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emotional-inteligence

Emotional Intelligence, how it affects the decisions you make

by on 22 February 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, think about and respond to emotions in both yourself and in other people [1]. If, for example, your friend is feeling sad and refuses a social invitation an emotionally intelligent person will recognise their sadness and correctly reason that this is why their friend does not want to socialise. Someone who is less emotionally intelligent may instead feel angry at their friend for refusing the invitation and then find themselves taking their own anger out on someone else. They are not able to reason rationally about their friend’s emotion – sadness – or to recognise their own emotion – anger – and how it is going to affect their behaviour.

 

Emotions play a large part in the decisions we make in life which can be a good or a bad thing. If you have a bad morning and decide to send a rude email to your work colleague this would be a decision poorly ruled by emotion. On the other hand, if you are offered a new job and you feel sad about leaving your current job you would want to consider why you are feeling sad and whether it is, in fact, a relevant factor in your decision.

 

Emotional intelligence plays a big role in decision making abilities. One group of researchers tested this by measuring emotional intelligence in a group of volunteers [2]. They then made half of the volunteers anxious (by asking them to give a presentation) before they completed an unrelated gambling task in which they could choose a high-risk option for a high reward or a safe option for a low reward. Those who were low in emotional intelligence and who were made anxious were much more likely to go for the safe option than those who were high in emotional intelligence. This is because they were unable to attribute their anxious feeling to the presentation they had just given and instead attributed it to the task at hand meaning they went for the safe option. However, when the researchers told the volunteers that they may be feeling anxious because of the presentations they were no more or less likely to choose the safe option than other participants.

 

Of course, the safe option may sometimes be the best one but at other times we have to take risks to reap the rewards. The importance of this study is not that it made people more or less risky but that it shows how an unrelated emotional experience can affect the decisions we make if we are not aware of how they are affecting us.

 

1. Salovey, P. & Mayer, J.D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9(3), 185-211.

2. Yip, J. A., & Côté, S. (2012). The Emotionally Intelligent Decision Maker Emotion-Understanding Ability Reduces the Effect of Incidental Anxiety on Risk Taking. Psychological Science, 24(1), 48-55.

June Blog 2 - Why it's important to get out into the sun

What is biofeedback and how does it help with Stress Management?

by on 15 February 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

Biofeedback does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives feedback on the biological or physical signals of our bodies. Our bodies give off signals all of the time, some of which we can see and some of which we can’t. When stressed, for example, your heart beats faster, your mouth becomes dry and your palms become sweaty. These are the signals that you can see or feel. There are also other bodily signals that occur when we are tense or stressed that are hidden: your blood pressure rises, your body releases chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline and the electrical conductivity of your skin increases. This latter signal is also known as skin conductance or electrodermal activity (EDA). This is the signal that the Pip measures because it is sensitive to even minute changes in stress or tension.

 

The main function of biofeedback is not the measuring element but the feedback element. Biofeedback essentially opens a window into the hidden signals of your body that allow you to recognise when you are stressed or tense and when you are relaxed. Although most of us would notice if our hearts were pounding wildly and our palms were sweating profusely before a meeting we may be less likely to pay attention to stress when it is hidden, when we are sitting on a bus fretting over work and forgetting to breathe, for example. In these situations it can not only be difficult to recognise stress but to know how to relax. Biofeedback tools let you test out different ways of relaxing and get immediate feedback on whether they really do calm both your body and your mind. This knowledge is a powerful tool to have at your disposal when stress levels start to creep up too high.

 

As the saying goes, knowledge is power. The advantage of tools such as the Pip is that the more knowledge they give you on your body and the more you practice using them, the better you are likely to become at self-soothing and calming yourself. At the start, apps such as Clarity provide guided audio that leads you through relaxation techniques. As you get more proficient at using the Pip you will find out which technique suits you best, or develop your own personal techniques. This means that you can transfer your skills to the other unguided apps and, ultimately, to real world situations. We all get stressed and, as we’ve shown before, not all stress is bad (link to blog here). The challenge is knowing when and how to let stress work to your advantage and when and how to relax again, take a break and recharge the batteries for the next challenge ahead.

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Have you fallen foul of confirmation bias? How your biases influence perception.

by on 9 February 2017in PipCorporate

You have the impression that your new colleague doesn’t really like you. You can’t pinpoint exactly why though because you don’t know him very well. You send him an email requesting that he sign off on a project and his reply is impersonal, to-the-point and bordering on cold. Your suspicions are confirmed and you now dislike him as well.

 

As humans we like to be able to explain the world around us so that we can understand the present and make predictions about the future. For example, understanding someone’s personality allows us to understand why they behave as they do and make a prediction about how they are likely to behave in future. We have a remarkable ability to collate and analyse lots of information to come to these conclusions, but, like any processing system, we take shortcuts and this can lead to mistakes. One common shortcut we all take is called confirmation bias.

 

Confirmation bias is the tendency to pay attention to information that confirms what you think you already know and to ignore information that disconfirms it. Say, for example, you believe the stereotype that all older people are grumpy. Instead of rationally assessing the personalities of everyone you know you are more likely to immediately bring to mind the one grumpy older man that you met in a shop last year, and not remember the five non-grumpy older men that you met on the same day. Your attention and memory will be immediately drawn to information that confirms your prejudice. What’s more, every time your prejudice is confirmed in this way, the stronger it will become.

 

This tendency to succumb to confirmation bias can cause problems in social, personal and work situations. It can be particularly problematic in a corporate environment where perceptions of a brand or product can determine whether it succeeds or fails. If there is a (mistaken or otherwise) public perception that a product is unreliable or somehow faulty it can be incredibly difficult to change that perception because confirmation bias means that those times when the product or brand was faulty will be much more easily remembered than the times when it was reliable.

 

While changing perceptions can be difficult it can be done. One recent study found that providing people with opposing arguments caused their views to be more moderated and less prone to confirmation bias [1]. The real take-home message here is to learn to check your own confirmation bias before jumping to conclusions too readily. If you are pretty confident in your perception of something or someone don’t look for evidence to prove your theory, look for evidence to disprove it. Only by looking at what doesn’t fit the picture, as well as what does, will you fully understand your world and the people in it. Does your colleague really not like you? Or is that based on your initial misinterpretation, a series of ambiguous situations and a healthy dose of confirmation bias?

 

 

  1. Schwind, C., Buder, J., Cress, U., & Hesse, F. W. (2012). Preference-inconsistent recommendations: An effective approach for reducing confirmation bias and stimulating divergent thinking? Computers & Education, 58(2), 787-796.

 

 

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Announcing our new app “PipHub”

by on 9 February 2017in PipLife

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We are delighted to announce the launch of our new app “PipHub”.

Available for iOS & Android, PipHub is your gateway to everything Pip related.

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Its Apps view provides one location for discovering, installingand launching all the apps available for your Pip.

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The Notifications view provides regular communications from theteam at Pip HQ, including links to articles and Pip App updates.

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Control is All You Need

by on 2 February 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

The noise from the drill outside is filling your office … and your head. You are trying to concentrate on the report you have to write for the Board which is due at midday, but your mind keeps skidding off the screen and back to that ghastly noise.

 

Distraction like this is stressful for most of us – in fact it is a major problem for many people who work in large, open-plan offices, where they are expected to focus while surrounded by the voices of a dozen colleagues. So what can you do about it? Suppose that your boss arranges for a button to be installed on your desk and tells you that when you find yourself feeling stressed by distracting noise, pressing that button will stop it by activating a sound shield around your desk. But the device is expensive to run and you should use it sparingly, she says.

 

The deadline for another report is looming, and the drill is still growling outside, so you are grateful to have the possibility of getting rid of it. But actually, you find yourself in the flow and so feel less stressed by the distraction – and in a rush, the report is finished. You lean back on your chair and stretch in satisfaction. But actually, your boss was lying.  The button didn’t do anything. She was just giving you the belief that you had potential control over the noise, when in reality, you didn’t have any objective control.

 

Research consistently shows that perceived control is a considerable stress reliever [1]. And in general people who believe that they have at least some control over their working lives end up happier, healthier and more productive [2]. In general, the more senior you are in an organization, the better is your mental and physical health and the longer you will live on average [3]. Much of this beneficial effect of seniority is because of the increased control that those higher up in the hierarchy have.

 

Two people in the same office may have exactly the same objective level of control over their working day, which will be lower for more junior employees. But if one believes that he has more control than the other, he will have lower blood pressure and lower stress hormones than the one who believes that he has little control [4]. In practical terms, we can all build in a little more control into our working lives and so reduce the stress. Sound-attenuating earphones can reduce distracting sounds, as can breaking down tasks into sub-goals and rewarding ourselves with a short break when we have achieved it. For example, “right, I will spend 15 minutes all out on this draft then I am going to stretch my legs by going to the water cooler.”

 

If we chunk our working day in that way we are taking control, to some extent, of our work schedule, and this strengthens a more general feeling of control. And as we have seen, feeling in control has remarkably positive effects on body and mind.

 

  1. Corah, N. and J. Boffa, Perceived control, self-observation, and response to aversive stimulation.
  2. Spector, P.E., Interactive effects of perceived control and job stressors on affective reactions and health outcomes for clerical workers. Work & Stress, 1987. 1(2): p. 155-162.
  3. Wilkinson, R.G. and M.G. Marmot, Social determinants of health: the solid facts. 2003: World Health Organization.
  4. Morrison, C., et al., Effect of socioeconomic group on incidence of, management of, and survival after myocardial infarction and coronary death: analysis of community coronary event register. Bmj, 1997. 314(7080): p. 541.
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Count your blessings and thank your employees: The importance of gratitude

by on 27 January 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

Ever heard the phrase ‘count your blessings’? If an adult told you this when you were younger you probably rolled your eyes. I hate to tell you though, they were right. Counting your blessings, or being grateful for what you have, is one of the most effective tools you have to boost mood and feel happy.

 

But how do you go about counting your blessings? Well it really is as it sounds. Researchers in the University of California Davis split students into 3 groups. They asked one group to write down 1-5 things in their lives that they were grateful for each week for 10 weeks. The second group wrote down 1-5 things that annoyed them. The final group wrote down things that had affected them in the past week. They repeated this study with different students 3 times and every time the researchers found that those in the gratitude group were happier, more optimistic and more likely to help other people [1]. The gratitude group were even more likely to exercise than students in the other groups.

 

An even more potent gratitude intervention was conducted by Dr. Martin Seligman (of learned helplessness fame: link to blog here) in the University of Pennsylvania who asked volunteers to write a letter of gratitude to someone who had been kind to them but had never been properly thanked. The volunteers read the letter out to that person and the researchers measured their mood afterwards. The simple effect of reading the letter out boosted the volunteers’ happiness for up to a month [2]. If you’re not someone who enjoys public displays of emotion then this exercise may make your toes curl but worry not, the University of California Davis listed some of the things that their students were grateful for and they ranged from ‘the generosity of friends’ and ‘wonderful parents’ to ‘waking up this morning’ and ‘the Rolling Stones.’ It doesn’t matter what you’re grateful for, it’s yours to be thankful for and to harness.

 

Since then, other studies have found that gratitude is not only important for one’s own happiness but also for relationships and in the workplace. People who express gratitude towards their partner are more positive about their partner and feel more comfortable about voicing relationship concerns when they arise [3]. In relation to the workplace another study found that a manager expressing gratitude towards employees was a strong predictor of how the employees felt and performed. Employees working as fundraisers for a public university in the U.S. either did a shift as normal or were given a short speech by their manager before their shift in which she told them how grateful she and the university were for their work. The employees who had been thanked not only felt better about themselves but made an average of 50% more fundraising calls in the week afterwards than those who did the regular shift. There were no incentives to make more calls, their salary was not commission based, but those who had been thanked by the manager felt greater self-worth and therefore exhibited more motivation to do the task [4].

 

So that’s the benefit of feeling grateful. Count your blessings and thank your employees and both you and the recipients will reap the benefits of gratitude.

 

  1. Emmons, R.A. and M.E. McCullough, Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of personality and social psychology, 2003. 84(2): p. 377.
  2. Seligman, M.E., Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. 2012: Simon and Schuster.
  3. Lambert, N.M. and F.D. Fincham, Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior. Emotion, 2011. 11(1): p. 52.
  4. Grant, A.M. and F. Gino, A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 2010. 98(6): p. 946.
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What’s your response style?

by on 18 January 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

Think back to a situation that made you angry in work. Perhaps you were treated unfairly by someone in a position of power, maybe your work was criticized in front of your colleagues or maybe you were snubbed at a group meeting for no fault of your own.

 

Now think about how you reacted. Did you challenge the person, attempt to fix the problem or silently mull over it for the rest of the day, week or even month?

 

Many of us easily fall into the latter approach. Sometimes unpleasant incidents are one-offs that do not merit much attention and yet they consume large parts of our attention, internally, for a long period afterwards. This type of repetitive, negative mulling over is called rumination.

 

Rumination is a type of maladaptive self-reflection in which you repetitively, passively think about the incident that upset you, and your feelings about it, without taking any action to fix the problem or change your feelings [1]. The trouble with rumination is that not only does it take up a large amount of your attention but it exacerbates the original emotion meaning that it can make you even more angry or even more upset [2]. People who have a strong natural tendency to ruminate are more likely to experience depression, anxiety and anger [1].

 

So what should you do when faced with an upsetting or angering incident? The catch-22 is that other types of self-reflection can be helpful because thinking over an incident with a view to understanding how or why it happened can lead to solving the problem. If, for example, you think over the meeting where your work was criticized you may conclude that everyone else’s work was criticised as well, that the criticism was not as bad as you thought, that you can improve your work in future or that your boss was reasonable but is not normally so and you should try to shrug it off if as an annoying but once-off incident. If, however, you find yourself focusing on how angry you felt at the time and how angry you still feel now and how angry you are likely to feel later you are probably not focussing on solving the problem but instead just making yourself more angry.

 

It can be hard to get to the stage of helpful self-reflection while still in an angry or upset mood so the first step to breaking out of a ruminative cycle is to distract yourself. Going for a walk, doing any form of exercise or doing something pleasant can clear your mind for a more rational and focused analysis of the problem if, that is, it requires it. Many studies have shown that even just thinking about emotionally-neutral things can temporarily distract someone enough to reduce anger [2]. Mindfulness, if followed correctly, can sometimes also help to reduce rumination because it allows negative thoughts to pass through the mind without judgement or getting caught up in the emotions. Cognitive therapies can also help as they challenge the types of repetitive negative thoughts that occur while ruminating.

 

There is a fine line between helpful self-reflection and harmful rumination and it can be hard to sort one from the other while emotion has too strong a hold. Some studies have shown that ruminators have more interpersonal conflict than non-ruminators and it is easy to see why if rumination means you are caught up in an emotion that should have already passed by [1]. If you catch yourself ruminating in work take a break, distract yourself and only then, if needs be, return to the problem with a fresh mind.

 

  1. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., B.E. Wisco, and S. Lyubomirsky, Rethinking Rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2008. 3(5): p. 400-424.
  2. Rusting, C.L. and S. Nolen-Hoeksema, Regulating responses to anger: effects of rumination and distraction on angry mood. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1998. 74(3): p. 790.
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Why breaks are as important as the work itself

by on 12 January 2017in PipCorporate

Do you ever set aside a whole day to get one task done only to find, at the end of the day, that you haven’t done it? Where did all of that time go? Well our brains like ticking off tasks. It gives us a little boost of pleasure to say ‘finished that!’ which makes it more rewarding to do lots of small tasks than one big one. Most of us are accosted with emails and phone calls throughout the day. By attending to each one that comes in we get a little boost of pleasure at ticking off a task but the big task we aimed to get done gets put off. So how can we get big tasks done? Surprisingly, the answer may be in the breaks we take.

 

 

The human brain has difficulty focusing attention for a long time. When we have a big project we may set aside hours to do it but our brain can only maintain attention for a short period of that time. Imagine your attention is like a wind-up car, you can wind it up and watch it speed across the floor but after a few seconds it will slow down and you will need to wind it up again. Our attention lasts for longer than a few seconds but the idea is the same, we need to reboot by taking a break and then re-engaging [1]. So what should you do to reboot your attention? Try setting a timer to go off after 25-30 minutes of solid work. After this time take a 5 minute break before returning to the task for another 25-30 minutes. After a series of these blocks of work take a longer break.

 

 

In your short breaks try stepping away from your workspace for a few minutes, making a cup of tea or stretching. During a longer break give your mind and body a rest. In our blog last week we discussed how exercising during the work day can improve productivity (link to blog on exercising during the workday). Exercise can improve creativity for up to 2 hours afterwards [2]. Working with breaks will not only help you to complete that big task but will likely also put you in a better mood. Generally people are less happy when their minds are wandering than when engaged in a task [3]. So give your attention a boost with regular breaks and you’ll finally be able to say ‘finished that!’ on that big task you’ve been putting off for too long.

 

 

1. Ariga, A. and A. Lleras, Brief and rare mental “breaks” keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements. Cognition, 2011. 118(3): p. 439-443.
2. Blanchette, D.M., et al., Aerobic exercise and creative potential: Immediate and residual effects. Creativity Research Journal, 2005. 17(2-3): p. 257-264.
3. Killingsworth, M.A. and D.T. Gilbert, A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 2010. 330(6006): p. 932-932.

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Top ways to make your commute a chance to relax

by on 5 January 2017in PipCorporate, PipLife

Your commute is just a stressful part of your day, right? Running for trains, buses and trams that are never on time or being stuck in endless traffic jams on a rainy Monday morning – yuck.

 

But let’s look at it another way. A commute is a free section of time in which you have no responsibilities but to get from A to B. And unless you’re driving, someone else is even doing the hard part for you. So your commute is actually a perfect opportunity to take time out to relax. Here we give our top three ways to make your commute relaxing:

 

  1. Reading while moving can be difficult if, like me, you get motion sick or if you have to stand. It’s obviously not an option if you’re driving either. But immersing yourself in a story can be a great way to step outside of your own thoughts temporarily. Nowadays there are multiple podcasts and audio versions of books meaning you can stick in a pair of headphones, or a cable into your car radio, and enter someone else’s story.
  1. Mindfulness is a word we hear everywhere but it really comes down to one premise – taking time to be in-the-moment instead of being stuck in your thoughts. Try a mindful moment on your commute. Focus your attention on all of the physical sensations that you feel, good or bad, but without responding to them. You may notice your feet planted firmly on the floor, your hand on a cold support structure, the sway of your body as you turn a corner. You may notice the people around you, the bright red of a coat or the black of someone’s shoes. When you look outside you may notice buildings, trees, shops or something you’ve never noticed before. If you are driving you can still be mindful, although we would not advise looking out the window while moving! Try it while stopped at lights or be mindful of your actual driving.
  1. Use the Pip. Let’s be honest, you or your workplace got a Pip and you keep forgetting to use it. Like any good thing you build a habit by doing it regularly. Why not start by using the Pip on your commute? All you need is the tiny Pip, your phone and, if you like, a pair of headphones. See it as a buffer between home and work in the mornings and work and home in the evenings when you can reset your mental set from one to the other.

 

 

Don’t let the daily commute stress you out, try one of our tips and make it a little me-time in your day.

 

 

Banish the pesky 3pm slump with exercising

Learned Helplessness and Attributional Style – What is it and how does it affect you?

by on 15 December 2016in PipCorporate, PipLife

Why do some people feel in control, even in the face of adversity, while others feel depressed and helpless? We can look at three important things: 1) what is currently happening in their lives; 2) how they explain and respond to what is happening; 3) what they have experienced in the past.

 

One of the most fundamental studies we have for understanding human behaviour was conducted by psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1960s. Seligman was trying to understand if and how past experiences can lead to depression. To do this he conducted a study with dogs. He split the dogs into two groups, one group experienced a mildly painful electric shock but could stop it by pressing a lever. The other group experienced the same shock but could not stop it. Later, all of the dogs were put into another situation in which they received an electric shock but could escape by jumping over a small barrier. The dogs who had previously been able to press a lever to stop the shock quickly learned to leap over the barrier to escape. The dogs who had not had a lever didn’t learn to leap over the barrier, they lay down and gave up. As they previously experienced a situation in which they had no control they learned, falsely, that they would never have control [1]. Seligman and colleagues showed that the same applies to humans. They played an irritating noise to a group of people, some of whom could switch it off by solving a problem and others who could not switch it off. They then put all participants into a second situation in which they heard the irritating noise but this time all of them had the power to switch it off. Only those who had previously had control over the noise tried to stop it. The others did not try to switch it off exhibiting what Seligman called “learned helplessness” [2].

 

So how does this translate to real life? People can have different levels of learned helplessness depending on what they have experienced but also on what they attribute negative events to. Some people who experience negative uncontrollable events do not develop learned helplessness. Seligman and colleagues have found that people’s level of learned helplessness predicts how successful they will be in the workplace and how likely they will be to quit [3]. The same is true of athletes and of school achievement [4, 5]. Children with high levels of learned helplessness also have more depressed mood [5].

 

Thankfully, it is possible to change a learned helplessness mindset and interventions exist to do so. Teaching people how to be optimistic and how to reappraise some of the events in their lives helps to change not only how they think about but also how they behave in a situation that seems hopeless at first sight but that may not be on a second look.

 

 

  1. Seligman, M.E., Learned helplessness. Annual review of medicine, 1972. 23(1): p. 407-412.
  2. Hiroto, D.S. and M.E. Seligman, Generality of learned helplessness in man. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1975. 31(2): p. 311.
  3. Seligman, M.E. and P. Schulman, Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1986. 50(4): p. 832.
  4. Seligman, M.E., et al., Explanatory style as a mechanism of disappointing athletic performance. Psychological Science, 1990. 1(2): p. 143-146.
  5. Nolen-Hoeksema, S., J.S. Girgus, and M.E. Seligman, Learned helplessness in children: A longitudinal study of depression, achievement, and explanatory style. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1986. 51(2): p. 435.