Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Power of Positive Feedback

In a fascinating research study, Dr Daniel Kirschenbaum from the University of Wisconsin took a group of bowlers and asked them to review their performance after each bowling session.  He divided the group into two groups.     Group 1 reviewed only what they did well and were asked to remind themselves to engage more of the proper behavior.     Group 2 was asked to review their performance and indicate what they had done poorly and remind themselves to avoid making the same mistakes in the following rounds.       Which group of bowlers do you think improved their bowling performance? It probably won’t surprise you that the people shown the “positive” video feedback performed better. But you might be surprised by how much better they did! Amazingly, the bowlers who focused on what they did well showed…

Increase Your Leadership Skills by Becoming More Emotionally and Socially Literate

GUEST BLOG: By Drs. Todd B. Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener In January 2010, we phoned each other after watching a PBS documentary called This Emotional Life. There was one scene where a middle-aged husband was recently fired from his job and on top of this, could barely sleep and rarely connected with his wife because of their difficulties parenting a newborn child. What does psychology have to offer to help a person dealing with so many stressors at one time? In this PBS special, a positive psychology coach taught him to keep a journal so that he could record three bits of daily appreciation. Telling someone who is experiencing hardship to be grateful may or may not be the wisest approach. There is certainly research evidence suggesting that daily gratitude can boost happiness but reframing misfortune as opportunity can also come across as invalidating and Pollyanna-ish. Isn’t there more research that could potentially have informed this particular case? We…

The Paradox of Choice

Rational-choice theory attempts to explain human choice by assuming we are rational choosers, have well ordered preferences, and have information on costs and benefits. It also assumes we compare options on the basis of preference, value or utility. Additionally, the theory says that rational choosers should always be able to express their preferences. A rational decision maker, therefore, will look at all the options, choose the one that brings the most utility, and understand why the choice was made. But in economic theory, there hasn’t been enough study understanding from where our preferences come. Preferences are complicated because it includes human biases as well as culture. Barry Schwarz explores this shortcoming as well as gives us evidence-based advice on how we can make wiser decisions in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. He lays out a compelling case for becoming a Satisfier (one who makes a decision when their criteria is met) over a…