Author: Senia

Hey, that mug is mine!

Posted on by Senia

There’s a delightful series of experiments about the power of owning something. One experiment goes like this:
* Students walk into an experiment and they are given a MUG.
* Other students walk into an experiment and they are given a PEN.
* Then a student gets the choice to switch his MUG for a PEN or a PEN for a MUG.
Almost nobody switches! They like the choice that’s been made for them.

Most behavioral economists explain this as the endowment effect – once you own something, just that owning it starts to make it more valuable to you.

I also think there’s a degree of automatic reaction and cognitive dissonance. What do I mean and why am I throwing around buzz words?
* Automatic reaction. Jon Haidt studies automatic reaction – the idea that sometimes you just react and later use your brain to rationalize why you may have reacted in that way. I believe the students just don’t want to give it away (whether because they don’t like change, whether because it’s more valuable to them now, or whether for no reason at all).
* Cognitive dissonance. “Well, I don’t want to give up my mug really. Maybe that means I like the mug more. Maybe that means the mug is more valuable to me.”
* Why buzz words? Because these two buzz word pairs signify EXACTLY the meanings of why people might be saying one thing but acting in another way. These words are like useful shortcuts right now.

So NO to “my MUG for your PEN.”

In another study (and this is from memory), some students were given a mug and then told that they could sell it. The mug cost about $5 at the campus bookstore, and all the students given the mug were willing to sell it – but at an average prce around $7!!! Other students were told they could buy a mug, and these students chose prices at which they would buy the mug – they chose about $3 per mug! So the value of the mug can depends on what eyes you look through.

Seth Godin makes this endowment effect very real and very immediate in his Loss vs. Gain story. In sum – he found “the perfect” domain name. He wanted it. He made a bid on it. The seller wouldn’t take $600 for it. The seller was very happy with his own endoment effect for that domain name. Seth was sad. It’s just this blasted endowmnet effect!

One of the best pieces by The Economist I’ve ever read on any topic is a blog post called Un-Endowing the Endowment Effect. The post states, “Now a new paper scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Economic Review argues that this asymmetry might not be as formidable as it seems.” It looks like once you change a few things, the endowment effect may disappear. What would one need to change? Well, something that psychologists rarely like to hear in experimental settings … if the words used when handing the object to a student are different, that makes a difference. Also, if a student can be unobtrusively in signaling an interest to trade, that can make a difference. And if a student can inspect the other good before committing to the exchange, that can make a difference.

Please please please, go read this short Economist post, and especially the most delightful Economist words ever – the last line of this article!

Radio program on “happiness and work” postponed

Posted on by Senia

Hi – our radio program originally scheduled for Monday 8-9am is postponed. This week all the programming on this channel (114) for the “Be Happy, Dammit” show will be pre-recorded replays. This has to do with the channel itself, and we will be put into a new slot later on.

This is a new change as of Sunday, 8/26…. so our program will have a new date, and we don’t know the new date yet. We’ll let you know as soon as we know.

Here is the original post about the show.

Best,
Senia

How Microsoft tests games, and how you should too

Posted on by Senia

Here is a Wired article on how Microsoft tested the game Halo 3 on 600 game players playing over 3000 times. Microsoft watched each interction, and documented each move in each game. Microsoft knows to the square foot where each player died in the game.

Why is this method useful for you if you’re not in the game space?

Because it works.
Because it’s methodical.
Because you can rely on it.
Because you’re constantly improving and questioning.
Because you get to know your customer better.
Because you’ll trust yourself more after you go through this prep.
Because your customers will trust you more after you go through this prep.

Happiness and Work – Sirius Radio on MONDAY 8-9am (Lime ch. 114)

Posted on by Senia

Karen Salmansohn, host of the daily radio program “Be Happy, Dammit” has invited me to guest-produce a segment of her program.

We’ll be focusing on HAPPINESS and WORK.

By the end of the program, you’ll know:
* Several new techniques for becoming happier at work
* What the research says about happiness at work
* The ONE main suggestion from each panelist for becoming happier at work

PANEL:
Margaret Greenberg, President of the Greenberg Group – an organizational effectiveness consulting and coaching practice
David J. Pollay, Syndicated columnist with the North Star Writers Group, and is president of TheMomentumProject.com, an international training and consulting organization
Doug Turner, Vice President of HR for the Washington, DC division of Balfour Beatty Construction company

Senia Maymin, Workshops and coaching for positive management and Editor-in-Chief of PositivePsychologyNews.com

All the guests are writers at PositivePsychologyNews.com.

DETAILS:
Monday (8-27-07), 8-9am
Sirius radio channel 114 (also called “Lime 114“)
To get a three-day free internet subscription, go here and click on “FREE ONLINE TRIAL” in the upper left area.

STATISTICS:
*** “At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?”
Only 20% of people can answer YES to this question. (Gallup data)

*** People feel that they enjoy leisure much more than work,
but it turns out surprisingly that people achieve the state of “flow” – when they
lose track of time and get “into the zone” – people achieve this more at work than in leisure.

FOUR SEGMENTS:
Here are the segments I’ve asked the panel to prepare for each of the four 11-minute segments:

1) How has your business outlook changed since learning about Positive Psychology?
2) What are your favorite findings in Positive Psychology that can be applied to business?
3) What are some findings that you WISH would be applied to businesses? That you wish businesses and individuals at work would take on?
4) What is the ONE THING you would recommend to someone listening to implement at work starting today?

Feel free to email ahead of the show with questions: senia [at] senia [dot] com

Sandpipers and a Mighty River

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“There’s a new way of creating in the world. I was just talking to a man who is very driven in his work in the stock market, and he said success is all a matter of will, and I said, no, I think it’s all a matter of belief.

“We talked about the image of sandpipers on the beach: they run up, get all the delicious food in the sand, then run back – and their feet never get wet. They’re always in harmony, and in rhythm with the ebb and flow of the ocean. And what’s happening with women now is they are bringing to the party of life the concept of that ebb and flow with natural law. There’s no willfulness around it. Willfulness is masculine energy, which this society has been built on, but it is not the natural way.

“And that’s what you need to do. You don’t finish the ten thousand things on the list, and then get to you, who is ten thousand and one; what you want to do is make a practice of what centering and what quietude really is. And quietude is actually flowing with the flow – back to the sandpiper again. He’s not frantic, running back and forth; he’s rhythmic with the flow.'”

Viki King

“[O]ur lives inherently have the power and unlimited capacity of a mighty river. … Then through positive energy rituals to train our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual capacities, we will create a dam to harness the power of the river and continually refresh the lake that is our life.”

Dana Arakawa, paraphrasing Greg Martin

He who _____ first loses

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EXAMPLES:

* In a job interview, he who names the salary first loses.

* In a discussion with a teenager, he who loses his temper first loses.

* In a triathalon, he who starts off first often loses.

* At work, he who insists his way is the right way loses.

* In relationships, he who insists that there’s only one way to see things loses.

* In competitive skating, gymnastics (and other sports of an aesthetic nature), the skater or gymnast who goes first loses.

COUNTER-EXAMPLES:

* In a sprint, he who starts off out front often wins.

* In pool, he who starts first often wins.

* In apologizing, he who goes first often wins.

* In starting a project off, he who is assertive and starts first on a productive note often wins, in many cases taking the entire team towards that win.

People Ask What They Want You to ASK THEM

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Try this.

Next time a friend or a colleague asks you a question, feel free to answer, and then ask that person the same question back. I don’t know why this happens – this comes from no academic study that I know of – but I have found this to be consistently true.

People ask those things that they themselves want to be asked.

Maybe it’s because … people are practicing those questions in their head (speaking to themselves), and one day they ask that question aloud of someone.

Maybe it’s because … people can think of a personal answer while they are asking a question.

Maybe it’s because … these are typical questions that go on in the person’s head day in and day out, and the listener isn’t always with that person, and so doesn’t hear that question asked again and again. Perhaps Joselle asks everyone she meets, “Which is better – making more money but hating your job, or making less money but liking it a little more?” Maybe that’s just Joselle’s standard question.

Examples:
* “How are you?” – That person often wants to be asked how they are.
* “How are you getting on with your business partner?” – That person often wants to be asked about his/her business partner or work colleagues.
* “How many hours of TV do you let your child watch per day?” – This person is often thinking of how many hours are appropriate for his/her child.

Enjoy asking people those questions they want to be asked anyway!

When to Use Self-Report and When Not To

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Penelope wrote recently about finding your fit with the company rather than with the job, and referenced back to a Positive Psychology News Daily article that I had written on using your strengths in the job search.

Stephanie then wrote that using strengths at work makes sense, but only if you’re measuring your strengths objectively.

When should a person should take a self-report assessment and when a person should take a more objective assessment? (BTW, for examples of self-report assessment, please go to www.AuthenticHappiness.org, and click on any of the assessments there – you’ll need to login to take these because they save your results for future visits. For examples of objective tests, you may want to try the two recommended by Stephanie here. Other suggestions for objective tests? Please leave a note in the comments). Some guidelines for when to use a self-report and when not to:

Self-report assessments are useful when:

1) You want to save costs. If you want a quick-and-dirty summary of how you’re doing on certain measures – strengths, optimistic explanatory style, pathways to happiness – you can just hop online and take those respective assessments.

2) You want to be quick. Self-reports are useful for giving you results right away – as soon as you’re done, the results are available. Sometimes, “objective” assessments can give results right away also.

3) You believe that you know yourself pretty well. Every person has a degree of self-awareness. Some people have it stronger than others, and each person has it stronger some times over other times. If you are in a mood that you feel confused about your direction and your state of being, then maybe a self-asssessment would only make you more confused as you might not answering the questions from a steady state of mind.

4) You don’t believe that these assessments are gospel. To be a good candidate for self-assessments, you’d usually believe that the way you answered today is not going to be 100% the way that you’ll answer tomorrow, and you’re likely ok with that. If you want to know whether you answered the math test correctly (or whether you know all the latest regulatons in your field), then you’d better get an objective measure of that.

5) You believe that your results can change over time. Some people do not believe this about self-assessments. You may hear people say that if you’ve shown some strengths on the VIA Signature Strengths assessment, then you will likely show them again next time you take the assessment. I don’t believe this. I’ve seen many people have “love of learning” pop up into their top five or top ten strengths when they start taking some professional or personal-interest coursework. Assessments are a reflection of where you are at that time – in that moment.

6) You are a good practitioner of “the gut test.” Once you get your self-assessment results, the first question you can ask yourself is “Do I believe this? Does this accurately reflect me?” and if the immediate gut answer is “no,” then perhaps this self-assessment didn’t work for you – it might be the day, it might be the assessment, it might be anything. You could then try taking it again on a different day, or you may just say that doesn’t work for you.

Objective assessments are useful when:

1) You want to be more exact. As Stephanie writes here, self-reports do want people to divide into specific categories, no doubt. The questions are often ipsative or on a Likert scale, both of which simplify a person into a stilted few-dimensional form instead of the complex being that the person is. (I would also argue that the point of both self-reports and objective assessments are to simplify a person – to see a specific theme about a person culled down to its simple, describable form.)

2) You want to be more thorough. This is the most effective argument for me for an objective measure. This is the reason that I like to dig into psychology articles – to learn what questions were actually asked. I absolutely believe and agree with Stephanie that questions can be phrased in a way that favors a certain answer, and can be ordered in such a way as to influence the person answering the questionnaire. I wrote here about different ways to study positive psychology (including questionnaires and assessments), and I believe that having a study participant DO something (such as a cause-and-effect experiment) as opposed to SAY something about his/her thoughts (such as an assessment) is often more telling.

3) You are measuring something that can be objectively measured. Some things are not as great at being objectively measured, such as preferences and beliefs. For example, I believe a person is the best judge of whether he or she is happy. If you ask, “How happy are you (1-10) where 1 is very not happy and 10 is very happy?” I would give much more credence to Sarah saying “6” than to Sarah’s husband saying “4” about her because the point is how happy does Sarah believe she is? That’s a subjective response – subjective to Sarah – so self-report is a great method for this.

4) You have the money and/or time. For learning more about an individual manager’s workstyle, it can be helpful to have a 360-degree assessment (i.e. questionnaires filled out by the person’s colleagues, bosses, and direct reports), but these 360-degree assessments come with more cost in money and in time, so there needs to be an appropriate weighting to the importance of these relative to the project. Especially in the case of coaching the leadership and management capabilities of a person, having much more than just a self-report is usually found to be crucial.

Note: There is no particular reason that there are more items for the self-report than for the objective assessment. Please add more thoughts in the comments.

How do you like to say goodbye?

Posted on by Senia

I’ve been facilitating a wonderful workshop on Resilience for teachers – so that the teachers can teach their 10-14 year old students. It has been two weeks of intensity, great ideas, strong commitment from the teachers, and a fabulous interaction between the facilitators. Today is the last day.

How do I like to say goodbye? Quickly. With expectation of soon-again-next-time. Smiling. With gratitude. Like a little girl running away from a fun wave on the shore, expecting to be back next summer.

How do you like to say goodbye?

Are you an abstainer, a moderator, or an in-fluxer?

Posted on by Senia

I’ve been working a lot with my clients on creating productive, successful habits. And for you to be able to create a new habit, you will often need to know what method of creating habits fits best for you.

Here are three various ways for taking on a habit:

* ABSTAINING.
If you’re an abstainer, you work best when you completely STOP – cold turkey – an old destructive way of acting. For you, it’s easier to say to yourself, “I will have no dessert after dinner, except on Saturday evening.”

* MODERATING.
If you’re a moderator, you work best when you do not deprive yourself, when you allow yourself some of the old habit. For you, it’s easier to say to yourself, “I will have just a little dessert every day after dinner – just one peppermnt pattie or just one small serving of jello.”

* IN-FLUXING.
If you’re an in-fluxer, you are comfortable going between abstaining and moderating. For you, it’s easier to say to yourself, “Sometimes, I will have no dessert after dinner. Sometimes, I will have a small dessert. I’ll listen to my feelings and thoughts in the moment.”

I find that the in-fluxer is the most difficult position to be in because you need to constantly make ACTIVE decisions about your every action. On the other hand, both the abstainer and the moderator can set up some GOOD constraints, which make day-to-day decisions easier to make because many decisions become automatic. I would encourage you to determine which of the abstainer or the moderator you are in creating new habits. And if you’re an in-fluxer, what can you still do to make day-to-day decisions more automatic and simpler?