psychology Archives - Page 6 of 11

Swift Trust

In 1996 the organizational scholars Debra Meyerson, Karl Weick and Roderick Kramer described what they called swift trust. A later commentator notes that their main example is the film production crew. Strangers meet, take up their roles and start work at once, with no time to get to know each other.

The chapter describes contexts in which “swift judgments of trust are mandatory.” Such temporary systems “act as if trust were present, but their histories seem to preclude its development.” The theory describes the sequence. The team assumes trust first and checks and adjusts it later.

The Family as a System

From 1974 Helm Stierlin taught in Heidelberg. Around him grew the Heidelberg group of family therapists. A 2006 article on his work describes their subject as problems of the family system that show themselves in the behavior of one person, im individuellen Verhalten sich ausdrückenden Systemproblemen.

On 22 November 2019 the Federal Joint Committee decided to make systemic therapy for adults a benefit of the statutory health insurance. In January 2024 it decided to extend this to children and young people. The committee says the method looks nicht auf die einzelne Person, sondern auf die Interaktionen zwischen Mitgliedern der Familie, not at the single person but at the interactions between members of the family.

When a Problem Arises

In 1935 the psychologist Karl Duncker published Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, on the psychology of productive thinking. On the first page he defines a problem. Ein ‚Problem‘ entsteht z.B. dann, wenn ein Lebewesen ein Ziel hat und nicht ‚weiß‘, wie es dieses Ziel erreichen soll. A problem arises, for example, when a living being has a goal and does not know how to reach it.

Thinking, Duncker wrote, is called onto the scene wherever the given state cannot be turned into the desired state by simple action. Its task is to design the action that leads from one to the other. In 2003 a seminar at Heidelberg University opened with this definition.

The Happiness Course

In spring 2018 the Yale psychologist Laurie Santos taught a course called Psychology and the Good Life. More than 1,200 students enrolled, about a quarter of Yale’s undergraduates. It became the most popular class in the history of Yale College. Santos said, “I hate seeing them so time constrained that they never have a chance to take a break and explore this interesting place.”

An online version, The Science of Well-Being, had more than five million learners by October 2026. Its description promises challenges to increase your own happiness “and build more productive habits.”

Nine Steps Down

German conflict training often uses the nine stages of escalation described by Friedrich Glasl. They fall into three levels. In the first, both sides can still win. In the second, one wins and the other loses. In the third, both lose. The last stage is called Gemeinsam in den Abgrund, together into the abyss.

A training handout on violence in medical practices, on the website of the national association of statutory health insurance physicians, lists the nine stages. It quotes the first rule of a state accident insurer: Wehret den Anfängen! Stop it at the start. A regional sports federation teaches club officials that at the second stage, eine sachliche (!) Auseinandersetzung, a factual discussion, could still end the conflict.

Relationships Are Not for the Office

The psychologist Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks of the University of Michigan studies what he calls Protestant Relational Ideology. He describes it as “a deep-seated belief that affective and relational concerns are considered inappropriate in work settings.” A university release summarized it as a “widespread American belief that personal relationships and emotions in the office are inappropriate and unprofessional.”

He traces the belief to the ascetic Protestants who founded early American communities. One of his chapters is subtitled “an American Anomaly.”

Polite but Impersonal

In September 2015 the psychologist Adam Grant wrote in The New York Times: “We’re social creatures outside work, yet the office interaction norm tends to be polite but impersonal.”

He reported that in 1985 about half of Americans said they had a close friend at work. By 2004 it was 30 percent. “Now, work is a more transactional place. We go to the office to be efficient, not to form bonds.”

Ask and Ye Shall Receive?

In 2013 Victoria Brescoll of Yale, Jennifer Glass and Alexandra Sedlovskaya asked managers to respond to employees who requested a change in their work hours. The scenarios varied the employee’s sex, job status and reason for the request.

Managers were most likely to grant flexible hours to high-status men who wanted them for career development. “All women workers, regardless of their status or the reason for their request, face a gendered wall of resistance to their requests for flextime, while men face status-specific resistance,” Brescoll said.

Connected on the Weekend

In 2013 the American Psychological Association surveyed 1,084 employed adults. Fifty-three percent checked work messages at least once a day over the weekend. Fifty-four percent did so while home sick, and 44 percent on vacation.

The same survey found that 71 percent felt they had control over whether they worked outside normal hours. “We’re learning that not everyone wants to power down, and that’s OK,” said David Ballard of the APA.

Killing Me Softly

In 2018 four management researchers, including William Becker of Virginia Tech and Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University, reported on employees and their partners. They found that the mere presence of an expectation to monitor email outside working hours led to anxiety. This held regardless of how much time employees actually spent on email after hours.

The effect extended to the family. The expectation also harmed the partners’ health and their satisfaction with the relationship. The paper’s title is “Killing Me Softly.”