Some of us are more suited to productive conflict

If you're interested in how team conflict can be beneficial, here's more research on the issue from Bret Bradley and colleagues, this time focusing on team member personality. Although we know that certain personality traits affect whether conflict occurs - for instance, less agreeable people are more likely to find themselves in a clash - this research investigated what matters when it occurs.

Bradley and colleagues figured that two traits might be critical. People more open to experience are more likely to raise issues and enjoy frank discussion, but are also willing to compromise and be flexible in terms of how they are prepared to act in the future. Similarly, emotionally stable people tend not to anxiously skirt issues but are willing to go to others to voice problems directly, and are more likely to contribute to positive emotional states within the team, regarding other members positively. We might expect such people to be involved in transparent and resolvable conflicts.

As with the previous work, the study drew on real academic performance of undergraduate business students, working in 117 teams with an average of five members apiece. Each team worked interdependently for 13 weeks, culminating in a final term project, which was evaluated to give information about team performance. Participants completed a questionnaire on personality in week four and another on task conflict in week ten. A week four exam was used to control for levels of content knowledge within the group.

The results of the study was firm and striking. Teams who had a high average openness to experience actively benefited from high task conflict. But those low in this area benefited from low task conflict. In fact, the high-high group and the low-low group had a comparable level of performance. Exactly the same pattern was found with emotional stability; meanwhile, none of the other Big 5 personality traits produced such effects.

The authors conclude that both openness to experience and emotional stability are important features of teams that get involved with conflict. The study poses another point: while conflict may be functional for some groups, others thrive in low-conflict conditions. This would explain the  near-zero relationship between the two observed from meta-analysis, and suggest that we should be cautious of maxims such as 'a little conflict is good for you'. On the basis of this study, it seems this would depend on who you are, and who your colleagues are, too.

Bradley, B., Klotz, A., Postlethwaite, B., & Brown, K. (2013). Ready to rumble: How team personality composition and task conflict interact to improve performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98 (2), 385-392 DOI: 10.1037/a0029845
 
Further reading:

De Dreu, C. K. W., & Weingart, L. R. (2003). Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 741–749. DOI:10.1037/0021-9010.88.4.741

Forcing a smile at work? Mindfulness can help

Mindfulness is a way of operating that involves paying attention to events in a nonjudgmental way, and psychological research is corroborating its benefits, reported for millennia in other fields of knowledge.  A new paper by Ute Hülsheger and her colleagues takes a neat angle by focusing on one mechanism through which mindfulness might act: reducing reliance on an unproductive emotion regulation strategy, surface acting. As we've discussed before, surface acting involves adjusting or controlling your emotional expression in response to a felt emotion. When you put on a smile and force a calm voice in response to a querulous customer, that's surface acting. It's a common strategy, but research shows it to be psychologically draining, leading to emotional exhaustion and burnout.

Hülsheger's team predicted that mindfulness would decrease the need to surface act, by depersonalising the negative elements of the experience and interrupting automatic thought processes that lead first to undesired physiological responses and then trigger counterreactions (such as surface acting). To investigate this, they recruited 219 Dutch and Dutch-language Belgians into a diary study in which they were asked to record their experiences after work and prior to going to bed on five consecutive days.

After work, participants recorded their daily levels of mindfulness - sample items "Today I found myself doing things without paying attention", and their daily extent of surface acting - "Today I pretended to have emotions that I did not really have". Job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion, the outcome measures of interest, were taken separately before bed to avoid common method bias, where participants' ratings of some items contaminate ratings of others recorded in the same sitting.

The study used a fairly sophisticated statistical method called multilevel structural equation modelling. Effectively this means that the data on daily mindfulness can be distinguished into what is consistent for the individual, their 'mean mindfulness', and daily variations from this mean. The team found that both mean and daily mindfulness was associated with lower surface acting, and this in turn with less emotional exhaustion and more job satisfaction.

It could be that the causality runs in reverse to what Hülsheger's team proposed; perhaps we're simply more mindful on days we happen to do without surface acting. To investigate this a second study introduced experimental conditions, with 64 participants receiving ten days of mindfulness training and a further 42 doing without. The training was self-managed with instruction from written and audio materials, and involved common mindfulness techniques such as body scanning to encourage bodily awareness, as well as guided meditations.

The team found that the mindfulness group had significantly higher daily mindfulness ratings, as you would expect, and members of this group experienced less exhaustion and higher job satisfaction. The data suggested that for job satisfaction this effect was again mediated by the reduced surface acting seen in the mindfulness group. However this mediation wasn't observed for emotional exhaustion, possibly on account of lower power due to the smaller samples used.

The paper contributes to the growing body of research on the impact of mindfulness on workplace variables, and I find it a helpful one in refining our understanding. Mindfulness is used to refer to a range of phenomena - a trainable activity, a behavioural tendency, and a particular state - all of which are together examined in these studies. This is helpful in joining the dots and suggesting that the different phenomena do appear to be pointing at the same thing. This helps us build a picture: we are all more or less predisposed to mindful awareness, with our actual access to this state fluctuating day-by-day (around 38% of the variance was within-person) and influenced by even a short period of training.

Hülsheger, U., Alberts, H., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work: The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98 (2), 310-325 DOI: 10.1037/a0031313

Further reading:

Brown, KW, Ryan, RM, Creswell, JD (2007). Mindfulness: Theoretical Foundations and Evidence for its Salutary Effects. Psychological Inquiry, 18 (4) DOI:10.1080/10478400701598298 
pdf freely available here

Expressing your proactive potential depends on attachment style

Employees who engage in proactive behaviours tend to be an asset to the workplace; they're less phased by obstacles, more likely to pursue new opportunities, and take more efforts to master their environment. While organisations have a role in cultivating proactivity, so do our personal traits. However, a recent paper by Chia-huei Wu and Sharon Parker suggests that this influence itself depends upon our 'attachment style', a common term in therapeutic fields and finding wider application elsewhere. Essentially, unleashing our proactive potential depends on how we relate to those around us.

In this four-month study, 58 Taiwanese undergraduate students recorded their volume of proactive behaviours on a monthly basis, together with how curious and future oriented they had felt that month, and made a 'core-self evaluation' (CSE) of how able and capable they saw themselves during that time. All three factors have been demonstrated to influence proactive behaviours. At the start of the study, each participant also completed an attachment questionnaire and a measure of proactive personality, this to control for large effects that might swamp all other factors.

Wu and Parker were specifically interested in within-subject variations, such as whether an individual acts more proactively during months when their curiosity was aroused, CSE high, or future orientation more pronounced. Analysis revealed the presence of each of these influences, but the CSE and future orientation effects were mediated by participant's attachment style, specifically a form of attachment called relationship anxiety involving a fear of being unloved and perceiving one's worth through the eyes of others.

Relationship anxiety reduced the influence of CSE on that month's proactive behaviour; for such individuals, their own evaluations of current capability aren't really enough to give them confidence that they can act. Yet for these individuals the link between future orientation and proactive behaviour was even stronger than usual. This finding was unpredicted, and Wu and Parker don't discuss it extensively. I might speculate that the insecure quality of this attachment encourages individuals to act on the future when they put it in focus, to quell anxieties and get their house in order. But it's a speculation, nothing more.

This study suggests that for individuals high in relationship anxiety, higher states of CSE may not translate into proactive behaviour. So efforts at work to build capability may not have the desired effects with this group. What may be more beneficial is a more socially oriented approach: "having positive and reliable social relationships with others, such as supportive mentors or colleagues, will alleviate their worries about loss", reducing their degree of anxiety and reliance on this attachment style.  As an additional benefit, such relationships may also strengthen their self-evaluations, further helping these people make their mark in the workplace.

Wu, C., & Parker, S. (2012). The role of attachment styles in shaping proactive behaviour: An intra-individual analysis Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (3), 523-530 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2011.02048.x

Further reading:

Fuller, J. B., & Marler, L. E. (2009). Change driven by nature: A meta-analytic review of the proactive personality literature. Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 75, 329–345. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2009.05.008,

Grow, broaden, maintain: HR practices and how they matter for older workers

In the last issue of the Human Resource Management Journal, Dorien Kooij and colleagues investigate how general HR practices might have differential effects for younger and older employees. Given the ageing workforces prevelant in the West, it's an increasingly relevant issue.

800 respondents to a much larger survey were randomly selected to form eight equally sized age groups, ranging from those below 20 to an over-50 group. Participants reported their experiences of HR practices that could influence their ability, motivation or opportunities within the last 12 months. These practices were organised into bundles, the first containing practices that help the employee maintain their performance or minimise drops in capability: this comprised career advice, performance appraisal, opportunities to voice ideas, and access to information needed to carry out the job.

This was to be accompanied by just a second bundle, but confirmatory factor analysis found the best fit to the data was a total of three categories. Consequently the researchers added a development bundle, composed of formal training both for the current role and for anticipated future roles, and a job enrichment bundle, involving challenging job demands, and whether the job called on the full capacity of skills and knowledge that the individual possesses.

Overall, experience of each bundle was positively related to the measures of wellbeing collected in the survey - the individual's organisational commitment, their job satisfaction, and their perceived organisational fairness. The association between developmental practices and wellbeing was weaker for older workers relative to their younger counterparts. This was predicted on the basis that as we develop over our lifespan, our priorities shift away from opportunities for growth towards a 'prevention focus' that is concerned with keeping problems at bay. And indeed those practices within the maintenance bundle had a stronger relationship with wellbeing measures for older workers.

Although for older workers, growth is less important for wellbeing, Kooij's team predicted that it may be vital for their performance . As workplace demands evolve and fluctuate, older workers tend to be more at risk of experiencing obsolescence, which can be mitigated by proactively broadening functionality. Job performance was captured in the survey in the form of a self-rating, and was indeed found to have a significantly more positive relationship with both the development and job enrichment bundles (originally these were to be a single bundle, at which the prediction was pointed).

It should be noted that this 'more positive relationship' was a little odd, as it actually reflects a move from a negative relationship (more HR practices relating to negative wellbeing) to a non-significatn one, rather than from positive to more positive. There are some precedents for this negative relationship; explanations include participants self-reporting poorer performance because they are conscious that the training, while broadening, may be taking them away from the immediate demands of the job. Still, this makes the finding harder to parse, as does the fairly low effect sizes found in the study. (The authors raise this, but counter that effect size is of limited insight in these forms of regression analysis.)

This study suggests that older adults appreciate HR interventions to different degrees compared to their younger counterparts, treasuring more those that keep them on track than those designed for growth. The data at the least poses the possibility that in contrary to these preferences, these older workers may have more to gain from the activities they seek less. A conundrum for the HR sector to consider.

Kooij, D., Guest, D., Clinton, M., Knight, T., Jansen, P., & Dikkers, J. (2013). How the impact of HR practices on employee well-being and performance changes with age Human Resource Management Journal, 23 (1), 18-35 DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12000

Dorien T. A. M. Kooij, Annet H. De Lange, Paul G. W. Jansen, Ruth Kanfer and Josje S. E. Dikkers Age and work-related motives: Results of a meta-analysis Journal of Organizational Behavior 32. DOI: 10.1002/job.665

How disclosing conflicts of interest can pass the burden to the customer

 

We habitually consult experts to advise on personal and professional matters, but their recommendations can be coloured by conflicts of interest. Commonly advisors are required to disclose conflicts: armed with this information, the consumer can account for bias before making decisions. But evidence shows it's hard to make such adjustments. And new research by Sunita Sah, George Loewenstein and Daylia Cain suggests moreover that disclosure may make consumers feel obliged to follow the advisor's best interests.

Their series of studies collected data using a mobile van offering people chances to win prizes - from gift vouchers to chocolate bars - through a dice-roll lottery. They could choose from lotteries A or B, where overall A's prizes were slightly but evidently better. Before comitting, the chooser met another participant, the 'advisor', who handed them a written recommendation of which lottery to pick. In most cases, the advisor had a conflict of interest - they would also get a go on a lottery, but only if the chooser selected the weaker lottery B. The chooser then made their selection, rolled the dice and left; the advisor would then get their turn, if warranted. Participant numbers ranged from 124 to 278 for individual studies.

In the first study, 53% of choosers took lottery B after merely receiving the advice to do so. When the advisor's recommendation also included text revealing their conflict of interest, compliance advice rose to 81%. Yet in both conditions participants rated lottery A as more attractive (this was consistent across studies). A replication examined whether relatively low stakes were driving this abandonment of self interest, by doubling the prizes and recruiting students with presumably lower income as participants. Without disclosure, only 36% took the recommended B, but disclosure took the proportion to 82%.

Was this an altruistic act, choosers electing to be generous and go on with their day? Unlikely: the post-study survey suggested that after compliance, choosers were less happy, sensed more pressure and felt more uncomfortable about the decision, which doesn't suggest general altruism. Instead, the researchers liken this to a 'panhandler effect', where money is passed over due to discomfort over a face to face refusal. A third experiment investigated this: here, when the chooser learned of the conflict from the advisor compliance stood at 90%. When the information came instead from a 3rd party (embedded in the initial instructions) their compliance dropped to 72%; it's less awkward if you're not told directly by the person who hopes to gain, even if they know you know. And if the 3rd party info also stated the advisor was oblivious that you had been made aware of the conflict, the compliance plummet to 47%. This suggests that when choosers comply, it's partly to avoid the perception that they have betrayed the advisor's interests. Without the shared knowledge - I know that you know I stand to benefit - they're happy to disinherit them.

My only quibble with this argument is that in the final, 47% compliance condition, I might personally view the advisor as shiftier. Holding secret information, I may spend the interaction expectantly waiting for them to 'fess up to the conflict of interest - something the experiment actually prohibits. When they don't, I might feel like punishing them by going against their wishes. However, the post-survey scores suggest that there was no significant difference between how much advisors were liked and trusted in this condition and the other disclosure conditions, which goes some way to minimise this concern.

Overall, disclosure leads to more compliance with the advisors interests, especially when disclosure is face to face. This happens even though trust in the advisor drops, and choosers are less happy with the situation. This suggests that the tactic of disclosure practiced simply may be unhelpful for the chooser and ultimately less conducive to the relationship overall. Sah and colleagues agree that disclosure remains important and necessary, but suggest research into smarter ways to deliver it, as well as alternative approaches when conflicts of interest arise.

Sah, S., Loewenstein, G., & Cain, D. (2013). The burden of disclosure: Increased compliance with distrusted advice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104 (2), 289-304 DOI: 10.1037/a0030527

Further reading:

 Paul M Healy, Krishna G Palepu, (2001). Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 31, Issues 1–3, September 2001, 405-440, DOI10.1016/S0165-4101(01)00018-0.
(link to pdf)

Fitting the office to our evolutionary niche

Imagine a workplace in harmony with our true nature. That's the aspiration held out by Carey Fitzgerald and Kimberley Danner in a recent paper surveying insights from environmental and evolutionary psychology and considering what they say about our work environments. The fundamental observation from which all else follows is that we are creatures evolved to live a life substantially in touch with nature and our own natural patterns. The workplace? Commonly, not so much...

Take greenery. There is evidence that exposure to natural environments improves our quality of life; for instance, jogging in a park is more effective than urban jogging for lowering anxiety and depression. In a workplace, this could translate to the presence of plants, and studies have shown that their presence can improve concentration and remove stress, presumably owing to their contributions to air quality as well as their immediate sensory effects. Similarly, access to windows is nigh-universally prized by workers.

Most workplaces, especially white collar ones, are sedentary environments that contrast with the lifestyles our species developed to cope with. One recent response to this within workplaces has been permitting or encouraging standing desks, which can make a substantial difference to health through upping 'non exercise activity thermogenesis' - the energy you burn off just through daily activities. Other approaches can include building opportunities to exercise, which if taken outdoors could kill two birds with one stone, something our ancestors were presumably more accomplished in than we were.

If we're going to be more permissive with working habits, how about allowing a nap? Inadequate sleep can impact motor skills, insight formation and language perception, and is a product of demanding environments that call for thinking, planning and anticipation, which constitute the bulk of workplaces. But we have a natural escape valve from overtiredness, and it's not sold at Starbucks. A short afternoon sleep is a feature of cultures worldwide, and is more effective than caffeine at improving performance in areas like motor and verbal tasks. It seems likely that napping is a feature of our circadian rhythms: it's a natural way to operate, not just a byproduct of a heavy lunch. 1/3 of surveyed workplaces say they would be ok with napping, but only 16% had provision for it, and only 10% of employees say they had done so at work, despite 48% napping in the last month (presumably on their own time).

Finally, Fitzgerald and Danner discuss the social factor of human existence. This is something better acknowledged within organisations - conflicts hurt wellbeing and performance, social support can buffer against stress - but what I found notable was a consideration of non-human companions. Bringing a pet to work can reduce your own stress, and a dog in the office can facilitate group cohesion, cooperation and trust.

If we're serious about wellbeing, engagement, and the better workplace, then these cornerstones of a life led adequately - light, air, movement, sleep and companionship - are things that organisations have got to put in place.


Fitzgerald CJ, & Danner KM (2012). Evolution in the office: how evolutionary psychology can increase employee health, happiness, and productivity. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 10 (5), 770-81 PMID: 23253786
 
Further reading:
See the Psychologist article (and mp3 audio) where Craig Knight discusses environmental design - link here

Your boss's expectations shape your performance - but only if you trust them?

The Pygmalion effect is the much-observed finding that a leader's high expectations for their subordinates, if clearly communicated and followed up by supporting behaviours, translate into higher achievements for those subordinates. The leader paints the possibility of another possible self that the subordinate could become - 'be all you can be' - if they apply themselves and follow the path. Thus inspired, the subordinate fixes themself on the new horizon, and with guidance, surpasses themself. The leader keeps the horizon visible, a function termed 'the maintenance of hope'. As you can see, the orthodox view of this is rather unidirectional - leader transmits, others receive. In a theoretical paper, Leonard Kararkowsky, Nadia DeGama and Kenneth McBey unpack how the subordinate is likely to be a crucial factor in this effect: for them, it all comes down to trust.

Trust involves at its base a willingness to be vulnerable and put yourself in anothers hands, believing they will not let you down. Clearly the Pygmalion effect involves risk, as it calls for individuals to abandon old behaviours and strive for something currently beyond them. So it's reasonable to believe trust plays a part. Just how might it do so?

Firstly, the authors note that for trust to occur, the individual has to believe that the trustee has the ability to deliver. This is a cool, cognitive component of trust. Does this leader have the nous to get me from the present to the new possibility? And even before this, do I believe they possess good enough judgment to spot talent? If this trust is present, then the manager's high expectations can raise the subordinate's self-expectations, and with it self-efficacy and motivation to perform.

Just because they can, doesn't mean they will. So trust also relates to beliefs about a person's integrity: how reliable they are, whether their words meet their actions. Coupled with this is an even more important factor: benevolence. While integrity and capability are concerns to coolly appraise, benevolence involves emotional feelings of loyalty and attachment, the sense that this individual cares for you and will go beyond obligations to see you right. When leader Pygmalion behaviours - goal setting, feedback, advice - are viewed through the prism of integrity and benevolence, the subordinate can view them as one side of a social contract, where the leader is delivering effort (integrity) for the subordinate's good (benevolence). This calls for reciprocity from the subordinate, in the form of renewed efforts and changes in their own behaviour.

Karakowsky and colleagues note that the effect has been most deeply researched in educational and military settings - settings where respect for the other's authority and integrity is taken for granted.  The military setting in particular is heavily masculine, which may explain why the research often fails to find the effect with female leaders, who may be perceived through social stereotyping as less capable due to misfit to masculine activities. The authors conclude that for Pygmalion to be fully understood, we need to understand the influence of trust and the active role that subordinates need to take for change to occur.

Karakowsky, L., DeGama, N., & McBey, K. (2012). Facilitating the Pygmalion effect: The overlooked role of subordinate perceptions of the leader Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (4), 579-599 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02056.x

Further reading:

White, S. S., & Locke, E. A. (2000). Problems with the Pygmalion effect and some proposed solutions. The Leadership Quarterly, 11, 389–415. DOI: 10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00046-1