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A Simple ‘Thanks’ Can Tame the Barking Boss
Supervisors often resort to bullying to compensate for their own feelings of incompetence. But studies show that bosses lower their aggression when they feel appreciated.
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Emotional Labor Costs
Anybody who has worked in a customer-service position knows how difficult it can be to maintain a smile and good humor in the face of an angry client or customer. In fact, the effort may be more costly than we realize. Alicia A. Grandey, an industrial-organizational psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, has spent a good part of her career studying “emotional labor”—the process of altering one’s behavior or disposition to meet an employer’s expectations. For workers in jobs that require stressful interactions with superiors, co-workers, or customers, the effects of emotional labor can create considerable internal turmoil.
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Big Salary Hikes Today Could Lead to a Psychological Fall Tomorrow
Think hefty merit raises, commissions, and bonus structures are the best motivators? Maybe not. Such remuneration schemes can actually backfire. Staff morale can take a big dive during lean times, when bonuses and raises are curtailed. Temporary declines in income—say, from lower sales commissions due to a business slowdown— have a much larger impact on our feeling of contentment than income gains of the same magnitude. A new study conducted in Europe demonstrates this.
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Appearances Really Count When Rising to the Top
Even in the most egalitarian of working environments, certain people seem to reliably move to a higher status than others. They seem more competent and committed. In essence, they appear to be natural leaders. But groups don’t always place the most valuable or competent person in charge. Rather, the people who appear to be the most valuable or competent at any given time tend to achieve higher rank, a recent study indicates.
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The Mind of a Furloughed Worker
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain on furlough from their jobs, hoping the congressional budget standoff will end in time for them to pay their rents and mortgage installments. It's a situation that is all too familiar to countless private sector workers who were laid off - either permanently or temporarily - from their jobs amid the economic crisis that spanned the globe over the last five years. What’s it like to live in a time of such uncertainty? According to brain studies, that depends on your personality type. Research shows a glimpse of how employees will differ in the way they deal with such unknowns as a work stoppage.
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Eye Contact May Make People More Resistant to Persuasion
Making eye contact has long been considered an effective way of drawing a listener in and bringing him or her around to your point of view. But new research shows that eye contact may actually make people more resistant to persuasion, especially when they already disagree. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool,” says lead researcher Frances Chen, who conducted the studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and is now an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia.
