Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.
How do emotions affect people's minds when the future is uncertain and does valence play a role?
Humans' are the only species who can elaborate intentions and scenarios forward in time (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007). This capacity can be interrupted by motivation and emotional PRIMEs, triggering fight – flight mode (Buck, 1985; McDougall et al. 2005). And the valence seems to play an important role. According to (Shuman et al. 2013):
“The distinction between the positive and the negative is fundamental in our emotional life” ... “This multifaceted conceptualization of valence is highly compatible with the frequent observation of mixed feelings in real life” (Abstract).Since I was in my teens, I have been involved in interpersonal matters concerning individual and organizational performance, learning, and creativity for problem-solving and innovation. First, being lucky to experience the important father-influence (LaFlamme et al. 2012; Rolle et al. 2019; Sethna, 2017; Vieno et al. 2009, 2014; Österberg, 2004), by working side-by-side with my father in our family’s business. That included having business related conversations with my father (who also was the executive).
In parallel, I was assigned dual roles: (1) manager and (2) head coach for a smaller sports operation. As a manager, I mainly negotiated investments and personnel matters (like today's HR), which caused the inventory to increase by more than 100% and the organization to grow 1400 % to 14 assistant coaches. As a coach, I mainly applied goal-setting theory (Locke and Latham, 2002) and Baumrind's (1966) research on parenting styles, biomechanics and physio stuff, which together proved to improve the athletes performance. Significantly.
When I stepped down as the head coach/manager, I was offered the role of head of education for a sports association. I developed courses and traveled in Sweden to deliver these courses. I taught what I knew best: goal-setting theory, research on parenting styles, biomechanics and physio stuff.
In the midst of all that, I was asked to work for a couple of days in a company to clean up their business administration (mainly accounting). I stayed for two years, significantly improving my financial skills.
Then I started my own educational company; I kept travelling in Sweden to teach goal-setting theory, parental styles, biomechanics and physio stuff. And sometime around this time, I also became a so-called executive coach (years of training with my father kicked in). That means I advised managing director's and CEO's, by answering questions about things concerning leadership and organization from a perspective of business administration and prospective psychology.
Eventually, I received my master's degree in business administration, my bachelor's thesis in experimental emotional psychology, as well as my master's degree in social psychology.
After star-psychologist Daniel Kahneman (1934 – 2024) in 2002 received The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred, for Amos Tversky's (1937 – 1996) and his work on “natural stupidity”. economists 'en masse' became increasingly interested in psychology. Because of that, I was recruited to the only fully financed position at a faculty to write my doctorate (and to tutor researchers on method). I was also assigned by various university colleges in Sweden to be the expert lecturer on matters concerning leadership - entrepreneurship, and creativity. As the crowning touch, I was recruited to the University of Helsingfors to become a research leader.
We know from Swedish psychological scientist Anders Eriksson’s (1947 – 2020) work on dedicated training that 4000 hours of dedicated training will improve your skill in any field. Significantly. (Some people recognize that this resembles the so called 10 000 hour rule, which is a misinterpretation of Dr. Eriksson's work; there is a 10 000 hours level, but before that, there's a 4000 hour level).
During my longstanding tenure as an expert in leadership – organization, > 100 000 hours, I typically have experienced situations where organizations have issues, one way or the other. And typically, the local political climate triggers conformity to sustain the situation which caused the problem in the first place.
Common knowledge in psychology is that the human mind is wired for prospection, and in particular, intentional thinking forward in time (Ardila, 2008, Ardila et al. 2018; Adornetti, 2016; Barkley, 2001; Coolidge and Wynn, 2018; Tomasello et al. 2005). This means, if everything 'up there' works properly, the mind will automatically start elaborating intentions and scenarios forward in time, which will result in improved performance, learning, and creativity for problem-solving and innovation (Locke and Latham, 2002; Österberg, 2012). And because we are social beings, the efficacy of intentional thinking will improve in a social context (Bandura, 1977; Heider, 1958; Pinker, 2011; Tomasello, 2014).
But, as Kahneman and Amos Tversky famously demonstrated, when the future is uncertain, that is, intentional elaboration is not working, members of our species fall victim of “natural stupidity”. That means we tend to rely on information which is either:
- prototypical (Kahneman och Tversky, 1972)
- often repeated (Tversky och Kahneman, 1973)
- easy to access (Kahneman and Tversky, 1977).
Sometimes when we encounter a challenging situation with negative valence, cortisol levels increase, blocking hippocampi in favor of amygdalae, which triggers fight-flight behavior (Goleman, 2006). IF intentional prospection do not kick in, that's when we abandoned reasoning – talking without winning – in favor of argumentation – talk to win – and polemics – verbal war and guilt by association.
There are at least two ways to improve your prospective thinking:
- Eat real food. 3.6 million years before the present, our ancestors added animal fat (bone marrow) to their diet (Mann, 2018; McPherron et al. 2010; Thompson et al. 2019). That started a reduction of their gut and an expansion of their brains - from the occipital lobe and forward (Aiello och Dunbar, 1993; Aiello och Wheeler, ; 1995; Hublin et al. 2014; Ponzter et al 2016). After our genus was established, they added meat to their diet Kimbel och Villmoare, 2016; Pobiner, 2016; Villmoare, 2018; Villmoare et al. 2015). A plethora of studies show that animal source food, meat and fat, is crucial for children's physical and mental development (Adesogan et al. 2020; Allen, 2003; Balehegn et al. 2019, 2023), as well as to sustain adults physical and mental health (Calabrese et al 2024; Dobersek et al. 2023, 2024; Ede, 2019, 2022, 2024; Itkonen et al. 2020; Margara-Escudero et al. 2022; Pan et al. 2024; Tong et al. 2020; Ylilauri et al. 2019).
- Leadership. According to me and other researchers, the solution is a leadership style which influences work climate – an intervening variable between the leader and the organization (Ekvall, 1996; Ekvall och Ekvall och Ryhammar, 1998, 1999; Österberg, 2012).
Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.
Mer om min expertis:
Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment