Do vacations make you happy?

I blog a lot about happiness research, but this one I have some personal experience with.  A couple of recent research studies, summarized in today's Boston Globe, show a few interesting findings that many people probably instinctively realize, but are kind of stark when written as fact.

First, they found that ones happiness goes up just before vacation (in antipitation) but is often not higher when you get back (compared to someone who never went on vacation).  Basically, we need a vacation from our vacation.

It is even worse these days because people are so worried about the economy, their jobs, and the money they are spending that they don't even enjoy it while they are on vacation.

And then a third study found that family vacations are stressful in general, because, well, you know how families can be.  One guy actually pretended to go fishing every afternoon, drove a block to a nearby bar, and spent the afternoon there.  None of his family cared about fishing, so he never got a question he couldn't squeak out of. I gotta remember that one :-D.

Another way to Nudge for good health

Two connected papers were published in Judgment and Decision Making last quarter that have great illustrations of the "Nudge" effect I have blogged about many times in the past.

The first study looked at how people take food from salad bars.  The salad bar had three rows of 24-oz containers of food.  So as you walked down the bar, half of the items were in the front row and half of the items were in the middle row, and then in the way back was a repetition of whatever was in the front row (for people walking down the other side). They moved the items around to see what effect location had.  It turned out that just the slight inconvenience of having to reach to the middle row decreased how much of those items were taken.  They also looked at whether items were at the beginning of the bar, middle or end.  Some things were taken more at each location, so this basically canceled itself out.  Finally, they found that customers took less of items that had tongs than items that had spoons.  Just the small inconvenience of having to use tongs reduced the amount that people took.

The second study looked at the location of items on a printed menu. They moved the items around the menu to see what effect the location would have.  They only looked at one thing, but it was significant.  Items at the beginning and end of the menu were ordered more than items in the middle of the menu.

So what does this matter?  You could take two approaches:

Maximize profits:  put the items with the highest profit margin in the front row of a salad bar and the beginning or end of a printed menu.

Maximizing health:  put the healthiest items in the front row of a salad bar and the beginning or end of a printed menu.

Why we dream

Some new research on dreaming used fMRI to see what brain areas are active during dreaming and compared it to what these same areas do during conscious thought.  The idea was to predict what benefits dreams provide and perhaps why we evolved to have dreams.  This Scientific American article summarizes several recent studies in this area.

One of them found increasing frontal theta activity.  This is where we create memories of our personal experiences.  This is probably why dreams seem like they really are happening to you, even when the dream has events that never really happened.

A second found that in the dreams we remember, there is more activity in the amygdala and hippocampus.  The amygdala is used to process emotion and the hippocampus converts short term memory to long term.  So dreams perhaps are used to help us remember the important events of our day, since important events usually have stronger emotions than unimportant events.  It might be more important to remember the emotion associated with an event then it is to remember the details.  Remembering that an experience was pleasurable, painful, frustrating, saddening, fun, or whatever is probably more important than remembering that it happened at 3:12pm or that you were wearing a yellow shirt when it happened. 

A third study supported the link to emotion by finding that when people don’t get REM sleep, they have trouble processing emotions the next day.  That area doesn't get its rest.

Interesting, huh? 

Parenting is easier than you thought

This is a great podcast series.   It combines several of my favorite bloggers, has very counter-intuitive and controversial findings, and is probably true.

The main takeaway is that all of you parents out there are probably working a lot harder at it than you need to.  They cite some very comprehensive and statistically rigorous research studies that show that parents have a lot less influence on their children's eventual success that they think.  It's very hard to accept this because it is natural to assume that 24 hours a day of interaction must do something and the emotional link would make it hard to accept.  But don't jump to any conclusions without listening to this (or reading the transcript). 

What is "reasonable" conduct??

As a frequent forensic expert, I am often called to testify regarding whether a consumer, employee, supervisor, or organization’s behavior is “reasonable.”  That is the basic legal standard.  If someone acts reasonably, they are not guilty of negligent behavior.  If they act unreasonably, then they are guilty.

So how do you define reasonable behavior?  A recent column by Dan Markiewicz illustrates some of the ways that we define reasonableness for employers when it comes to keeping employees safe.

To start, organizations need to follow government regulations, guidelines (even when not required by law), voluntary industry standards, common industry practices, common trade or professional practices, and common sense.   Notice that they don’t need to follow their industry’s best practices, just the ones that are considered the common, acceptable, decent practices. And they don't just need to follow the practices required by law, there is more to "reasonableness."  So it is in between the regulatory minimum and the industry's best practices.  But where?

 

Another challenge is when an organization claims that they didn't know that a hazard existed.  If the organization is willfully (intentionally) ignorant of a hazard, the law considers it as if they knew about it.  They can’t use as an excuse that they didn’t know about a hazard if reasonable practices would have identified it and they didn’t use these reasonable practices.  I see this a lot in companies that don’t keep injury statistics.  They figure if they don’t know that x% of their warehouse workers overexert their backs, then they didn’t “know” there was a problem and therefore are justified for not having fixed it. But it is a common practice in industry and considered minimally acceptable behavior in the safety discipline to keep track of injuries so that trends can be identified.  So an organization can’t use this as an excuse. 

Another piece of evidence we look for when it comes to “reasonableness” is follow through.  An organization can have all the rules and policies they want, but if they don’t implement or enforce them to a reasonable degree, they have not acted reasonably.  There are many examples of organizations being “paper tigers” when it comes to safety.  Many integrate safety into their company mission statement, but then let it hang there.  Some have safety training programs that are so irrelevant to the work the employee actually does that it would take an expert to figure out how to apply it.  Sometimes there are supervisors who pay lip service to the safety metric but really whip it up when it comes to meeting deadlines or minimizing resources. Again, this is not considered "reasonable" conduct.

But when organizations are not paper tigers, when they create real safety policies, safety training, and safety supervision policies and procedures, then they have nothing to worry about.  They have acted reasonably.  Even if they haven’t used best practices, they are not legally responsible if they have at least used reasonable practices in their surveillance, training, and supervision.  That’s where I come in.  I evaluate the behavior of the employer, employee and/or customer and determine who acted reasonably and who didn’t.   Then I explain that to the jury.  They ultimately decide, but it is up to me to explain what the industry considers "reasonable" and how this is different from the regulatory minimum and the state of the art best practices.

Giving or asking for help

What does it mean to offer help to a coworker, subordinate, or superior?  In the June issue of ISHN, James Leemann has a column that takes a very interesting perspective.  He explains that it is a lot more complex than it seems, citing some extensive work in a new book by Edgar Schein.   But rather than have you read the article or the book, here is what you need to know.

The first thing is that it is a two way human connection.  It is not just one person asking for help and the other one giving an answer.  It is a reciprocal process that must build a relationship between receiver and giver.  The way the help is provided has to match the way the receiver wants to be helped.  He describes three ways to give help, all of which I have seen many times while consulting in a variety of workplaces. 

• The doctor diagnoses the problem, determines the treatment, and tells the receiver what to do. This is the most authoritative mode of helping.  It works best when there is a clear power distance between the help giver and receiver. 
• The expert gives the person all of the information needed to make a decision, but leaves the decision up to him/her.  This leaves some flexibility with the recipient.  It helps them feel more in control of the process and less dependent.
• The consultant teaching the recipient how to decide and lets them go through most of the process on their own.  This gives the most freedom and authority to the recipient.  It is best when helper wants to empower the receiver.

There are many things that can go wrong in their process, either because of the helper or because of the receiver.  For example, the helper:

• Gives advice before the receiver is ready.  As you may have personally experienced, when you don’t want help, you throw up a barrier and resist it.
• Uses a more authoritative helping style than is wanted by the recipient.  If someone is looking for some insight into the process (i.e. a consultant), being an expert or doctor may not be welcome.
• Uses a less authoritative helping style than is wanted by the recipient.  If someone is looking for an answer, they may feel like they were left hanging if the helper just gives them some insight and leaves the decision up to them.
• Takes control of the situation and makes the recipient feel out of the loop or dependent.
• Doesn’t take the time to understand the problem before offering help.  In this case, the method may be fine, but the help is useless.

On the other hand, the recipient can also hurt the relationship.  He/she can:

• Not trust the person giving help and disregard the information provided.
• Seek reassurance rather than real help.  In this case the recipient will ignore the actual advice/help.
• Become defensive if the help is not what was expected. 

So the next time you are asking for help or offering help, think about the type of help that is needed (doctor, expert, or consultant) and make sure that there is enough mutual trust and understanding of the problem before you get started.

Create positive expectations and the team will excel

An article in the June ISHN talks about the power of expectations.  In a column by John Kello, he talks about several studies that sound like valid research, but doesn’t cite the research specifically.  But the results coincide with others that I have read.  This research looked at workplace teams and how they perform.  The workers are randomly assigned to a team.  They both do a baseline task and have about equal levels of performance.  Then one group is given a “positive spin.”  They are told that the first task was just a warm up and they will probably do better the second time.  The other group is given a “negative spin.” They are told that they may be tired, so their performance the second time may not be as good as the first time.  Other than the spin, both groups are identical.

But guess what happens?  The team that expects to do better the second time really does better.  And the team that expects to do worse really does worse. So there is a huge margin between the performance of the positive group and the negative one. 

This has some great insights for any team leader.  Give your team positive expectations and they will perform better.  A positive coaching style is much better than a negative coaching style.  I have seen the same results with elementary school teachers before standardized tests, sports coaches, and random lab experiments.  And so on and so on.

I would love to hear your own stories either supporting or contradicting this idea.  Feel free to put them in the comments.