Division of Occupational Psychology conference report

I'll close up our first full month here at the Occupational Digest with the first of a few reports on the Division's annual conference which ran 12-14^th of January this year.

I was engaged and provoked by Timothy Judge's Myers Lecture, challenging “The illusions under which we labour”. His sights were on the “situational premise”: the idea that environment and context matter in explaining human behaviour, thus allowing occupational psychology to fixate on culture, recommend interventions, and believe in change. Judge examined this assumption via a wide-ranging tour of findings from behavioural genetics, such as the heritability of altruism, together with evidence of how humans quickly adapt to a new status quo; key examples here included how both marriage and lottery wins have only a transient impact on your levels of life satisfaction.
Judge ended by suggesting that because people are difficult to change, we should place more focus on recruiting the right type of people, redesigning jobs to fit people and leveraging strengths rather than trying to fix weakness; all laudable activities, I feel, and each of them currently practised in the profession (the first of those frankly dominates the industry!). The conclusion itself was less convincing, and I think he would have to be armed with a more systematic argument, based on evidence that tied directly to the methods and objectives in question, in order for organisational psychologists (and educators, therapists, army trainers...) to abandon their belief that individuals can change to become more effective at accomplishing goals.
A later talk by Steve Woods looked at ethnic differences in ability test scores. Occupational test users are sensitive to 'adverse impact' - disproportionately favouring people from one group over another – so this topic has been well researched, including using meta-analysis, which looks for patterns over a set of studies. Woods cites Roth et al’s (2001) meta-analysis which suggests a difference in means between black and white test-takers of up to 1D: loosely, this means a squarely average white candidate would score similarly to a black candidate who was sharper than nearly 85% of the black population. Evidence suggests the difference genuinely reflects group differences in ability, rather than issues with testing, with researchers disputing whether the effect reflects innate differences or cultural ones such as access to education.
Meta-analyses tend to collapse all the available data to ensure their overview is as authoritative as possible. Woods points out that by separating out the data instead, we can see whether the difference alters over time. This would give credence to the cultural cause, as genetic changes at that scale would be negligible, but cultural changes, especially for disadvantaged communities often targeted by public policy, can be more substantial. Woods and colleagues were interested in scores that reflected ‘g’, the general factor of intelligence, and considered only scores from tests that measured two or more of its subcomponents (eg numerical and verbal ability). The samples included were healthy Americans over the age of sixteen from ninety-one different samples, resulting in 1.1 million test scores, grouped into four decades from the 60s to 90s.
One unexpected finding was a spike in D, the black-white difference, when you move from the 60s to 70s. This isn't predicted by either distributional or cultural accounts, but makes sense if you think of the period before civil rights as one of limited opportunity for black people. Consequently, test taking would only be available to fairly exceptional individuals, ‘restricting the range’ to those likely to score better. Putting this decade aside, the overall trend was for a shrinking of D, closing down to around .3. Woods argues that this data changes the question from 'if' to 'how much' of the variance is due to cultural and developmental factors.
The talk was interesting especially in the light of Tim Judge’s keynote; here we saw evidence on fixed vs mutable differences in an organisational context, and, here at least, the score was culture one, genes nil.

Details about the 2011 DOP conference: http://www.bps.org.uk/dop2011/

Booster breaks at work enhance health and energy, and could ripple through organisations

Many of us in developed countries know that our lifestyle gets in the way of achieving a level of health in line with our level of wealth. With around half our waking hours spent in work settings, Wendell C. Taylor recommends an evidence-based workplace policy aimed to boost our health, with follow-on benefits for the organisation.

Taylor's paper, an eclectic review of research and practises including US federal recommendations, yogic techniques and sports science, points out that the modern workplace is laced with health hazards. These include a lack of strenuous physical activity, prolonged bouts of sitting still, weight gain (often due to unhealthy consumption), and of course stress. His solution is to take fifteen minute 'booster breaks' that involve health-promoting behaviours such as physical activity, meditation and breath training.

Fifteen minutes may seem like small beer, but Taylor lays out the evidence that these small efforts may have big effects. The US Department of Health and Humans Services, through a review of hundreds of studies, concluded that having some moderate-to-heavy physical activity in your routine improves health, even when the doses are small; indeed, no minimum level has been identified for producing health benefits.

Sedentary behaviour has serious effects on health - the risk of obesity increases by five percent for every two hours spent sitting at work - and the effects are worse when not interrupted; luckily, that's just what taking a booster break will do. Snacking and smoking, both common ways to use or even to justify work breaks, are suppressed when alternatives are promoted to fill our time. Given that on average we can prevent weight gain by tipping our energy intake-outtake by 100 kilocalories, these small effects matter.

We can also put in time to change our state of mind. Meditation can reduce anxiety and increase clarity of thought, and it can be hacked to fit even the short times of work breaks. Taylor asserts that rhythmic breathing can affect stress and immune function as well as reduce depression, and cites evidence for decreases in blood pressure from three months of practice of a few daily fifteen-minute sessions. Of course, all these types of break can increase blood flow and energy levels, which are both important for work effectiveness.

Taylor recommends sanctioning and promoting these health-enhancing practises in the workplace as booster breaks where employees get together to breathe, work out, or experience Big Mind together. He argues that such a policy can have multiple effects in a ripple-like fashion: the primary impact is at the centre, on individual behaviours; a smaller but profound effect takes place for individual outcomes like health, stress, energy, fun; then increasingly smaller effects occur for organisational morale, productivity, healthcare costs, and even for the organisation's image.

Taylor argues that breaks can enhance daily productivity even if they reduce the total time working, citing research conducted with data entry workers. This might seem strange if we see the capacity for work purely in terms of 'time available', but once we see energy as a major limiting factor this makes a lot of sense. Organisational morale is boosted partly by the group design, which encourages worker cohesiveness and a sense of collective fun.

We all want to stay well at work - the challenge is to know what we can do within our busy schedules. This article argues that even as little as fifteen minutes from our day can make a personal difference, and by taking our colleagues along we can multiply that impact, for ourselves and for the organisation. The full Booster Break methodology is currently being assessed using an ongoing randomised control trial - rest assured we'll bring you a follow-up once it's completed.

Taylor, W. (2011). Booster Breaks: An Easy-to-Implement Workplace Policy Designed to Improve Employee Health, Increase Productivity, and Lower Health Care Costs Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 26 (1), 70-84 DOI: 10.1080/15555240.2011.540991

Organizational Psychology Review and open access to articles

In the last post we looked at a study from a brand new journal, Organizational Psychology Review. I've read the opening sally from the editorial team and it gives a good picture of the purpose of the journal. The intent is to open a space for articles that attempt to synthesise specific findings to get a bigger picture. They hope this will allow practice "to move beyond an ill-understood ‘bag of tricks’ to better informed actions". This is firmly in line with what the Occupational Digest is all about, so I'm very happy to be adding this to my list of journals to follow.

It's worth emphasising that the journal will be accessible without charge for the next three years (until December 2013). To gain access you need to register but this is fairly straightforward.

I should also thank the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology for opening access to their article on Job Demands - this is a really useful way to raise awareness of the good work being published, and I encourage others to do likewise (and tell me!). If you are a publisher and you would like your articles featured on the Occupational Digest, do get in touch as enthusiasm is contagious.

Influencing others by showing emotion: a new emotional ability?

Many workplaces recognise that besides more cognitive notions of intelligence – our capability to solve problems, use logic, process and judge factual information – they also need Emotional Intelligence (EI): the capability to recognise, make the most of and manage emotion. Now a new theoretical paper makes the case that we should be expanding this concept of EI to include the ability to influence others through emotional displays.

EI currently focuses on spotting, dealing with and making sense of emotions. Can I figure out why I was feeling increasingly uneasy through the meeting? Spot how you are feeling right now? Guess what might cheer you up? Authors Côté and Hideg focus their attention on another feature of emotions: that we display them physically to others in emotion displays. This insight goes back to Darwin, and has since been extensively researched notably by Paul Ekman (whose work is popularised in the TV series Lie to Me) with the field now recognising that the face, voice and touch are all used for this purpose. Emotional displays, even subtle ones, can cause our heart rate to rise, our skin to sweat, and our emotions to swell, often to then be displayed onwards in ripples of emotional contagion, such as when laughter gathers any within earshot.

Côté and Hideg draw attention to the workplace consequences of these displays. Anger at those who have neglected their duties can provoke them to redouble their efforts, guilt displays increase the likelihood of forgiveness, and positive emotions can result in more pro-social behaviour. Clearly there is an advantage to being adept at these displays, and the authors point out at least two ways in which one can be better. One is displaying the right emotion for the situation; considerations include the communication medium, as some emotions, such as anger, are displayed more strongly via the voice than the face (and the reverse can be true). Another is displaying that emotion effectively, facilitated by approaches such as 'deep acting' which tries to change the emotion itself, contrasting surface acting, which just acts on behaviour and can be perceived as inauthentic. (You can decide for yourself what's going on in the photo above.)

Côté and Hideg amass research showing genuine variety in how well people can influence others through displays, for instance the ability of bill collectors to communicate urgency to debtors. They argue that all this evidence suggests a real human capability that shows individual differences, concerns emotions, and can result in better or worse outcomes. On this basis, they call for it to be considered as a new emotional ability within the Emotional Intelligence framework.

In an illuminating section the paper explores how influencing others through emotional displays also relies on another: the intended recipient. They may fail to recognise the display if they come from a different culture with different cues. They may be unmotivated to give their attention to your display, because they don't trust you, because they hold the power in the interaction and are blase about how you may feel, or because they don’t see the value in trying to understand the situation (what the authors refer to as epistemic motivation). There is evidence for each of these factors moderating the effect of emotion displays.

We all know that people are influenced by the emotional reactions of those around them. But it’s valuable to recognise the ways this does and doesn’t work, know its genuine workplace consequences, and be aware that this may be better treated as an ability, rather than an unaccountable influence in the workplace. This paper does a fine job of this, drawing together a wealth of evidence, and because this research is clear, readable, and released in the freely-accessible Organizational Psychology Review, I'd encourage having a look yourself.

Côté, S., & Hideg, I. (2011). The ability to influence others via emotion displays: A new dimension of emotional intelligence Organizational Psychology Review, 1 (1), 53-71 DOI: 10.1177/2041386610379257

Second-rates and saboteurs: possible consequences of employee of the month schemes?

As the BPS' newest employee, I'm thinking about how to make a good impression on my peers and managers. Perhaps I could even make it to Employee of the Month! "EOM" schemes are highly popular across companies, and considered by many to be best practice, so I was fascinated to find a paper by Johnson and Dickinson that starts to explore the motivational consequences of such schemes.

The studies described in the article seem to me preliminary, with a small student sample and favouring eyeballing over statistical analysis; I'll just touch on them below. The literature review, however, is a real eye-opener, and reveals how much opportunity there is for investigation of this area, with “no published empirical studies on EOM, even within a variety of disciplines such as psychology, management, and economics." Moreover, there are a number of criticisms of EOM design, including:

• A competitive structure. If everyone performs well this month, there's still only one EOM: it pays to do better than others, not to excel together.
• A winner-takes-all design. Small differences in performance may make the difference between acclaim and... tumbleweed. The pretty good and the mediocre are treated the same: they're invisible.
• A focus on results over methods. Getting things done by bulldozing your workmates could be a way to win the award.
• Criteria that are often vague and not transparent.

Some EOM schemes attempt to 'share the wealth' by ensuring the award revolves around to new individuals. This could however dampen any recognition value it has: "I've performed best this month... except for maybe Janet and Khaled, who already got it." The authors investigate this: in their sample of six students they don't see visible improvements on a dull computer-based processing task after being told they have won a revolving award.

A non-revolving scheme however, can end up with one or several great performers hogging the award, leaving the swathe of the 'able middle' unrecognised and unmotivated. Johnson and Dickinson look at this also, in a study where they set up their participants to always come in between 2nd and 5th place behind a named (fictional) "co-worker". Over time, a few of the students tailed off somewhat in performance, but a few others didn't. In my view this research doesn't provide compelling evidence for or against these EOM features, but lays some groundwork for subsequent work: watch this space.

One further risk, deliberately excluded from the research by using fictional teams, is that employees may seek the award via counterproductive work behaviours that could even slip into covert sabotage. If Steve is just one flawless restaurant set-up ahead of me, maybe I'll dawdle the next time he's in charge. This is serious business, and the consequence of EOMs focusing on results over behaviour.

Overall, this paper calls to our attention how shaky the theory and evidence for EOM schemes is, despite their obvious attractions as catchy, memorable, and simple ways to try to recognise employees. Raising the number of awards and a greater focus on behaviours seem supportable steps, but it's also key that organisations look inward to how the schemes are viewed by the employees who participate – or not.

Does your organisation have a EOM scheme? What are your views on its strengths and weaknesses?

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Johnson, D., & Dickinson, A. (2010). Employee-of-the-Month Programs: Do They Really Work? Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 30 (4), 308-324 DOI: 10.1080/01608061.2010.520144

Hey co-worker, your family stresses affect me, too

Kim is a little worried about her co-worker Greg. She hears all about his home issues: young kids, ill mother, and a house sale turned ugly.

You hear that his mammoth project has been stuttering recently - unsurprising.

It seems to have affected Kim a little too...

wonder how she is finding work right now?

Greg is experiencing family-work interference (FWI), where an individual struggles in the workplace, home, or in both domains, due to the conflicting demands they make. These include time demands and stresses, together with required behaviours - a workplace may expect an objective and cool style, whereas a family wants your openness and warmth. We vary in how we experience this: men are most likely to perceive the problem as family obstructing their work, rather than the reverse, and ‘Type-A’ traits are associated with more FWI. All in all, though, these clashes cause problems.

Now a new study by Lieke ten Brummelhuis and colleagues suggests that an employee’s levels of FWI affects not just themselves, but their co-workers too. They studied 1,430 pairs of employees from a Dutch policing organisation, and measured whether the FWI of one employee correlated with more sick days and stronger intention to leave the organisation for both members of the pair. They discovered it did: higher FWI produced worse outcomes on both measures for the employee themselves, and somewhat more weakly for their co-worker as well.

The team provide evidence that the negative outcomes are due to the transmission of emotional states from one co-worker to the other, a process called crossover. They measured states commonly associated with FWI: burnout, where exhaustion and doubts stack up to make daily responsibilities a struggle, and low levels of engagement, an attunement with your job, organisation, profession. The study showed that both crossed-over, and also showed that each appears to have a distinct effect. Burnout was more likely to lead to sick days, whereas lack of engagement, by eroding loyalty, increases intention to leave.

How the feelings caused by FWI cross-over isn’t fully understood. It’s likely to be a combination of negative banter, atmosphere, and displaced tasks from the overloaded employee. As such, it's premature on the basis of this research to recommend how to reduce the cross-over; some may be due to too much sharing between colleagues and some due to too little. But we can clearly see the benefit in seeking to reduce FWI for each and every employee, as the consequences can be far spreading. When Greg is feeling the strain, Kim may be feeling it, too.

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Ten Brummelhuis, L.L., Bakker, A.B., Euwema, M.C. (2010). Is family-to-work interference related to co-workers' work outcomes? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77(3), 461-469, DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.06.001

Arrogant employees are judged poorer at their jobs, even by themselves

We all believed that Neville
was a f f f fine lad
but when we go to know him better
Neville drove us mad.
Neville is a bighead
Neville is a pain
Neville is a pratt without a brain

Toy Dolls – Neville is a Nerd

Most of us can recount work experiences involving people we would call arrogant. However, there's been little research pinning arrogance down, measuring it, or discovering its consequences for the workplace. A recent paper introduces a way to measure it and investigates what sets the arrogant individual apart.

Russell Johnson and colleagues firstly set out their definition: arrogance consists of those behaviours that exaggerate your importance and disparage others. This distinguishes it from narcissism which, although related, includes thoughts and attitudes that don't affect others, such as the physical self-admiration of Narcissus himself.

The authors gathered experiences of arrogant behaviour from employee focus groups to create the Workplace Arrogance Scale (WARS) which they validated through a series of studies. An example item is 'Shoots down other people's ideas in public'. They were then able to turn to the consequences of arrogance, firstly showing that arrogant individuals report fewer organisational citizenship behaviours – acting beyond your job to help others or the wider organisation. They then turned to the biggie: how good are arrogant individuals at their jobs?

To answer this, the researchers recruited eighty-two participants from a number of companies. They provided a range of measures including the WARS, overall task performance and specific performance areas - customers, relationships and development – on which each participant was rated by themselves and by nominated individuals in their organisation. (Getting these other-perspectives was possible as the WARS looks at behaviours rather than hidden thoughts.)

Far from being the most able, arrogant workers were judged weaker in almost every way by one rating group or other. Some of the findings are less surprising: people who think their managers are arrogant grade them as poorer across the board, which may be influenced by a reverse halo effect (overgeneralising a negative feature) or using the rating process to punish those they resent. Some are more compelling: individuals who rate themselves more arrogant rate themselves weaker at relationships and overall performance, with their supervisors and direct reports agreeing.

Another study looked at cognitive ability within another 172 working individuals who completed the Wesman Classification Test, a well-established measure of verbal and numerical reasoning. Weaker performance in either area was associated with higher ratings of arrogance.

There's evidence that arrogant people are aware of these shortcomings, not least in the lower ratings they give themselves. The studies also gathered ratings of more internal features, finding that arrogant individuals report lower self-esteem, greater work-related strain, and are more likely to fixate on minimizing mistakes rather than focusing on success. This paints a picture of the arrogant as anxious to cut it but aware they may be performing at the edge of their ability, preoccupied with failure and trying to survive by cutting others down.

However, as all studies (bar the cognitive ability scores) used subjective ratings, we can't discount the possibility that it is perceived performance that is weaker for the arrogant; perhaps they alienate others and, ostracised, join their critics in discounting themselves. Further research using objective measures of performance (eg sales data) could address this issue. For now we should pay more attention to arrogance in the workplace: it appears the bigheads don't have the capabilities to match.

Johnson, R. E., Silverman, S. B., Shyamsunder, A., Swee, H., Rodopman, O., Cho, E., et al. (2010). Acting Superior But Actually Inferior?: Correlates and Consequences of Workplace Arrogance. Human Performance, 23(5), 403-427. doi:10.1080/08959285.2010.515279