29. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

 Guide To Self with Dr. John Schinnerer
Optimal Human Functioning Via Positive Psychology
925-575-0258
John@GuideToSelf.com

Dear Friends:

I have been invited to conduct a training class at a speaking platform like no other and wanted to invite you to listen. The class is complimentary and you can listen to as many classes as you wish from the comfort of your home and convenience of your telephone or computer.

The class I am offering a complementary training course, Positive Psychology: The Science of Optimal Human Functioning, on November 18th, 2009 at 6 pm PST.
To find out more, please go to: http://www.globalteleclass.com
 

At this platform you will be trained, motivated and inspired by some of the most respected speakers in the Health, Personal Development and Sales & Marketing Industries.

For the month of November, scheduled speakers include:

Health Department: Steven Frank, Jennifer Hough, Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo, Elaine Petrone, Eric Rolf, Nancy Desjardins, Dr. John Schinnerer, and Jimmy Moore

Sales & Marketing Department: Beatty Carmichael, Angela Treat Lyon, Heather Picken, Jerry Ellefson, Rik Schnabel, Ed Dacey, and Mary Beth Lozano

Personal Development Department: Joan Marie Whelan, Dr. Rick Brinkman, Satyen Raja, Leslie Householder, Dr. Gloria Burgess, Ken Foster & Amazon John Easterling, Debbie Friedman, Stephanie Frank, Nanette Geiger, Katana Abbott, Philip Tirone, Deborah Skye King, Michelle Rigg, Wes Hopper, and Steve Keough.

Remember, these classes are being offered at no cost to you and you can listen from the comfort of your home and convenience of your telephone or computer.

To your success,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Positive Psychology Coach
Guide To Self, Inc.
913 San Ramon Valley Blvd. #280
Danville, CA 94526
(925) 575-0258

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice coaching individuals to their optimal human functioning using the science of positive psychology. He is President of Guide To Self (http://www.guidetoself.com), a company that focuses on executive coaching, emotional management skills and mindful living.  He holds a doctorate from U.C. Berkeley in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer hosted Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show on positive psychology and emotional management. Dr. Schinnerer started in the private sector as President of Infinet Assessment (http://www.infinetassessment.com), a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer is the award-winning author of Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought and numerous articles. His book may be found at Amazon.com, Target.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.

Posted in Raising optimistic children, National speakers, Emotion & learning, Science of love, Curiosity, Mindfulness, Hope, Gratitude, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Executive coach, Unsconscious mind, Therapist, San Ramon CA, Employee engagement, International Wellbeing Study, Corporate Culture, Resiliency, The human brain, Creativity, Life coach, Emotional IQ, Dr. John Schinnerer, Realistic optimism, Positive Psychology, Forgiveness, Innovative brand research, Staying calm, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Men's emotions, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Positive mood music, Customer Engagement, Happiness, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

28. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2009) — More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief.Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull’s eye instead of the center.A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held beliefs about depression. One is that stressful life events are a major cause of depression. The other is that an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain triggers depressive symptoms.Both findings are significant because these beliefs were the basis for developing drugs currently used to treat depression.Redei, the David Lawrence Stein Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School, found powerful molecular evidence that quashes the long-held dogma that stress is generally a major cause of depression. Her new research reveals that there is almost no overlap between stress-related genes and depression-related genes.“This is a huge study and statistically powerful,” Redei said. “This research opens up new routes to develop new antidepressants that may be more effective. There hasn’t been an antidepressant based on a novel concept in 20 years.”

 For the full article, please click here.

What are you learning today? Stay curious!

 John Schinnerer, Ph.D.Guide To Self, Inc.Executive coach, speaker, authorDanville,  San Ramon,  Alamo CA

Posted in National speakers, The human brain, Danville CA, San Ramon CA, Executive coach, Managing Sadness, Emotional mind, Life coach, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional IQ, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Depression, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

28. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

NonWestern communal cultures keep biology from having its way with depression

From EurekaAlert.org…

EVANSTON, Ill. — A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern University study.

In other words, a genetic vulnerability to depression is much more likely to be realized in a Western culture than an East Asian culture that is more about we than me-me-me.

The study coming out of the growing field of cultural neuroscience takes a global look at mental health across social groups and nations.

Depression, research overwhelmingly shows, results from genes, environment and the interplay between the two. One of the most profound ways that people across cultural groups differ markedly, cultural psychology demonstrates, is in how they think of themselves.

“People from highly individualistic cultures like the United States and Western Europe are more likely to value uniqueness over harmony, expression over agreement, and to define themselves as unique or different from the group,” said Joan Chiao, the lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.

In contrast, people from collectivist cultures are more likely to value social harmony over individuality. “Relative to people in an individualistic culture, they are more likely to endorse behaviors that increase group cohesion and interdependence,” Chiao said.

Collectivist cultures may give individuals who are genetically susceptible to depression a tacit or explicit expectation of social support. “Such support seems to buffer vulnerable individuals from the environmental risks or stressors that serve as triggers to depressive episodes,” Chiao said.

The study by Chiao and Northwestern graduate student Katherine Blizinsky, “Culture-gene coevolution of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,” will be published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

For full release, please click here.

It’s interesting to note that many of the third wave of mental health therapies originate in Eastern cultures, such as mindfulness, nonattachment, nonjudgment, and accepting reality as it is. All of these skills originated in the East via Zen Buddhism or in Buddhism proper. And all of these skills are essential elements of Dialetic Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).  All of these therapies have been shown to be effective in dealing with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, OCD,  eating disorders, and several personality disorders such as the most difficult one to treat (in my opinion) - borderline personality disorder.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Awareness, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Mindfulness, The human brain, Men's emotions, National speakers, Danville CA, Borderline Personality, Brain plasticity, Therapist, Emotion & productivity, Alexithymia, Managing Sadness, Guide to Self, Life coach, Dr. John Schinnerer, Measuring emotions, Staying calm, Tips to help anxiety, Managing Anxiety, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Depression, Managing stress | Print | No Comments »

23. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

I am an avid football fan and have been since I was six years old. I grew up down the street from Gene Upshaw, Hall of Fame offensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders, and Head of the Player’s Union for years. I love football.

That said, my 12-year-old son and I have an ongoing debate over whether or not he can play PeeWee Football (in the San Ramon Valley it’s called Thunderbirds). I have told him repeatedly that the damage done to his body, in particular his brain, is not worth any success that may be had playing football.

The brain is the consistency of a wet sponge or a soft boiled egg. The human skull is hard to keep your brain safe from injury. However, the inside of the skull has pointed ridges which can damage the brain when the head and body are stopped suddenly, such as that which happens on many plays in football. Even those hits which don’t result in a ‘concussion’ still bruise the brain to an extent. It’s not as simple as one has a concussion or one does not. It’s not black and white. Damage to the brain occurs on a continuum. Think of it as a 1 to 10 scale with 1 being uninjured and 10 being a severe concussion.

Even lesser hits in football can result in minor bruises to the brain, bruises which may not be considered even mild concussions. But there is still a cumulative negative effect on the brain. And we’re beginning to see the results thanks to former NFL and college players who have donated their brains after death.

We’ve known for roughly 20 years that ex-NFL players suffer from the degenerative brain disease known as CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE is the only fully preventable cause of dementia of which we know.

A new study has revealed that the brain of a deceased 18-year-old former college football player showed early signs of CTE. This is the youngest age that signs of CTE have been found, to my knowledge.

The same study also report that Mike Borich, a former college football player who passed away at the age of 42, showed advanced signs of CTE. This is the first time that advanced signs of CTE have been identified in a former college player who never played in the NFL. It is also the first time that CTE signs have been found in one who played the position of wide receiver. This means that the damage done to the brain in high school and college football is taking a toll on the brain that adversely affects quality of life later on. Adverse effects of CTE may include symptoms such as change in personality, self-destructive behaviors, addictive behaviors, memory loss and more.

According to Dr. Robert Cantu, a leading sports concussion expert and clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University School of Medicine, ‘It is our hope that this evidence helps draw the focus of the CTE discussion to amateur athletes, where it belongs. Young men and women are voluntarily exposing themselves to repetitive brain trauma without full knowledge of the potential consequences, and the rules of the games are designed without an appreciation for the risks carried by the players.’

Cantu and the other co-directors of the BUSM CSTE, Robert Stern, PhD, and Chris Nowinski, a former division I football player, published a paper that reported these CTE findings in the July issue of the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology (2009, vol.68¸ pp. 709-735). The results were also presented to the NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee and NFL Players Association.

As long as I’m in charge of my son’s health, he won’t be playing football. The risk is too high. The importance of a healthy brain is too great. Odds are, he will be angry with me for some time. I’m willing to risk it.  

All the best,

John Schinnerer, PhD

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Danville CA, National speakers, The human brain, Emotion & productivity, Executive coach, Football and concussions, Brain plasticity, Men's emotions, Consciousness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Abusive Coaches, Life coach, Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion, Anger Management, Parenting, Mean coaches | Print | No Comments »

22. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2009) — Women are better than men at distinguishing between emotions, especially fear and disgust, according to a new study published in the online version of the journal Neuropsychologia. As part of the investigation, Olivier Collignon and a team from the Université de Montréal Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition (CERNEC) demonstrated that women are better than men at processing auditory, visual and audiovisual emotions.

While women have long been thought to outperform men in neuropsychological tests, until now, these findings were inconsistent. To obtain more conclusive evidence, the Université de Montréal researchers did not use photographs to analyze the reaction of subjects. Instead, the scientists hired actors and actresses to simulate fear and disgust. “Facial movements have been shown to play an important role in the perception of an emotion’s intensity as well as stimulate different parts of the brain used in the treatment of such information,” says Collignon, who also works as a researcher at the Université catholique de Louvain’s Institute of Neuroscience in Belgium.

[snip]

The study found that women were superior in completing assessments and responded quicker when emotions were portrayed by a female rather than a male actor. Compared to men, women were faster at processing facial and multisensory expressions.

[snip]

Autism and emotions

In 2002, researchers Baron and Cohen put forth a controversial theory stipulating that autism and Asperger’s syndrome are an extreme in male interpersonal behavior that’s characterized by impaired empathy and enhanced systematizing. “Seeing as our results show that men identify and express emotions less efficiently than women, it supports this theory to a certain extent,” says Collignon.

Differences between men and women

Are women natured or nurtured to be different? Biology may play a role, since there are few opportunities for socialization to shape such gender differences. Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that females, because of their role as primary caretakers, are wired to quickly and accurately decode or detect distress in preverbal infants or threatening signals from other adults to enhance their chances at survival.

For full article, please click here.

At some level, this feels like ‘Well, duh, of course women identify and express emotions more quickly and accurately.’ However, this is not something that has been scientifically proven beyond doubt. This study helps to swing the pendulum in the direction of females being more tuned in to the emotions of fear and disgust.

Cheers,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Alexithymia, Managing Anxiety, Men's emotions, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Emotional management, Emotional mind, Dr. John Schinnerer, Measuring emotions, Life coach, Anxiety, Nature vs. nurture, Managing stress | Print | No Comments »

22. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2009) — Although we assume we can see everything in our field of vision, the brain actually picks and chooses the stimuli that come into our consciousness. A new study in the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s Journal of Vision reveals that our brains can be trained to consciously see stimuli that would normally be invisible.

Lead researcher Caspar Schwiedrzik from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany said the brain is an organ that continuously adapts to its environment and can be taught to improve visual perception.

“A question that had not been tackled until now was whether a hallmark of the human brain, namely its ability to produce conscious awareness, is also trainable,” Schwiedrzik said. “Our findings imply that there is no fixed border between things that we perceive and things that we do not perceive — that this border can be shifted.”

1.      Schwiedrzik et al. Sensitivity and perceptual awareness increase with practice in metacontrast masking. Journal of Vision, 2009; 9 (10): 1 DOI: 10.1167/9.10.18

For full article, please click here.

I have done a number of presentations on visual attention, perception and mindfulness. It never ceases to amaze audiences when they miss obvious stimuli, such as a unicycling clown, right in front of them.

There are many powerful exercises to demonstrate to audience members that their visual attention is a limited capacity. In other words, we are not consciously aware of everything that comes in through our five senses.

We miss a lot of ridiculously obvious things depending on what we are attempting to do with our attention. For instance, if we are focusing on looking for grammatical errors (proof-reading), we may miss contextual or factual errors. If we are in an angry mood, we look for information that perpetuates that anger.

 There is a great Frank & Ernest cartoon that provides a nice metaphor for this phenomenon.

‘ When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.’  To put it another way, when you’re angry, everything looks to reinforce that anger (via your perception of things).

The other extension of this is ‘When you’re a nail, everything looks like a hammer.’ That is, when you’re in a sad funk, everything you see seems to reinforce and extend that sad feeling or depressed mood.

Have a Thriving Thursday!  Just for today, don’t be a nail or a hammer. Chose to learn today. Opt to be optimistic!

Cheers,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in National speakers, Positive expectations, Brain plasticity, Visual perception, Curiosity, Awareness, Life coach, Guide to Self, Consciousness, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

21. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Everyone tends to float off into space once in a while and fail to see what is sitting there right in front of them. Recently researchers decided to put the theory of “inattentional blindness” to the test: the unicycling clown test. They documented real-world examples of people who were so distracted by their cell phone use that they failed to see the bizarre occurrence of a unicycling clown passing them on the street.

The study is published in an upcoming issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Compared with individuals walking alone, in pairs, or listening to their ipod, cell phone users were the group most prone to oblivious behavior: only twenty-five percent of them noticed the unicycling clown. The walkers not using a cell phone noticed the clown over fifty-percent of the time.

Furthermore, the cell phone users had difficulties performing even the simple task of walking, an action that should require relatively few cognitive resources. They walked more slowly, changed direction more often, were prone to weaving, and acknowledged other individuals more rarely.

Dr. Ira E. Hyman, Jr. at Western Washington University, head researcher of the study, says: “If people experience so much difficulty performing the task of walking when on a cell phone just think of what this means when put into the context of driving safety. People should not drive while talking on a cell phone.” Furthermore, the research shows that the level of familiarity with the person’s real-world environment does not affect their attentional awareness.

 For full article, please click here.

Is it possible that using a cell phone makes us more mind-less? Perhaps it disconnects us from what is going on within our bodies and immediately around us outside our bodies. Use caution when talking on the cell while driving.

Latest stats show that driving while talking on cell is as dangerous as driving drunk. It simply overtaxes our minds and our attentional capabilities.

 The take home point is that our attention is limited in nature, not limitless.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.
Danville, CA 94526

Positive psychology coach

Posted in Danville CA, National speakers, Executive coach, Psychology and technology, Visual Attention, Therapist, Emotion and technology, Awareness, Guide to Self, Life coach, Consciousness, The human brain, Mindfulness, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

20. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) — Most of us won’t respond to the call of adventure while soaking in a relaxing bath. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, we’re more likely to book a weekend at a spa. 

“Imagine you are sitting in a bathtub, listening to calm music with gentle candlelight. Add lavender aroma. Then as you flip through a magazine, you come across an advertisement from an amusement park, promising you an exciting place full of adventurous offerings. How appealing would you find the prospect of visiting this amusement park?” write authors Hakkyun Kim (University of Concordia, Canada), Kiwan Park (Seoul National University, Korea), and Norbert Schwarz (University of Michigan). 

The authors found that people evaluate vacation products with adventurous appeals more favorably when they feel excited rather than peaceful, and vice versa. They found that processing advertising claims depends much on the consistency between the message and the consumer’s mood. 

The authors explain that people who see an advertisement that promises an exciting vacation ask themselves, “Would this vacation really make me feel that way?” They are more likely to think a vacation will really be exciting when they currently feel excited rather than peaceful. In other words, incidental emotions influence the perceived likelihood that the product will deliver on its emotional promises: When the current emotions match the promises of the product, people infer that it may really make them feel that way; but when the current emotions mismatch the promises, the discrepancy between their current feelings and the promises suggests that the product may fail to deliver what it promises. 

The researchers’ results suggest that marketers can facilitate the impression that products will deliver on their promises by displaying them in contexts in which consumers’ pre-existing feelings are likely to match the product’s claims. “Exciting sports events are a better arena for advertising exciting vacations than for advertising serene vacations, not only because an exciting vacation may match the audience’s general preferences, but also because an exciting vacation will match the audience’s current feelings,” the authors conclude.

For full article, please click here.

I suppose this makes accurate emotional measurement all the more important. Check out the work I’ve been doing with Resonance Strategies. Great work for marketing, branding, and change initiatives for those who aren’t too fearful. In the consulting work I’ve done, I’ve foudn that dealing with emotions in a business climate sends most business people running for the hills. It’s not rational, it’s emotional! Despite their fears, emotion is still a larger part of the human mind that reason (roughly 90-10%) and dominates most decision-making.

The next step will be matching internal branding campaigns to employee emotions to ensure greater employee productivity. Do I hear individualized internal branding calling? What about individualized external branding and advertising to match ads to consumer emotions and moods?

Savor the day!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in National speakers, Organizational psychology, Emotional mind, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Executive coach, Subliminal messages, Employee engagement, Rational mind, Customer Engagement, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Measuring emotions, Innovative brand research, Unique marketing research, Brand Equity, Chief Marketing Officer, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

20. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

 ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) — You can teach an old dog new tricks, say UCLA scientists who found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web. 

The findings, presented Oct. 19 at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, suggest that Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults. 

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, reductions in cell activity and increases in deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function. 

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to that which occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information. 

“We found that for older people with minimal experience, performing Internet searches for even a relatively short period of time can change brain activity patterns and enhance function,” said study author Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the author of “iBrain,” a book that describes the impact of new technology on the brain and behavior.

For full article, click here.

All the best!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

‘Man has never made any material as resilient as the human spirit’

– Bernard Williams

English Philosopher

Posted in Danville CA, Emotion & learning, Emotion & productivity, Executive coach, Therapist, Emotion and technology, Curiosity, Life coach, Creativity, Guide to Self, Rational mind, The human brain, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

20. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2009) — Overweight women’s self-esteem plummets when they view photographs of models of any size, according to a new study in Journal of Consumer Research. And underweight women’s esteem increases, regardless of models’ size.

Authors Dirk Smeesters (Erasmus University, the Netherlands), Thomas Mussweiler (University of Cologne, Germany), and Naomi Mandel (Arizona State University) researched the ways individuals with different body mass indexes (BMIs) felt when they were exposed to thin or heavy media models.

“Our research confirms earlier research that found that normal body mass index (BMI) females’ self-esteem can shift upwards or downwards depending on the model they are exposed to,” the authors write. “Normal BMI females (with BMIs between 18.5 and 25) have higher levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately thin models (because they feel similar to these models) and extremely heavy models (because they feel dissimilar to these models). However, they have lower levels of self-esteem when exposed to moderately heavy models (because they feel similar) and extremely thin models (because they feel dissimilar).”

This research provides important new insights into how media exposure affects the self-esteem of overweight and underweight women. “Underweight women’s self-esteem always increases, regardless of the model they look at,” the authors explain. “On the other hand, overweight women’s self-esteem always decreases, regardless of the model they look at.” Perhaps surprisingly, overweight and underweight women showed comparable levels of self-esteem when they weren’t looking at models.

Advertisements also affected participants’ eating behavior and intentions to diet and exercise. For example, overweight participants ate fewer cookies and had higher intentions to diet and exercise when exposed to heavy models than when exposed to thin models.

Turn off the TV. Smile. Hang out with friends.

Have a happy day!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive psychology coach

Posted in Emotion & learning, Awareness, Emotional management, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Executive coach, Subliminal messages, Depression, Happiness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Managing stress, Life coach, Guide to Self, Unique marketing research, Innovative brand research, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

20. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

 From ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) — Computer scientists from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore are working on the development of an efficient and intelligent facial expression recognition system. The system is capable of locating the face region using derivative-based filtering and recognizing facial expressions using boosting classifier. The portable device is being developed to help autistic children understand the emotions of surrounding people. 

A paper detailing the specifics of the device will be published in the journal Intelligent Decision Technologies. 

Teik-Toe Teoh, Yok-Yen Nguwi and Siu-Yeung Cho of the Centre for Computational Intelligence of the School of Computer Engineering of Nanyang Technological University state that “emotion is a state of feeling involving thoughts, physiological changes, and an outward expression. In this paper, we propose a system that synergizes the use of derivative filtering and boosting classifier. “ 

The portable facial expression recognizer locates the edge of the human face through Gaussian derivatives, Laplacian derivatives and filter out non-face images using Adaboost. Secondly, the feature locator finds crucial fiducial points for subsequent feature extraction and selection processing. Finally, the meaningful features are classified into the corresponding classes.

For full article, click here.

Have a tremendous Tuesday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

A Curious Guy

Lifelong Learner

Well-Versed in the Foundations of Positive Psychology

Posted in Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Emotion recognition software, Emotion and technology, Mindfulness, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional mind, Emotional management, Men's emotions, Measuring emotions | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

This Is Your Brain on Kafka

By: Tom Jacobs  |  September 16, 2009  |  08:55 PM (PDT)  |

Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains.

Does absurdist literature make you smarter? Giraffe carpet cleaner, it does!

The befuddled tramps in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot are a poetic personification of paralysis. But new research suggests the act of watching them actually does get us somewhere.

Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains.

That’s the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What’s more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks.

In the first of two experiments, 40 participants (all Canadian college undergraduates) read one of two versions of a Franz Kafka story, The Country Doctor. In the first version, which was only slightly modified from the original, “the narrative gradually breaks down and ends abruptly after a series of non sequiturs,” the researchers write. “We also included a series of bizarre illustrations that were unrelated to the story.”

The second version contained extensive revisions to the original. The non sequiturs were removed, and a “conventional narrative” was added, along with relevant illustrations.

All participants were then shown a series of 45 strings of letters, which they were instructed to copy. They were informed that the strings, which consisted of six to nine letters, contained a strict but not easily decipherable pattern.

They were then introduced to a new set of letter strings, some of which followed the pattern and some of which did not. They were asked to mark which strings followed the pattern.

Those who had read the absurd story selected a higher number of strings as being consistent with the pattern. More importantly, they “demonstrated greater accuracy in identifying the genuinely pattern-congruent letter strings,” the researchers report. This suggests “the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities” are enhanced when we struggle to find meaning in a fragmented narrative.

[snip]

To Prolux and Heine, these finds suggest we have an innate tendency to impose order upon our experiences and create what they call “meaning frameworks.” Any threat to this process will “activate a meaning-maintenance motivation that may call upon any other available associations to restore a sense of meaning,” they write.

So it appears Viktor Frankl was right: Man is perpetually in search of meaning, and if a Kafkaesque work of literature seems strange on the surface, our brains amp up to dig deeper and discover its underlying design.

For full article, please click here.

Smile, you’re alive!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

A Curious Guy

Guide To Self, Inc.

Danville CA 94526

Posted in Corporate Culture, Emotion & learning, Curiosity, Employee engagement, San Ramon CA, Meaning-making, Unsconscious mind, Executive coach, Awareness, Consciousness, Guide to Self, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Unique marketing research, Chief Marketing Officer, Rational mind, Customer Engagement, Business & psych | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer’s disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create “lifelogs” that archive their entire lives.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

The ViconRevue was originally developed as the SenseCam by Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, for researchers studying Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Studies showed that reviewing the events of the day using SenseCam photos could help some people improve long-term recall.

For full article, click here.

Have a wonderful Monday!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

A Curious Guy

Guide To Self, Inc.

Posted in Psychology and technology, Memory and recall, Emotion & productivity, Mindfulness, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Happiness is catching. Happiness spreads through friends, spouses, siblings and neighbors. There is a ripple effect whereby happiness extends widely through social networks, even between people who may not know one another. One’s happiness depends on the degree of happiness of those surrounding her.

Happiness at Harvard?

A study performed at Harvard University, by Nicholas Christakis, is the first of its kind to demonstrate the existence of clusters of happy and sad individuals. Happiness depends upon the happiness of those around them. What’s more, individuals who surround themselves with happy people are more likely to be happy in the future. One’s future happiness can actually be predicted by the number of happy people surrounding them and the degree to which the social network as a whole experiences constructive emotions, such as happiness.  These findings come from an analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network, a longitudinal study that has followed nearly 5,000 people for over 20 years.

Happiness Spreads Through Social Networks

Study findings suggest that happiness results from the spread of happiness throughout social networks and not merely from individuals choosing to surround themselves with like-minded individuals. For example, if your next door neighbor becomes happier due to a job promotion, your likelihood of becoming happier increases by 34%. And this happiness effect can linger for up to one year.

Happiness Ripples Out to Friends of Your Friends

This relationship between individual’s happiness holds true for the first three degrees of separation. For example, when John becomes happier, it buoys the happiness of John’s friends as well as the friends of John’s friends. So there is a ripple effect of happiness within social circles where happiness is contagious and spreads similar to the waves of a wireless network. And we are consciously aware of little, if any, of it.

In the past five to ten years, more and more studies have looked at happiness and what determines it (e.g., genetics, money, elections, marital status and emotional management). However, no study has looked at human happiness as it relates to the happiness of others. While the study is the first of its kind and needs to be replicated to ensure the accuracy of these findings, the findings are remarkable and exhilarating.

Positive Emotional Contagion

Emotional contagion, the process by which one person picks up the feelings of another, has been scientifically documented since 1994. Emotions may be ‘caught’ from others for a length of time ranging from seconds to weeks.  This is particularly true of destructive emotions - anger, fear and sadness. In fact, the hard part is not ‘catching’ the emotions but in protecting oneself from them, keeping them at bay. Until this study, emotional contagion had not been documented for any of the positive, constructive emotions such as joy, contentment, peacefulness or happiness. 

The difficulty is that most people primarily feel destructive emotions. Most people experience more destructive emotions than constructive emotions. 

Cutoff Point for a Happy, Thriving Life

On the other hand, roughly 10% of adults in the United States feel three times as much positive emotion as negative. This 3:1 ratio is the measuring stick for a thriving happy life as set by Barbara Fredrickson at UNC Chapel Hill. It appears that this top 10% is raising the level of happiness of many others. Imagine if it were possible to raise this thriving, happy portion of the population to 15% or 20%.

Benefits of Increasing Societal Happiness

Assuming the percentage of the populace experiencing happiness could be improved, here are just a few of the possible societal benefits:

·         The economy would improve (e.g., higher ratios of positive, open-ended inquiries are present in executive teams in highly successful firms)

·         Creativity would increase (e.g., happiness is necessary for greater innovation and open-mindedness)

·         Productivity would soar (e.g., a happy employee is a productive employee; optimistic salespeople outsell pessimistic ones by approximately 38%; happy employees engage more effectively with customers)

·         The burden on the health care system would be eased (e.g., happiness improves immune system functioning; teaching the skills of happiness and optimism reduces depression and anxiety).

·         People would live longer (e.g., happy, optimistic people live 7 – 10 years longer than those who are pessimistic and unhappy)

·         The educational system would show significant academic gains (e.g., students taught to be more happy and optimistic showed significant gains on achievement testing and received better grades)

Happiness is Learnable

The exciting part is that happiness can be taught. It can be learned. People can learn to feel positive emotions more frequently and more intensely. Emotional management is a learnable skill. Just as one practices a sport and improves over time so it is with emotions.   As individuals learn to string together more and more happy moments, the ripple effect spills over and one person’s happiness positively influences others.  It even influences the happiness of other people they don’t know.

The goal is emotional management. The goal is happiness. The goal is to learn to mitigate destructive emotions and encourage positive emotions. Happiness is social phenomena. The more individuals experience positive emotions, the more society as a whole is happier, healthier, and more productive and that is no small feat.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Guide To Self Beginners Guide To Managing Emotion | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Positive emotions, such as awe, curiosity, love, contentment and pride, act as a hidden reset button for the physiological effects of destructive emotions (e.g., chronic stress, long-term anger, or enduring sadness). Positive emotion undoes the harmful physical effects of negative emotions.

Positive emotions…

·         lower blood pressure

·         increase immune system functioning

·         improve clarity of thought and creativity and

·         decrease cortisol levels (i.e., the stress hormone).

Research has recently uncovered the four best predictors of future positive emotions. They are…

• The feeling that you can count on others
• The perception that you have autonomy and are in control of your own life
• Whether you learned something new yesterday
• Whether you did what you do best yesterday

(E. Diener, University of Illinois, author of Happiness)

If you have loved ones and friends you can count on, if you feel autonomous, if you learn something new daily, and if you use your strengths on a daily basis, you will create more moments of happiness in your life. As you learn to string together fleeting moments of happiness, you will create a contented mood.

According to Barbara Fredrickson (UNC Chapel Hill), author of Positivity, as we learn to unpack happiness, we discover that it is positive emotions that lay at the heart of a number of things such as resiliency, happiness, life satisfaction and subjective well-being.

In other words, when you increase the frequency with which you experience positive emotions, you improve your psychological resources (e.g., resiliency) and subsequently, you become more satisfied with life and physically healthier.

About the Author

Dr. John Schinnerer is in private practice helping individuals learn happiness by mitigating destructive emotions and fostering constructive emotions. His practice is located in the Danville San Ramon Medical Center at 913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #280, Danville, California 94526. He graduated summa cum laude from U.C. Berkeley with a Ph.D. in psychology. Dr. Schinnerer has been an executive and psychologist for over 10 years. Dr. John Schinnerer is President and Founder of Guide To Self, a company that coaches clients to their potential using the latest in positive psychology, mindfulness and attentional control. Dr. John Schinnerer hosted over 200 episodes of Guide To Self Radio, a prime time radio show, in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Dr. Schinnerer is President of Infinet Assessment, a psychological testing company to help firms select the best applicants. Dr. Schinnerer’s areas of expertise range from positive psychology, to emotional awareness, to moral development, to sports psychology. Dr. Schinnerer wrote the award-winning, “Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought,” which is available at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and AuthorHouse.com.  

Posted in Hope, Gratitude, Curiosity, Assertiveness, Mindfulness, Negotiation and emotion, Altruism, Science of love, National speakers, Employee engagement, Positive emotions and job search, Executive coach, Corporate Culture, Positive expectations, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Resiliency, Organizational psychology, Guide to Self, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Life coach, Creativity, Managing stress, Dr. John Schinnerer, Nervousness, Tips to help anxiety, Anger Management, Managing Sadness, Men's emotions, Managing Anxiety, Emotional mind, Customer Engagement, Happiness, Positive Psychology | Print | No Comments »

19. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

By Jonah Lehrer from Ideas

January 2, 2009

THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains.

And yet, city life isn’t easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it’s also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized that city life is exhausting — that’s why Picasso left Paris — this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.

“The mind is a limited machine,” says Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of a new study that measured the cognitive deficits caused by a short urban walk. “And we’re beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.”

One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil.

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities. For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift. Instead of inhabiting wide-open spaces, we’re crowded into concrete jungles, surrounded by taxis, traffic, and millions of strangers. In recent years, it’s become clear that such unnatural surroundings have important implications for our mental and physical health, and can powerfully alter how we think.

This research is also leading some scientists to dabble in urban design, as they look for ways to make the metropolis less damaging to the brain. The good news is that even slight alterations, such as planting more trees in the inner city or creating urban parks with a greater variety of plants, can significantly reduce the negative side effects of city life. The mind needs nature, and even a little bit can be a big help.

Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy thoroughfare like Newbury Street. There are the crowded sidewalks full of distracted pedestrians who have to be avoided; the hazardous crosswalks that require the brain to monitor the flow of traffic. (The brain is a wary machine, always looking out for potential threats.) There’s the confusing urban grid, which forces people to think continually about where they’re going and how to get there.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

Natural settings, in contrast, don’t require the same amount of cognitive effort. This idea is known as attention restoration theory, or ART, and it was first developed by Stephen Kaplan, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. While it’s long been known that human attention is a scarce resource — focusing in the morning makes it harder to focus in the afternoon — Kaplan hypothesized that immersion in nature might have a restorative effect.

Imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in Concord. The woods surrounding the pond are filled with pitch pine and hickory trees. Chickadees and red-tailed hawks nest in the branches; squirrels and rabbits skirmish in the berry bushes. Natural settings are full of objects that automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative emotional response — unlike, say, a backfiring car. The mental machinery that directs attention can relax deeply, replenishing itself.

“It’s not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of Manhattan,” says Berman. “They needed to put a park there.”

In a study published last month, Berman outfitted undergraduates at the University of Michigan with GPS receivers. Some of the students took a stroll in an arboretum, while others walked around the busy streets of downtown Ann Arbor.

The subjects were then run through a battery of psychological tests. People who had walked through the city were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on a test of attention and working memory, which involved repeating a series of numbers backwards. In fact, just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature.

“We see the picture of the busy street, and we automatically imagine what it’s like to be there,” says Berman. “And that’s when your ability to pay attention starts to suffer.”

This also helps explain why, according to several studies, children with attention-deficit disorder have fewer symptoms in natural settings. When surrounded by trees and animals, they are less likely to have behavioral problems and are better able to focus on a particular task.

For full article, click here.

Posted in National speakers, Curiosity, Awareness, Danville CA, Emotion & productivity, Unsconscious mind, Executive coach, Mindfulness, Resiliency, Guide to Self, Creativity, Dr. John Schinnerer, Anxiety, Anger Management, The human brain, Consciousness, Managing stress | Print | No Comments »

16. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

APA, Science Directorate, Volume 23: No. 10, October 2009

The Beautiful Powers of Unconscious Thought

by Ap Dijksterhuis

“When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however…the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves.”

Sigmund Freud

When you are facing an important decision, others will sometimes tell you to postpone your decision and “sleep on it” first. In my case it was often my grandmother who gave me this advice. It is a belief many people intuitively share: It helps to put a problem aside for some time in order to arrive at a better decision. Somehow, waiting seems to help us to differentiate between the vital and the futile. Postponing a decision helps us to base our decisions on the appropriate reasons.

But does this “folk belief” hold in a scientific experiment? A few years ago, we conducted an experiment in which we had people choose between four hypothetical apartments. The information was constructed in such a way that one of the four apartments was objectively more desirable than the other three, in that it possessed more positive and fewer negative qualities. However, this was not immediately evident as the apartments were described with a great deal of information. After our experimental participants read all the information about the apartments, they chose their favorite one either immediately or after a period of distraction during which they did some other things. Our hypothesis was that the latter group would continue to “unconsciously think” about the apartments while they were distracted. Indeed, our findings showed that 37 % of the participants who decided immediately chose the appropriate apartment, whereas 60 % of the unconscious thinkers chose the best one (see Dijksterhuis, 2004; Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). Postponing a decision helps, even if one does not consciously think about it anymore.

The next question was whether unconscious thought could be even more helpful than an equal period of conscious thought. Traditionally, most scholars on decision making have assumed that thorough conscious thought is the best strategy to arrive at sound decisions. This is without doubt sometimes true, but as a general principle it needs to be qualified. We know that under some circumstances (e.g., Wilson & Schooler, 1991), conscious thought deteriorates the quality of decisions. In another experiment we conducted (Bos et al., 2009), our participants chose between six houses that were on sale in our home city, Nijmegen. We simulated the website on which these houses were advertised but removed the asking price. Our participants were given a few minutes time to navigate our “website,” and some participants were then given as much time as they wanted to think about the houses, and to further browse through the information. Others were distracted for about 45 minutes (they actually did other experiments) before they decided. Finally, participants chose their favorite house and they were asked to estimate the asking price for each of the six houses based on the information provided. The unconscious thinkers - that is, the ones that were distracted - performed significantly better than the conscious thinkers, a finding that has now been replicated a number of times (see Strick et al., 2009, for a meta-analysis).

In other experiments (Dijksterhuis, Bos, van der Leij & van Baaren, 2009), we asked immediate decision makers, conscious thinkers, and unconscious thinkers to predict the results of soccer matches that were to be played in the near future. The accuracy of the predictions did not differ much for people who didn’t know much about soccer. For fans, however, the results did differ. Fans who thought unconsciously made better predictions than fans who thought consciously or fans who guessed immediately. Interestingly, for both immediate decision makers as well as for conscious thinkers, knowledge of soccer did not correlate with the quality of the predictions. Only among unconscious thinkers was this correlation obtained, indicating that the benefits of expertise, at least within the confines of the present paradigm, become apparent when one thinks unconsciously rather than consciously.

For the entire article, including when, how and why unconscious thought may be better than conscious thought, click here to go to the APA site.

Become more aware. Cultivate mindfulness. Have an enjoyable weekend!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.

Executive Coach

Danville CA 94526

Posted in National speakers, Danville CA, Executive coach, Unsconscious mind, Awareness, Mindfulness, Psychology & soccer, Rational mind, Consciousness, Subconscious mind, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

15. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From PhysOrg.com…

‘An innovative diagnostic technique invented by a Monash University researcher could dramatically fast-track the detection of mental and neurological illnesses.

Monash biomedical engineer Brian Lithgow has developed electrovestibulography which is something akin to an ‘ECG for the mind’. Patterns of electrical activity in the brain’s vestibular (or balance) system are measured against distinct response patterns found in depression, schizophrenia and other Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders.

The vestibular system is closely connected to the primitive regions of the brain that relate to emotions and behaviour, so Lithgow saw the diagnostic potential of measuring and comparing different patterns of electrovestibular activity.

Monash has teamed up with corporate partner Neural Diagnostics to develop and patent electrovestibulography, or EVestG™. It is hoped the simple, quick and inexpensive screening process for CNS diseases will eventually become standard practice in hospitals around the world.

“The patient sits in a specially designed tilt chair that triggers electrical responses in their balance system. A gel-tipped electrode placed in the individual’s ear canal silences interfering noise so that these meaningful electrical responses are captured and recorded,” the Monash researcher said. “The responses are then compared to the distinct biomarkers indicative of particular CNS disorders, allowing diagnosis to be made in under an hour.”

Neural Diagnostics CEO Dr Roger Edwards said the implications of the new technique were huge.

“We are doing the necessary research and development and getting independent expert reports done, but results so far are cause for great optimism,” Dr Edwards said.’

For full article, please click here.

Stay happy!

John Schinnerer, PhD

Executive Coach

Danville CA 94526

Posted in National speakers, Neuropsychology, Hope, Emotion & learning, Danville CA, Executive coach, Emotion & productivity, The human brain, Alexithymia, Guide to Self, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional IQ, Anxiety, Managing Sadness, Depression, Measuring emotions | Print | No Comments »

15. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2009) — ‘A naturally produced molecule called resveratrol, found in the skin of red grapes, has been shown to lower insulin levels in mice when injected directly into the brain, even when the animals ate a high-fat diet.

The findings from a new UT Southwestern Medical Center study suggest that when acting directly on certain proteins in the brain, resveratrol may offer some protection against diabetes. Prior research has shown that the compound exerts anti-diabetic actions when given orally to animals with type 2 diabetes (non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus), but it has been unclear which tissues in the body mediated these effects.

“Our study shows that the brain plays an important role in mediating resveratrol’s anti-diabetic actions, and it does so independent of changes in food intake and body weight,” said Dr. Roberto Coppari, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study appearing online and in the December issue of Endocrinology.

“These animals were overrun with fat and many of their organs were inflamed. But when we delivered resveratrol in the brain, it alleviated inflammation in the brain,” added Dr. Coppari.’

For full article, click here.

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Danville, CA

Posted in Danville CA, Dr. John Schinnerer | Print | No Comments »

15. October 2009 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily (Oct. 15, 2009) — ‘Bosses who are in over their heads are more likely to bully subordinates. That’s because feelings of inadequacy trigger them to lash out at those around them, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.

In a new twist on the adage “power corrupts,” researchers at UC Berkeley and USC have found a direct link among supervisors and upper management between self-perceived incompetence and aggression. The findings, gleaned from four separate studies, are published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science.

With more than one-third of American workers reporting that their bosses have sabotaged, yelled at or belittled them, the new study challenges previous assumptions that abusive bosses are solely driven by ambition and the need to hold onto their power.

“By showing when and why power leads to aggression, these findings are highly relevant as abusive supervision is such a pervasive problem in society,” said Nathanael Fast, assistant professor of management and organization at USC and lead author of the study.

During role-playing sessions, study participants who felt their egos were under threat would go so far as to needlessly sabotage an underling’s chances of winning money. In another test, participants who felt inadequate would request that a subordinate who gave a wrong answer to a test be notified by a loud obnoxious horn, even though they had the option of choosing silence or a quiet sound.

[snip]

“Incompetence alone doesn’t lead to aggression,” said Serena Chen, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and co-author of the study. “It’s the combination of having a high-power role and fearing that one is not up to the task that causes power holders to lash out. And our data suggest it’s ultimately about self-worth.”

[snip]

That said, flattery may not be the best way to soothe a savage boss, the study points out: “It is both interesting and ironic to note that such flattery, although perhaps affirming to the ego, may contribute to the incompetent power holder’s ultimate demise — by causing the power holder to lose touch with reality,” the study concludes.

Journal reference:

1.      Nathanael J. Fast, Serena Chen. When the Boss Feels Inadequate: Power, Incompetence, and Aggression. Psychological Science, 2009; DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02452.x

University of California - Berkeley (2009, October 15). Bosses Who Feel Inadequate Are More Likely To Bully. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 15, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/10/091014102209.htm

Bottom of Form

For full article, click here.

Cheers!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Posted in Danville CA, Men's emotions, Emotion & productivity, Corporate Culture, Executive coach, Employee engagement, Anger Management, Victims of bullying, Business & psych, Abusive Coaches, Measuring emotions, Dr. John Schinnerer, Emotional IQ, Guide to Self, Bullies | Print | No Comments »