cause people not to see things that are present.
This effect can lead to overlooking interpersonal cues, life opportunities.
and more dangerously, inattention in traffic accidents, and victimization.

Mindful awareness helps people pay attention to the present experience and to opportunities and to  mitigate potential perceptual misinformation.

-*How to you maintain focus to reduce “inattentional blindness”?

Related Posts

©Kathryn Welds

Women Who Negotiate Salaries May Elicit Negative Evaluations

Linda Babcock

Women negotiate their first post-university salaries less frequently than their male counterparts, leading to a long-term career wage disparity, reported Carnegie-Mellon University’s Linda Babcock.

Hannah Riley Bowles

In addition to this disadvantage of avoiding salary negotiation, women who did negotiate “salary” in a lab study encountered a different problem:  They were disliked by men and women participants due to their perceived “demandingness.” 

Lei Lai

Lei Lai

In this study Harvard’s Hannah Riley Bowles and Lei Lai found another challenge for women attempting to achieve both salary parity and colleagial work relationships.
Less assertive women negotiators were equally disliked and they failed to achieve equitable “salaries.

These findings findings suggest the challenge women face in achieving salary parity and being accepted in work groups.
When male and female volunteers in another lab study asked for salary increases using identical scripts, participants liked men’s style, but disliked the same words from women.

Women negotiators were considered “aggressive,” but they could counteract this perception when they:

  • Smiled
  • Displayed a friendly manner.

These tactics improved others’ perceptions of women negotiators, but did not improve women’s negotiation outcomes.

In contrast, women negotiators improved both social and negotiation outcomes when they:

  • Justified the salary request based on a supporting “business case,”
  • Communicated commitment to positive organizational relationships.

Women who smile and focus on the interpersonal relationship fulfill gender role expectations, leading to greater approval by male and female observers.
This suggests that both men and women have implicit biases about “appropriate” behaviours and communications from women in the workplace

Kathleen McGinn

Kathleen McGinn

Bowles, with Harvard colleague Kathleen McGinn and Babcock, suggested that “situational ambiguity” and “gender triggers” modify women’s willingness to negotiate.

When women have information about the potential salary range and whether the salary is negotiable, they are more likely to negotiate.

Women can improve their negotiation outcomes by asking:

  • the salary range,
  • which elements of the compensation package are negotiable.
Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink

Effective negotiation is a survival skill, according to Dan Pink:

The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness.

He noted that effective persuaders and “sellers” collaborate in “inspecting” a negotiation and “responding” to the negotiation through “interpersonal attunement.”

Pink suggested ABC negotiation skills:

Attunement: Aligning actions and attitudes with others,

Buoyancy:  “Positivity,” optimism, asking questions,

Clarity:  Helping others identify unrecognized needs that can be fulfilled by the negotiation proposal.

Joan Williams

Joan Williams

UC Hastings College of the Law’s Joan Williams offered wide-ranging structural strategies to address documented wage discrepancies.


What is the best negotiation pitch you’ve heard for a job-related salary increase or role promotion?

How did the negotiator overcome objections?

How did the negotiator manage the relationship with the negotiating partner?

Related Posts

©Kathryn Welds

Training or Mentorship to Build Leadership Skills?

Peter Harms

Are leadership development services worth the investment?

Paul Lester

Paul Lester

A six-month study of U.S. Military Academy cadets at West Point provided answers.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Peter Harms collaborated with Paul Lester of the U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Directory, U.S. Military Academy’s Sean Hanna, Gretchen Vogelgesang of Federal Management Partners, and University of Washington’s Bruce Avolio to evaluate:

Sean Hanna

– Sean Hanna

  • -Military cadets’ readiness to receive candid feedback from multiple sources,
  • -Impact of mentoring from a supportive leadership coach,

-Availability of advancement opportunities in the organization.

Bruce Avolio

Participants were randomly assigned to an individual mentorship program or classroom-based group leadership training.

Those who participated in the mentorships were significantly more likely to report increased confidence in assuming a leadership role than those in the classroom training.

The mentoring group’s effectiveness was significantly related to the mentorship coaches’ ability to:

  • Establish a trust-based collaborative relationship,
  • Provide support,
  • Offer candid feedback based on observations,
  • Advocate for cadets who exercised leadership.

Additionally, participants who reported greatest gains in leadership skills and confidence were:

  • Open to receiving direct developmental feedback from mentors,

The most cost-effective approach to leadership development did not produce the greatest results, suggesting the value of individualized leadership coaching

Ted Kaptchuk

Ted Kaptchuk

The powerful effect of individual attention was demonstrated in a different study, when 250 patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) received individual attention from medical personnel.

Those who received the most individualized attention in three no-treatment conditions reported the greatest symptom relief even though they received no medical intervention and participants were informed that the “treatment” was a placebo, reported Harvard’s Ted Kaptchuk.

The most important “active ingredient” in leadership development training may be personalized attention, followed by candidates’ willingness to receive candid feedback and to implement recommendations.

 -*How has personalized mentoring helped you develop leadership competencies?

©Kathryn Welds

Self-Compassion, not Self-Esteem, Enhances Performance

Juliana Breines

Juliana Breines

Self-compassion is treating one’s own mistakes with the same support and compassion offered to others, and it is more important than self-esteem to develop skills and performance, found University of California, Berkeley’s Juliana Breines and Serena Chen.

Self-compassion enables people to accept their mistakes and shortcomings with kindness.
It also enables equanimity when people are aware of self-critical thoughts and feelings.
When people experience disappointing performance outcomes, they recommended accept responsibility for the situation, using this information to improve future performance, and adopting self-compassion or kindness.

Serena Chen

In Breines and Chen’s research, volunteers considered a personal setback with either:

  • self-compassion or
  • self-esteem enhancement (focusing on one’s positive qualities and accomplishments).

People who practiced a self-compassion tended to view personal shortcomings as changeable, and said they felt more motivated to avoid decisions or errors that led to disappointing outcomes

Another task induced failure, then provided an opportunity to improve performance in a later challenge.
Participants who viewed their initial low performance with self-compassion devoted 25 per cent more time to preparing for future trials, and scored higher on the second test than those who focused on bolstering their self-esteem.

Self-compassion can enhance performance, suggested Breines and Chen, because it enables more dispassionate assessment of actions, abilities, and opportunities for future improvement.
In contrast, self-esteem-bolstering thoughts may narrow focus to consider only positive characteristics while overlooking opportunities for improvement.

Robert McCrae

Self-compassion measures were related to positive personality characteristics in a study by Kristin Neff and Stephanie Rude of University of Texas, and Kristin Kirkpatrick of Eastern Kentucky University.
This five factor model of personality was outlined in Robert McCrae and Paul Costa’s acronym OCEAN:

Paul Costa

  • Openness (curious vs. consistent/cautious)
  • Conscientiousness (organised vs. careless)
  • Extraversion (outgoing vs. reserved)
  • Agreeableness (friendly vs. unkind)
  • Neuroticism (nervous vs. confident)

     

Kristin Neff

Neff’s team found that higher levels of personal well-being, optimism, initiative, conscientiousness, curiosity, happiness were associated with self-compassion.
Higher self-compassion was also related to lower anxiety and depression.

In contrast, self-criticism, was associated with imagined negative evaluations by others and comparisons with other people.

Mark Baldwin

McGill University’s Mark Baldwin found that participants who imagined an important person providing critical feedback experienced more negative self-evaluations and moods.

Compassionate self-appraisals enable people to perform better and experience more positive moods than self-critical evaluations.

-*How have you applied self-compassion to improve performance?

Related Post
Working toward Goals with “Implementation Intentions”

©Kathryn Welds

“Everything is Negotiable”: Prepare, Ask, Revise, Ask Again

Women have negotiated less effectively for salaries than men in a number of studies. The real-life consequences of this trend is a persistently lower salaries than men   throughout women’s working lives.

Linda Babcock

The lifetime salary gap for women MBAs was estimated at USD $500,000 – USD $2 million when compared with male classmates, according to Carnegie Mellon’s Linda Babcock.
She linked this difference to men’s greater willingness to negotiate salary and promotions.

Catherine DesRoches

This salary difference also exists for women in academic medicine, who earned about 80 percent of their male peers’ compensation in a salary study by Harvard’s Catherine DesRoches, Sowmya Rao, Lisa Iezzoni, and Eric Campbell with Darren Zinner of Brandeis.

Babcock, with Sara Laschever, suggested that these negotiation differences are linked to  gender socialization practices.

Sara Laschever

They observed that many parents encourage boys to take risks, earn money, and participate in competitive team sports.
These activities can prepare people to negotiate, compete, and tolerate disrupted interpersonal relationships.

In contrast, they suggested that parents may encourage girls to play collaboratively and value interpersonal affiliation instead of getting part-time jobs and participating in sports teams.

John List

John List

Women’s avoidance of salary negotiation and preferring less competitive work roles, was also reported by University of Chicago’s John List, Andreas Leibbrandt, and Jeffrey Flory.

This team’s research studied respondents to two identical “job ads” on internet job boards with different wage structures.
One position offered hourly pay whereas the other role’s pay depended on performance compared with coworkers.
More women than men applied to the hourly wage role.

Andreas Leibbrandt

Andreas Leibbrandt

Men were 94 percent more likely than women to seek and perform well in competitive work roles among nearly 7,000 job seekers across 16 large American cities.
This gender wage gap “more than doubled” as performance-linked compensation increased.
Women in these studies were significantly more likely to choose less competitive employment options.

Jeffrey Flory

Jeffrey Flory

Women were also more likely to apply to jobs in which the performance required teamwork rather than individual accomplishment.

Likewise, women favoured flat fee compensation that was unrelated to   performance.

Men did not wait for an invitation or permission to negotiate.
They were more likely to negotiate even when there was no explicit statement that wages were negotiable.

When there was a specific invitation to ask for higher salaries and job titles, women negotiated as frequently as men 

Babcock and Laschever noted that negotiation practices considered “acceptable” for men may be unfavourably viewed when women use them.

They advised women to adopt several changes in negotiation mindset and behaviours:

  • Consider that “everything is negotiable,”
  • Research personal “market worth” using online resources like Salary.com, Payscale.com, and Glassdoor.com,
  • Consider oneself worthy of higher salaries and job roles,
  • Examine self-limiting beliefs about negotiation,
  • Plan negotiation talking points, including accomplishments, results, impact,
  • Practice negotiating the salary proposal, suggest timing, set an ambitious anchor point, prepare for objections,
  • Plan counter-offers and practice self-regulation (such as through intentional breathing) to maintain negotiation position and interpersonal rapport.

Roger FisherHarvard’s Roger Fisher and William Ury added recommendations for Collaborative Negotiation that enables both people to derive value from the negotiation conversation through preparation, proactivity, and persistence while reaffirming the negotiation goal’s value for all parties.

Ohio State’s Roy Lewicki, David Saunders of Queen’s University, and Vanderbilt’s Bruce Barry of Vanderbilt contributed additional research-based guidance on effective Negotiation.

Leigh Thompson

Leigh Thompson

Related research by Leigh Thompson of Northwestern, found that more than 90% of negotiators neglect to ask “diagnostic questions that reveal the negotiation partner’s most important needs, priorities, preferences, and even fears.
When negotiators elicited these “wants,” they achieved significantly improved negotiation outcomes.

Pat Heim

Pat Heim

Women’s reluctance to negotiate may be related to gender differences in attributions of success and failure, suggested Pat Heim

Women often attribute failures to themselves (“internalizing”) whereas men identify external factors (“rationalisations”l, “excuses”) associated with their shortcomings.
Women are more likely to attribute success to external factors (“deflection of merit”), whereas men typically attribute their effective performance to themselves (“self-bolstering”).

Men are often promoted because they are seen to have “potential,” but women are  more likely to be promoted based on their results and accomplishments, noted Heim.

Even factors like attire can influence perception of authority:  Men judged women as less authoritative when wearing “business casual” attire.

These studies encourage women to develop skills and behaviours required to close the wage gap between professional women and men.

-How do you prepare for negotiations and overcome objections during negotiations?

Related Posts:

©Kathryn Welds

Working toward Goals with “Implementation Intentions”

Heidi Grant Halvorson

Heidi Grant Halvorson

People are motivated by goals that enable:

  • Relatedness to others,
  • Competence in skillful performance,
  • Autonomy in directing effort, according to Columbia’s Heidi Grant Halvorson.

Juliana Breines

She advocated working toward “better” performance rather than focusing on achieving the goal.

This can be accomplished by acknowledging mistakes and practicing self-compassion, suggested by Berkeley’s Juliana Breines and Serena Chen, and University of Texas‘s Kristin Neff.

The Relatedness-Competence-Autonomy model aligns with Daniel Pink’s suggestion that meaningful goals enable two similar features and one different element:

Daniel Pink

  • Autonomy (same): Controlling work content and context,
  • Mastery (like Competence): Improving skill over time through persistence, effort, corrective feedback,
  • Purpose (in contrast to Relatedness): Being part of an inspiring goal.

Halvorson suggested ways to move closer toward goals:

Serena Chen

-Consider the larger context of specific productive actions, 

-Define reasons for doing what needs to be done – the “why,”

-Use “implementation intentions” to prepare responses for challenging situations: If X, then Y.

If “x” occurs (specify time, place, circumstance),
-Then I will respond by doing, thinking, saying “y.”

      • ->“When I feel anxious, I will focus on inhaling and exhaling slowly for 60 seconds.”
      ->“When it’s 7 am, I will walk for 10 minutes,”

Kristin Neff

-Apply implementation intention routines (habits) for “strategic automation” to reduce decision-overload that may undermine self-control,

-Focus on something interesting for five minutes to evoke positive feelings,

-Review “small wins” and progress toward goals.

Goal persistence can be increased, reported Stanford’s Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in a study of employees at seven companies.

Teresa Amabile

Teresa Amabile

They found that “catalysts” and “nourishers” continue movement toward goals.
She recommended capitalising on preferred motivational style:

-“Promotion-focused” (maximise gains, avoid missed opportunities, powered by optimism),
-“Prevention-focused” (minimise losses, variance, powered by cautious pessimism),

Carol Dweck

Carol Dweck

Halvorson collaborated with Stanford’s Carol Dweck and quoted Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right” to underscore the value of optimistic engagement with goals.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford

They synthesized Dweck’s work on “mindsets” with Halvorson’s recommendations for :
-Setting,
-Monitoring,
-Protecting,
-Executing,
-c\Celebrating goals.  

An earlier post outlined Dweck’s definitions of mindsets:

• Fixed Mindset:  Belief that personal capabilities are limited to present capacities, associated with fear, anxiety,

• Growth Mindset:  View that personal capabilities can expand based on:
-Commitment,
-Effort,
-Practice,
-Instruction,
-Correcting mistakes,
-Collaboration.

Peter Gollwitzer

Peter Gollwitzer

Columbia’s Peter Gollwitzer refined “mindsets” by distinguishing the Deliberative Mindset of evaluating which goals to pursue from the Implementation Mindset of planning goal execution.

His team found that the Deliberative Mindset is associated with:

    • Accurate, impartial analysis of goal feasibility and desirability,
    • Open-mindedness.

In contrast, the Implementation Mindset is linked to:

    • Optimistic, partial analysis of goal feasibility and desirability,
    • Closed-mindedness.

Halvorson, Dweck and Gollwitzer translated their research on self-determination and motivation into practical recommendations for goal seekers:

    • Adopt a supportive “mindset,”
    • Practice “self-compassion” when encountering setbacks to achieving goals,
    • Design effective responses to anticipated challenging situations,
    • Use “implementation intentions” and “strategic automation” toward goals,
    • Consider incremental progress toward goals.

-*What approaches help you work toward goals?

Related Posts:

©Kathryn Welds

Executive Presence: “Gravitas,” Communication…and Appearance?

Professional advancement requires demonstrated knowledge, skill, and competence, coupled with perceived “cultural fit,“collaboration,” and “executive presence.”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

These requirements appear prone to subjective definition and biased judgments.
What is “executive presence”? How is it measured?

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, CEO of Center for Talent Innovation, conducted 18 focus groups and 60 interviews to investigate behavioral and attitudinal aspects of Executive Presence (EP).

Perceived Executive Presence includes three components:Executive Presence

Gravitas” – Authoritative Behavior

    • Confidence, composure,
    • Decisiveness,
    • Integrity,
    • Emotional Intelligence: Self-awareness, self-regulation, interpersonal skills,
    • Personal reputation,
    • Vision for leadership,

Communication

    • Speaking skills:  Voice tone, articulation, grammatical speech conveying competence,
    • Presence,” “bearing,” “charisma” including assertiveness, humour, humility,
    • Ability to sense audience engagement, emotion, interests,

Appearance

    • Grooming, posture,
    • Physical attractiveness, average body weight,
    • Professional attire.
      According to Hewlett’s interviewees, “Executive Presence” accounts for more than a quarter of factors that determine a next promotion.

Harrison Monarth

How can Executive Presence be developed?

 Harrison Monarth suggested that Executive Presence behaviours can be cultivated with Image Management tactics including:

-Maintaining a positive personal reputation to influence others’ favourable perceptions and willingness to collaborate,

-Effectively managing online “brand”,

-Gaining followers online and in the “real world,”

-Influencing and persuading others,

-Demonstrating “Emotional Intelligence” through self-awareness, awareness of others (empathic insight), and regulating one’s own emotions.

He focused less on appearance than Hewlett and Stanford Law School’s Deborah Rhode, who summarized extensive research on Halo Effect and “The Beauty Bias”.

Deborah Rhode

Rhode estimated that annual world-wide investment in appearance was close to $USD 200 billion in 2010.
She contended that bias based on appearance influences career and life outcomes and is:

  • Is prevalent,
  • Infringes on individuals’ fundamental rights,
  • Compromises merit principles,
  • Reinforces negative stereotypes,
  • Compounds disadvantages facing members of non-dominant races, classes, and gender.

Executive Presence is widely recognized as a prerequisite for leadership roles, yet its components remained loosely-defined until Hewlett’s investigation and Rhode’s human rights analysis.

-*Which elements seem most essential to Executive Presence?

See related posts

©Kathryn Welds

How Much Does Appearance Matter?

Linda A. Jackson

Physically attractive people were evaluated as more intellectually competent and likeable in a meta-analysis by Michigan State University’s Linda A. Jackson, John E. Hunter, and Carole N. Hodge.

Nancy Etcoff

Similarly, women who wore cosmetics were rated more highly on attractiveness, competence, likeability and trustworthiness when viewed for as little as 250 milliseconds by participants in studies by Harvard’s Nancy L. Etcoff, Lauren E. Haley, and David M. House, with Shannon Stock of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Proctor & Gamble’s Sarah A. Vickery.

Models without makeup, with natural, professional, “glamorous” makeup

However, when participants looked at the faces for a longer time, ratings for competence and attractiveness remained the same, but ratings for likeability and trustworthiness changed based on specific makeup looks.

Etcoff’s team concluded that cosmetics could influence automatic judgments because attractiveness “rivets attention and impels actions that help ensure the survival of our genes.”

Most people recognize the bias in assuming that attractive people are competent and that unattractive people are not, yet impression management remains crucial in the workplace and in the political arena.

-*Where have you seen appearance exert an influence in workplace credibility, decision-making and role advancement?

Related Posts

©Kathryn Welds

 

Women Who Express Anger Seen as Less Influential

Jessica Salerno

Jessica Salerno

Women who expressed anger were less likely to influence their peersin computer-mediated mock jury proceedings, found Arizona State University’s Jessica Salerno and Liana Peter-Hagene of University of Illinois. 

Liana Peter-Hagene

Liana Peter-Hagene

More than 200 U.S. jury-eligible volunteers reviewed opening arguments and closing statements, eyewitness testimonies, crime scene photographs, and an image of the alleged weapon in a homicide.

Participants made individual verdict choices, then exchanged instant messages by computer, with “peers” who were said to be “deliberating their verdict decisions.”

In fact, “peer” messages were scripted, with four of the fictional jurors agreeing with the participant’s verdict, and one disagreeing.
In different test conditions, the dissenting participant had 1) a male user name or 2) a female user name or 3) a gender-neutral name.

Victoria Brescoll

Victoria Brescoll

Half of the dissenting messages contained no emotion, anger, or fear, and had no influence on participants’ opinions.

However, when a single “male dissenter” sent angry messages, characterized by “shouting” in all capital letters, participants’ confidence in their verdict decision significantly dropped.
This confidence-eroding effect of one “male dissenter” held even when the majority of “jurors” shared the same opinion.

A single female dissenter who expressed disagreement in an angry message did not undermine the other juror’s confidence in their decisions.

This finding suggests that a single male dissenter’s angry communication causes people to doubt their opinions, and that “female” anger was less influential than “male” anger.

In contrast, volunteers became more confident in their initial verdict decisions when their vote was echoed by the majority of other participants.

Eric Luis Uhlmann

Eric Luis Uhlmann

Male and female evaluators assigned lower status to female CEOs and female trainees when they expressed anger, compared with angry male professionals in research by Yale University’s Victoria Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann, now of INSEAD.

Kristi Lewis Tyran

Kristi Lewis Tyran

Men who expressed anger in a professional context were conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness.

Likewise, women who expressed anger and sadness were rated less effective than women who shared no emotion, according to Kristi Lewis Tyran of Western Washington University.

Evaluators judged men’s angry reactions more generously, attributing these emotional expressions to external circumstances, such as experiencing pressure and demands from others.

These differing judgments of emotional expression suggest that women’s anger is more harshly evaluated because anger expressions deviate from women’s expected societal, gender, and cultural norms.

-*What impacts and consequences have you observed for women and men who express anger at work?

RELATED POSTS:

©Kathryn Welds

 

Rationalisation: Coping or Complacency?

Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones

Rationalisation was described by Freud biographer and psychoanalyst Ernest Jones as an unconscious maneuver to provide plausible explanations for unacceptable behaviour, motives, or feelings.

Gil Diesendruck

Children as young as ages four to six demonstrated this tactic in experiments by Bar-Ilan University’s Avi Benozio and Gil Diesendruck.

The research team found that young children learned to “reframe” disappointing circumstances.
This approach is often used by older people to reduce uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, described in classic studies by New School’s Leon Festinger.

Leon Festinger

In Benozio and Diesendruck’s experiments, children ages three, four, five and six years old completed tasks in exchange for stickers that varied in attractiveness to each age group.

Participants could invest considerable effort or minimal work in activities and could choose to keep these prizes or give them to another person.

Six year olds who invested substantial effort to obtain attractive rewards were less likely to relinquish stickers to others.

Elliot Aronson

When six year olds applied significant effort to obtain less desirable rewards, they also distributed fewer to others, but their reasoning differed.

They adjusted their appraisal of the less attractive stickers, judging these prizes as more appealing.
In contrast, four year olds discarded stickers rather than bolstering the value of the stickers.

Aesop

These differences suggest that children learn to rationalize by age six and continue using this strategy into adulthood, and validated by Stanford’s Elliot Aronson and the U.S. Army’s Judson Mills.

Their studies validated Aesop‘s observation of “sweet lemons” and “sour grapes” in the well-known fable The Fox and the Grapes.

To evaluate a possible relationship between cognitive dissonance and rationalization, UCLA’s Johanna M. Jarcho and Matthew D. Lieberman with Elliot T. Berkman of University of Oregon conducted fMRIs while participants responded to measures of attitude change linked to cognitive dissonance.

Joanna Jarcho

Joanna Jarcho

Brain activity showed significantly increased rapid reappraisal pattern used in emotional regulation, suggesting that rationalization may be an automatic coping mechanism rather than an unconscious defense mechanism.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr

Benozio and Diesendruck noted that this adaptive capacity could lead to complacence instead of working to change negative circumstances, articulated in the well-known Serenity Prayer attributed to Yale’s Reinhold Niebuhr:

…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

-*To what extent is rationalisation a logical error?
-*How effective is rationalisation as an emotional regulation strategy?

Related Posts:

©Kathryn Welds