Category: Psychology

Give Entrepreneurs “the Solitude They Need to Think Creatively”

(p. R1) . . . , numerous entrepreneurs and CEOs are either self-admitted introverts or have so many introvert qualities that they are widely thought to be introverts. These include Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, Marissa Mayer, current president and CEO of Yahoo, and Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

As entrepreneurs, introverts succeed because they “create and lead companies from a very focused place,” says Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” and founder of Quiet Revolution, a website for introverts.
. . .
Many people believe that introverts, by definition, are shy and extroverts are outgoing. This is incorrect. Introverts, whom experts say comprise about a third of the population, get their energy and process information internally. Some may be shy and some may be outgoing, but they all prefer to spend time alone or in small groups, and often feel drained by a lot of social interaction or large groups.
. . .
Introverts not only have the stamina to spend long periods alone–they love it. “Good entrepreneurs are able to give themselves the solitude they need to think creatively and originally–to create something where there once was nothing,” says Ms. Cain. “And this is just how introverts are wired.”
. . .
While extroverts are networking, promoting or celebrating success, introverts have their “butt on the seat,” says Laurie Helgoe, author of “Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life is Your Hidden Strength” and assistant professor in the department of psychology and human services at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va. “An introvert on his (p. R2) or her own is going to enjoy digging in and doing research–and be able to sustain him- or herself in that lonely place of forging your own way.”
They don’t need external affirmation
Another important characteristic of introverts is that they tend to rely on their own inner compass–not external signals–to know that they’re making the right move or doing a good job. That can give them an edge in several ways.
For instance, they generally don’t look for people to tell them whether an idea is worth pursuing. They tend to think it through before speaking about it to anybody, and rely on their own judgment about whether it’s worth pursuing.
With extroverts, the need for social stimulation, for getting the idea in front of other people, can make them leap before they’ve thought something out, Ms. Buelow says. “It’s very important for them to get outside feedback and motivation.” Feedback is great, of course. But at a certain point a leader needs to decide on a plan and execute it.
Following their own compass also helps introverts stay focused on a venture. Extroverts can get sidetracked by seeking external validation, such as awards or media attention for a project, which can divert them from their main goals. While introverts welcome external validation, they won’t let it define them or distract them. “It’s about keeping the long-haul perspective,” Ms. Buelow says.
What’s more, because introverts aren’t looking for outside events to validate their plans–or themselves–they don’t take setbacks as personally as extroverts. Somebody who relies on external affirmation tends to take setbacks personally and may get dispirited if the company hits a rough patch.
. . .
. . . , in a 2009 study looking at how introverts and extroverts approached an “effortful task,” Maya Tamir, director of the Emotion and Self-Regulation Laboratory at Boston College and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found that extroverts sought a happy state while completing the task, while introverts preferred to maintain a neutral emotional state.
“The introverts’ happy space is a quieter space with less interruptions,” says Ms. Buelow. “They won’t have that overstimulation.”

For the full commentary, see:
ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN. “The Case for the Introverted Entrepreneur; Conventional wisdom says you need to be an extrovert to start a successful business. That’s wrong for all sorts of reasons.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., August 24, 2015): R1-R2.
(Note: ellipses added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “Why Introverts Make Great Entrepreneurs; Conventional wisdom says you need to be an extrovert to start a successful business. That’s wrong for all sorts of reasons.”)

The Cain book mentioned in the commentary quoted above is:
Cain, Susan. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. New York: Crown, 2012.

The Helgoe book mentioned in the commentary quoted above is:
Helgoe, Laurie. Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2013.

The Maya Tamir article mentioned above, is:
Tamir, Maya. “Differential Preferences for Happiness: Extraversion and Trait-Consistent Emotion Regulation.” Journal of Personality 77, no. 2 (April 2009): 447-70.

Challenging Videogame Improves Attention and Memory in Seniors

(p. R1) Neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco have found that playing a challenging videogame upgrades our ability to pay attention.
As reported in the journal Nature in 2013, the Gazzaley lab trained 60- to 85-year-old subjects on a game called NeuroRacer. The multitask version involves simulated driving along a winding road while quickly pressing keys or a game controller to respond to a green sign when it appears on the roadside. As a control, some subjects played a single-task version of the game that omits the winding road and involves only noticing and responding to the green sign. To ensure that subjects were genuinely challenged but not discouraged, the level of game difficulty was individualized.
After 12 hours of training spread evenly over a month, multitasking subjects were about twice as efficient at shifting attention as when they started, a huge improvement by any standard. Remarkably, their new scores were comparable to those of 20-year-olds not trained on NeuroRacer. The subjects still tested positive six months later.
The multitaskers also got an unexpected brain bonus. Their sustained concentration and working memory (briefly holding information such as a phone number) improved as well. The training had targeted neither of these functions, but the general benefits emerged nonetheless.

For the full commentary, see:
PATRICIA CHURCHLAND. “MIND AND MATTER; A Senior Moment for Videogames as Brain-Boosters.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 3, 2015): C2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 30, 2015, and the title “MIND AND MATTER: Videogames for Seniors Boost Brainpower.”)

The Gazzaley article mentioned above, is:
Anguera, J. A., J. Boccanfuso, J. L. Rintoul, O. Al-Hashimi, F. Faraji, J. Janowich, E. Kong, Y. Larraburo, C. Rolle, E. Johnston, and Adam Gazzaley. “Video Game Training Enhances Cognitive Control in Older Adults.” Nature 501, no. 7465 (Sept. 5, 2013): 97-101.

Steve Jobs as Demanding Consumer: Jerk or Benefactor?

(p. D2) Mr. Jobs said he wanted freshly squeezed orange juice.
After a few minutes, the waitress returned with a large glass of juice. Mr. Jobs took a tiny sip and told her tersely that the drink was not freshly squeezed. He sent the beverage back, demanding another.
A few minutes later, the waitress returned with another large glass of juice, this time freshly squeezed. When he took a sip he told her in an aggressive tone that the drink had pulp along the top. He sent that one back, too.
My friend said he looked at Mr. Jobs and asked, “Steve, why are you being such a jerk?”
Mr. Jobs replied that if the woman had chosen waitressing as her vocation, “then she should be the best.”

. . .
. . . it wasn’t until my mother found out that she had terminal cancer in mid-March and was given a prognosis of only two weeks to live that I learned even if a job is just a job, you can still have a profound impact on someone else’s life. You just may not know it.
. . .
. . . one evening my mother became incredibly lucid and called for me. She was craving shrimp, she said. “I’m on it,” I told her as I ran down to the kitchen. “Shrimp coming right up!”
. . .
The restaurant was bustling. In the open kitchen in the back I could see a dozen men and women frantically slaving over the hot stoves and dishwashers, with busboys and waiters rushing in and out.
While I stood waiting for my mother’s shrimp, I watched all these people toiling away and I thought about what Mr. Jobs had said about the waitress from a few years earlier. Though his rudeness may have been uncalled-for, there was something to be said for the idea that we should do our best at whatever job we take on.
This should be the case, not because someone else expects it. Rather, as I want to teach my son, we should do it because our jobs, no matter how seemingly small, can have a profound effect on someone else’s life; we just don’t often get to see how we’re touching them.
Certainly, the men and women who worked at that little Thai restaurant in northern England didn’t know that when they went into work that evening, they would have the privilege of cooking someone’s last meal.
It was a meal that I would unwrap from the takeout packaging in my mother’s kitchen, carefully plucking four shrimp from the box and meticulously laying them out on one of her ornate china plates before taking it to her room. It was a meal that would end with my mother smiling for the last time before slipping away from consciousness and, in her posh British accent, saying, “Oh, that was just lovely.”

For the full commentary, see:
NICK BILTON. “Rites of Passage; Life Lessons from Steve Jobs.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Fri., AUG. 7, 2015): D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “Rites of Passage; What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Being a Son and a Father.”)

Stress Can Help Us Do Well

(p. C3) “We’re bombarded with information about how bad stress is,” says Jeremy Jamieson, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester who specializes in stress. But the conventional view, he says, fails to appreciate the many ways in which physical and psychological tension can help us to perform better.
In research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2010, Prof. Jamieson tested his theory with college students who were preparing to take the Graduate Record Examination, which is used for admission to Ph.D. programs. He invited 60 students to take a practice GRE and collected saliva samples from them beforehand to get baseline measures of their levels of alpha-amylase, a hormonal indicator of stress. He told them that the goal of the study was to examine how the physiological stress response affects performance.
He then gave half the students a brief pep talk to help them rethink their pre-exam nervousness. “People think that feeling anxious while taking a standardized test will make them do poorly,” he told them. “However, recent research suggests that stress doesn’t hurt performance on these tests and can even help performance. People who feel anxious during a test might actually do better…. If you find yourself feeling anxious, simply remind yourself that your stress could be helping you do well.”
It worked: Students who received the mind-set intervention scored higher on the practice exam than those in the control group. Nor could the difference in GRE scores be attributed to differences in ability: Students had been randomly assigned to the two groups and didn’t differ, on average, in their SAT scores or college GPAs.

For the full commentary, see:
KELLY MCGONIGAL. “Stressed Out? Embrace It; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 16, 2015): C3.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 15, 2015, and has the title “Use Stress to Your Advantage; To perform under pressure, research finds that welcoming anxiety is more helpful than calming down.”)

McGonigal’s book, related to her commentary quoted above, is:
McGonigal, Kelly. The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It. New York: Avery, 2015.

The research article mentioned in the passages quoted above, is:
Jamieson, Jeremy P., Wendy Berry Mendes, Erin Blackstock, and Toni Schmader. “Turning the Knots in Your Stomach into Bows: Reappraising Arousal Improves Performance on the GRE.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 208-12.

Affluent Are More Likely to Work During Retirement

That the affluent are more than twice as likely to work past retirement, may be a sign that the better paying jobs are also the more satisfying jobs.

(p. B9) But retirement isn’t for everyone. Affluent individuals are more than twice as likely as other people to keep working in retirement, according to a July survey by Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch and Age Wave, a research firm based in Emeryville, Calif., that specializes in aging populations.

Some 33% of retirees with $1 million to $5 million in assets are working, as are 29% of those with more than $5 million. Most say they do so because they want to, not because they have to, according to the survey.
Half of affluent working retirees have shifted to a different line of work, most often because of greater flexibility of scheduling, the opportunity to experience new things, and the pursuit of a passion or interest, the survey found.
The results show how important it is to consider what you will do with your time and to think hard about whether that will be satisfying.

For the full commentary, see:
LIZ MOYER. “Can You Afford to Retire Early?” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 2, 2014): B7 & B9.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Aug. 1, 2014.)

Should You Care How Other People Perceive You?

(p. B2) Sadly, it does appear that being flawed in one area may help in others. In an article in The Atlantic titled “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk,” the author Jerry Useem quotes several studies that show that nice guys don’t usually win. Donald Hambrick, a management professor at Penn State, told the magazine, “To the extent that innovation and risk-taking are in short supply in the corporate world, narcissists are the ones who are going to step up to the plate.”
Not everyone thinks Jobs was a jerk. Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, wrote on Twitter that he felt the Gibney film was “an inaccurate and meanspirited view of my friend. It’s not a reflection of the Steve I knew.”
But the black hat-white hat version of Jobs may be too confining.
In a fascinating interview last year with Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s famed designer and longtime friend of Jobs, recounted a telling story. He remembered a time when Jobs had been tough — too tough, in Mr. Ive’s estimation — on his team. Mr. Ive pulled him aside and told him to be bit nicer. “Well, why?” Jobs replied. “Because I care about the team,” Mr. Ive responded. “And he said this brutally, brilliantly insightful thing, which was, ‘No, Jony, you’re just really vain,’ ” Mr. Ive recalled. “He said, ‘You just want people to like you, and I’m surprised at you because I thought you really held the work up as the most important, not how you believed you were perceived by other people.’ ”
That story and the documentary left me with me with two questions: Would you rather do something extraordinary that benefits the lives of millions of people? Or be liked by several hundred? And does it have to be an either-or question?
The answer, like Jobs, is complicated.

For the full commentary, see:
Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Decoding Steve Jobs, in Life and on Film.” The New York Times (Tues., SEPT. 8, 2015): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date SEPT. 7, 2015.)

“You Can Recognize the People Who Live for Others by the Haunted Look on the Faces of the Others”

(p. C21) In her first book, “Strangers Drowning,” Larissa MacFarquhar, a staff writer for The New Yorker, reports . . . about extreme do-gooders, people whose self-sacrifice and ethical commitment are far outside what we think of as the normal range.
. . .
A line from Clive James’s memoir “North Face of Soho” comes to mind. He quotes the journalist Katherine Whitehorn: “You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others.”
. . .
(p. C26) It was Kant who observed that, as the author writes, “it was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage.”
. . .
Charity begins at home, most of us would agree. Not for many of the people in “Strangers Drowning.” In their moral calculus, the goal is to help the most people, even if that means neglecting those close by, even spouses or children.
One of the interesting threads Ms. MacFarquhar picks up is the notion that, for extreme altruists, the best way to help relieve suffering may not be to travel to Africa, let’s say, to open a clinic or help build a dam. It is far more noble and effective — though less morally swashbuckling — simply to find the highest-paying job you can and give away most of your salary. She finds people who live this way.

For the full review, see:
DWIGHT GARNER. “Books of The Times; Samaritans and Other Troublemakers.” The New York Times (Fri., SEPT. 25, 2015): C21 & C26.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date SEPT. 24, 2015, and has the title “Review: ‘Strangers Drowning’ Examines Extreme Do-Gooders.”)

The book under review, is:
MacFarquhar, Larissa. Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. New York: Penguin Press, 2015.

Experts Are Paid “to Sound Cocksure” Even When They Do Not Know

(p. B1) I think Philip Tetlock’s “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” co-written with the journalist Dan Gardner, is the most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” (I helped write and edit the Kahneman book but receive no royalties from it.) Prof. Kahneman agrees. “It’s a manual to systematic thinking in the real world,” he told me. “This book shows that under the right conditions regular people are capable of improving their judgment enough to beat the professionals at their own game.”
The book is so powerful because Prof. Tetlock, a psychologist and professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has a remarkable trove of data. He has just concluded the first stage of what he calls the Good Judgment Project, which pitted some 20,000 amateur forecasters against some of the most knowledgeable experts in the world.
The amateurs won–hands down.
. . .
(p. B7) The most careful, curious, open-minded, persistent and self-critical–as measured by a battery of psychological tests–did the best.
. . .
Most experts–like most people–“are too quick to make up their minds and too slow to change them,” he says. And experts are paid not just to be right, but to sound right: cocksure even when the evidence is sparse or ambiguous.

For the full review, see:
JASON ZWEIG. “The Trick to Making Better Forecasts.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 26, 2015): B1 & B7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Sept. 25, 2015.)

The book under review, is:
Tetlock, Philip E., and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015.

Autism Is “Inseparably Tied to Innovation”

(p. 11) “NeuroTribes” is beautifully told, humanizing, important. It has earned its enthusiastic foreword from Oliver Sacks; it has found its place on the shelf next to “Far From the Tree,” Andrew Solomon’s landmark appreciation of neurological differences. At its heart is a plea for the world to make accommodations for those with autism, not the other way around, and for researchers and the public alike to focus on getting them the services they need. They are, to use Temple Grandin’s words, “different, not less.” Better yet, indispensable: inseparably tied to innovation, showing us there are other ways to think and work and live.

For the full review, see:
JENNIFER SENIOR. “‘Skewed Diagnosis; A Science Journalist’s Reading of Medical History Suggests that the ‘Autism Pandemic’ Is an Optical Illusion.” The New York Time Book Review (Sun., AUG. 23, 2015): 11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 17, 2015, and has the title “‘NeuroTribes,’ by Steve Silberman.”)

The book under review, is:
Silberman, Steve. Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. New York: Avery/Penguin Random House, 2015.

Should We Have a Right to the Silence that “Contributes to Creativity and Innovation”?

(p. D5) The benefits of silence are off the books. They are not measured in the gross domestic product, yet the availability of silence surely contributes to creativity and innovation. They do not show up explicitly in social statistics such as level of educational achievement, yet one consumes a great deal of silence in the course of becoming educated.
. . .
Or do we? Silence is now offered as a luxury good. In the business-class lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I heard only the occasional tinkling of a spoon against china. I saw no advertisements on the walls. This silence, more than any other feature, is what makes it feel genuinely luxurious. When you step inside and the automatic doors whoosh shut behind you, the difference is nearly tactile, like slipping out of haircloth into satin. Your brow unfurrows, your neck muscles relax; after 20 minutes you no longer feel exhausted.
Outside, in the peon section, is the usual airport cacophony. . . .
. . .
To engage in inventive thinking during those idle hours spent at an airport requires silence.
. . .
I think we need to sharpen the conceptually murky right to privacy by supplementing it with a right not to be addressed. This would apply not, of course, to those who address me face to face as individuals, but to those who never show their faces, and treat my mind as a resource to be harvested.

For the full commentary, see:
MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD. “OPINION; The Cost of Paying Attention.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., MARCH 8, 2015): 5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 7, 2015.)

The commentary quoted above is related to the author’s book:
Crawford, Matthew B. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Too Much Positive Thinking Creates Relaxed Complacency

(p. D5) In her smart, lucid book, “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation,” Dr. Oettingen critically re-examines positive thinking and give readers a more nuanced — and useful — understanding of motivation based on solid empirical evidence.
Conventional wisdom has it that dreams are supposed to excite us and inspire us to act. Putting this to the test, Dr. Oettingen recruits a group of undergraduate college students and randomly assigns them to two groups. She instructs the first group to fantasize that the coming week will be a knockout: good grades, great parties and the like; students in the second group are asked to record all their thoughts and daydreams about the coming week, good and bad.
Strikingly, the students who were told to think positively felt far less energized and accomplished than those who were instructed to have a neutral fantasy. Blind optimism, it turns out, does not motivate people; instead, as Dr. Oettingen shows in a series of clever experiments, it creates a sense of relaxation complacency. It is as if in dreaming or fantasizing about something we want, our minds are tricked into believing we have attained the desired goal.
There appears to be a physiological basis for this effect: Studies show that just fantasizing about a wish lowers blood pressure, while thinking of that same wish — and considering not getting it — raises blood pressure. It may feel better to daydream, but it leaves you less energized and less prepared for action.
. . .
In one study, she taught a group of third graders a mental-contrast exercise: They were told to imagine a candy prize they would receive if they finished a language assignment, and then to imagine several of their own behaviors that could prevent them from winning. A second group of students was instructed only to fantasize about winning the prize. The students who did the mental contrast outperformed those who just dreamed.

For the full review, see:
RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. “Books; Dare to Dream of Falling Short.” The New York Times (Tues., DEC. 23, 2014): D5.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date DEC. 22, 2014.)

The book under review, is:
Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Current, 2014.