Lean allegedly came from the Japanese manufacturing model in the 1980s and 90s, yet its governing principles, the ‘Five Ss’, are explained in Frederick Taylor’s 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management in beautiful detail: Sort – you look at a workspace and you see what is needed for the job; everything else, pictures, food, drinks, anything apparently superfluous, you take out. Then you Set in order, so for example if somebody is right-handed you’d make sure you they were sitting in a right-handed workspace. Then Shine – you take everything off and clean ­– or shine – the workspace, so that managers can see that you’re doing your job and nothing else. Then you Standardize, so that if you’re in Leicester or Lima it’s the same recognizable corporate space. Then Sustain, always said to be the hardest one – keep it going. Of course Sustain is difficult if you go into a workspace and mess around with it in this way, you generate the Hawthorne effect – a quick peak of interest and then a trough of disappointment, so Sustain is hard. But the psychologically interesting thing is that people still think, ‘It must work.’

We don’t understand psychologically why putting someone in an impoverished space should work, when it doesn’t work for any other animal on the planet. Put an ant in a lean jam jar or a gorilla in a lean cage and they’re really miserable, so why should it work for people? So we started to experiment. […]

Every time we’ve experimented, we’ve found well-being and productivity have been inextricably linked. Over eight years, lean has always, without exception, been the worst condition you can put anyone into.

{ Craig Knight/The Psychologist | Continue reading }

What’s the best way to make a good first impression? […] Be yourself.

{ peer-reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

First impressions are powerful and are formed in all sorts of social settings, from job interviews and first dates to court rooms and classrooms. We regularly make snap judgments about others, deciding whether people are trustworthy, confident, extraverted, likable, and more. Although we have all heard the old adage, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” we do just that. And at the same time that we are judging others, we in turn communicate a great deal of information about ourselves – often unwittingly – that others use to size us up.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

art { Christen Brun, A Basket Of Ribbons, 1896 }

…scientific research with actual forensic examiners which [showed] that the *same* expert, examining the *same* evidence, can reach different conclusions when they are affected by bias. The problem was also demonstrated in fingerprinting and DNA, very robust forensic domains. […]

Fingerprinting, DNA, CCTV images, firearms, shoe and tire marks, document examination, and so on. When there is no instrument that says ‘match’ or ‘no-match’ and it is in the ‘eye of the beholder’ to make the judgement, then subjectivity comes in, and is open to cognitive bias. Essentially, forensic areas in which there are no objective criteria: where it is the forensic expert who compares visual patterns and determines if they are ‘sufficiently similar’ or ‘sufficiently consistent’. For example, whether two fingerprints were made by the same finger, whether two bullets were fired from the same gun, whether two signatures were made by the same person. Such determinations are governed by a variety of cognitive processes.

{ Itiel Dror/Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

{ A new study suggests that if you’re looking for employment, wearing red is a bad decision }

photo { Nadav Kander }

In both the lab and the field, female subjects tend to show greater confidence in their groups than in themselves, while male subjects show greater confidence in themselves than in their groups.

{ PDF | via OvercomingBias }

photos { Joseph Cultice }

A cute mistake that young children make is to think that they can hide themselves by covering or closing their eyes. Why do they make this error? A research team led by James Russell at the University of Cambridge has used a process of elimination to find out. […]

The revelation that most young children think people can only see each other when their eyes meet raises some interesting question for future research.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

In the 1990s, Thomas Quick confessed to more than 30 murders, making him Sweden’s most notorious serial killer. Then, he changed his name and revealed his confessions were all faked. […]

There were no DNA traces, no murder weapons, no eyewitnesses – nothing apart from his confessions, many of which had been given when he was under the influence of narcotic-strength drugs.

{ Guardian | full story }

image { Marina Abramović, Rhythm 10, 1973 }

This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for this hypothesis.

{ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin/SAGE | PDF }

When I wrote about the marshmallow test several years ago, it seemed so simple:

A child was given a marshmallow and told he could either ring a bell to summon the researcher and get to eat the marshmallow right away or wait a few minutes until the researcher returned, at which time the child would be given two marshmallows. It’s a simple test of self control, but only about a third of kids that age will wait for the second marshmallow. What’s more interesting, though, is that success on that test correlates pretty well with success later in life. The children who can’t wait grow up to have lower S.A.T. scores, higher body mass indexes, problems with drugs and trouble paying attention.

The initial finding hasn’t been overturned, but a new study in the journal Cognition is adding a layer of complexity to the test with the finding that whether the child perceives the researcher as trustworthy matters.

{ Smithsonian | Continue reading }

When we read a text, we hear a voice talking to us. Yet the voice changes over time. In his new book titled Poesins röster, Mats Malm, professor in comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that when reading older literature, we may hear completely different voices than contemporary readers did – or not hear any voices at all.

‘When we read a novel written today, we hear a voice that speaks pretty much the same language we speak, and that addresses people and things in a way we are used to. But much happens as a text ages – a certain type of alienation emerges. The reader may still hear a voice, but will not understand it fully and therefore risks missing important aspects,’ says Mats Malm.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

Kathryn Graham and her colleagues trained 148 observers and sent them out to 118 bars in early-hours Toronto where they recorded 1,057 instances of aggression from 1,334 visits. Where the majority of psychology research on aggression is based on laboratory simulations, Graham’s team collected real-life observational data to find out who gets aggressive and why.

The researchers followed the Theory of Coercive Actions, according to which aggressive acts have one or more motives: compliance (getting someone to do something, or stop doing something); grievance; social identity (to prove one’s status and power); and thrill-seeking.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority (77.5 per cent) of aggressive acts were instigated by men. Men more than women were driven to aggression by identity and thrill-seeking motives; by contrast female aggression was more often motivated by compliance and grievance. This often had a defensive intent, as a reaction against unwanted sexual advances. […]

The researchers found that greater intoxication led to more serious aggression in women, but not men - perhaps because the latter were emboldened enough already.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

Generally, we think of children as having more supernatural beliefs. As they age and gain education and information (as well as brain development) they abandon the supernatural for science. Right? Apparently not. These researchers show that we retain both supernatural and scientific ideas–flexibly combining or interchanging them to explain various events.

For example, “a person might explain AIDS using witchcraft in one instance, biology in another, or combine the two in a third instance.” Indeed, say the researchers, the tendency to invoke the supernatural explanation increases with age rather than decreases.

{ Keene Trial | Continue reading }

Many of us use them several times a day without really noticing. And yet the way we behave in lifts, or elevators as they are known in the US, reveals a hidden anxiety.

“Most of us sort of shut down. We walk in. We press the button. We stand perfectly still.”

{ BBC | Continue reading }

Try to recall the last time you were angry, depressed, or anxious. What did you want to do with those feelings? There is a good chance you had an urge to text your best friend, post a Facebook status update, or write in your journal. We often want to get things off our chest and prevent them from festering inside of us. If we pick the right outlet, disclosing our emotions can help us feel better in the moment. Furthermore, there’s evidence that emotional disclosure through writing can improve mental and physical health outcomes months and even years later.

{ Psych Your Mind | Continue reading }

Through three separate experiments a team of scientists from Hiroshima University showed that people showed higher levels of concentration after looking at pictures of puppies or kittens. […]

“This finding suggests that viewing cute images makes participants behave more deliberately and perform tasks with greater time and care,” said the researchers, according to the published paper. […]

The study’s authors write that in the future cute objects could be used as a way to trigger emotions “to induce careful behavioral tendencies in specific situations, such as driving and office work.”

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

The authors’ basic idea is that many men, wishing to appear ‘manly’, don’t talk about or get help for their problems, especially psychological issues: boys don’t cry, and men certainly don’t. However, the authors argue that gay men, generally less encumbered by traditional masculinity, may be an exception to this rule. […]

In accordance with the authors’ predictions, gay men were indeed more open to seeking psychological help.

But unexpectedly, they were actually less likely to report experiencing psychological distress. That’s surprising, given several previous reports of higher rates of mental illness in homosexuals, which has been dubbed ‘velvet rage’.

Sánchez et al’s data suggest that gay men may be, er, more gay (…the other kind), and that their increased rates of diagnosed mental illness are a product of their greater willingness to seek help: maybe straight men are just in denial.

{ Neuroskeptic | Continue reading }

photo { Robert Mapplethorpe }

[A possible explanation for why we enjoy watching sad films]

Media psychologists have long puzzled over how individuals can experience enjoyment from entertainment such as tragedies that often elicit profound feelings of sadness. The present research examines the idea that a focus on “meaningful” entertainment and affective responses identified as “elevation” may provide a framework for understanding many examples of sad or dramatic entertainment. The results of this study suggest that many types of meaningful cinematic entertainment feature portrayals of moral virtues (e.g., altruism). These portrayals, in turn, elicit feelings of elevation (e.g., inspiration) that are signified in terms of mixed affect and unique physical responses (e.g., lump in throat). Ultimately, elevation also gives rise to motivations to embody moral virtues, such as being a better person or helping others.

{ Wiley | via BPS }

pastel on paper { Johannes Kahrs }

Canadian researchers have come up with a new, precise definition of boredom based on the mental processes that underlie the condition.

Although many people may see boredom as trivial and temporary, it actually is linked to a range of psychological, social and health problems, says Guelph psychology professor Mark Fenske. […]

After reviewing existing psychological science and neuroscience studies, they defined boredom as “an aversive state of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity,” which arises from failures in one of the brain’s attention networks.

In other words, you become bored when:



• you have difficulty paying attention to the internal information, such as thoughts or feelings, or outside stimuli required to take part in satisfying activity;

• you are aware that you’re having difficulty paying attention; and

• you blame the environment for your sorry state (“This task is boring”; “There is nothing to do”).


{ University of Guelph | Continue reading }

art { Picasso, Femme couchée lisant, 1960 }

According to an influential and controversial theory, autism is the manifestation of an “Extreme Male Brain.” The reasoning goes something like this - the condition is far more prevalent in males than females; people with autism think in a distinctive style that’s more commonly observed in men than women (that is, high in systematising and low in empathising); and greater testosterone exposure in the womb appears to go hand in hand with an infant exhibiting more autism-like traits in later childhood.

Simon Baron-Cohen, the psychologist who first proposed the theory, always conjectured that there may also be such a thing as an “Extreme Female Brain.” Now in a new paper, a pair of researchers in the USA have made the case that the Extreme Female Brain exists, it’s highly empathic, and it comes with its own problematic consequences, in terms of a fear of negative evaluation by others, and related to that, a greater risk of eating disorders (which are known to be far more prevalent in women than men).

{ BPS | Continue reading }

photo { Andrew Miksys }