According to the American Psychological Association people still worry about money, work and relationships but have got used to waking up at 0300 worrying.

This is the new normal according to the American Institute of Stress. All the fears expressed in 2007, when the property bubble burst, have since come true for many people so people are now discounting them. (This is similar in a way to people who are pessimistic and therefore more mentally prepared for bad news).

And now it seems there are generational differences in the way people react to and deal with stress. People under 32 were less stressed about money than their parents but people over 50 saw time running out for them to recover their nest eggs. Younger people say they are more stressed about sex and relationships whereas over-40s are more chilled out about it.

It is generally recognised that stress is on the increase and that it affects men as well as women.

As I said last year it’s a competitive market place with many excellent writers and I think business psychologists can make a great contribution to the workplace in these difficult economic times.

WordPress tell me most of my readers come for the UK, the USA, and India with some from Africa and Brazil.

And my top 5 ie most read, posts:

My 5th most read was: Emotional Intelligence and empathy

My 4th most read was: Emotional Intelligence and self-control and those marsh-mallows

So still a lot of interest in EI out there

My 3rd most read was: Moral Judgements and decision-making which had the most comments and was also in last year’s top 5

My 2nd most read was: No country for grey-haired men about ageism in recruitment affecting men as well as women.

And the most read, as many as the rest of the top five together, was: The 4 agreements – shamanic Emotional Intelligence for the second year running.

This year I created a new blog about health and lifestyle issues and transferred the more general posts, about half of them, from here to uLearn2BU .

I decided that this blog needed to be more focussed on the psychology of work to supplement my Leadership and Management blog.

So many thanks for reading and for your comments and looking forward to more in 2012.

It seems we say we value creativity but don’t really want it. Teachers apparently don’t like creative kids – they are probably too disruptive and not good at following rules.

In organisations leaders say they want creative ideas – and then stick to the tried and tested.

I’ve seen creative people promoted only to find that they then have other priorities so they get frustrated and end up losing their credibility when they succumb to their dark side and their ideas are seen as totally unrealistic.

Experiments by Mueller and colleagues using implicit attitude tests showed that when people are uncertain they think negatively about creative ideas and found it harder to recognise them. This shows that people may dislike creative ideas because they increase uncertainty and that’s not a state we enjoy.

But of course being creative requires just that – doing something that hasn’t been done before or doing something in a different way.

Research elsewhere into the links between creativity and the Big 5 personality factors confirmed that openness and extraversion were significantly related to creativity, but agreeableness had no effect. However they found that people with higher levels of arrogance and pretentiousness also reported more creative accomplishments and being engaged in more creative activities.

So other researchers then explored the connections between creativity and dishonesty.

In a series of experiments reported in Psychology Today they found that people reporting higher creativity were more likely to take advantage of ambiguous situations to cheat. This was nothing to do with intelligence; there were no links between intelligence and creativity nor between intelligence and dishonesty. In fact creativity was a better predictor of dishonesty than intelligence.

People with a more creative mindset were more motivated to think “outside the box” and this is what led to increased levels of dishonesty. In experiments within real organisations they found that people working in what were considered more creative departments or in jobs in which they were expected to be creative, were more likely to act unethically when asked to make decisions on a range of scenarios.

The research actually showed that creativity causes dishonesty. The researchers think that “creativity helps people to develop original ways to bypass moral rules …. to reinterpret information in self-serving ways as they attempt to justify their immoral actions”.

It makes you wonder about creative entrepreneurs who may be less inclined than the rest of us to follow rules which they regard as meaningless red tape eg paying VAT! Or think of Richard Branson’s early days selling vinyl records out of telephone boxes.

The researchers also caution that although the findings are statistically significant they are only trends and there are many creative people who are not dishonest. 

However reminders of money reverse the effects of mimicry and make the mimic less liked and those being mimicked feel threatened.

If you’ve been trained in the black arts of NLP you will also know all bout mirroring and matching and there is a substantial amount of research on what is also called postural echo. When we are getting on with someone we tend to unconsciously match their body movements and find ourselves moving in synch. (Conversely deliberately getting out of synch will break the spell and tells the other person, perhaps at an unconscious level, that we are not interested).

But when we are mimicking body language it seems that we are perceived as more trustworthy and attractive and it puts us in a better mood and more likely to be helpful to others.

So it seems reasonable that if we were to do that consciously then we would recreate that feeling.

Research by Jia Liu however, reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, shows that the feel-good factor can be undermined and disrupted by the introduction of money or reminders of it.

Their experiment involved participants answering irrelevant questions on a computer which had either a wallpaper of shells or of monetary symbols. This was followed by a 10 minute session working in pairs with a stranger who either mimicked or didn’t. They then rated how much they liked that person and completed a questionnaire about how threatened they felt.

Without the reminder of money the participants reported the usual benefits of liking their partner more and feeling less threatened. However those participants reminded of money at the outset liked their partner less and felt more threatened than the other participants.

The experiment showed that whilst mimicking someone’s body language usually has positive benefits being reminded of money – which triggers ideas of selfishness and egocentricity and makes us yearn for autonomy – has a negative effect.

Source: The Psychologist Vol 24 No 11 November 2011

This is based on how much energy the brain uses. Just 2% of our body weight it consumes 20% of its energy, as much as the heart muscle, and they don’t think we can give it any more.

Other scientists believe that the brain’s wiring can’t  get any better either. They’ve found that clever people have the most efficient wiring and can move messages very quickly through the brain compared to less intelligent people but see little scope for further development.

Is that it then? Have we really peaked with Big Brother, X Factor, Jeremy Clarkson, soaps, and all the reality TV shows?

Perhaps the answer lies in man-machine combinations. Already computers can do things we can’t (and vice versa). 70% of stocks in the world are traded using algorithms but is that better than rogue traders risking corporate money and our pension schemes?

IBM’s Watson computer has already won the US quiz show Jeopardy this year and robots, or robotic arms, assemble and spray cars and work in inhospitable environments. Computer programmes have been designed to mimic conversations (even with each other) and have been used in experimental psychotherapy settings. The development of artificial intelligence or AI has already gone beyond the realms of science fiction.

The Singularity Institute has been set up with donations from Google and Nasa to monitor these developments and includes people like the founders of PayPal and Skype as well as a philosopher, a gerontologist and a futurist. They believe the time will come, possibly by 2045, when robots will become clever enough to redesign themselves and become more intelligent than man.

Sci-fi fans know this already of course with Cyborgs, Terminator and replicators. HAL seems so yesterday!

Already neuro-prosthetic devices have been implanted in the brains of rats to boost their memory paving the way for developments which could help people with dementia or brain injuries.

On the negative side suppose a computer became so powerful that it could take over other computers, control the web, and use that power to improve itself so dramatically so that it became far more efficient and cleverer than humans? It could take control of the world’s assets (remember I mentioned the algorithmic trading of stocks). But hang on, haven’t I seen that film?

One of her colleagues had argued that hunger and sexual arousal could make you more impulsive so she wondered if there were physical visceral experiences that might have the opposite effect. In the experiment she gave people water as part of what they thought was a water-tasting experiment. Half the group were given full cups while the other half only had sips.

They were all then given 45 minutes of tests followed by an impulse control test similar to the famous marshmallows test.

Those people who urgently needed to go to the lavatory tended to opt for the larger, deferred reward.

Tuk speculates (in the absence of neuro-imaging or actually measuring how full the participants’ bladders were) that, because the area of the brain responsible for controlling urine retention also controls other things such as cognitive responses, controlling impulses leads to more rational decisions.

Maybe if you have important decisions to make and you need to run to the lavatory you put off making the decision because you can’t concentrate on anything else but getting to the loo? Or if you were anxious about getting to the lavatory would you be more likely to make a quick decision so you could go?

Darwin’s original research was to prove that humans shared expressions with animals thus supporting his theory of evolution.

The results were published in his 1872 book “The Expression of Emotion in Human and Animals”.

Now you can go on-line to make your own judgments about which emotion is being expressed.

Paul Ekman, the expert in body language and micro-expressions on whom the TV series “Lie to Me” was based, followed up Darwin’s work in the 1960s travelling round pre-industrial cultures to see if there really were universal emotional expressions. His findings broadly supported Darwin’s hypothesis.

His company currently trains people to recognise emotional expressions and is also believed to be involved in training Homeland Security and security experts in the UK to develop face-reading skills.

Cambridge University has updated the experiment using video and you can contribute to their research by assessing online video clips.

Recognising emotional expressions is important in variety of research areas such as autism, where sufferers find it difficult to recognise emotional expressions.

Botox users also find it difficult to express emotions through facial expressions, thus making it more difficult for others to read them, and it has been suggested that it actually reduces their level of empathy.

Empathy is one of the cornerstones of emotional intelligence. Being able to recognise other people’s emotional state through non-verbal signs is an important element of EI.

Read the full BBC news story 

Although the incidence of those who are suffering from NPD in the UK general population is thought to be less than 1%, with between 2 and 16% amongst psychiatric patients, it’s been estimated that in the USA, UK and Australia narcissists and psychopaths may make up as much as 10% of the leadership population. The proportion amongst young people in their 20s in the USA may be even as high as 25% and whatever the true figures narcissism is believed to be on the increase.

At a clinical level narcissistic personality disorder is a mental illness  defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual DSM-IV-TR 301.81 as follows: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
6. Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
8. Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

It is one of a cluster of dramatic personality disorders which also includes anti-social (psychopathic) behaviours.

People are believed to develop this for a variety of reasons including:

• An oversensitive temperament at birth
• Severe emotional abuse as a child
• Being praised for perceived exceptional looks or abilities by adults
• Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback – See: The Golden Boy syndrome
• Excessive praise or criticism for behaviors in childhood
• Overindulgence by parents – See Little Princesses
• Poor unreliable parenting
• Valued and used by parents as a means to boost their own self-esteem – think of those children’s beauty pageants.

So if you want to know if you, or someone you know, suffers from NPD read the above checklist again and see how many of those descriptions apply.

And you can also read my posts on stress, well-being, and resilience

Researchers at the Centre for Ethics at Harvard have found that when people worked in the presence of children’s toys or reminders of children or if they engaged in children’s activities or if there was a creche on site they behaved more ethically and in more pro-social ways.

In laboratory experiments participants in a child-related environment cheated less at games, were more generous, and in word games chose more virtuous words than those in a normal setting.

In the real world they found that companies which had 5 or more day-care centres, nurseries or kindergartens within a 2 mile radius of their HQ gave significantly more to charities.

The researchers think that being in the vicinity of children or being reminded of children aged up to 9 years of age – and maybe their presumed innocence - makes people behave better.

They suggest using coloured fonts in e-mails or having children’s music in the lifts. Thinking about it you could have crayons instead of flip chart markers and encourage people to have family pictures of children in their cubicles. Perhaps more primary colours?

They are now interested to see if the same effect would apply to diversity and reducing discrimination. They also admit there is a dark side in marketing where they found children being used to market soda, in cigarette adverts, shaving products and fast food. Think Ronald McDonald!

Source: HBR September 2011