Power & Influence

In class on Wednesday, we talked about the article "The Power Elite" and sources of power.  When Dr. Goates asked what we felt gave someone power we named some things like job/title, intelligence, reputation, wealth, social connections, and personality.  Then someone stated the word influence.  This is what Dr. Goates said to be most important.  Without influence you can't have power.  Power is only the capacity to influence, and influence is about action - power in motion in an attempt to alter someone's attitudes or behavior.  We also talked about how it is not people who have power, but institutions.  Family, school, and church USED to be the most important when it came to influences, but now it has changed to government, military, and businesses.  This shows how much our world has changed over the years.  Sadly now everything that matters revolves around business, money, and politics rather than family, religion, or politics.  We also talked about French and Raven's 5 sources of power, referent, expert, coercive, reward, and legitimate, and then the 4 contingencies of power, substitutability, centrality, discretion, and visibility which I also found to be really interesting when focusing on these issues.  I never thought about how much someone's influence capacity told about the power they had though, and it definitely made me realize power is more than just wealth or title even though many would like to believe that nowadays.

SAS Institute

I found the article about SAS Institute to be very interesting for our second Case Analysis.  At first, I was surprised to hear all of the benefits and accommodations the company provides for it's employees.  I didn't know if it was just some made-up company, or if it was for real.  But then I realized, like Goodnight said in the article, everything that the company provided was simply based around an employee-friendly environment.  It wasn't rocket science, yet merely common sense.  If the employees are treated better, they will in return treat the company better.  I liked the way Goodnight implemented this.  His employees were all treated with the same respect, they were not split up into levels, and no one was given special treatment over others.  The thing about SAS Institute is that the employees were still there to work, and they loved to do that work.  It was hard, but because they had such a great environment and culture surrounding them, they were willing to put forth whatever was needed for the company.  It personally sounded to me like a great place to work, and it seems like a lot of people feel the same way considering there is usually thousands of applicants for only openings of about a couple hundred jobs.

Book Report #5

                While completing How We Decide, it created me to think about how much of our mind many people probably do not even begin to understand.  In many ways actually, we have so many preconceptions, that what we think we “know”, is actually incorrect.  The chapter on “The Moral Mind” was a very strong example of this, and I found this to be very interesting and one of my favorites, certainly out of the last few chapters of the book. 

                Lehrer begins this chapter talking about a man named John Wayne Gacy.  Gacy was a successful and well-liked man.  He was “pillar of the community” and was voted one year as the Man of the Year by the local chamber of commerce.  He had a wife, and what seemed to be a normal, overall good life.  Sadly, his whole life was carefully crafted lies.  One day, Gacy’s wife noticed a putrid order coming from underneath their house.  Gacy tried to cover the smell with a 50-pound bag of lime and told her it must just be a dead rodent or a sewage leak.  The smell would not go away, and he then even went to the extent of filling the crawlspace under the house with cement.  The smell still was evident, and then finally became found to be rotting bodies.  “On March 12, 1980, John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murdering thirty-three boys” (Lehrer). 

                Gacy was a psychopath.  Psychopaths make terrible moral choices because of a specific brain malfunction.   Morality can be a very unclear concept, but simply, it is the choices made about how other people should be treated. Psychopaths cannot consider other people’s feelings; they can’t sympathize with their states of mind.  Their logic is perfect, but what causes this condition is the damage of their emotional brains.  This is what makes them dangerous.  They have what is seemed to be an “emotional emptiness” causing them to feel nothing.  Like Gacy, even after something as terrible as causing multiple murders, they feel no remorse or have anything on their conscious.  “They can lie with impunity” (Lehrer).  Whereas normal people would show symptoms of nervousness when lying, psychopaths are not even the slightest bit anxious.  A lot of them, instead of their blood pressure and pulse rate rising, they are actually calmed by acts of violence.

                Lehrer states that the absence of emotion makes the most basic moral concepts incomprehensible.  A quote from G.K. Chesterton, makes the concept clear, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason.  The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason” (Lehrer).  This is exactly what Lehrer is trying to explain throughout the whole morality chapter, stating that moral decisions are supposed to rely on strictly logical and legal ideas, but these conceptions are based on a vital mistake.  Neuroscience has discovered that there is nothing rational about the substrate of moral decisions.   When you encounter an ethical problem, the unconscious automatically generates an emotional reaction, and within a few milliseconds, the brain has already made up its mind because you know what is right and what is wrong (Lehrer).  These moral instincts are not rational, yet they are essential from keeping people away from committing outrageous offenses.   After our emotions have made the moral decision, then the rational circuits in the prefrontal cortex are activated.  “People come up with persuasive reasons to justify their moral intuition.  When it comes to making ethical decisions, human rationality isn’t a scientist, it’s a lawyer” (Lehrer).

                I, probably along with many other people, never knew that morality had a stronger connection with emotions than that of rationality.  I never thought about it in the way Lehrer presented it, which has now created my accurate understanding.  Moral decisions are all about taking other people’s thoughts or emotions into account.  Sadly, psychopaths commit the crimes they do because their emotions never tell them otherwise.  Luckily, normal human beings all have this sense of moral distinction built into their brains, and it doesn’t matter what culture you grew up in or what religion you believe in.

                In the final chapter, four main ideas are stressed: “novel problems also require reason”, “embrace uncertainty”, “you know more than you know”, and “think about thinking”. Lehrer wraps the book up by stating how amazing the human brain is and how it can always improve itself.  “Tomorrow, we can make better decisions” (Lehrer).  The first step to doing this is seeing ourselves as we really are, by assessing our flaws and talents, and our strengths and shortcomings (Lehrer).   I found this book to be extremely fascinating and helpful, and I enjoyed reading it because I personally happen to be a terrible decision maker.  Lehrer continued to suggest throughout his entire book that we need to put the knowledge of our brain to work in order to successfully make decisions, and now I am hoping I can be able to use some of this book and information, to do exactly that. 

Rules for Radicals

I found this article very interesting because of the idea of the Haves and Have-nots. This truly applies to today's society and any time throughout history. The Haves are the ones who have control and it is vital for the have-nots to stand up for what they believe in. The right of revolution was even laid out in the Declaration of Independence. This form of protest has been completely acceptable since the beginning of our country; it is what our country was founded out, so how can it be so wrong? The Haves try to solidify their power through literature, but I feel that this is all interpretation. Words can sometimes be manipulated or misread to help support an argue. But of course anyone in power would want to make sure their power is recognized. The major time period that comes to mind while reading this is the 1960s. During this period many changes occurred from revolution, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Second Wave Feminism, and Gay and Lesbian Rights. Because of the people who protested, we as a nation were able to truly better equality. I mean all men are created equal right? All of these great changes sparked out of revolution and protest so how could this be such a bad thing for the have-nots? Even today there are many protests from small ones to larger ones like Occupy. The right to protest is vital in America because it helps us have a democracy that the people can have their voices heard. Without it where would we be? Great changes have come out of protest and revolutions in history, so I feel it is justified. 

Goate Bucks!

I thought the activity on Monday was very interesting, and although I still feel like I don't completely understand exactly what was going on...or at least what was suppose to happen...I think when Dr. Goates explains everything a bit more, it will all fall into place.  But here are some of my thoughts though without being completely  educated on the complete exercise, and my take on what we did.  I was in the Bottom Group.  We were instructed not to leave our own designated space unless we received permission from  a member of the Middle Group or Top Group to go elsewhere.  We were allowed to knock on the door of the Middle Group and request a meeting with that group, but we were not allowed to go straight to the Top Group.  These instructions already confused the Bottom Group, with some of us not leaving our areas like it instructed, and others disregarding that statement completely and leaving to find other groups immediately.  I'm not really sure if either of us were right or wrong.  Finally when the Middle Group came down and gave us our instructions for our slogans, we needed to rush and create as many as we could in 10 minutes.  When it came down to presenting the slogans to the company buying them, I felt as though it was mass confusion.  They had already given a lot of the money away, whether they knew what they were doing or not, there was much left to negotiate for our team.  I thought it was good active exercise, but I think I will be able to better appreciate it when I hear it better explained on Monday.

Book Report #4

When trying to escape a dangerous situation, the emotional brain can only be reliable to a certain point until you need to switch over to rationality.   Rational thought takes place in the prefrontal cortex, the outermost layer of the frontal lobes.   Some people are better at this than others are though, causing those some of the others to make unwise, or irrational, decisions.  “People who are more rational don’t perceive emotion less, they just regulate it better” (Lehrer).   All of Lehrer’s examples really portray how important each part of the brain is when it comes to decision making.  It depends on what the situation is, and how you respond to that, that then determines how you then are able to come up with a decision.

                A story of a crew of pilots keeping calm in the midst of their airplane’s system crashing was an amazing illustration.   The most remarkable thing about the performance of the pilots, Lehrer states, is that they managed to keep their emotions in check.  That would not be something easy to do while you know in your head that you have lost all control of your aircraft, and if you have no way of regaining it, you, your entire crew and hundreds of your passengers will crash into the ground.  “If the emotional brain is pointing you in the direction of a bad decision, you can choose to rely on your rational brain instead” (Lehrer).  This is exactly what Captain Al Haynes needed to do in this situation of his United Airlines Flight 232 taking a turn for the worse.  He never let his fear turn into panic, and he only was able to do this because he used his prefrontal cortex to manage his emotions.  He took what he knew, and even though he was faced with a situation that they were never trained for or no one specifically knew how to handle, Haynes made connections and thought carefully about everything minute detail he could act upon.  This activity is an exclusive strength of the prefrontal cortex.  This region of the brain is able to take an abstract principle and apply it to an unfamiliar situation to come up with an original solution.  What makes this possible is a specific kind of memory called our working memory.  It is able to determine if we know any information that can be relevant to the problem at hand.  Neurons in the prefrontal areas will fire in response to a stimulus and keep firing for several seconds even after the stimulus is gone.  This makes it possible for the brain to make connections and ideas overlap.  Those new ideas are simply several old thoughts that occur at the same time.  “The problem-solving abilities of working memory and the prefrontal cortex are a crucial aspect of human intelligence” (Lehrer).  In this situation alone, Haynes saved 184 passengers lives that day, along with his own and many of his flight crew.  He was only able to control the plane to a certain extent to land, but because he got it to crash on to the runaway expected, they were able to put out the fire immediately and medical attention was readily available.   “Although the rational talents of the prefrontal cortex kept Flight 232 from crashing into a cornfield, it’s important to realize that rationality isn’t an all-purpose solution” (Lehrer).  As much as one decision-making method can be the absolute best solution for one situation, it can lead to disaster for another. 

This book has caused to me to look at so many decisions differently because of all the examples and information Lehrer has presented through it.  Just as we were talking about rationality saving the day, the next chapter switched to begin talking about how sometimes thinking too much can create a problem and rationality can lead us astray.   Thinking too much is actually a mental mistake better known as choking.   We all know this feeling when we continually rehearse our speech repeatedly and we know we know every single word, but when we get up in front of the class or audience, not a word comes to mind.  This happens on an even bigger level, for example with opera superstar Renee Fleming.   She was used to singing one of the most beloved pieces from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and killed the high notes every time with no problem, the one’s many other sopranos had trouble with.  All of a sudden in one of her routine performances, she started to worry about the most difficult part of the song as she approached it.   “She couldn’t stop thinking that she was about to make a mistake” (Lehrer).   She made it through the song, barely being able to breathe, and greatly shaken up by the end of it.  Sadly, Fleming’s performance problems became chronic.   The songs that used to be “second nature” to her became impossible for her to sing.  Her struggle was against anxiety; she had lost her confidence.   When you have a high skill in something, a lot of the time it becomes completely automated.  You don’t even need to think about what you’re doing.   A part of your brain in the prefrontal cortex that monitors behavior can interfere with this and those decisions that are normally made without thinking, causing one to “choke”.   This was just one of his examples showing that rational thought can backfire.   Along with many other points I have pulled out before, it can be added to the list of information that we need to be aware of, because even though reason can be a powerful cognitive tool, it is also dangerous to rely on exclusively. 

Penn State

So with Penn State's scandal and JoePa being the biggest news at the moment, when I was looking over my notes from the excerpts from The Prince, it seemed to make some connections.  It may be a stretch for some of them, but I feel like there are ideas that can very well relate.  For example, in the beginning it talks about good and bad behavior - virtues and vices.  The article states the opinion that what ever will increase your chances to stay in power is better, not what is "right".  Joe Paterno knew about the child molestation like 6 or 7 years ago.  He reported it to whatever higher official he needed too, in order to be legally right, but morally, he didn't do much about it. He did what he needed to and went on his way.  By laws of the university, he did what was expected, but if he wanted to really do what was right, which in my head, morally, would be more than just letting it go after telling someone that didn't do anything about it, he could have.  Because of his name, if he wanted an investigation 7 years ago, there would have been one, but instead he let it go, not causing any controversy with his job or institution, but not thinking about how other peoples lives could be jeopardized.  Another note that I had written down in class explaining the end of 18th chapter we read, is how it discussed that as long as you appear to be playing by the rules, that's all that matters.  No one will intrude if it looks like everything is going good.  This all has to do with image management.  I think that one of Penn State's biggest issues in general is image management, because they try to always portray a "WE ARE the best" image.... They didn't act on a life-changing problem, probably to save their image, when they found out, but it blew up in the faces now.  I don't know every detail about the whole scandal, and I am not saying that Joe Paterno should have been fired or not, because I am not educated on the whole situation enough.  All I was doing was connecting some points I found could be related, because all I do know is that Joe Paterno was aware of the situation, and morally, he should have done more about it.  Instead, he let it under the carpet for years, and more boys lives are jeopardized and possibly ruined.

Magic Cable

This case article was a good representation of Hurtsberg's motivator-hygiene theory of job satisfaction.  You could also see what the company's valued because of visible artifacts, which we had talked about with the layers of culture a week or two ago.  Tile-Elite obviously didn't have a very nice working environment or culture altogether.  It was dirty and dusty, and there was really no room for advancement, at least in Roberts case.  You could tell they valued the end result, not really caring how they got there, even if it meant putting their employees in jeopardy.  We then concluded in class on Monday, that Roberts is dissatisfied with Tile-Elite.  That is because of hygiene factors in the company.  In this case, it included working conditions, the quality of company policies and administration, and interpersonal relationships with supervision.  The place was dirty like already stated, he had been promised an advancement that he never got, and he didn't have a very good relationship with his boss as a result.  This made him motivated to get out of there.  Then when you first start reading about Magic Cable, it seems to put out a much nicer culture.  Indeed, it is cleaner and they may value their employees a little more or with greater significance, but when it comes down to it, they take away something promised to Roberts just like Tile-Elite did.  They said he would always have overtime on Saturdays, but then suddenly take this away.  Also, because he does the same mechanical work, he doesn't really have anything to "master" and everything comes easy, so this gives him no satisfaction.  This is classified as a motivator in Hurtsberg's Theory, and obviously it is not motivating Roberts.  Neither of these company's are the place for Robert, one giving him dissatisfaction and the other not satisfying, and we see at the end that he continues to move on to a different plant, hoping to get what he is looking for.

Motivation

In class, both on Monday and today, we talked about motivation.  Monday we talked a lot about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all that entails.  The bottom of the pyramid starts off with physiological needs such as food, air, clothing, etc.  Next is the level of safety and security. This is one's structure and order in life.  Continuing up the pyramid comes loving and belonging. Friends, family, and group identity are all part of this level.  Next, second to the top, is esteem.  This is one's recognition, status, or acceptance.  It includes one's feelings of adequacy, competence and confidence, and where one's sense of self-efficacy.  All these levels just described are deficiency needs, but the top of the pyramid changes this, being a growth need.  This top level represents self-actualization.  Self-actualization is the instinctual need to make the most of unique abilities and strive to be the best you can be.  So after discussing this pyramid and ideas, we realize that this hierarchy doesn't really predict behaviors.  If we actually acted by what the pyramid tells us, we would be willing to sell our parents or children, whatever it might be, in order to eat or have shelter.  This is not realistic because most people would do anything just to make sure their children or family is safe and healthy.  The other two needs that I thought were interesting were the aesthetic and cognitive needs.  Cognitive being the need to acquire knowledge and be able to understand it.  Aesthetic being able to see the beauty and balance in anything.  I liked the example Dr. Goates gave for this about a school project.  When putting together a project, you want it to look "beautiful" in your opinion when it's finished.  I never thought about this as being an aesthetic need.  But this, just like all of these other ideas are all part of what makes us motivated each and every day.  I think we look past this, not taking time out to realize what motivates each of our steps or decisions.

Five Reasons to Stop Saying "Good Job!"

We haven't discussed this article in class, and I'm not sure if we are going to because it is not on the syllabus, but it was on D2L and I thought I would read it because it sounded interesting.  I have to say, as I was reading it, I found it very... rough, for lack of a better word.  I'm not sure how to explain how this article came across but I didn't like it at first.  It talks about how when parents, or anyone, tells a child "good job", they are only saying that for their own convenience, not for the child's emotional needs.  I personally think this statement is just plain stupid.  They start off by saying that the words "good job", manipulate a child, create a praise junkie, steal's a child's pleasure, makes a child lose interest in what they are commended for, and reduces a child's achievement.  There are some minor truths within these, but I feel like they exaggerate these issues to an absurd extent at first.  As they go on to explain there are better things that could be said to children, I did see valid points and arguments to their statements then.  You don't always want to praise a child for every single one of their accomplishments because then they will always expect it.  Also, a simple evaluation-free statement can be better because you still are acknowledging them, but it lets them take on the pride in what they did.  The last thing the article says is a more useful way to express positive reinforcement to a child is asking more than talking.  Questions are even better then descriptions.  If you ask the child their favorite part about what they did or accomplished, it shows that their opinion matters.  I liked the way they ended the article, saying that not all compliments, thank-you's and expressions of delight are bad, but we just need to know how to better express them.  I felt the last sentence is a very good in closing when it says, "you don't have to evaluate in order to encourage".

Book Report #3

                Lehrer continues to discuss how a feeling can easily fool us even when we may think it is a smart decision.   Our emotions don’t always lead us to the correct answers in life.  He starts out with the example of one of the most popular television game shows, Deal or No Deal.  For the most part, this is a game of dumb luck.  It has no code to figure out or any numerology to interpret.   And yet, Deal or No Deal is also a game of demanding decisions.  In all reality, the contestants should really figure out whether or not it would be a good deal mathematically when they are pressed with the decision to take the Banker’s offer or to continue to play.  But like Lehrer states, if they all played the game being completely rational like this, it would be boring.  No one wants to watch people do arithmetic.  Instead, like expected, many contestants rely on their feelings and impulses to make some risky choices.  “While this instinctive decision-making strategy normally works out just fine…there are certain situations on the game show that reliably fool the emotional brain” (Lehrer).  There have been contestants that make terrible choices and reject deals that they should have accepted.  People on the show loose fortunes because they trust their emotions at the wrong time.

In one story a man, named Frank, on the Dutch version of Deal or No Deal, loses more than €100,000 in fewer than 3 minutes.  What caused this man, along with many others, to make a stupid decision to not take the money offered and wishfully kept opening other cases when his chances didn’t even look good?  During the game he opened the case with his largest amount remaining, making the Banker’s offer decrease.  An analysis done by a team of behavioral economists says that after this decrease in proposal, a player typically will become excessively risk-seeking, meaning that he is much more likely to reject a perfectly fair offer.   “The contestant is so upset by the recent monetary loss that he can’t think straight” (Lehrer).  Frank continued to open more cases, digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole.  This is result of a very simple flaw rooted in the emotional brain, it’s technical name being loss aversion.  “When a person is confronted with an uncertain situation – like having to decide whether to accept an offer from the Banker – the individual doesn’t carefully evaluate the information, or compute the Bayesian probabilities, or do much thinking at all” (Lehrer).  Instead, they trust their emotions and instincts, depending on mental shortcuts – skipping the math all together.   Even professional money managers are vulnerable to this bias, so what makes us do this?  The answer is, because we are afraid to take a loss – it feels bad.  “We try to postpone the pain for as long as possible; the result is more losses” (Lehrer).  Loss aversion makes us irrational when it comes to evaluating risky gambles.  Lehrer states that there is no rational reason for us to treat gains or losses so differently, but we still do.  The only way to avoid it is to know about it. 

Along the same lines, letting our emotions foolishly make some decisions, Lehrer discusses how easily people can get into debt with credit cards.  I loved this part of the book because it really made me think and realize how true this is.  He writes about a financial counselor in the Bronx who helps dozens of people every day cut up their credit cards and develop plans for them to get out of debt.  The problem with credit cards is that people don’t really feel like they are spending that money they’re charging on it.  Cards make transactions abstract, so you don’t really feel the downside of spending money like you would with cash.  “Brain-imaging experiments suggest that paying with credit cards actually reduces activity in the insula, a brain region associated with negative feelings” (Lehrer).  In this case, spending money doesn’t feel bad, so why not spend more!  Our feelings are looking at the immediate rewards, they’re not even thinking twice about the long-term fiscal consequences.  “The emotional brain just doesn’t understand things like interest rates or debt payments or finance charges” (Lehrer).  We buy whatever we want now, and decide we’ll figure out how to pay for it later.  Feelings trick us into making foolish financial decisions, buying what we can’t afford.  An experiment showed that when we start thinking about an immediate reward, the brain areas associated with emotion, such as the midbrain dopamine system and nucleus accumbens, were turned on.  These are the cells that make us run up credit card debt.  I found this so relevant to my life at the moment because I just caved in and got a debit card recently, even though I was trying not too for reasons just like these.  Obviously, I can’t get myself in debt, it’s not a credit card, but I knew it would be much easier for me to spend money if I had a card then if I always needed cash on me.  I finally gave in this year because it’s too hard to have cash all the time in college, and I found myself spending more and more.  For example, right after I read this part of the book on the credit cards and debt, I went out to grab food.  I contemplated if I wanted to get a more expensive item then I usually do, telling myself it didn’t matter since I had my card.  I knew that if I had to pay with cash though, I would get the much cheaper deal because I have always trained myself to do that.  I was tempted to get the more expensive item, but after just reading how it was my feelings taking over and how we need to be able to control that, I decided to save the money and get the cheaper item even though I wanted the other one.  “It’s not easy for the brain to choose a long-term gain over an immediate reward – such a decision takes cognitive effort…” (Lehrer).  I liked that I was able to apply what I just read to something in my life, even if it only saved me a few dollars.  “…you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes not getting what you want is just what you need” (Lehrer).  We need to remember this because it is important that we know how to compensate for our flaws when things like our emotions lead us astray.  

Layers of Cultures

In class, Dr. Goates taught about the layers of culture.  At the top of the pyramid are the cultural artifacts.  This is tangibly observable.  It includes observable symbols and signs like stories, myths, rituals, and language.  Under the artifacts in the pyramid is the category of shared values. These are shared perceptions of good and bad, or right and wrong.  What organizations say they value are their espoused values.  What the organizations actually value are enacted values.  The last bottom level of the pyramid is the shared beliefs.  These are unconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions of reality and of the way things are done and what they mean.  Both the shared values and shared beliefs are derived or declared versus being tangibly observable.  At first all of this didn't mean much to me until we put practical examples into it.  We talked about if someone were to find Shippensburg 50 years later after a volcano erupted and covered everything, what would they find and what would it mean?  We said they would find things like all our textbooks and materials.  These would be the tangible artifacts.  This shows that we valued education, and that we believed that education was important in life.  The other example we talked about was cell phones.  I found this one very interesting because I never thought about just how important and how much we value our cell phones and why.  We obviously value communication and connectivity very highly.  Relationships with our friends and family are very important to us.  I liked looking at this pyramid representing the layers of culture because we see this top layer all the time, but we don't always think to look below the surface at the meanings.

The Nacirema

When first reading "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema", you're taken back by all of the things described.  It seems like he's talking about a culture and people that are wild and uncivil.  It explained how they use a bundle of hog hairs to clean their mouth, along with magical powders for their teeth.  That seems crazy.  It also talks about holy mouth men and their daily ceremonies that involve much discomfort and torture.  Reading these things makes us have a impression that they are very uncivilized.  Then, I finally realized that the article was talking about Americans.  Narcirema spelled backwards.  Those hog hair brushes were toothbrushes.  The magical powders representing fillings.  The holy mouth men were the dentists.  This shows that we can read something with one certain perspective, and have a totally a different thought about it than if we looked at it in another view.  Realizing that the article was talking about Americans, shows us that we can judge and create perspectives of something so quickly without really knowing the meaning behind it.  I personally read that article thinking those people were crazy and wild, until realizing their rituals and culture are my own everyday actions and culture.  Those "crazy people" are us.

Wal-Mart Goes Preppy

This is an article for next week, but I read it before hand so I figured I would comment on it now.  In this article it talks about how Wal-Mart changed their uniform from the old blue vests, to a blue polo and khakis.  They did this in their process of changing things to attract upscale shoppers.  I feel like it does put off a more professional and business casual look to it, but it also takes away one of the symbols that Wal-Mart has always been known for:  the blue vest with "How may I help you?" written on the back of it.  They want this to give Wal-Mart a whole new look in order to attract a whole different crowd of people and better compete with their rival, Target.  They may be producing a more attractive look for their employees, but I'm not so sure that it is really going to affect their business.  At one point it discussed a woman who complained about buying khakis, and I thought this was ridiculous.  In almost every job, you need to buy at least one part of your uniform.  Even if they give you a shirt, hat, etc., you almost always need to buy pants or shoes.  If you don't buy directly yourself, then it probably comes out of your first few paychecks.  For them to add that part in about them buying their own khakis, trying to make it a negative effect of the new dress code, I thought, was just pointless and dumb.  That's how it is at most jobs.

Decision-Making Quiz

In class on Monday, Dr. Goates introduced us to three decision-making heuristics before looking at the decision-making quiz.  These were the availability heuristic, the representativeness heuristic, and anchoring and adjustment.  I really found them interesting when we applied them to how we reacted and decided to the problems on the decision-making quiz. One I particularly took interest too was the ease of recall part of the availability heuristic.  For example, problem 3 asked whether stomach cancer or motor vehicle accidents caused more deaths in the U.S.  Many of us answered car accidents, and that is because of this ease of recall bias.  This bias is based on vividness and recency, and since very few of us knew of someone with stomach cancer, we all figured accidents caused more death.  Problem 4a and 4b really grabbed my attention as well.  I had put that 7 letter words ending with "ing" would be more common than 7 letter words that had "n" as the sixth letter, which is the same thing.  But because our brain is familiar with the "ing" ending, it automatically relates with that.  I looked right past that it's the same thing and put that it would have more in the paragraph.

Book Report #2

The first section of my book talked about how decisions are a result of our emotions.  People that have serious problems with their emotions have a very hard time making simple everyday decisions.  Our emotions create opinions that we are accustomed to relying on.  Picking up where I left off though, changes the perspective a bit and states how people can’t always coast on those emotions.  “Dopamine neurons need to be continually trained and retrained, or else their predictive accuracy declines.  Trusting one’s emotions requires constant vigilance; intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice” (Lehrer).

Bill Robertie is one of the only people in the world who’s a world-class expert in three different games, chess, poker, and backgammon.  At first glance, chess, backgammon, and poker seem to rely on very different cognitive skills; so how did Robertie get so good at the three games?  His response to this was, “I know how to practice. I know how to make myself better” (Lehrer).  He knew he needed to critique and analyze every decision he made for every game, figuring out the ideal outcomes of each.  Robertie identified that the most effective way to get better, is to focus on your mistakes.  “In other words, you need to consciously consider the errors being internalized by your dopamine neurons” (Lehrer).  Robertie would always carefully review each game afterwards, insisting on finding errors even after winning.  “He knows that self-criticism is the secret to self-improvement; negative feedback is the best kind” (Lehrer).

We tend to think of experts, like Bill Robertie, as having intelligence dependent on a vast amount of explicit knowledge, but experts are extremely intuitive.  “When an expert evaluates a situation, he doesn’t systematically compare all the available options or consciously analyze the relevant information” (Lehrer).  Experts instead naturally depend on their emotions generated by his dopamine neurons.  Like Robertie, they take their prediction errors and make it useful knowledge, giving him accurate feelings he wouldn’t even be able to explain.

Emotions aren’t perfect.  We have to remember this even after finding out how helpful they can be in each of our decision-making processes.   “They are a crucial cognitive tool, but even the most useful tools can’t solve every problem” (Lehrer).  As we remember from the previous reading, dopamine neurons get excited by predictable rewards.  What we weren’t already told is that they get even more excited by surprising ones.   This is why 52 year-old Ann Klinestiver became an addicted gambler after put on medication for his Parkinson’s disease.  The drug she was put on, Requip, imitates the activity of dopamine in the brain, increasing it.  This drug was first like a miracle, fixing all her movement problems, but eventually ruined her life as she gambled away all of her life savings, her car, her belongings, and her husband leaving her for that.  This is because of the reaction of our dopamine neurons to the surprising rewards.  Most of the time, the brain will get over its astonishment, and will figure out which events predict the reward and the dopamine neurons will stop releasing so much of the neurotransmitter.  Slot machines though, are unpredictable.  The dopamine neurons try to make sense of the rewards, but they keep getting surprised.  “Instead of getting bored by the haphazard payouts, the dopamine neurons become obsessed” (Lehrer).  Luckily, after taking Ann off the medication, she lost her obsession for gambling.  This just shows though, how emotional occurrences can also be very misleading when it comes to some decisions.  “When emotions get out of control – and there are certain things that reliably make this happen – the results can be just as devastating as not having any emotions at all” (Lehrer). 

Negotiation

      Conflict requires negotiation.  As said in class, negotiation is two or more conflicting parties attempting to resolve their divergent interests by redefining the terms of their interdependence.  Interests, as we discussed, being the key word.  I never realized their could be such a strong difference in how you negotiate.  Distributive negotiation ends with one party winning and the other losing.  When both parties get what they want and "win", it is called integrative negotiation. This type of negotiation focuses on figuring out each other interests, not positions.  The parties don't try to fight over who has more power, or who is technically right or wrong.  That will usually just continue in a circle if no one gives in, never getting anywhere.  Instead, if you help the other party, you will help yourself.  This was called "enlightened self-interest" in our reading.  This is part of integrative negotiation, showing that you realize you need to work together with the opposite party, by finding each others interests, in order for you to mutually benefit.  What we need to remember, though, is not to try to hurt the other party after they have agreed to cooperate.  If you both have agreed, don't cause conflict.  Even though it might help you and you may temporarily benefit, it will hurt you in the end because then your opponent is not going to trust you.  They will probably turn around later on and hurt you because you originally had done it to them.

AccelMedia-GTechnica

Along with the Pemberton stores activity we did on Monday, I liked this activity we did on Wednesday.  Already split into the buyers and sellers, we did not know what information the opponent knew.  We both need to buy/sell something and we were on a mission to get it for the price we wanted.  Going into it, we set a price that we didn't want to exceed because it would hurt our company.  This, we learned, is called the resistance point, or reservation price.  We also had a price in mind that we were going to initially present to the opposite team.  This is a big component you need to carefully considered when negotiating with a company or other party.   If you set an extreme offer, called anchoring, you may be able to work your opponent to a much higher price then they were originally willing to pay, or vice versa, you may be able to buy for a much lower price than they were originally going to sell for.  When I negotiated, I got a good price for what I was looking for, but I think if I would have known in advance how knowing some of these negotiating tactics can really help and affect your outcome, I might have done much better.
The other thing we didn't talk much about in class but that was mentioned in the article "Secrets of Power Negotiating" is the concept of being able to walk away.  When going into a negotiation, you need to have the choice in your mind that you can walk away without making a deal.  If you can't reach an agreement that you have already set that you need to reach, then walk away without any deal at all. Don't pass the point that you're willing to leave without a commitment.  If you do, you'll have already lost.

Pemberton General Stores

I thought the activity in class with the Pemberton general stores situation was very interesting.  Getting into groups, we had to start off by figuring out which decision had the best outcome, expecting that the other team would do the same.  We figured out that if we stayed closed, there was a chance that we'd get a profit if the other store stayed closed as well, but if the other team opened, we were losing double what we would if we decided to stay open.  Even if they stayed open as well, then we would both lose $20,000, and if they closed then we would profit $40,000.  We decided that opening in the first 4 rounds, until we had a chance to discuss with them, would be to our best benefit. We did this, and they had decided to do the same, landing us both in debt after the first 4 rounds. When we got to discuss, we decided to trust each other and both stay closed the rest of the weeks, that way we would both profit the $20,000 a week.  We both held our ends of the deal and we ended in profit of something like $160,000.
So what did this show us?  Well, then we went back and talked about a simple jail situation, as a representation of our store activity, which easily explained what the rational person would do according to the expected value analysis.  If the two parties cooperate with each other, you will come out on top. But you don't know what the other person is going to do, so you will most likely compete because you won't lose as much if you compete and they compete, as if they compete and you don't.  If both parties act "rationally" there will be what we talked about as "mutual destruction" because they will both compete. If you don't trust you competition and or make a deal with them to cooperate together, you're better off competing.

Book Report #1

By reading the first section of How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, I became very intrigued by how we actually make decisions.  Decisions are a part of our everyday life, even the minute ones we may not place much thought into.  On the contrast, life is also full of perplexing choices, creating our decision-making process very important.  For a long time, humans believed that emotions interfered with one’s way of “rational thinking”, creating them to make mistakes, but they were wrong.  Confused by many, decisions are actually a result of our emotions.  “If it weren’t for our emotions, reason wouldn’t exist at all” (Lehrer).  I was surprised to hear this, and at first not convinced, I continued to read and my mind was changed. Lehrer goes on to give many examples of how this is shown and proved, over and over. 

Based on a group of patients, neurologist Antonio Damasio began to find similarities connecting with emotional issues, decision-making, and a particular part of the brain, called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).  “The patients all appeared intelligent and showed no deficits on any conventional cognitive tests.  And yet they all suffered from the same profound flaw: because they didn’t experience emotion, they had tremendous difficulty making any decisions” (Lehrer).  Sadly, these patients all experienced damage to, or were missing, their OFC, creating their enormous difficulties.  The orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for integrating visceral emotions into the decision-making process.  Without this, one is unable to conquer simple decisions, such as in routine tasks. For example, Elliot, one of Damasio’s patients, was overwhelmed by “irrelevant details, like whether to use a black or blue pen, what radio station to listen to, and where to park his car” (Lehrer).   When our OFC’s can’t comprehend our emotions, we are actually losing are our own opinions we are accustomed to relying on.

Now knowing that our decisions and emotions are tightly connected, the question is, where does this integrated process begin?  Discovered by accident, the answer to this question is the fluctuations of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc).  “Scientists now know that this neurotransmitter helps to regulate all of our emotions, from the first stirrings of love to the most visceral forms of disgust” (Lehrer).  Dopamine neurons are like “prediction neurons” because they predict rewards given to the body.  For example, in the book they talk about an experiment with monkeys. Every time a man sounded a loud noise, he gave the monkeys a drop of juice.  Once the monkeys learned that after the sound, they were given juice, the neurons began firing at the sound of the tone.  “If the cellular predictions proved correct, and the reward arrived right on time, then the primate experienced a brief surge of dopamine, the pleasure of being right” (Lehrer).   Dopamine neurons continuously create patterns based on experience.

We don’t even realize this is going on, in what could be a decision we make in less than 10 seconds.  We may notice something so miniscule that it doesn’t even occur to us, but we will make a decision based on that observance because it created an emotion in us such as fear or excitement.  For example, in the book, he tells a story of a Lieutenant Commander who saved a battleship because of this intuitive reason.  Watching the radar on his shift, he immediately had a bad feeling about a blip that appeared heading straight for an American battleship.  It had the same route of a friendly aircraft, but he had this gut feeling it was an incoming missile.  He ordered it to be shot down without knowing, hoping he was making the right decision.  After analyzing the radar tapes, they discovered that the missile, right off the coast, didn’t show up on the radar until the third sweep.  If it was an American aircraft, it would have shown up the first radar sweep because of the difference in altitudes they each start off at.  The Commander was unconsciously evaluating the altitude of the blip, even though he didn’t know he was doing it.  Although he couldn’t explain it, he had felt so scared.  He acted on this emotion, making the decision to shoot the Iraqi missile down.

While reading this first section of the book, what came to mind was the Carter Racing article we read and discussed in class.  As we came to find out, it was actually a representation of a story of the launching of a spaceship.  If the people at NASA had all the data they did, what made them make the decision they did to launch it?  What emotion or feelings did they encompass that lead them to still launch it under the conditions? I’m not sure of the answer of this, but in reading the rest of the book, maybe I will be able to make some more conclusions.

Small Groups

The article by James Surowiecki was a bit confusing to me at first.  At first it states something about how being in a small group can actually make them dumber rather than wiser. Which threw me off, until I figured out he was just talking about the performance of the MMT.  Like stated, small groups are used everyday, all the time.  For juries, board of directors, teams, and meetings, small groups are present all over.  Everything has it's faults though.  Influence of the people in small groups on each other's judgment can not be ignored.  As much as they might think they still have their own ideas or opinions, they become very reliant on each others thoughts.  Because the influence is more direct and immediate, means that small groups can make very bad decisions.  Emphasizing consensus over dissent is one of the real dangers of that.  People start to just agree with each other, figuring they know what they are talking about because they have learned to share opinions and thoughts so often. Instead of challenging ideas, they just go along with whatever comes their way.  On the contrast, when a small group works well together and doesn't fall into these traps, they have the potential to be perfect.  Like mentioned in the article, when they work together so diligently and consistently, they have what can be called an "intellectual swing".  What he ends with saying though, is how group decisions are not inefficient.  Like everything though in the worlds, whether worked on in groups or by individuals, has it's faults and advantages.

Carter Racing

I enjoyed the discussion we had on the Carter Racing article in class on Monday.  Reading the article and analyzing it before hand, I had decided that I thought they should still race.  When we got together in groups, my group also agreed that they should go for the race.  We found no reason for them not too considering the evidence and statistics we had.  As a class we figured out the expected value and probability of all the choices.  We, still as a class, with those results, decided that they should race.  When Dr. Goates gave us the second paper with more data about the weather, our decisions began to change very quickly.  With the other information, we realized there seemed to be a much stronger correlation between the weather and blown engine gaskets.  It made me realize how quickly we sometimes look at situation, and could be so set on a decision, but we don't realize we're not looking at the full picture.  In all situations, whether at work, school, or just in life, many times we don't always see all the "evidence" or "data".  The Carter team worked great together and had been very successful that season.  If they had just raced though, without looking into the extra data about the weather, they could have blown everything. Before jumping to conclusions with any decisions or actions, we should always take a step back first to make sure we're are taking everything into account.  

Multicultural Teams

To almost go along with my last blog, I think that multicultural groups are hard to classify as "teams".  Continuing with Katzenbach and Smith's definition of team, after reading the article on multicultural teams it sort of contradicts the meaning of team. Cultural differences can create many issues and obstacles to effective teamwork. Yes, as they said, with good management, most of those obstacles can be overcome, but I feel like some are very hard to fix completely. The most trouble is with communication, which deals prominently with accents and fluency.  You can have excellent management but if you can't understand the person you're suppose to be on a "team" with, there are obviously going to be some difficulties.  Also, when dealing with different cultures, you're dealing with very different norms.  When people have grown up and been taught to act a certain way, even if comes off to someone else as very rude and wrong, it isn't always easy to change their habits. Some habits, or ways of your culture, become a part of you.  So with that said, I think it is hard for a group of multicultural people to really become a team because of the hardship they have become close and understanding each other.  With the right people, management, and willingness though, they could become a well-established team with a little work and patience.

Working Groups vs. Teams

Sometimes you forget how a common simple term can be used all the time but with such different meaning behind it.  For example, so many times the word "team" is used, whether it be for an sports activity, or a project at work or in school, but what is that word representing? What Katzenbach and Smith discuss is how the word "team" brings more of meaning.  A real team will bring more to the table than a "group".  The people on a team work as a whole and have a common goal and purpose.  They rely on each other and will do anything for each other in order to reach their goal.  So many times I feel, especially on sports teams, a person will get so selfish and because they think they need to do everything themselves in order succeed, they will take over.  I think we do this a lot in life, usually making things more complicated for ourselves.  When working on projects, or playing a sport, or in many other situations, we need to learn how to really work as a team with other people.  There will probably have a better outcome, and it will probably be much more enjoyable, no matter what is getting done or what is trying to be achieved. I don't think many people act accordingly anymore, and it's something to think about.

What Do Personality Tests Really Tell Us?

"Employers love personality tests", the article starts out. Should they? Should they rely on this method to determine whether or not a person is fit to be hired for their position? Personality tests, in my opinion, can be very misleading. As much as they may be able to read a person better then if they just told you about themselves, I feel that they can also be unreliable. Most personality tests use questions that are indirect ways of actually asking what they want to know. Sometimes these questions are not easily answered. For example, when Malcolm Gladwell talks about the Myers-Briggs test example with being a "Judger" or "Perceiver". He goes on to say how he can't really choose between one or the other because he finds himself following both examples at different times, and I agree with this example completely. I've taken many personality tests before, and I find myself annoyed because I usually am not just one way or the other. I feel that I face this issue with a lot of the questions. Is that still portraying a good representation of my personality then? I'm not sure it is.

What I also found to be very interesting was the way psychologist Lon Geiser interpreted the stories Gladwell came up with for that test.  I don't see that ever being a reliable test, because like Gladwell argues, the stories can be taken in many ways.  It all depends on the person's opinion who would be analyzing them.

GPA Matters?

Of course everyone wants a good GPA in college, but I feel like it is always said that other qualities are more important.  After reading the article concerning what matters most to some corporations, I was very surprised to read that a lot of them look at GPA first. I do understand where they are coming from, but I don't think that that is a fair representation of a person. Whether or not though, I feel the issue I have with this is making it apparent to students. I think that a lot of college students have the impression that extra curricular activities, leadership, teamwork, etc are more important qualities than if they have a 4.0. If companies are beginning to pay more attention to grades, the word should be spread.