12. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily…

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2010) — Some scholars estimate that presenteeism, a relatively recent buzzword that applies to people who are less productive at work because of health issues, costs employers as much as three times the dollar amount as absenteeism in terms of lost productivity.

But researchers at University of Michigan believe those numbers may be inaccurate. A new opinion paper suggests that the tools for measuring and quantifying hours of lost productivity and translating those hours to dollars are unreliable and don’t capture the entire presenteeism picture, said Susan Hagen, an analyst from the U-M School of Kinesiology Health Management Research Center (HMRC).

Because of this, the HMRC has suggested a three-year moratorium on its studies of presenteeism that translate hours of productivity loss into financial or dollar equivalents.

The HMRC defines presenteeism as reduced productivity at work due to health conditions such as asthma, back pain, allergies or depression.

“It’s hard to be 100 percent effective every moment you’re at work,” Hagen said. “We’re talking about the lack of productivity that stems from a health condition, or because you’re worried about your health.”

One of the challenges in measuring presenteeism is that all the measurement instruments use self-reported data. This means you’re depending on employees to report they aren’t working as effectively as they could be, due to their health.

“There are all kind of estimates as to how often it happens,” Hagen said. “The estimates can vary so widely. Some studies say that most workers don’t have any presenteeism, while there is other research that suggests most workers experience presenteeism to some degree.”

Another big problem is that there are so many different measuring tools, and each tool may measure presenteeism in a different way. Also, not all health problems affect workers in the same ways. For example, a person may have allergies for two weeks in May and feel horrible, but the measurement instrument could take that two weeks and expand that bad experience to 12 months. This process vastly over-reports the illness and thus, the hours lost and the subsequent financial loss.

“Almost everybody believes in the concept of presenteeism but maybe some of those calculations based on those early measurements aren’t accurate,” Hagen said.

“Our concern is that organizations may be making financial or future decisions based on data that may not support those decisions,” Hagen said.

The paper appears in the November issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

University of Michigan (2010, November 10). Sick at work and surfing the net? You’re not alone — or are you?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 11, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/11/101109152943.htm

To life, love, health and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder of Guide to Self, Inc.

For a complimentary copy of the award-winning self-improvement book on latest ways to turn down anger, anxiety, sadness and guilt, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com and enter your name and email. This top self-help book (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought) outlines the latest tools to manage your own mind, turn up the volume on love, joy, hope, interest, passion, curiosity, awe, self-compassion and more. Managing  your mind leads to greater physical health, better relationships, more enjoyment in life and healthier relationships. What’s not to like?!

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12. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From Science Daily…

ScienceDaily (Nov. 10, 2010) — Couples who score well on a simple test of numeracy ability accumulate more wealth by middle age than couples who score poorly on such a test, according to a new study of married couples in the United States.

Researchers found that when both spouses answered three numeracy-related questions correctly, family wealth averaged $1.7 million, while among couples where neither spouse answered any questions correctly the average household wealth was $200,000. Numeracy is the ability to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts, and are skills typically learned during school.

“We examined several cognitive skills and found that a simple test that checks a person’s numeracy skills was a good predictor of who would be a better family financial decision maker,” said James P. Smith, a co-author of the study and Distinguished Chair in Labor Markets and Demographic Studies at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. The other two authors of the study are John McArdle of the University of Southern California and Robert Willis of the University of Michigan.

Researchers found that choosing the wrong person as a family’s primary financial decision maker can have consequences. While families choose the less-numerate spouse less than 20 percent of the time, when this does happen total household wealth is lower.

The findings are published in the November edition of The Economic Journal.

The study relied on a sample of married couples from the Health and Retirement Survey, a nationally representative survey of Americans at least 50 years old that includes high-quality measurement of family wealth and tests of cognitive ability of both husbands and wives. The Health and Retirement Survey is funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Researchers say the skills needed to make successful investment choices are among the most cognitively demanding that a family has to make, especially as they get older and assume greater control of decisions about their wealth, pensions and health care.

The new study is one of the first to examine who makes these financial decisions for a household, how that selection is influenced by couple’s personal attributes and the relative cognitive abilities of both wives and husbands.

In addition to studying numeracy skills, the study also examined the impact that other cognitive skills, including memory retrieval and intact mental status, may have on financial outcomes. Researchers found the other cognitive functions studied had far less influence on a household’s wealth.

Other findings from the study include:

• As the numeracy score of each spouse rose, the percent of a family’s portfolio held in stocks increased.

• A man was the financial decision maker in 62 percent of the households studied. This male preference was particularly pronounced when the husband was older and more educated than his wife.

• Selection of the husband as the financial decision maker was more sensitive to a husband’s numeracy ability than it was to the numeracy skills of the wife. Even when a husband scored zero in his numeracy test, there was essentially a 50-50 chance that he would still be selected as the financial decision maker. This male bias in choosing the financial decision maker has been declining over time so that it is smaller among younger couples in this age range.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging to RAND, the University of Southern California and the University of Michigan.

1. James P. Smith, John J. McArdle, Robert Willis. Financial Decision Making and Cognition in a Family Context. The Economic Journal, 2010; 120 (548): F363 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2010.02394.x

RAND Corporation (2010, November 10). Couple’s numeracy skills linked to greater family wealth, study finds. ScienceDaily.

Study your math! Study your math! Study your math!

To life, love, laughter and wealth!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self, Inc.

For a free PDF copy of the award-winning self-improvement book on positive psychology and optimal human functioning, Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought, visit http://www.GuideToSelf.com and enter your name and email address for 216 pages of the latest tools to manage your mind. This book includes tools to turn down sadness, stress, anxiety, guilt and anger. What’s more it includes tools to turn up the volume on curiosity, joy, pride, love, compassion and relaxation. It’s the key to your courage, success, wealth and happiness.

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10. November 2010 by John Schinnerer.

There is a battle going on in your mind. There are two factions in your mind. Sometimes these two get along and sometimes they are in conflict. At times, the two cooperate. At times, they act in direct opposition to one another.

The two factions are your rational, thinking mind and your automatic, emotional, subconscious mind. Here is the latest study to examine the differences between the two sides…

ScienceDaily (Nov. 8, 2010) — Expert typists are able to zoom across the keyboard without ever thinking about which fingers are pressing the keys. New research from Vanderbilt University reveals that this skill is managed by an autopilot, one that is able to catch errors that can fool our conscious brain.

The research was published in the Oct. 29 issue of Science.

“We all know we do some things on autopilot, from walking to doing familiar tasks like making coffee and, in this study, typing. What we don’t know as scientists is how people are able to control their autopilots,” Gordon Logan, Centennial Professor of Psychology and lead author of the new research, said. “The remarkable thing we found is that these processes are disassociated. The hands know when the hands make an error, even when the mind does not.”

For  a free PDF copy of the award-winning book Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide to  Managing Emotion and Thought, visit http://www.GuideToSelf.com and enter your name and email address. This book outlines the latest proven tools for optimal human functioning - tools to manage your negative emotions (anger, anxiety, sadness and stress) and turn up the volume on your positive emotions (gratitude, curiosity, awe, love,  joy, pride, hope, happiness and passion). It also helps you become more aware of your automatic mind and the shortcuts it takes without your consent.

To determine the relationship between the autopilot and the conscious brain, or pilot, and the role of each in detecting errors, Logan and co-author Matthew Crump designed a series of experiments to break the normal connection between what we see on the screen and what our fingers feel as they type.

In the first experiment, Logan and Crump had skilled typists type in words that appeared on the screen and then report whether or not they had made any errors. Using a computer program they created, the researchers either randomly inserted errors that the user had not made or corrected errors the user had made. They also timed the typists’ typing speed, looking for the slowdown that is known to occur when one hits the wrong key. They then asked the typists to evaluate their overall performance.

The researchers found the typists generally took the blame for the errors the program had inserted and took the credit for mistakes the computer had corrected. They were fooled by the program. However, their fingers, as managed by the autopilot, were not — the typists slowed down when they actually made an error, as expected, and did not slow down when a false error appeared on the screen.

In two additional experiments, the researchers set out to probe awareness more deeply. In the second experiment, they had the typists immediately judge their performance after typing each word. In the third, they told typists that the computer might insert or correct errors and again asked them to report on their performance.

The typists still took credit for corrected errors and blame for false errors in the second experiment, and still slowed down after real errors but not after false ones. In the third experiment, the typists were fairly accurate in detecting when the computer inserted an error, but still tended to take credit for corrections the computer had made. As with the other two experiments, the typists slowed down after real but not after false errors.

The research is the first to offer evidence of the different and separate roles of conscious and unconscious processing in detecting errors.

“This suggests that error detection can occur on a voluntary and involuntary basis,” Crump, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology, said. “An important feature of our research is to show that people can compensate for their mistakes even when they are not aware of their errors. And, we have developed a new research tool that allows us to separately investigate the role of awareness in error detection, and the role of more automatic processes involved in error detection. The tool will also allow a better understanding of how these different processes work together.”

The research was supported with funding from the National Science Foundation.

1. Gordon D. Logan, and Matthew J. C. Crump. Cognitive Illusions of Authorship Reveal Hierarchical Error Detection in Skilled Typists. Science, 29 October 2010: Vol. 330. no. 6004, pp. 683 - 686 DOI: 10.1126/science.1190483

To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self, Inc.

http://www.GuideToSelf.com

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26. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily.com….

Peace of Mind Closes Health Gap for Less-Educated, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — Psychological well-being is powerful enough to counteract the pull of socioeconomic status on the long-term health of the disadvantaged, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lack of education is a powerful predictor of future poor health and a relatively early death. But among people whose formal education ended with a high school diploma or less, positive psychological characteristics such as meaningful relationships with others and a sense of purpose have a strong connection with lower levels of an inflammatory protein connected to an array of potentially deadly health problems.

“If you didn’t go that far in your education, but you walk around feeling good psychological stuff, you may not be more likely to suffer ill-health than people with a lot of schooling,” says Carol Ryff, UW-Madison psychology professor and co-author of the study, which appears in the current online edition of the journal Health Psychology. “Low educational attainment does not guarantee bad health consequences, or poor biological regulation.”

The researchers measured levels of Interleukin-6 in participants in the Survey of Midlife in the United States, a now 10-year-long study of age-related differences in physical and mental health.
“High levels of IL-6 are associated with many kinds of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, some cancers and other health problems,” says Jennifer Morozink, a UW-Madison psychology graduate student and lead author of the study. “These positive psychological characteristics all moderate the level of IL-6 for people without much education.”

Less-educated people who scored high on measures of general happiness or self-acceptance or who felt that the circumstances of their lives were manageable showed levels of the inflammatory protein comparable to similarly satisfied, but highly-educated peers.

The results are significant, according to Ryff, because they reinforce a new angle on eliminating the wide gap in overall health between the well-to-do and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

“Other research shows that these psychological factors respond well to intervention,” Ryff says. “Therapies exist that give people the tools to keep all these psychological characteristics working in their favor. They’ve been shown to keep people from falling back into depression and anxiety, which we know means bad things for their health.”

The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging and included UW-Madison psychology professor Chris Coe and Institute on Aging scientist Elliot Friedman, melds two new directions in research: a focus on why socioeconomic inequality has such detrimental health effects for have-nots, and a shift toward scrutinizing the health impacts of positive psychological attributes, in contrast to decades of research linking psychological disorders and maladjustment to poor physical health.

“There’s a far richer understanding of how people get these strong psychosocial characteristics than there was not that long ago,” Morozink says. “There are studies of the brain showing people with higher levels of well-being react differently to negative situations.”

Environmental factors are also important in developing resiliency in the face of trying circumstances.

“Attentive parents, strong role models and feeling engaged in and important to their community could contribute a great deal to these psychological characteristics,” Ryff says.
Journal Reference:
1. Jennifer A. Morozink, Elliot M. Friedman, Christopher L. Coe, Carol D. Ryff. Socioeconomic and psychosocial predictors of interleukin-6 in the MIDUS national sample.. Health Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1037/a0021360

For a FREE PDF copy of the award-winning self-help book on how to create more positive psychological resources in your life, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com. In exchange for your email and name, you will receive an instant free copy of John Schinnerer’s fantastic self-help book Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought

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6. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

Mindfulness Shown to Turn Down Volume on Stress, Irritability and Depression 

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All my love,

 John Schinnerer Ph.D.

Guide to Self, Inc.

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