Tag: social behavior

  • Why are “they” acting this way? Psychological Tips in the “New Normal”

    The future isn’t predictable right now. We are living in a time of transition and many of us are reeling from the rapid changes occurring. In the roundtable forums I facilitate for business owners and executives, the participants talk about the various responses they observe from employees – some are in denial, others angry, still others depressed and some happy to be working virtually. 

    One CEO of a manufacturing operation expressed concern last week in our meeting because his once engaged workforce seems to be going through the motions and making “mindless” mistakes along the way. “They don’t want to be accountable,” he added. His view is that employees should feel fortunate they have a job when so many people don’t. When he asks some of his key managers what the pulse of the organization is, they report that some of the employees think he’s fortunate because they are showing up.

    Some things aren’t predictable. Human behavior often is. What is the psychology of people’s responses to the pandemic and its effects? How can understanding it help you be a better leader? Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ Stages of Grief offers us a good model to help better understand some of the internal changes that we and others may be experiencing. 

    Kubler-Ross was a Swiss psychiatrist that worked with many dying patients. She based her model on her observations of how the patients and their families responded to grief; she outlines five stages in her now classic book, On Death and Dying. These are:

    Stage 1: Denial of the situation – can involve avoidance, confusion, shock or fear

    Stage 2: Anger with what’s happening or those seen as responsible – can involve frustration, irritation, anxiety or insubordination

    Stage 3: Bargaining or struggling to find the meaning of what is occurring – can involve an urgency to make a deal to resolve things, regret, or guilt

    Stage 4: Depression – can involve feeling overwhelmed, helpless, hostility or isolated

    Stage 5: Acceptance – can involve calmness or feeling at peace, exploring options, curiosity about what might come next or increased comfort with the unknown.

    Although the stages appear linear, people don’t necessarily go through all of them or in the same order. Productivity tends to remain high when a person is in denial and begins to dip if anger sets in. In the bargaining stage, productivity goes down as the person attempts to make deals or exchanges to resolve things and get back to normal. Many organizations furloughing employees may witness the bargaining stage as employees plead to do x, y, and z in order to keep working. Depression is tough to address as it can range from mild and situational to severe and long-term. Depressed people aren’t productive and have a hard time concentrating. At the acceptance stage, people are more willing to accept the “new normal” and even participate in visioning the future.

    Take some time to be aware of your own internal response to the crisis. Is it clouding how you communicate and engage with others? If you identified the stage you are in and you are working with someone in a different one, how will you communicate differently? In my next blog, I will discuss some communication strategies to help you enhance your communication during this potentially stressful time.

    Written by Mary Key, Ph.D.

  • How To Persuade People to Change Their Behavior

    Our innate anti-persuasion radar raises our defenses, so we avoid or ignore the message or, even worse, counter-argue, conjuring up all the reasons why what someone else suggested is a bad idea. Sure, the governor said to stay home but they’re overreacting.  Maybe the virus is bad in some part of the country, but I don’t know a single person whose gotten it.  And besides, many people who get it are fine anyway, so what’s the big deal?  Like an overzealous high school debater, they poke and prod and raise objections until the persuasive power of the message crumbles.

    So if telling people to do doesn’t work, what does? Rather than trying to persuade people, getting them to persuade themselves is often more effective.  Here are three ways to do that.

    1. Highlight a gap. 

    You can increase people’s sense of freedom and control by pointing out a disconnect between their thoughts and actions, or between what they might recommend for others versus do themselves.

    Take staying at home. For young people who might resist, ask what they would suggest an elderly grandparent or a younger brother or sister do. Would they want them out, interacting with possibly infected people?  If not, why do they think it’s safe for them to do so?

    People strive for internal consistency. They want their attitudes and actions to line up.  Highlighting misalignment encourages them to resolve the disconnect.

    Health officials in Thailand used this approach in anti-smoking campaign.  Rather than telling smokers their habit was bad, they had little kids come up to smokers on the street and ask them for a light.  Not surprisingly, the smokers told the kids no. Many even lectured the little boys and girls about the dangers of smoking. But before turning to walk away, the kids handed the smokers a note that said, “You worry about me … But why not about yourself?” At the bottom was a toll-free number smokers could call to get help.  Calls to that line jumped more than 60% during the campaign.

    2. Pose questions.

    Another way to allow for agency is to ask questions rather than make statements.  Public health messaging tries to be direct: “Junk food makes you fat.” “Drunk driving is murder.” “Keep sheltering in place.” But being so forceful can make people feel threatened. The same content can be phrased in terms of a question: “Do you think junk food is good for you?” If someone’s answer is no, they’re now in a tough spot. By encouraging them to articulate their opinion, they’ve had to put a stake in the ground — to admit that those things aren’t good for them. And once they’ve done that, it becomes harder to keep justify the bad behaviors.

    Questions shift the listener’s role. Rather than counter-arguing or thinking about all the reasons they disagree, they’re sorting through their answer to your query and their feelings or opinions on the matter.  And this shift increases buy-in. It encourages people to commit to the conclusion, because while people might not want to follow someone else’s lead, they’re more than happy to follow their own.  The answer to the question isn’t just any answer; it’s theiranswer, reflecting their own personal thoughts, beliefs, and preferences. That makes it more likely to drive action.

    In the case of this crisis, questions like “How bad would it be if your loved ones got sick?” could prove more effective than directives in driving commitment to long-term or intermittent social distancing and vigilant hygiene practices.

    3. Ask for less. 

    The third approach is to reduce the size of the ask.

    A doctor was dealing with an obese trucker who was drinking three liters of Mountain Dew a day.  She wanted to ask him to quit cold turkey, but knew that would probably fail, so she tried something else. She asked him to go from three liters a day to two.  He grumbled, but after a few weeks, was able to make the switch.  Then, on the next visit, she asked him to cut down to one liter a day. Finally, after he was able to do that, only then did she suggest cutting the soda out entirely. The trucker still drinks a can of Mountain Dew once in a while, but he’s lost more than 25 pounds.

    Especially in times of crisis, health organizations want big change right away. Everyone should continue to stay at home, by themselves, for two more months.  But asks this big often get rejected.  They’re so different from what people are doing currently that they fall into what scientists call “the region of rejection” and get ignored.

    A better approach is to dial down the initial request. Ask for less initially, and then ask for more. Take a big ask and break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Government officials responding to the pandemic are already doing this to some extent by setting initial end dates for social distancing measures, then extending them. But there might be more opportunities, for example when experts allow for some restrictions to be lifted — say, on small gatherings — but insist that others, such as concerts or sporting events, continue to be banned.

    Whether we’re encouraging people to socially distance, shop only once a week, thoroughly wash hands and wear face masks, or change behavior more broadly, too often we default to a particular approach: Pushing.  We assume that if we just remind people again or give them more facts, figures, or reasons, they’ll come around.  But, as recent backlash against the Covid-19 -related restrictions suggests, this doesn’t always work over the long term, especially when your demands have no fixed end date.

    If we instead understand the key barriers preventing change, such as reactance, and employ tactics designed to overcome them, we can change anything.


    Author:

    Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author, most recently, of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

  • How Being Bullied Affects Your Adulthood

    One researcher who has interviewed hundreds of adults who were bullied as teens posits an interesting theory.

    In American schools, bullying is like the dark cousin to prom, student elections, or football practice: Maybe you weren’t involved, but you knew that someone, somewhere was. Five years ago, President Obama spoke against this inevitability at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said. “But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.”

    We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is corrosive to children’s mental health and well-being, with consequences ranging from trouble sleeping and skipping school to psychiatric problems, such as depression or psychosis, self-harm, and suicide.

    But the damage doesn’t stop there. You can’t just close the door on these experiences, says Ellen Walser deLara, a family therapist and professor of social work at Syracuse University, who has interviewed more than 800 people age 18 to 65 about the lasting effects of bullying. Over the years, deLara has seen a distinctive pattern emerge in adults who were intensely bullied. In her new book, Bullying Scars, she introduces a name for the set of symptoms she often encounters: adult post-bullying syndrome, or APBS.

    DeLara estimates that more than a third of the adults she’s spoken to who were bullied have this syndrome. She stresses that APBS is a description, not a diagnosis—she isn’t seeking to have APBS classified as a psychiatric disorder. “It needs considerably more research and other researchers to look at it to make sure that this is what we’re seeing,” deLara says.

    Roughly 1 in 3 students in the United States are bullied at school (figures on cyberbullying are less certain, because it is newer than other forms of bullying and the technology kids use to carry it out is constantly in flux). This abuse can span exclusion, rumors, name-calling, or physical harm. Some victims are isolated loners while others are bedeviled by their own friends or social rivals.

    Years after being mistreated, people with adult post-bullying syndrome commonly struggle with trust and self-esteem, and develop psychiatric problems, deLara’s research found. Some become people-pleasers, or rely on food, alcohol, or drugs to cope.

    In some respects, APBS is similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in which people who have had terrifying experiences develop an impaired fight-or-flight response. Both APBS and PTSD can lead to lasting anger or anxiety, substance abuse, battered self-esteem, and relationship problems. One difference, though, is that people with APBS seem less prone to sudden flares of rage.

    “Those with PTSD have internalized their trauma such that it has affected their nervous system,” deLara says. “People with PTSD react immediately because their triggers are basically telling them they need to protect themselves against harm.” Those with APBS seem to have a longer fuse; the damage comes not in an outsized reaction but instead because they ruminate on what happened.

    DeLara observed another distinction between sufferers of PTSD and those with APBS: Sometimes, having been bullied seems to have positive outcomes.

    About 47 percent of deLara’s interviewees said they had mined something beneficial, like a sense of inner strength or self-reliance, from the experience. Others cultivated empathy or consciously decided to treat others well or make something of their lives. Everyone with APBS had at least one or more of these boons, deLara says.

    It’s unclear how much of this silver lining can be traced to genetics, and how much to a supportive family or community. “We don’t know the answer as to why some people who are bullied as children have what they consider to be a beneficial outcome as adults,” deLara says.

    She is planning to compare the recovery rates for people with PTSD and with APBS. One difference she saw in people with APBS is that they don’t see the world as a menacing place, as people with PTSD often do.

    Some people have an inborn sense of optimism, or ability to focus on how lucky they are to have left bullying behind them. These people might have a head start in bouncing back, but resilience can also be learned. For people with APBS, deLara recommends family and cognitive behavioral therapies, particularly those focused on trauma.

    Of course, the damage wrought by bullying handily outweighs any benefits. “Because people can make lemonade out of lemons, it doesn’t mean that bullying is a good thing,” deLara says. Even those who are able to see the positive side of having been bullied often had other negative ramifications.

    DeLara hopes that giving a name to these experiences will make it easier for people to find effective treatment. “In order to help someone you have to be able to clearly name what’s going on,” she says. Moreover, people who live with the symptoms of adult post-bullying syndrome don’t realize that they’re not the only ones to respond this way. One man told deLara that the idea of APBS helped him realize his reaction was normal and not another personality flaw.

    DeLara plans to continue studying the long-term consequences of bullying and which therapies can help people overcome them.

    Dieter Wolke, who has studied the psychiatric impacts of bullying in adults at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, agrees that bullying can leave devastating, long-lasting psychological damage. He’s hesitant, however, about using a new term for these symptoms based on their cause. “I see not much value in inventing a new name,” he says. It’s more important, he says, for doctors to be trained to broach the subject of bullying with their patients.

    What is clear is that while some adults have overcome the bullying they endured as kids, others continue to suffer. The research on what forms this suffering takes is still preliminary. Whether or not the label of APBS sticks around, people who live with its symptoms will benefit from any research into how to resolve them.

    Author: Kate Baggaley