THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REASON YOU DON'T DO WHAT YOU SAY

Mon Dec 11 2023 Michael McQueen

In the early 50s, a doomsday cult called the Oak Park Study Group thought the world was ending. Members of this particular cult had predicted that a massive flood would occur on December 21st of that year and destroy all life on Earth. Oak Park Study Group members were taught that on the eve of the cataclysm, an alien being from the planet Clarion would come to rescue the true believers from the fate that awaited humankind the next day.

At the time, Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger became intrigued by this group’s rise to prominence. Having infiltrated the group with a group of colleagues under the guise of being true believers, Festinger uncovered some fascinating psychological findings about the nature of cognitive dissonance.

Oxford Dictionary have announced their word of the year, and you will be forgiven if you have no idea what it means, if you have even heard it at all. The word of 2023 is, ‘Rizz.’

If you haven’t heard of it, ‘rizz’ is a slang word derived from ‘charisma’, defined by The Oxford Dictionary as, "Pertaining to someone’s ability to attract another person through style, charm, or attractiveness."

“Rizz” is one word among many proliferated primarily through Gen Z’s social media presence – Gen Z being the 2 billion people born between 1995 and 2009.[1] Other key words in the lexicon include, “slay”, “sus”, “drip”, “simp”, “stan” and “cap”, all commonly used among Gen Zs but completely opaque to the untrained ears of older generations.

Good news: human beings are better than we think. Finding ways to motivate people has bewildered leaders for centuries. While most have given up use of the 'stick' as a motivator, many continue to use the 'dangled carrot' - but findings from the last few years show that this is far more counterproductive than we think.

Contrary to what we would assume, rewards and incentives can often have the effect of demotivating others. According to researchers at the US National Institute of Health (NIH), the reason for this can be found in the part of the brain that they stimulate.

How to Stop an Outage Becoming an Outrage

Fri Nov 24 2023 Michael McQueen

Following the recent Senate enquiry, now ex-CEO of Optus Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned with a name now tied to two of the biggest tele-communications crises of the last few years – last year’s data breach and last fortnight’s network outage.

While crises will inevitably occur, they do not need to come at the cost of credibility. However, so many leaders and companies fail to exhibit the qualities that the public expects during a crisis, and because of this they forfeit the trust that undeniably equates to currency in today’s sceptical marketplace. This most recent network outage crisis offers leaders and organisations some lessons on precisely this front.

HOW TO HARNESS THE HERD INSTINCT

Wed Nov 15 2023 Michael McQueen

The human being is a tribal creature. We operate as a ‘we’ far more reliably than we operate as an ‘I’, and our compulsion for conformity is consistently stronger than our impulse towards individuality. This revelation has been key to the last century of psychological findings, and offers vital insight to the social and trends of our day – and how we might influence them.

Intuitively, we all know we operate as a group. Anyone who has been caught up in the energy of a sports match or immersed in the atmosphere of a concert has witnessed firsthand the striking power of the herd. The group’s influence on the individual has been proved over and over in psychological studies, often to rather comical effects.

Creatives are at a crossroads.

A few months ago, a letter signed by over eight-thousand authors made the news as it asked the leaders of companies like Microsoft and Meta not to train their AI systems on the authors’ work without consent or compensation. Published by the Author’s Guild and signed by names like Margaret Atwood and James Patterson, the letter made the case that real authors have worked to produce the intellectual property which is being used to feed the AI, and should be appropriately compensated.[1]

Technology often advances faster than the infrastructure and regulations needed to support it. As AI tools have proliferated exponentially over the past year, the legal issues of intellectual property, copyright and plagiarism have only become more complex. As big companies are profiting of the creative work of people who have spent decades committed to their craft, the ethical injustices are clear.

Can you explain the difference between ‘used cars’ and ‘pre-owned vehicles’? What about ‘wire tapping’ and ‘electronic intercepts’? Or ‘impotence’ and ‘erectile dysfunction’?[1]

The difference? Semantics!

WHY YOUR MIND IS NOT OVER MATTER

Thu Oct 26 2023 Michael McQueen

We all like to believe we put our mind over matter. Overall, we are rational agents with free will who have control over our bodies, impulses and sensations. However, more and more studies are emerging that prove this belief to be far from the truth.

Researchers across disciplines and cultures are showing that our bodies are far more involved in our thinking than we like to believe. Our cognitive processes are embedded in a system that involves various parts of the rest of our body, from our heart to our gut.