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Contagious Kindness? It’s a Thing.

Amanda Paull — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:25 +0000

Please Share: Kindness at Work

Kindness is contagious. We know that. Studies even prove it. A study published last July in the journal Emotion found that (I hope you’re sitting down) kindness is contagious at work, too, and it’s actually good for business.

The study is called “Everyday Prosociality in the Workplace: The Reinforcing Benefits of Giving, Getting, and Glimpsing.”

The upshot, when translated into common language: When people do nice things for other people at work, they’re happier; and the receivers start doing nice things for other people. “People who were “receivers” in the experiment paid it forward by doling out volumes more acts of kindness compared to the control group – 278% more!”

The work environment is more pleasant, people have a sense of ownership and belonging—and feeling appreciated can help make workers more successful.

While the article doesn’t overtly cover other areas of interaction, like social media, we would like to think that kindness here (instead of the usual, anonymous vitriol) would also apply.

Read the full article by Richard Davidson, Neuroscientist.

*Mural Art by Lettering Designer Gina Lu

Fake News! We Are All To Blame.

Celeste Gregory — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 00:52:46 +0000

When it comes to fake news, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

Researchers at Ohio State found that when they gave people accurate statistics on a controversial issue, their memories adjusted the stats to match their own beliefs.

When they passed on these misremembered stats, the information grew more and more different as it was passed from person to person.

Like a game of telephone. But it’s not our hearing that warps the message, it’s our brain.

Memory isn’t a recording device; memory is more like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, and pieces mixed in from other puzzles, according to the researchers.

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20191225/facts-are-misremembered-to-fit-personal-biases-ohio-state-study-finds

Story 2018 Recap

David Paull — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 05:39:03 +0000

How does someone from the market research industry engage a group of creatives, communicators, and storytellers? By making them go, “hmm?” That’s exactly the approach I took when I was offered the opportunity to talk with the 1200 amazing people attending the Story 2018 conference put on by Story Gathering.

The Story audience is an eclectic bunch and I knew that in order to earn my time on that stage I’d have to deliver a lot of value and a few surprises. With that in mind I got to work crafting a talk and a fun, interactive experiment.

The talk was based on how principles from the field of behavioral science can be used to craft more effective and persuasive stories. I told two versions of a compelling story, the second of which was deliberately written to capitalize on known cognitive biases to elicit a certain reaction. I then pulled back the curtain to show the audience how it was done and gave them some tools to use for themselves. The experiment looked at how powerful “framing” is when communicating a message. Participants listened to two versions of a story, then answered questions about it. Again, one version was deliberately written to elicit a specific reaction and it most certainly did.

Feedback from the audience was quite positive, with many telling me that they appreciated the tangible and practical takeaways they could deploy in their work. My biggest takeaway from this experience is to know your audience. There are many directions I could have taken and many were more self-serving. But when on that stage, I was in service to the audience, not myself. Through that lens I was able to craft a great experience for them and for me.

By the way, if you want to hear more about the talk or the outcome of the experiment, please let me know. I’d love to discuss it or share it with your audience.

Daydreaming is necessary for problem-solving

Celeste Gregory — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 17:48:16 +0000

And other counterintuitive research discoveries

There are limits to the conscious mind’s capacity for processing.
Truly.

Our minds switch back and forth between focused attention and daydreaming. Focused, undistracted attention enables us to get things done. Like building the pyramids. So at work we probably should never, ever let our minds wander.

Except that our daydreaming mode is responsible for our creativity; because when our attention is wandering, or unfocused, our minds are making connections among ideas that we wouldn’t normally link together; and suddenly we’re “able to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable.” And those times of daydreaming function as restoratives, enabling us, ironically, to do more than if we worked longer hours without a break.

So to maximize productivity, scientists recommend partitioning our days, scheduling chunks of time for uninterrupted, focused work; and scheduling time for brain vacations. Maybe even a nap.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/hit-the-reset-button-in-your-brain.html?emc=eta1

Other things great for creativity, like being sleepy
Sometimes the inability to focus has benefits. We’re more likely to consider the irrelevant information straying around our brains, mostly because we can’t control it. As when we’re daydreaming, groggy thinking can help us make disparate connections and come up with more creative solutions.
http://www.wired.com/2012/02/why-being-sleepy-and-drunk-are-great-for-creativity/

Things bad for creativity, like being sleepless
Going without any sleep damages creativity, along with limiting ordinary brain function. When we sleep our brains go into maintenance mode, sorting and consolidating information and strengthening neural networks. Sleeping on a problem can really help solve it. Find out how: http://creativesomething.net/post/55777070869/no-sleep-and-its-effect-on-creative-thinking

What does it take to get customers addicted to your stuff?

Amanda Paull — Mon, 07 May 2018 17:45:03 +0000

Nir Eyal can show you how to design habit-forming apps.

Not habit in the classical sense, of a quality that develops the powers of the body or mind. No.
Habit as in drug habit.

The supercomputer in our pockets, with its dings, buzzes, haptics, likes, and so on, acts on our brains like crack. A dopamine rush every time we use it. Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, says that a company’s economic value is increasingly the “function of the strength of the habits they create.” It’s getting customers addicted to your stuff.

The idea is to make your app/site part of a user’s daily routine. And emotions. “A cemented habit is when users subconsciously think, ‘I’m bored,” and instantly Facebook comes to mind,” says Eyal. “They think, ‘I wonder what’s going on in the world?’ and before rational thought occurs, Twitter is the answer.”

If you want to make your customers junkies—or “hook” them as Eyal says, consider the trigger-action-reward-investment sequence for habit design:
•   The degree to which a company can utilize habit-forming technologies will increasingly decide which products and services succeed or fail.
•   Habit-forming technology creates associations with “internal triggers” which cue users without the need for marketing, messaging or other external stimuli.
•   Creating associations with internal triggers comes from building the four components of a “Hook” — a trigger, action, variable reward, and investment.
•   Consumers must understand how habit-forming technology works to prevent unwanted manipulation while still enjoying the benefits of these innovations.
•   Companies must understand the mechanics of habit-formation to increase engagement with their products and services and ultimately help users create beneficial routines.

“If used for good,” writes Eyal, “habits can enhance people’s lives with entertaining and even healthful routines. If used to exploit, habits can turn into wasteful addictions. But, like it or not, habit-forming technology is already here.”

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave a comment below.

May the Fourth be with you: If you like Star Wars and iambic pentameter, read this

Amanda Paull — Thu, 03 May 2018 08:13:50 +0000

The rhythm of writing. And disturbances in the Force.

A Muggle’s Guide to Reading Minds like a Wizard (Using Science)

Amanda Paull — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 03:04:14 +0000

Most of us wonder, to varying degrees, what others are thinking about us and what kind of impression we’re making. People make lousy mind readers, but there’s a scientific way to make better guesses at practice mental telepathy (or Legilimency . . . ).

Researchers Tal Eyal (Ben Gurion University) and Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago) noted that we see things at different levels of detail. In other words, we can see the details of close things very clearly. Distant things we see in vaguer outlines, with few or no details.

We are close to ourselves, and see ourselves in excruciating detail. We think others see us the same way, but they don’t. They see us as if at a distance. If we can manage to take the long view of ourselves, Eyal and Epley maintain, we can better sense what others might be thinking about us.

The reverse works for empathy. Walk in another person’s shoes? Nope. That’s actually a lousy way to read minds. If we see ourselves under a microscope and others with a wide-angle lens, then to gauge what another person is thinking of him or herself we need to swap the wide-angle for the microscope.

At Engagious, we aren’t mind readers. But we do have some sure fire ways to get at what people are thinking–without guessing. So if you need to know what is on your audience’s mind, reach out. It’s kind of what we do here (all day long.)

And for our Muggle audience, you can read more: How to read minds like a wizard

Becoming better mind-readers – to work out how other people see you, use the right lens

Disfluency and handwriting

Amanda Paull — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 06:15:16 +0000

Writing is slower than typing, and transcribes less information. That’s why it’s better.

A study has found that students who take lecture notes by hand rather than by computer are able to recall more of the lecture.

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, while skeptical of this research, muses that “with handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important. Maybe it helps you think better.”

Merely transcribing every word the professor utters can diminish the ability to process new information. Writing by hand is tiring, and limiting, which forces note takers into a dialogue with the information: processing, reframing, sorting, summarizing, storing. With handwriting, especially cursive, students have been shown to be better able to retain information and generate ideas.

There’s relevance in this finding even for those long past the days of taking lecture notes. It speaks to the value of disfluency: a sense of mental difficulty that force us to think more deeply and to interact more comprehensively with information. Things like reading ornate fonts, trying to remember a phone number, interacting with the text of a book by writing comments in the margins—anything that forces us to slow down and struggle a little with the “data” in front of us, whatever form that data happens to take.

Life is Short. Eat the Cookie.

Amanda Paull — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 17:43:30 +0000

Go here for a review of Charles Duhigg’s 2016 book Smarter. Faster. Better. And then a survey/analysis of the business success self-help genre, since the original book of the self-help genre, published in 1859: Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles. (A straightforward beginning, one might say.) How the genre shifts with the economy, and why we keep reading these books. How to break the habit of eating a chocolate chip cookie every afternoon. And then why you shouldn’t.

It has books and cookies, so read it.

“If only somebody could tell me who built the damn station, the circumstances of the building, details of the wrangling between city officials and the railroad, so that I would not fall victim to it, the station, the very first crack off the bat” (Walker Percy, The Moviegoer).

Kahneman: Cognitive biases are like optical illusions

Rich Thau — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 18:22:27 +0000

Behavorial science pioneer Daniel Kahneman says that our brains seek coherence, unity, patterns, sometimes where there is none; suppressing ambiguity in favor of a meaningful picture. That’s what gives rise to our cognitive biases. Which is not an entirely negative thing. Life is messy, and we have to impose some order or go crazy. But even knowing that our reflexive thinking needs to be tempered with rational analysis can help us avoid some of those biases.