Short version: Use #FOMO (fear of missing out). Call them names (“you VOTER!”). Question their level of commitment. Promise to check up on them.

Hey, blog-reading friends. Your polling place is where all the cool kids are going to be on today. What’s your plan?

We’ll check back with you to see how you did.

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE HERE

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

<><><>

If you are receiving this email it is because I consider you a friend or I greatly respect you and your work.

I feel as a nation we are facing two very dangerous curves that if not checked will create a crush with devastating long term consequences. The first we are addressing with #SocialDistancing.

This is helping us to not overwhelm our healthcare system, limit contagion and allow our healthcare workers to methodically help those in need.

The second curve, the one we are not addressing, is the current blow to our economic system and our own financial lives. Obviously, there are some businesses and industries that will have a difficult time no matter what. If you are in the travel industry or work in a restaurant or hospitality, you will have to wait for a recovery. However, in my colleagues’ clients, I am seeing a lot of people ceasing to do business out of fear or just holding to see “where this is going.” I am comparatively insulated from this, unlike many working Americans who are living completely check to check. I was raised in extreme abject poverty but also graduated from the London School of Economics, spending a full year studying the 1929 global economic crisis––the Great Depression.

Here is the issue. If we fall into the category of businesses that are “holding off” out of fear––the majority––I am exceedingly nervous about the domino effect we are setting up economically. If we all shut down––even though most of us offer products and services, remotely deliverable, that are still vitally needed by all––we shut down the economic system. If our economic system shuts down, the long term effects of this will have severe, even longer-lasting effects on our physical and mental health. Many will perish if there is a global economic crisis, as they did during The Great Depression. We cannot wait for our national governments or hope that a stimulus package will solve this.

We must do what we can, together, NOW. The economy is a human health issue.

This weekend David Paull, CEO of Engagious, posted across his social media his thoughts about turning the “economic curve.” The writer Michael Lewis did an interview on CNN echoing the same. If we want to take our lives into our own hands we need to make #DoBusiness relevant in the world as a message, share what is working, discourage paralysis created by fear, and ensure we all––as a collective––prevent an economic crush that could destroy lives. This is the most, yet relatively unexpressed, truth in the world right now. Obviously, supermarkets and toilet paper manufacturers do not need to be “holding” in their efforts to do business. Many of us are still offering vital products and services that we all need, but are holding out of fear. Let’s STOP holding and turn the curve, freezing the domino effect that comes from holding––by DOING EVEN MORE BUSINESS REMOTELY––for all of us who can. The world must go on, the world will go on and, as it does go on, commerce needs to go on––to save lives and prevent any more suffering. We need to work together––#DoBusiness––to stop the domino effect.

You can help by SPREADING #DoBusiness

1- POST the #DoBusiness graphics below (3 JPEGs attached) to your social media. Pin them to the top of your feed and make them your cover pages.

2- Post these once a day and then, with the below images, share content that expresses your thoughts in your field, in your life, and what you are doing to TURN THE ECONOMIC CURVE.

3- Make the sentiment of us continuing to provide each other the vital products and services we still all need––#DoBusiness––as popular a notion as #SocialDistancing so that we can all start addressing the second curve that is equally vital to our global physical and psychological well being.

Here are three assets for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn created by me and a local industrial designer.

PLEASE COPY/SAVE THEM AND POST URGENTLY REPETITIVELY AND EXHAUSTIVELY––AND PUSH OUT TO YOUR NETWORKS––ASKING THEM TO POST REPETITIVELY AND EXHAUSTIVELY.

To download: Right-Click > Save Image As…

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

Our team was in Saginaw, Michigan, last week, with ten respondents who voted for Obama in 2012 and then Trump in 2016. What we uncovered was surprising, and not surprising. Surprising in relation to typical media coverage. But not really surprising, because it tracks with what we’ve been hearing in our past swing voter groups.

Here are some highlights:

Buyer’s remorse? Nope. They would vote for Trump over Hillary all over again.

But they voted for Obama. Yes, they did. But in a hypothetical (constitutionally impossible) matchup between Obama and Trump, eight of them would vote for Trump.

Are they better off than they were four years ago? Yes. The economy is booming, and they are personally seeing the benefits. They like what the president is doing on trade, healthcare, and immigration.

Would a recession erode their support? They don’t think there’s going to be a recession in the next year, but it wouldn’t matter, they’ll still support the president.

But don’t they watch the news? They don’t trust mainstream media coverage of what’s going on.

So, impeachment . . . A waste of time and a big waste of money. They want the attention to be on them and their needs, and they want government resources (their tax dollars) spent on America. In a word: they resent it. (“Resent” is an . . . interesting emotion, but we’re skipping the psychology sidebar in this post.) (Maybe just a footnote.[1])

Anybody exciting on the Democratic side? Not really. They only really recognized three of the 10 we showed them. When we dial tested segments from the last debate, Andrew #Yang rated highest while talking about the importance of early childhood education. Despite this group’s general disinterest with the candidates, they had a lot of positive comments about this one segment. See that here: https://youtu.be/1EviMd22Ms8

They want to keep their health insurance. Most of them (eight of 10) said they can’t vote for a candidate who supports Medicare for All.

For the full report go here; for clips and commentary go here. 

[1] See Ressentiment, Max Scheler; also https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/whats-ressentiment-got-do-it

Retailers have one objective this cyber week—to get you to spend as much money in their retail/online stores as possible.  To achieve this objective, retailers use behavioral science, or the study of human behavior, to influence your spending decisions. How are retailers able to do this?

Create a sense of urgency

People are looking for good deals and the limited-time nature of retailers’ discounts creates a sense of urgency for them. We may be told that the big sale is ending soon. Or that there is a limited supply of an item that we are interested in.  This works because nobody likes to miss out on an opportunity to save money—and that’s why time-limited discounts work. It is human nature to seek pleasure (discounts) and avoid pain (missing out on discounts).

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward the Brain’s Reward Center.”  -Camelia Kuhnen

Elicit positive feelings of excitement

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward Brain’s Reward Center,”  says Camelia Kuhnen, a behavioral economist at the University of North Carolina. These offers appeal to both the “fear anxiety center” and the “reward center”—the part that’s a trigger when we’re happy, says

Kuhnen.  She argues that our “happy-frenzied” state drives us to strongly prefer immediate rewards and take on more financial risk. Sales, coupons, and markdowns—valid only for a short period of time—help to build excitement in our “reward center”. And thus, retail sales soar.

“FREE!” Effectively frames the “gains” for consumers

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, has written about the psychology of gains and losses. This subject directly applies to how retailers are using behavioral science. Aron Ezra, the CEO of OfferCraft gives a very simple example to demonstrate.

Scenario 1: Sales associate #1 is selling $60 pants and then attempts to up-sell the customer on a $15 belt.

Scenario 2: Sales associate #2 sells the pants at $75 and presents the belt as a free gift.

Not surprisingly, the “free gift with purchase” will help enterprising sales associate #2 move a lot more belts than his counterpart. Why? Kahneman says that psychologically, we feel losses twice as acutely as we feel gains. A free thank-you gift would be viewed as a gain for the consumer; passing up a free gift will feel like a loss. We like receiving gifts. It feels good—and retailers know this.

This is just a brief list of all the ways we can be influenced–even when we are looking for it. Before you hit that ‘Buy’ button during cyber week, ask yourself how they nabbed you.

They’re rituals. They’re religious, cultural, and civic. Every society has them. We do them for our families, for our countries, for our teams. (Just try to neglect them: “But we always have monkey bread Christmas morning!”)

Turns out, these rituals aren’t magic; they’re science. And (no surprise) why we have them and perform them is the subject of studies.

Follow the links for the details, but here’s a glimpse of the findings: Pre-task rituals can reduce anxiety and improve performance. Engaging in a sequence of ritualistic movements tricks the brain into thinking it’s in an arena of stability and predictability. Which is calming.

More on point for the holiday season: Rituals unite us. They solidify and sacralize human bonds. They enhance our sense of belonging. They also can enhance our perception of value: A ritual for eating chocolate can make the chocolate taste even better.

So keep up those traditions, as they feed your soul. Start new ones with extended family and business partners. Traditions transcend family bonds. They reach into your community and your work life. And it is all good–for you and others.

Enjoy the season.

1. Networking is an exhilarating way to advance my career, boosting my productivity and my career outlook—not to mention all the great connections I get to make!
2. Networking is an exhausting, but necessary, thing I have to do to advance my career, but sometimes I feel like it distracts me from my real work.

Researchers at the University of Bamberg in Germany had a theory that daily networking gives people an increase in productivity and career optimism.

Maybe they have extraversion bias, because the results surprised them.

They found that daily networking made career optimism go up—for people who already had a strong need for social affiliation. But people who had a low need for affiliation did not see an increase in career optimism. Some even reported lower work performance, because the networking took so much energy.

Researchers concluded that “people who are less inclined to interact socially should not force themselves to network.”

That’s not permission to take up permanent residence in the introvert’s comfort zone.

And it isn’t doom to introvert’s career ambitions.