What motivates us to speak up at work?
Plus, the drawbacks of cringe culture
BRAIN WAVES
Loss aversion. Voicing your opinion can be tough at work, and a new study wanted to see what motivates employees to do so. Specifically, they wanted to see what prompts employees to speak up more: when a problem is framed as a potential gain or as a potential loss. In one experiment, researchers asked volunteers to write about a specific problem they were having at work. They asked some people to frame the problem as a gain (for example, “if the product is good, our company stands to make a lot of money”), and asked others to frame it as a loss (i.e. “if this product isn’t up to standards, the company’s reputation will suffer.”) They then asked people how likely they were to speak up about the problem. They found when people wrote about the problem as a potential loss, they were more likely to want to speak up about it. The finding held true across other experiments. But it wasn’t just any loss — people were even more motivated to pipe up when the loss was framed as a collective one. “When managers say, ‘If we don’t get this done, not only will you lose the $5,000 bonus, but everybody in this work group is going to lose a $5,000 bonus,’ it magnifies an employee’s motivation to act in a proactive way,” said study author Phil Thompson in a press release. “This suggests that framing work problems as what will be collectively lost - compared to what can be individually lost - makes employees want to speak up more.”
Cringe factor. Can you laugh at yourself? A new study looked at whether having a sense of humor about our own harmless slip‑ups makes a better impression on people than cringing with embarrassment. Researchers ran six experiments, showing study volunteers people’s everyday flubs (i.e. waving at the wrong person or walking into a glass door) and then compared volunteer reactions when the person either looked embarrassed or laughed it off. Across the board, the laughers came across as warmer, more competent, and more authentic. Researchers suggested it’s most likely because observers felt like embarrassment was overkill for such tiny mistakes. Put simply, no need to cringe.
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