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Yesterday I attended another conference, the third for this week alone.
The backstory. I'm a psychological scientist/research psychologist. I was recruited twice to Finland and the University of Helsingfors because of my expertise in executive functions (Österberg, 2001, 2004, 2012). Because I have no research money, but TV-English, I aim to offer my expertise to private organizations and government arms in Finland or elsewhere in the world. That means I'm kind of active to reach entrainment, which is rhythmic synchronization of behavior (Borrie, 2017), with people with whom I can form beneficial cooperations with.
All venues were nice, the food and drinks were great, but content wise they were mediocre.
The first conference theme was concerned with the climate and sustainability from a prospective perspective; the speakers set out to describe how to make sustainable investments taking climate issues into consideration. As I understood it, none of the speakers focused on scientific methods, but rather on qualitative ones, where the conclusions lead to hypotheses and themes that can be tested using scientific methods. During the subsequent networking session, I took the opportunity to explicitly ask for a definition, but they did not have one.
The second conference focused on entrepreneurship. The speakers were primarily from startups, though there were also individuals with board experience. However, they never mentioned that Finland has very low levels of entrepreneurship and innovation. It was as if they were pretending to be something they were not. This is known as overconfidence (Kahneman, 2015).
The moderator was a man I had met two and a half years earlier. I had been invited to a conference center under the pretense that they wanted to find ways to utilize my expertise to achieve something for Finland. But instead of respecting my expertise, he presented himself as an expert in my very own field! Later, at an AI conference, he claimed to be an AI researcher. Now he came over to say hello, and I asked if he was still pretending to be a researcher. He answered yes. In reality, he is a student at a Finnish mid-ranged university. Perhaps Finland’s oldest student.
Yesterday, I attended a third event. As I understood it, the event was organized in collaboration with the City of Helsingfors and a number of sponsors, with a focus on AI. Although the event was pleasant, it lacked the qualities the organizers claimed they wanted to showcase to the guests.
Here’s the catch: the organizer is someone in my circle of acquaintances who—in my view—also wants to come across as something he isn’t. When we first met over a year ago, he presented himself as a top-tier JavaScript software developer (albeit not in those exact words). He also organizes small events focused on entrepreneurship. To me, given my expertise in the field, it seemed like a perfect match: he would handle the logistics, and I would deliver the lecture. The revenue would be split accordingly. But when I put the proposal forward, I was met with what I call an aggressive rejection.
During a previous event organized by the city of Helsingfors, he stuck to the claim that he wasn't an Java-script software programmer, and also displayed some rejective aggression. So the aggressive rejection was longterm.
And whilst he continues to pretend that he's not a Java-script software programmer, our relationship has gone from reasonable to bad.
So when I arrived at the current venue, he didn't greet and welcome me like professional business people do. Instead, he looked at another guest and said “He thinks I'm a software guy”.
This behavior is similar to a fight-flight response.
The two most useful labels are:
Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome and intellectual / professional territoriality.Not Invented Here syndrome is the tendency to reject or undervalue ideas, methods, or expertise that originate outside one’s own group or discipline, even when they would be useful. It is especially common in technical fields such as software engineering. The attitude is often accompanied by an implicit or explicit claim of superior domain expertise (“we are the programmers / the engineers / the real experts”) and can carry a hostile or dismissive tone when outsiders try to contribute.
Intellectual territoriality (sometimes called expert or professional territoriality) is the related tendency to treat a knowledge domain as one’s personal or group territory and to defend it against perceived incursions. Collaboration is experienced as a threat to identity, status, or control rather than as a resource. Defensive behaviors can include dismissing the outsider’s competence, refusing joint problem-solving, or responding with irritation or aggression when the outsider persists.
Both phenomena are typically long-term because they are tied to professional identity and group norms rather than to a single incident. They are more likely when:
- The person’s sense of competence and status is tightly bound to a narrow technical identity.
- The organization or subculture rewards individual technical prowess more than interdisciplinary outcomes.
- Cognitive flexibility (one of the executive functions you study) is relatively low in the interpersonal/collaborative domain even if it is high within the person’s own technical work.
Why do people's coffee sometimes boil over?
The short version is that elevated levels of cortisol block hippocampi (there's one in each hemisphere) in favor of amygdalae (there's also one in each hemisphere) (Goleman, 2006).
It's also likely that there's some malfunction in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) (Puiu et al. 2020).
These people are sometimes called bad apples.
“Yes, there is a study from 2006 known as the “Bad Apple Effect.” This research was conducted by William Felps, Terence Mitchell, and Eliza Byington at the University of Washington. The study examined how one negative team member can significantly impact the overall performance and dynamics of a group (Co-pilot)
“This paper presents a review and integrative model of how, when, and why the behaviors of one negative group member can have powerful, detrimental influence on teammates and groups. We define the negative group member as someone who persistently exhibits one or more of the following behaviors: withholding effort from the group, expressing negative affect, or violating important interpersonal norms. We then detail how these behaviors elicit psychological states in teammates (e.g. perceptions of inequity, negative feelings, reduced trust), how those psychological states lead to defensive behavioral reactions (e.g. outbursts, mood maintenance, withdrawal), and finally, how these various manifestations of defensiveness influence important group processes and dynamics (e.g. cooperation, creativity). Key mechanisms and moderators are discussed as well as actions that might reduce the impact of the bad apple. Implications for both practice and research are discussed” (Felps et al. 2006).
“A single “bad apple” can reduce team performance by 30 – 40%. That's not a typo – one negative person can slash your team's effectiveness by nearly half” (The Leaders Guide).
“Common defensive mechanisms employees use to cope with a “bad apple” include denial, social withdrawal, anger, anxiety and fear. Trust in the team deteriorates and as the group loses its positive culture, members physically and psychologically disengage themselves from the team” (Gardner, 2007).
More reading: Finland's collapse is continuing, but no politician or public manager admits to having done anything wrong
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More about my expertise:
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 | X
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