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Overdosing on Incentives
Stock options, gift certificates, and lump sums of cash are the tools of choice that employers use to motivate staff to strive for success. It’s widely assumed that the promise of a monetary bonus improves a worker’s drive, concentration, and performance. But a new study shows that these motivational rewards may have the opposite effect on some people. In these individuals, the potential for a bonus can send the brain’s reward centers into overdrive and interfere with their ability to process information, a team of American and European researchers has concluded. The chemical in question is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a variety of roles in the brain.
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Taking a Transdiagnostic Approach to Understanding Self-Injury
Millions of people are affected by self-injury, especially adolescents and young adults. Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has been the focus of numerous studies and, yet, there is still a lot to learn about its causes and consequences. NSSI behavior, the most common of which is cutting, can have various short- and long-term consequences and research shows that NSSI is predictive of later suicide attempts. We also know that NSSI co-occurs with many other disorders, including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and substance use and eating disorders.
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“But I Didn’t Know!” People Show Prejudice-Based Aggression When It’s Easily Deniable
A study shows the role that “plausible deniability” may in discriminatory behavior against marginalized groups.
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Making Mindfulness Work for Patients
APS Fellow Marsha M. Linehan, director of the Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics at the University of Washington, is the recipient of a 2014 APS James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award. Linehan will give an award address at the 27th APS Annual Convention in 2015 in New York City. Linehan’s research focuses on employing behavioral models to study patients who develop suicidal behaviors, substance abuse issues, or borderline personality disorder. She also developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), originally used to treat suicidal tendencies and later modified to include the treatment of mental disorders and borderline personality disorder.
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When to Make the First Move
When Michael Jordan’s agent set out to negotiate a new contract with the Chicago Bulls for his client back in the mid 90s, he anticipated that the team’s managing partner would lowball the salary offer. So the agent opted to move first and requested an ambitious $52 million per year for Jordan. After a series of back and forth talks, the parties settled for an annual paycheck just above $30 million. By making the first offer — and doing so aggressively, at that — Jordan’s agent landed his client the single highest annual salary in the history of the National Basketball Association.
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Dishonesty and Creativity: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
New research shows that lying about performance on one task may increase creativity on a subsequent task by making people feel less bound by conventional rules. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “The common saying that ‘rules are meant to be broken’ is at the root of both creative performance and dishonest behavior,” says lead researcher Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School.