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People who constantly complain are harmful to your health
Moans, groans, and gripes release stress hormones in the brain.
Photo credit: Getty Images / Stringer
Could you give up complaining for a whole month? That's the crux of this interesting piece by Jessica Hullinger over at Fast Company. Hullinger explores the reasons why humans are so predisposed to griping and why, despite these predispositions, we should all try to complain less. As for no complaining for a month, that was the goal for people enrolled in the Complaint Restraint project.
Participants sought to go the entirety of February without so much as a moan, groan, or bellyache.
The most obvious reason for striving to complain less is that griping is bad for you: "When we complain, our brains release stress hormones that harm neural connections in areas used for problem solving and other cognitive functions. This also happens when we listen to someone else moan and groan."
Hullinger quotes Jon Gordon, author of the 2008 book The No Complaining Rule, as saying the harms of complaining are comparable to secondhand smoke. Being a Negative Nancy in the office is not unlike chain smoking at your desk. For Gordon, both are unacceptable. He doesn't want the other members of his office to have to breathe in the offensive fumes of an employee's gripes.
At the end of Hullinger's piece are several tips for moving away from constant complaining and rethinking the impulses that lead to such discontent. The best advice is to separate yourself from chronic complainers who can only make themselves happy by bringing down other people with their dissatisfaction.
Read more at Fast Company.
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Is immigration key to bolstering the American economy? Could having one billion Americans secure the US's position as <em>the</em> global superpower? What if massive population growth could nourish rural economies and strengthen our country from the inside out? Perhaps these questions are provocative fodder for more debate and contention but, for Matthew Yglesias, asking them and arguing about them is part of the American way. Join him in a conversation moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg as they explore the case for one billion Americans.
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Should you grow a beard? Here's how women perceive bearded men
Whether or not women think beards are sexy has to do with "moral disgust"
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Photo Credit: Frank Marino / Unsplash
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<p>The beard is an ever contentious subject in the domain of male grooming practices. Love them or hate them, new research on heterosexual mating preferences offers clues about why some women fawn over facial hair. </p>
<p>Research by <a href="https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191209" target="_blank">Tessa R. Clarkson et al.</a> at the University of Queensland measured women's judgement of the attractiveness of men with varying levels of facial masculinity and beardedness. What they found was that women do indeed perceive men with facial hair to be more attractive as well as physically and socially dominant. Particularly, women with high levels of moral disgust.</p>
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjU5OTg0MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzkxMjM3N30.cH-GqNwP5GVqvstgJWAhBPn1B_lYpVEAI0I7iax7EQw/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C1900%2C0%2C849&height=700" id="caae6" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cb0a355a4e8e1899789bc45f3f7aef56" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Photo Credit: Wikimedia
<p>The study used 919 American (mostly white) women ages 18-70 who rated 30 pictures of men they were shown with various stages of facial hair growth. The photographs depicted men with faces that had been digitally altered to look more feminine or more masculine, with a beard and without a beard. The women rated the men according to perceived attractiveness for long-term and short-term relationships. The study found that the more facial hair the men had, the higher the men were rated on their attractiveness, particularly for their suitability for a long-term relationship.</p><p>Part of this might be attributed to facial masculinity — i.e. protruding brow ridge, wide cheekbones, thick jawline, and deeply set narrow eyes — which conveys information to a woman about a man's underlying health and formidability. Women tend to associate more masculine faces with physical strength and social assertiveness. It can also indicate a man with a superior immune response. The researchers suggested that their findings favoring bearded men could be due to the fact that facial hair enhances the masculine facial features on a man's face, like creating the illusion of a thicker jaw line. This could communicate direct benefits to women like resources and protection that would enhance survival among mothers and their infants. In other words, while a beard doesn't mean superior genetics in and of itself, it might be a primitive, ornamental way of saying, "Hey girl, I'm a testosterone-fueled lean, mean, pathogen fighting machine." <br></p><p>It could also be that a beard becomes its own destiny. The researchers in this study cite prior research that found that by growing a beard, men felt more masculine and had higher levels of serum testosterone, which was linked to a higher level of social dominance. They also tended to subscribe to more old-school beliefs about gender roles in their relationships with women as compared to men with clean-shaven faces.<span></span><br></p>What does disgust have to do with beard preference?
<p>Obviously, not all women dig beards. The researchers were particularly interested in what traits make a women prefer bearded men over clean-shaven faces. They looked into several factors including a woman's disgust levels on various concepts, her desire to become pregnant, and her exposure to facial hair in her personal life. </p><p>According to the study, women who were not into facial hair were turned-off by potential parasites or other critters they imagined could be in the hair or skin. Women ranking high on this "ectoparasite disgust" scale might have viewed beards as a sign of poor grooming habits. However, women who ranked higher in levels of "pathogen" did find the bearded men to be desirable, possibly because they perceived beards as a signal of good health and immune function. An intriguing discovery in the study was links to morality. Women who displayed higher levels of "moral disgust," or feelings of repugnance toward taboo behaviors, were more likely to prefer hairy faces. The authors opined that this could reflect a link between beardedness, politically conservative outlooks, and traditional views regarding performances of masculinity in heterosexual relationships.</p>Additional findings
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Credit: Pixabay
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<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Professor Weld pointed out that Alec understood that these paths could tell precisely "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">why in some regimes of driving the atoms get pumped, while in other regimes of driving the atoms spread out and break up the wave function."</span></p><p>The research may have applications in topological quantum computing as well as advancing knowledge of how quantum chaos appears, explaining such phenomena as the butterfly effect. </p><p>Check out the new study in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.032032" target="_blank">Physical Review Research.</a></p>
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Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
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Books about race and anti-racism have dominated bestseller lists in the past few months, bringing to prominence authors including Ibram Kendi, Ijeoma Oluo, Reni Eddo-Lodge, and Robin DiAngelo.
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<h3>What is cognitive bias?</h3><p>Human brains are hardwired to take shortcuts when processing information to make decisions, resulting in "systematic thinking errors", or unconscious bias.</p><p>When it comes to influencing our decisions and judgments around people, cognitive or unconscious bias is universally recognized to play a role in unequal outcomes for people of colour.</p><p>This helps to explain why unconscious bias training is often the first resort for companies looking to build more inclusive workplaces, with <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenmorris/2020/07/21/dont-jump-into-unconscious-bias-training-until-you-read-this/#190a1cde3f41" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">outcomes that may be highly variable and, at times, result in little measurable improvement</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenmorris/2020/07/21/dont-jump-into-unconscious-bias-training-until-you-read-this/#190a1cde3f41" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>These three cognitive biases are likely to be at play and could influence our decisions:</p>
<h4>1. Moral licensing</h4><p>This is when people derive such confidence from past moral behaviour that they are more likely to engage in immoral or unethical ways later.</p><p>In a 2010 study, researchers argued that moral self-licensing occurs "because good deeds make people feel secure in their moral self-regard", and <a href="http://adam.curry.com/enc/20140824153442_monin2010compassonmorallicensing.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">future problematic behaviour does not evoke the same feelings</a> of negative self-judgment that it otherwise would.<a href="http://adam.curry.com/enc/20140824153442_monin2010compassonmorallicensing.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Participants who had voiced support for US President Barack Obama just before the 2008 election were less likely, when presented with a hypothetical slate of candidates for a police force job, to select a Black candidate for the role.</p><p>As the study authors hypothesize, "presumably, the act of expressing support for a Black presidential candidate made them feel that they no longer needed to prove their lack of prejudice". Other research shows that <a href="https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/soco.2016.34.6.559" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">implicit and explicit attitudes toward African Americans</a> did not substantively change during the period of the Obama presidency.</p><p>Moral licensing may help explain the limitations of corporate unconscious bias training in creating an anti-racist work environment, an effect which has already been observed when it comes to tackling gender inequality.</p><p>Iris Bohnet, a <a href="https://qz.com/631767/why-companies-that-take-pride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">behavioural economist</a>, suggests that "diversity programs aimed at influencing the worst offenders might backfire… Training designed to raise awareness about gender and race inequality may end up making gender and race more salient and thereby highlighting differences."</p>
<h4>2. Affinity bias</h4><p>This is our <a href="https://diversityjournal.com/13763-affinity-bias-conundrum-illusion-inclusion-part-iii/ride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">tendency to get along with others who are like us</a>, and to evaluate them more positively than those who are different. Our personal beliefs, assumptions, preferences, and lack of understanding about people who are not like us may lead to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/#7a4bcad71e9d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">repeatedly favouring 'similar-to-me' individuals</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/12/29/your-unconscious-bias-trainings-keep-failing-because-youre-not-addressing-systemic-bias/#7a4bcad71e9d" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>In organizations, this often affects who gets hired, who gets promoted, and who gets picked for opportunities to manage people or projects.</p><p>Employees who look like those already in leadership are given opportunities to develop their careers, due to affinity bias, resulting in a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/success/diversity-and-black-leadership-in-corporate-america/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">lack of representation in senior leadership roles for BIPOC</a>.</p><p>Affinity bias is particularly insidious in recruitment processes, where it presents as a lack of "culture fit", an ambiguous evaluation that should be avoided as an explanation for declining to hire a candidate.</p><p>Many hiring managers have a hard time articulating their organization's specific culture, or explaining what exactly they mean when they say "culture fit", leading to this being <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/06/how-to-reduce-personal-bias-when-hiring" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">misused to engage employees that managers feel they will personally relate to</a>.</p>
<h4>3. Confirmation bias</h4><p>This is the tendency to <a href="https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/confirmation-bias-how-it-affects-your-organization-and-how-to-overcome-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">seek out, favour, and use information that confirms what you already believe</a>.<a href="https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/confirmation-bias-how-it-affects-your-organization-and-how-to-overcome-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a>The other side of this is that people tend to ignore new information that goes against their preconceived notions, leading to poor decision-making.</p><p>It can hinder efforts to create and nurture an antiracist workplace culture, and also contributes to the limited effectiveness of unconscious bias training, together with moral licensing and affinity bias.</p><p>Many people's perceptions of others with different identities and with whom they have limited interaction, is strongly influenced by media depictions and longstanding cultural stereotypes.</p><p>For example, a 2017 study published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-11085-001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">people tended to perceive young Black men as taller</a>, heavier, and more muscular than similarly sized white men, and hence more physically threatening.<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-11085-001" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Persistent notions about female or BIPOC candidates being inherently less qualified than white male candidates can <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/04/if-theres-only-one-woman-in-your-candidate-pool-theres-statistically-no-chance-shell-be-hired" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">undermine efforts to increase diversity</a>, because such candidates are more likely to be negatively evaluated and ultimately not selected.</p><p>Confirmation bias also helps to explain why <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/12/why-arent-there-more-asian-americans-in-leadership-positions" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Asian Americans are underrepresented in leadership</a> positions despite outperforming other minorities and white people in the US on education, employment and income. Long-held stereotypes lead to Asian Americans being seen as modest, deferential, and low in social skills, while at the same time penalizing those who adopt more dominant behaviours.</p>
<h3>How to overcome unconscious bias</h3><h4>1. Change systems, not individuals</h4><p>The main reason unconscious bias training programmes fail to have the desired effect in creating lasting change, is that they are focused on changing individual behaviours while leaving largely untouched the systems that enabled those behaviours to thrive.</p><p>Individual biases are difficult to shift in the long term, and the academic evidence suggests that <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017017719841?journalCode=wesa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">knowing about bias does not result in changes in behaviour</a> by managers and employees.<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017017719841?journalCode=wesa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>The whole social environment - rather than the individual - needs to be addressed. This can be done by implementing company policies and programmes designed to mitigate bias through all stages of the employee's journey, from selection processes to performance ratings and promotion decisions.</p><p>These structures, which should be audited regularly, are important in ensuring that any individual's own bias is limited and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/06/29/youre-more-racist-than-you-think-how-your-mental-biases-perpetuate-racism-and-how-to-fix-them/#5306428d7ffc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">does not influence decisions at an organizational level</a>.<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mishagajewski/2020/06/29/youre-more-racist-than-you-think-how-your-mental-biases-perpetuate-racism-and-how-to-fix-them/#5306428d7ffc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Such structural initiatives may end up influencing social norms within organizations, so behavioural change happens on a larger group level, leading to <a href="https://qz.com/631767/why-companies-that-take-pride-in-diversity-programs-still-wind-up-hiring-white-guys/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">improved compliance from individuals</a> as they gain a new understanding of socially-acceptable behaviour.</p>
<h4>2. Slow down and act deliberately</h4><p>Bias is most likely to affect decision-making when decisions are made quickly, according to Stanford University psychology professor <a href="https://time.com/5558181/jennifer-eberhardt-overcoming-implicit-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jennifer Eberhardt</a>, who studies implicit bias in police departments.<a href="https://time.com/5558181/jennifer-eberhardt-overcoming-implicit-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>We are less likely to act on bias when we slow down and control our thoughts, consciously overcoming first impressions and the biases that come with them.</p><p>This is where unconscious bias training may have an impact, because self-awareness and education are key to shifting mindsets. Such mindset shifts are needed for people of colour as well, as research shows that they are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01973533.2018.1462185" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">equally subject to the unconscious bias provoked by negative stereotypes</a>.</p><p>At work, slowing down may take the form of ensuring that one person's biases do not contaminate processes through <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/06/7-practical-ways-to-reduce-bias-in-your-hiring-process" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">establishing control mechanisms</a>: ensuring a diversity of feedback givers during recruitment processes, and establishing structured interviews with the same set of defined questions and evaluation criteria for each candidate.</p>
<h4>3. Set concrete goals and work towards them</h4><p>Data is essential to making real progress on diversity goals, and especially important when it comes to mitigating the effects of bias because it provides an objective measure of what has improved – or worsened – over time.</p><p>The goals themselves will be specific to each organization's needs and context. But taking into consideration local variables such as countries of operation, company size, business goals, and organizational culture, setting goals and tracking progress in a transparent way ensures the environmental change (as opposed to individual) that is needed for success.</p><p>Data is key to buy-in, and companies can increase accountability by collecting and analysing data on diversity over time, comparing the numbers with those at other organizations, and sharing them with key stakeholders internally and externally.</p><p>Data collection also helps companies identify roadblocks, and <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/05/diversity-and-inclusion-efforts-that-really-work" target="_blank">engage with key stakeholders on strategies to address them</a>.</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/cognitive-bias-unconscious-racism-moral-licensing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">original article</a>.</p>
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