Cogniphany

I know it’s been a long time since I put a post up here, but I saw this in a journal this morning and it made me really happy to see it. 

I’m going to give you two sentences to think about.

• “Please feel free to contact me if you have questions.”
• “Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions.”

Those say the same thing, don’t they? Technically, they do. But the problem comes in with how they’re worded and how the brain deals with them.

When psychologists do research on memory and processing, they usually have some sort of a stress component. They’ll use a task to put the brain under a load, because that’s how the brain is usually working. You’re rarely fully focused on a task. You’re probably thinking about something else while you’re working, or you’re having to work quickly. As a general rule, you’re not perfectly focused on a task and nothing else, especially at work.

A very pertinent example of this and how this post fits in very well is linked with how long people spend reading a web page. On average, a typical person browsing the internet actually reads only about 28% of the information on the screen. In most cases, people scan what’s on the screen. This becomes more important as you consider how the brain processes negative modifiers.

When your brain encounters a sentence like “Please feel free to contact me, if you have any questions” it processes the noun (“me”) and the verb (“contact”) for meaning before it processes anything else. When the brain is under a cognitive load, (for instance at work, scanning a web page) the brain may stop there. So, when you toss in a negative modifier (“not”), then the brain might miss it. So, the big take-away for a scanner from the sentence “Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions,” can be “hesitate.”

The brain has to process the first phrase to be able to apply the negative modifier and understand it, so in cases where the brain is under a cognitive load, the negative modifier can be missed. A number of researchers have tested this and found that this holds true in written language, as well as spoken language. So, the fix here is to take care in how often you use negative modifiers and in what situations. If you’re in a high stress situation and you’re giving someone instructions, teach yourself to give positively worded instructions, not ones using negative modifiers. The chance that you’ll be misunderstood will be much lower, and your stress level should be decreased as well because of fewer mistakes.

Don’t trust your brain.

There are some very systematic ways that the brain is designed to be able to function, but it’s not helpful to you in life and business. Here’s some examples based on known psychological concepts and theories that can help you make better decisions.

Primacy and Recency – Your brain is wired to remember the first and last things that you’re presented with. So, if you’ve heard the old adage, “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression,” then you know that it’s definitely got some truth to it. Recency, is the basis of one of the biggest problems in performance management, the halo/horns effect. Not only are these really bad things to do to your employees, but it doesn’t make much sense to make important business decisions based on someone’s bad day.

Faulty Memories – We all feel like our memory is just about like a video camera, where we can rewind it and review what we’ve seen. But, in reality, our memory is relatively faulty. That’s why, even though we tend to think that eyewitness testimony is very reliable, the experts know that it’s not terribly useful. Generally, your memories are fairly patchy, even for things that have happened recently. When I was working in managment I’d keep a file for each employee. Every work shift, I’d write notes for myself with dates on them about what each employee had done (good or bad) and then at the end of the night, I’d stick those notes in each employees file. When it came time for an employee’s annual review, they were convinced that I had a memory like a steel trap. Actually, I just knew what my weaknesses were and planned for them.

Conformity – Human beings really don’t like to stand out, as a general rule. In the 1950’s, Solomon Asch performed some very interesting experiments. He was able to show that if a person was presented with a group who differed in their opinion, they would almost always conform to the group, even if the group was obviously wrong. This is really important knowledge to have when you’re a leader. If you gather a group of people together and try to get individual opinions, you’re very likely to miss out on that perspective. People are much more likely to be honest, if you’re speaking directly to them.

Overall, you need to be aware of how the brain works and what it likes. The more that you know about this, the more that you’ll be able go against what your brain is used to and get more accurate information.

There was an excellent survey conducted by Adecco recently, and the results are really compelling.

To summarize the findings, diversity is something that a number of companies are giving lip service to. They talk about it, but employees are still feeling like they’re being discriminated against. In particular, age discrimination seems to be the one that many people are feeling the most prevalent.

The really nice finding? More diversity = More productive

“Not only do the majority of workers think that a diverse workforce makes their organization more successful, half of respondents (53 percent) felt that the more diverse their company, the more productive a worker they’d become.”

What I personally find really interesting are the methods that they mention as ways to improve diversity in your organization. Each one has some powerful I-O psychological concepts in them.

1) Gain senior management commitment – Training research has presented evidence that when you’re going to have a program, people are more likely to engage if they feel that upper management is invested in the success of the program. If you’ve got senior management buy-in, you’ll get more trainees to buy-in as well.

2) Engage employees in the process – This really is a no-brainer, but it’s been proven through research. If you want employees to disengage with and torpedo a program, force it down their throats and make them feel like they don’t have any say in it. You want success? Let them be involved.

3) Support local/community diversity groups - This is a really good way to help gain your employees’ trust, especially in terms of a diversity training program. Organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) can really drive a diversity program. Additionally there are concepts in social psychology and in particular, the work of Robert Cialdini, that apply here. When employees see that you’re really dedicated to diversity, they’re much more likely to do the same thing.

4) Provide diversity training – You can’t just talk about something and expect change. If you want to change behaviors, you have to apply all of the other methods in social and cognitive psychology for creating behavior change. But you also have to give your employees the tools and the methods to learn how to do it. There’s also a bit more here from Cialdini about social proof. When you get a group of people in a room to agree that diversity is important and needs to be given attention, they’ll have a hard time going back on that.

5) Promote open communication - This really goes back to what I mentioned about including your employees in the decisions. If they’re engaged and involved in the decisions, making sure that you have honest, open communication is going to feed that engagement. This also allows you to eradicate a society where discrimination is tolerated. If people feel comfortable coming forward with a complaint, they’re probably going to come to you, before they go visit with the EEOC.

This is a really nicely presented research report and I love the psychology imbedded in it. Excellent work, Adecco. Bravo!