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Bosses Can Spot Self-Serving Workers
Supervisors are surprisingly accurate at distinguishing between employees who put in extra effort out of altruistic concern for the company, and those who suck up just to get ahead, according to a new study from a team of Canadian psychological scientists.
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The Vicious Cycle of Workplace Bullying
Victims of workplace bullying often become stressed and anxious, making them easy targets for additional abuse.
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Offering a Range of Numbers Can Lead to an Edge in Negotiations
New research from Columbia Business School challenges conventional wisdom about making an initial offer during a negotiation. To get the best deal, you may want to consider offering a range of options rather than a single number. Whether bargaining for catering, a new car, or a starting salary, psychological scientists Daniel Ames and Malia Mason, found that when bargainers offered a modest range (asking for a starting salary of $50,000 to $54,000, for example) they secured better offers than when they suggested a single “point” number (say, $52,000). Ames and Mason found that certain types of range offers worked better than others.
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The Slippery-Slope Effect: Minor Misdeeds Lead to Major Ones
“Well, you know what happens is, it starts out with you taking a little bit, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand,” notorious fraudster Bernie Madoff told Vanity Fair after stealing $18 billion from investors. “You get comfortable with that, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big.” A new study finds that getting away with minor infractions ends up making it easier for people to justify bigger, more serious ethical violations. Over time, small ethical transgressions--like stealing pens from work--can put employees on the “slippery slope” of increasingly bad behavior.
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Too Much Workplace Positivity Might Dampen Employee Motivation
Workers in Google’s offices enjoy an impressive array of perks: subsidized massages, scooters, putting greens, and office video game consoles. In an interview with The New York Times, a Google spokesman explained that the company provides these unusual perks as a way "to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world." But new research suggests that when it climbs too high, a positive mood in the office can actually hurt employee motivation. Happy employees are more likely to engage in the kind of proactive above-and-beyond behaviors that organizations need to succeed.
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Are Corporations People, Too? Your Brain Seems to Process Them That Way
According to rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court, corporations are people, at least when it comes to certain legal rights such as free speech. While corporations may be people in the eyes of the law, a team of psychological scientists recently investigated whether corporations also register as people in the brain. Researchers Mark Plitt, Ricky Savjani, and David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine utilized neuroimaging technology to determine whether people unconsciously perceive corporations as inanimate objects or as people. “Little is known about how our brains process information about collective units such as corporations,” the researchers write in the journal Social Neuroscience.
