Category: Psychology

Can “Radical Transparency” Work “in Today’s Polarized and Litigious World”?

(p. B1) In 1993, Ray Dalio, the chairman of what is today the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Associates, received a memo signed by his top three lieutenants that was startlingly honest in its assessment of him.
It was a performance review of sorts, and not in a good way. After mentioning his positive attributes, they spelled out the negatives. “Ray sometimes says or does things to employees which makes them feel incompetent, unnecessary, humiliated, overwhelmed, belittled, pressed or otherwise bad,” the memo read. “If he doesn’t manage people well, growth will be stunted and we will all be affected.”
To Mr. Dalio, the message was both devastating and a wake-up call. His reaction: “Ugh. That hurt and surprised me.”
That moment helped push Mr. Dalio to rethink how he approached people and to begin developing a unique — and sometimes controversial — culture inside his firm, one based on a series of “principles” that place the idea of “radical transparency” above virtually all else.
. . .
(p. B5) Of course, the larger question is whether Mr. Dalio’s version of utopia — a place where employees feel comfortable offering blunt and in some cases brutal feedback — can exist outside Bridgewater’s controlled environment of mostly self-selecting individuals who either embrace the philosophy or quickly exit. Given the intense environment, as you might expect, there are horror stories of employees who have left in tears. Turnover among new employees is high.
Mr. Dalio’s critics — and there are many — say his principles offer permission to be verbally barbaric, and they question whether the $160 billion firm’s success is a product of such “radical transparency” or whether he can afford such a wide-ranging social experiment simply because the firm is so financially successful.
In truth, it is hard to imagine how harsh individual critiques in the workplace can work at many other organizations in today’s polarized and litigious world, where people are increasingly looking for “safe spaces” and those who say they are offended by a particular argument are derided as “fragile snowflakes.”

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “DEALBOOK; Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Dives Deeper Into the ‘Principles’ of Tough Love.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 5, 2017): B1 & B5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 4, 2017, and has the title, “DEALBOOK; Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio Dives Deeper Into the ‘Principles’ of Tough Love.” )

The Dalio book, discussed above, is:
Dalio, Ray. Principles: Life and Work. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Washington, D.C. Regulators Protect Citizens from Goat Yoga

GoatYogaInGlendaleCalifornia2017-10-09.jpg“Goat yoga has spread nationwide since last year. Practitioners in Glendale, Calif., in May.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) WASHINGTON–Young goats have on occasion grazed in the Historic Congressional Cemetery, deployed to keep down brush. A yoga instructor has been holding weekly classes in the chapel.

Goats and yoga go together, as any modern yogi knows. So, cemetery staff proposed this spring, why not combine them and bring inner peace to all on the grounds?
“I asked the farmer if there’s any harm to the goats doing yoga,” says Kelly Carnes, who teaches the discipline on the cemetery grounds. “She said quite the opposite–the baby goats just love to interact with humans.”
Gruff was the response from District of Columbia officials. District policy, they decreed, prohibited the human-animal contact goat yoga presented: “At this time the request for the event with the inclusion of baby goats has been denied.”
. . .
(p. A12) This spring at the Congressional Cemetery, Ms. Carnes read about goat yoga and raised the idea with participants in her “yoga mortis” classes at the cemetery. They were “crazy to try it,” she says.
She spoke with Paul Williams, president of the nonprofit that manages the cemetery, about trying it with the goats they had twice hired over the past several years to eat down unwanted plants.
The cemetery planned to hold goat classes in a pen in a grassy area. In June, Mr. Williams sought permission from the health department.
The “no” came that month. The capital’s health code, says Dr. Vito DelVento, manager of the District of Columbia Department of Health’s animal-services program, bans animals beyond common household pets from within district limits.
. . .
Then there’s Washington’s “no touch” policy barring direct contact between humans and animals beyond household pets.
“Baby goats are probably one of the most fun animal species–they are a blast,” says Dr. DelVento, who has farm animals outside the District and has raised goats. “But the fact that we have baby goats jumping on people and interacting with people obviously violates our ‘no touch’ policy.”
Mr. Williams says he will try again next year when Mrs. Bowen has a fresh herd of kids. He will seek a no-touch-policy exemption.
“We’re really trying to offer a service,” says Mrs. Bowen, “that is good for people’s mental health and physical health.”

For the full story, see:
Daniel Nasaw. “The Kids Are Not Alright: Bureaucrats Buck Goat Yoga.” The Wall Street Jounal (Sat., OCT. 2, 2017): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 1, 2017, and has the title “Goat Yoga, Meet the Zoning Board.”)

Keys to Good Jobs: Honesty, Work Ethic, and Ability to Be Trained

(p. A13) . . . , Mr. Funk is chairman, CEO and founder of Express Employment Professionals, one of the nation’s largest job agencies. Informally, he sees himself as a man who makes a living by giving people hope–that is, by matching workers looking for good jobs with employers looking for good workers. Along the way he also served as chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
. . .
He shares a small brochure his company puts out summarizing a recent survey of employers. “So many people do not realize how important the soft skills are to unlocking job opportunity,” he says.
In order, the survey found the top five traits employers look for are as follows: attitude, work ethic/integrity, communication, culture fit, critical thinking.
Drugs are a huge problem today, with many would-be employees putting themselves out of the running when they fail drug tests. A certified truck driver can start at $55,000 to $60,000 a year, for example, but no one’s going to hire you if you do drugs.
. . .
And while education is vital, Mr. Funk says the most important thing for most people is the ability to be trained–which starts with basic competence in reading, writing and arithmetic. Mr. Funk also says institutions such as Oklahoma’s CareerTech, which works with local employers to train people for jobs that actually exist in their communities, are probably a better investment for many people than college.
. . .
“I’ve helped a lot of people find jobs in my life,” he says. “And I’ve learned that if you are honest, have a strong work ethic, and stay off drugs, there’s a great future for you out there.”

For the full commentary, see:

William McGurn. “MAIN STREET; Bring Back the Work Ethic; ‘There’s a person for every job and a job for every person,’ says Bob Funk.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Sept. 5, 2017): A13.
(Note: ellipses added; italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 4, 2017.)

Boys Town Closes California Sites Due to Intrusive Regulations

(p. 1A) It’s been a century since a young Irish priest named Father Edward Flanagan welcomed homeless boys into a run-down Victorian mansion in downtown Omaha.
But as Boys Town celebrates its centennial, the organization is lessening its focus on the kind of residential care model that made it famous.
The latest wave came in June, as Boys Town announced the shuttering of sites in New York, Texas and California, including one residential care site in Orange County.
. . .
In 2000 under the Rev. Val Peter, then its executive director, the organization had 16 sites — though some were shelters without residential care.
The Rev. Steven Boes, current president and national executive director, insists the Flanagan mission of caring for American families and children remains, despite what he called some tough decisions to close sites.
. . .
(p. 2A) Boys Town decided to shutter its 80-acre residential site in Trabuco Canyon and two family homes in Tustin, California, after years of advocating for regulatory changes in that state. At the time of the June announcement, those homes housed 28 children.
The Trabuco Canyon site was one of 14 Boys Town residential care facilities opened in the 1980s and ’90s as Peter worked to spread the model to larger metro areas around the nation.
Since then, changing state regulations have made it more difficult to implement the Boys Town model in many of those areas, said Bob Pick, executive vice president of youth care.
“We opened those sites 20 or 30 years ago, and it was an exciting time,” Pick said. “But times change, contracts change and we have to serve kids with the highest quality. We just couldn’t do that in some locations.”
When the Trabuco Canyon facility opened, youths stayed for up to two years, Pick said, adding that Boys Town’s own research shows that the minimum stay should be about six months and a yearlong stay is ideal.
Because of contractual rules including mandated length of stays in California, “we couldn’t get kids to stay longer than two or three months,” Pick said. “That’s just not quality care.”
. . .
The changes at Boys Town haven’t come without criticism.
The Rev. Peter worries that the closing of Boys Town sites and focus on research runs afoul of Flanagan’s mission. “I gave my whole life to this — to Flanagan’s dream,” Peter, 83, said. “This is called God’s dream. Times change, but God’s dream doesn’t.”

For the full story, see:
Klecker, Mara. “Renowned care model no longer main focus; Overall trend is toward in-home family consulting, fewer residential sites.” Omaha World-Herald (Sun., Aug. 27, 2017): 1A-2A.
(Note: ellipses added..)

“Insects Can Solve Problems, They Can Learn”

(p. D6) Never underestimate the power of the bee brain.
In the latest triumph for one of humanity’s favorite insects, bumblebees learned how to push a ball to the center of a platform for a sugary treat.
That may not make them a threat on the chess board, but soccer or even Skee-Ball might be within their intellectual grasp — if it were scaled down in size, of course.
The new research finding is one more reason that scientists who study insects, of all sorts, would like to point out that just because a brain is small, doesn’t mean it is simple.
Clint Perry, one of the bumblebee trainers at Queen Mary University of London, and a confirmed small brain partisan, said, “I’ve actually been asked if bees have brains.”
In fact, a number of recent experiments have shown that “insects can solve problems, they can learn,” he said. And scientists have yet to define the limits of insects’ mental abilities.
. . .
The task of pushing a little ball to the center of a platform was completely arbitrary. Bees don’t do anything like this in nature, where they seek out flowers for nectar and pollen. So it was a brand new behavior demanding some kind of general ability to learn.
The way the bees learned was important, too. They were pre-trained to expect a treat in the center of a platform. But having to push a ball to the center to get the treat was something they hadn’t seen.
Then the researchers tried several ways of teaching the bees what to do. The bees learned best by watching a fellow bee perform the feat. After that kind of observation, 10 of 10 bees solved the problem on the first try. On later tries, they continued to improve, taking less time.

For the full story, see:
Gorman, James. “SCIENCETAKE; The Power of the Bumblebee Brain.” The New York Times (Weds., FEB. 28, 2017): D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 23 [sic], 2017, and has the title “SCIENCETAKE; Bumblebees Demonstrate the Power of Insect Brains.”)

The “Grit” of the Successful Consists of “Passion and Perseverance”

(p. A11) Most people would think of John Irving as a gifted wordsmith. He is the author of best-selling novels celebrated for their Dickensian plots, including “The Cider House Rules” and “The World According to Garp.” But Mr. Irving has severe dyslexia, was a C-minus English student in high school and scored 475 out of 800 on the SAT verbal test. How, then, did he have such a remarkably successful career as a writer?
Angela Duckworth argues that the answer is “grit,” which she defines as a combination of passion and perseverance in the pursuit of a long-term goal. The author, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent the past decade studying why some people have extraordinary success and others do not. “Grit” is a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success and also tells the stories of many gritty exemplars, . . .
. . .
Ms. Duckworth first realized the importance of grit as a teacher. Before she became an academic, she worked as a seventh-grade math teacher at a public school in New York. Some of her students were more inherently gifted with numbers than others. But not all of these capable students, to her surprise, got the best grades. Those who did weren’t always “math people”: For the most part, they were those who consistently invested more time and effort in their work.
Ms. Duckworth decided to become a research psychologist to figure out what explained their success. One of her first studies was of West Point cadets. Every year, West Point enrolls more than 1,000 students, but 20% of cadets drop out before graduation. Many quit in their first two months, during an intense training program known as Beast Barracks, or Beast. The most important factor in West Point admissions is the Whole Candidate Score, a composite measure of test scores, high-school rank, leadership potential and physical fitness. But Ms. Duckworth found that this score, which is essentially a measure of innate ability, did not predict who dropped out during Beast. She created her own “Grit Scale,” scored using cadets’ responses to statements like “I finish whatever I begin” or “New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.” Those who scored highest on the Grit Scale were the most likely to make it to the end of Beast.
. . .
Grit may be defined by strenuous effort, but what drives that work, Ms. Duckworth finds, is passion, and a great service of Ms. Duckworth’s book is her down-to-earth definition of passion. To be gritty, an individual doesn’t need to have an obsessive infatuation with a goal. Rather, he needs to show “consistency over time.” The grittiest people have developed long-term goals and are constantly working toward them. “Enthusiasm is common,” she writes. “Endurance is rare.”

For the full review, see:

Emily Esfahani Smith. “BOOKSHELF; The Virtue of Hard Things; A study of Ivy League undergraduates showed that the smarter the students were, as measured by SAT scores, the less they persevered.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 4, 2016): A11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 3, 2016.)

The book under review, is:
Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. New York: Scribner, 2016.

“Many of Our Worst Behaviors Are in Retreat”

(p. A19) Mr. Sapolsky is one of those very few eminent scientists who are also eminent–or even coherent–when writing for the general public.
. . .
The author’s comprehensive approach integrates controlled laboratory investigation with naturalistic observations and study. To his immense credit, he doesn’t omit cultural norms, social learning, the role of peer pressure or historical tradition. He also has a delightfully self-deprecating sense of humor. Introducing a chapter titled “War and Peace,” he summarizes the chapter’s goals as: (a) to demonstrate that “many of our worst behaviors are in retreat, our best ones ascendant”; (b) to examine “ways to improve this further”; (c) to derive “emotional support for this venture” (d) and, “finally, to see if I can actually get away with calling this chapter ‘War and Peace.’ ” Earlier, after an especially abstruse sentence, he adds a footnote: “I have no idea what it is that I just wrote.”
. . .
It’s no exaggeration to say that “Behave” is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. .

For the full review, see:
David P. Barash. “BOOKSHELF; How the Brain Makes Us Do It; Biology can explain but not excuse our worst behavior; Testosterone may drive a vicious warlord, but social triggers shape his actions.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 2, 2017): A19.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 1, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Sapolsky, Robert M. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York: Penguin Press 2017.

Pessimistic Are Best Prepared for Bad News

(p. A13) In a study published in the journal “Emotion” in February, 2016, Dr. Sweeny and colleagues at the University of California, Riverside, showed that people resort to a number of coping strategies to manage their discomfort while waiting for an outcome. Dr. Sweeny calls this “misery management.”
. . .
None of these coping mechanisms worked, according to the study. They failed to reduce the participants’ distress–and some even made it worse. . . .
A better way to wait, the researchers found, is when participants agonized through their waiting period, ruminating and feeling anxious and pessimistic rather than attempting to minimize their anxiety and worry. Those who did this responded more productively to bad news and more joyfully to good news than participants who suffered little during the wait. This is “waiting well.”

For the full commentary, see:
Elizabeth Bernstein. “When a Little Agonizing Helps.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 23, 2017): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 22, 2017, and has the title “How to Manage a Long Wait for News.”)

The paper co-authored by Sweeney, and mentioned above, is:
Sweeny, Kate, Chandra A. Reynolds, Angelica Falkenstein, Sara E. Andrews, and Michael D. Dooley. “Two Definitions of Waiting Well.” Emotion 16, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 129-43.

A.I. “Continues to Struggle in the Real World”

The passages quoted below are authored by an NYU professor of psychology and neural science.

(p. 6) Artificial Intelligence is colossally hyped these days, but the dirty little secret is that it still has a long, long way to go. Sure, A.I. systems have mastered an array of games, from chess and Go to “Jeopardy” and poker, but the technology continues to struggle in the real world. Robots fall over while opening doors, prototype driverless cars frequently need human intervention, and nobody has yet designed a machine that can read reliably at the level of a sixth grader, let alone a college student. Computers that can educate themselves — a mark of true intelligence — remain a dream.

Even the trendy technique of “deep learning,” which uses artificial neural networks to discern complex statistical correlations in huge amounts of data, often comes up short. Some of the best image-recognition systems, for example, can successfully distinguish dog breeds, yet remain capable of major blunders, like mistaking a simple pattern of yellow and black stripes for a school bus. Such systems can neither comprehend what is going on in complex visual scenes (“Who is chasing whom and why?”) nor follow simple instructions (“Read this story and summarize what it means”).
Although the field of A.I. is exploding with microdiscoveries, progress toward the robustness and flexibility of human cognition remains elusive. Not long ago, for example, while sitting with me in a cafe, my 3-year-old daughter spontaneously realized that she could climb out of her chair in a new way: backward, by sliding through the gap between the back and the seat of the chair. My daughter had never seen anyone else disembark in quite this way; she invented it on her own — and without the benefit of trial and error, or the need for terabytes of labeled data.
Presumably, my daughter relied on an implicit theory of how her body moves, along with an implicit theory of physics — how one complex object travels through the aperture of another. I challenge any robot to do the same. A.I. systems tend to be passive vessels, dredging through data in search of statistical correlations; humans are active engines for discovering how things work.

For the full commentary, see:
GARY MARCUS. “Gray Matter; A.I. Is Stuck. Let’s Unstick It.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., JULY 30, 2017): 6.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JULY 29, 2017, and has the title “Gray Matter; Artificial Intelligence Is Stuck. Here’s How to Move It Forward.”)

“Basic Fairness Is Probably Written into Our Genetic Code”

(p. C2) Basic fairness is probably written into our genetic code. Human societies depend on the expectation of reciprocity: We assume that a neighbor will collect our mail if we’ve mowed their lawn, or that drivers will take turns braking at stop signs.
Fundamental as this trait might seem, however, its evolutionary origins are hazy. Previous research has shown that chimpanzees–one of our closest relatives–are less motivated by fairness than by what they immediately stand to gain from a transaction.
A new study shows that chimps can go beyond such reflexive selfishness and cooperate, even if it costs them something. But they don’t just give up what’s theirs, even to their kin. They are particular about when they will share some of their food, according to research led by University of Vienna biologist Martin Schmelz and just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Like many of us, the team found, chimps keep score: They’re most likely to allot treats to a partner if that chimp helped them first.

For the full commentary, see:
SUSAN PINKER. “MIND AND MATTER: What Chimps Understand About Reciprocity.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 22, 2017): C2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 21, 2017.)

The full academic article that is summarized above, is:
Schmelz, Martin, Sebastian Grueneisen, Alihan Kabalak, Jürgen Jost, and Michael Tomasello. “Chimpanzees Return Favors at a Personal Cost.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 28 (July 11, 2017): 7462-67.

How to Use Dyslexia and ADHD to Become a Better Leader

(p. R7) Leading a company without using email, reading memos or going to endless meetings sounds like a pipe dream. But it’s a reality for Selim Bassoul, chief executive and chairman of Middleby Corp., the Elgin, Ill., kitchen-supply maker with such popular brands as Viking and Aga Rangemaster.
Mr. Bassoul, 60, has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conditions that weren’t diagnosed during his childhood in Lebanon, when he initially struggled in school. Years later, when he was a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a professor suggested he get tested, he says.
. . .
WSJ: What are some ways that having dyslexia and ADHD affects your leadership style?
MR. BASSOUL: Dyslexia has forced me to be quite conceptual, because I’m not good with detail. I think in general rather than in specific [terms]. That allows me to step back and take in the big picture rather than get bogged down in details. Because of my weaknesses and handicaps, I’ve learned other ways to accomplish the same goal at faster speed.
As a dyslexic you have no choice but to rely on others for help with detail and tactical tasks. You become a great judge of character. You have to select the best team around you.
Then you have ADHD, which makes you restless but it can also be a huge motivator for action. It prompts you to go out of the office and into the field. You find yourself constantly on the front line. I don’t like to be confined to the office. I hate meetings. I am constantly visiting customers, our field offices, our manufacturing plants. I know the operations of my customers better than them, which helps create solutions for them prior to them knowing what they need.

For the full interview, see:
Rachel Emma Silverman, interviewer. “How a Chief Executive with Dyslexia and ADHD Runs His Company.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 17, 2017): R7.
(Note: ellipses added. Bold and italics, in original. The italics question is from the WSJ interviewer.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date May 16, 2017, and has the title “How a CEO With Dyslexia and ADHD Runs His Company.”)