Jeremiah Stanghini

How to Stop Binge-Watching

Thirty-years ago if you told someone that you ‘binge-watched’ MacGyver over the weekend they would have looked at you funny — mostly because binge-watching wasn’t really common parlance, but also because you couldn’t binge-watch in the 80s the way that you can now. Today, you can fire up your computer (or set-top box) and stream episode after episode. Heck, you could even watch episode after episode on DVD or blu-ray, if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s become so easy to binge-watch shows and in part, is contributing to people actually binge-watching more shows.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t binge-watched a show. In fact, that was part of the reason that I first signed up for Netflix in February of 2013 — to watch House of Cards. And did I watch one episode and then wait a week? No. I finished the first season in a weekend. I also finished season 2 in a weekend, but who’s keeping track. Well, since we’re confessing, I also caught up on four and a half seasons Breaking Bad relatively quickly (4 or 5 weeks?) before the last half of the final season was to begin.

I should make it clear that I’m not encouraging binge-watching, but simply providing evidence that I’ve got plenty of experience with it, which brings me to my point:

How to stop binge-watching.

I don’t remember how I stumbled on this little trick, but it has certainly helped me when I needed to pull myself away from a set of gripping episodes. This method works particularly well for a show that uses a lot of cliffhangers or plot twists near the end of an episode (Scandal is a good example, however the finale to season three, which was essentially three season finales in one, might confound this). Instead of watching the whole episode before calling it quits for the night/afternoon, you’ve got to stop the episode well before they introduce a new plot twist. One way to do this is to “hang up” very near to the reveal of the climax. It’s in the falling action where they get you!

I realize that the show isn’t meant to be watched in this way, but I’ve found myself, on many occasions, where I wanted to stop watching, but kept getting sucked in at the end of an episode. After enough times of this happening, I realized that I needed to end the episode before the end of the episode. Hence, stopping the episode somewhere after the climax (usually somewhere two-thirds into the episode).

One of the potential criticisms to this method is that you’ve got to “fast-forward” to the point where you’ve left off. That’s true only if you’re not using something like Netflix. When you end an episode with Netflix part-way through, it picks up where you’ve left off (in fact, it rewinds it a few seconds sometimes). Since this is pretty much the only way I’ve binge-watched shows, I can attest to it working splendidly.

How You Probably Discriminate and Don’t Even Know It

Are you a part of a group at work, school, or recreationally? Well, then you’ve probably discriminated without even knowing it. A recent theoretical review of the literature concluded “ingroup favouritism is more potent than outgroup hostility” when it comes to discrimination in the United States. Meaning, preferential treatment to the people that are on your team contributes to discrimination more than outward displays of hostility to people not part of your team.

I should say that this ingroup favouritism doesn’t simply apply to overt teams/groups. Consider your work relationships for a moment. Let’s say that your son or daughter gets along quite well with the son or daughter of one of your subordinates. This particular subordinate missed a bunch of days of work this year because they were taking care of their child who was sick. When it comes time for performance reviews and this particular subordinate’s performance falls between two possible ratings, you give the subordinate a higher rating. However, there is another subordinate, without a child who’s friends with your child. This subordinate has also missed some work this year, but instead of giving them the higher rating, you give them the lower (of the two) ratings. By giving a higher rating to the subordinate to whom there is a connection, you’d be exhibiting ingroup favouritism. You’re not openly discriminating against the other subordinate, but you are showing preferential treatment (even if it’s inadvertently!) to one subordinate over the other.

This particular bit of research seemed especially important given Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recent essay in The Atlantic. As I grew up in a fairly multicultural environment, I like to think that I don’t let a person’s race or ethnicity factor into any decisions I make. However, I, as many others have learned from Harvard’s Project Implicit Test, the culture that I live in has had an important influence on me.

There are obvious streams for this kind of research, but I was thinking about it in a broader context. As it stands, there’s the idea of ingroup and outgroup. That is, “our people” are over here and I’m going to do everything I can for them, while you’re people are over there and I’m not going to necessarily do everything that I can to help them. What if there no longer was an ingroup and an outgroup? Or maybe more specifically, what if everyone was part of your ingroup?

Consider someone like the Dalai Lama. There’s the ‘obvious’ ingroups for the Dalai Lama (Tibet, Buddhism, etc.), but I’d bet that the Dalai Lama probably thinks of all humans as his ingroup. Of course, we can’t all be the Dalai Lama, but we certainly could strive for this.

Let’s simplify this example just a little bit. Americans — is an ingroup — when you put it in context of a global stage. Americans look at themselves as an ingroup when it comes to some sort of international competition. That is, at the upcoming World Cup in June, Americans will be an ingroup, especially when there are matches against other countries. What if, instead of Americans thinking of themselves as the ingroup, they, instead, thought of the ingroup as fans of soccer (or football, depending upon where you’re from — although most Americans probably say soccer). While this is still an ‘ingroup,’ it’s certainly a broader and bigger ingroup than simply American (fans of soccer).

While not perfect, this is also on the way to expanding the ingroup to all of humanity.

Greenwald AG, & Pettigrew TF (2014). With Malice Toward None and Charity for Some: Ingroup Favoritism Enables Discrimination. The American psychologist PMID: 24661244

Do Public Salaries Increase Performance?

With the recent news regarding Jill Abramson and the New York Times, I wanted to take a closer look at the academic literature to see if I could find something about public salaries. There’s certainly been a lot written about whether she was fired or she quit or whether it had to do with secretive salaries or her gender. I’m not writing this post to debate any of that because I consider myself grossly uninformed on what may or may not have happened, but I am writing this post to talk about pay secrecy.

The research showed that pay secrecy adversely affected individual task performance. Meaning, the absence of public salaries led to a worse performance. Why? Pay for performance. That is, because the salaries weren’t public, workers didn’t have a perception that an increase in performance would lead to better pay.

There were a couple other important pieces that I wanted to highlight.

1. The best workers were more sensitive when it came to the perception of link between pay and performance.

This certainly makes sense as those folks who are working the ‘hardest’ would want to know that they’re being appropriately compensated for their hard work. An implication from this point is that organizations that don’t have public salaries might have a harder time retaining their top talent. We can tie this back to the situation between the New York Times and Abramson. Again, I wouldn’t say I’m informed of the situation, but from what I understand, Abramson was rather high up in the NYT hierarchy, which indicates to me that it was fair to consider her “top talent.”

2. If public salaries isn’t an option, partial pay openness could mitigate the negative effects of pay secrecy.

It might be that a firm or organization isn’t yet comfortable with releasing all data about salaries, so an intermediary step could see them gently open up the salaries by talking about ranges. This point reminded me about government salaries that often have ranges for each level that an employee reaches. One may not know exactly what their co-worker makes, but if one knows that their co-worker has reached a certain level, one would know that one’s co-worker’s salary is in a certain range.

Just before ending this post, I wanted to circle back to the point about pay for performance. In this study, the task that participants completed was a “computer matching game.” Based on what’s been written about pay for performance, this is the right kind of task to test these sorts of hypotheses. However, when it comes to more creative tasks, the pay for performance model doesn’t always fit the best. Tying this back to the situation with Abramson and the NYT — it’s not clear to me whether the “pay for performance” model fits best. Having never worked at a newspaper or publishing outlet, I don’t exactly know the role of an Executive Editor, but from what I’ve been able to read through Google searches, it sounds more like creative tasks.

Belogolovsky, E., & Bamberger, P. (2014). Signaling in secret: Pay for performance and the incentive and sorting effects of pay secrecy Academy of Management Journal DOI: 10.5465/amj.2012.0937

Why Women are Better CEOs, Presidents, and Prime Ministers

New research shows that women are far better at handling stress than men. I suppose that’s not a newsflash as most people already think that’s true, but consider the way in which this study frames it [Emphasis added]:

We consistently found the same general response pattern: while stressed women showed higher self-other distinction than women in the non-stressful control condition, men showed the converse pattern. More specifically, stressed women showed reduced emotional egocentricity bias, enabling them to judge the emotions of the other person in a way that was less influenced by their own emotional state. Moreover, their response times in the cognitive perspective-taking task decreased under stress, documenting that they were able to regulate the mismatch between their own and the “director’s” perspective faster under stress. Finally, stressed women showed a reduction of automatic imitative tendencies in the imitation-inhibition task, indicating that they were able to overcome low-level social signals interfering with their own movement intentions. Note that the latter finding is crucial. It highlights that women did not simply show an increase in other-related responses under stress – as this would have resulted in increased interference from automatic imitation. Instead, they were able to flexibly increase either self- or other-related representations, depending on the task demands which either required overcoming egocentric biases, or overcoming social interference.

As the stereotype goes, women are more “emotional” than men, so it would be much better for an organization or unit if it were managed by a man. However, this research is telling us that, when under stress, it is men who are less able to distinguish their emotional state from the intentions of those around them. It is men who are more adversely affected by stress. For women, it’s the opposite. In fact, women tend to be more prosocial [behaviour intended to benefit others] when they’re stressed. Meaning, instead of retreating inward, women are actually more helpful when they’re stressed.

This research certainly makes one think about the way that many organizations and countries are run today. Most people would agree that being a CEO, President, or Prime Minister certainly comes with oodles of stress. Unfortunately, the number of women who hold these positions is far outweighed by their male counterparts. Of course, there are a number of reasons for that, which we won’t get into in this post, but consider for a moment if the numbers were flipped. That is, what if there were more women CEOs (or high-powered leaders)? Or, what even if it was 50/50! What if the number of high-powered leaders and CEOs was 50% women and 50% men? At that point, would it be easier for folks to see, understand, and digest that women are actually better leaders and better at handling the stress?

Maybe it’s the language we use.

A quick Google search showed mixed results for “women are better CEOs.” In fact, many of the results near the top indicated that women CEOs are more likely to be fired. However, when I keyed in “women are better leaders,” I got plenty of positive results. Posts on Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and articles talking about academic research in newspapers like The Globe and Mail.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the world during my time in it, it’s that change (usually) happens gradually. Rarely is there a massive cultural shift overnight. So, here’s hoping that research like this contributes to the realization for some that when it comes to managers and leadership, women just might have an edge over men.

Tomova L, von Dawans B, Heinrichs M, Silani G, & Lamm C (2014). Is stress affecting our ability to tune into others? Evidence for gender differences in the effects of stress on self-other distinction. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 43, 95-104 PMID: 24703175

Solving False Equivalence in Politics?

Last week, John Oliver had a great segment that poked fun at how most (all?) television outlets cover climate change. Take a look:

Upon watching it, I didn’t think that Oliver was going to “even out” the representation in a physical manner. Instead, I thought that he was going to solve the issue of the “talking heads” appearing equal. Let me explain. Watch this:

That’s Lewis Black from the 2006 film, Man of the Year. I have no doubt that this sentiment had been expressed before this film, but this was the first time that I had heard it in this way. Hosting someone on a TV program with ideas that are clearly incorrect and putting their “talking head” up next to someone who has legitimately studied and confirmed that the other person is incorrect is a form of false equivalence.

As Black explains, to the viewer, both of these sides appear “equal.” It appears that one person is expressing an opinion and that the other person has a different opinion. What’s being missed is that one person’s opinion is factually erroneous (just as we saw in the video with Bill Nye earlier).

When I was watching the Oliver video, it made me think that he was going to do something else. I thought he was going to show the two talking heads in boxes (as you usually see on “debates” on political talk shows), but instead of giving them both a 50/50 split on the screen, I thought he was going to ration it more appropriately given the overwhelming support for climate change. I thought he’d give Bill Nye’s box 97% of the screen and the other guy’s box 3% of the screen.

I realize that this probably wouldn’t work in an actual talk show, but since I knew it was supposed to be semi-satirical, it seemed like a plausible idea.

On that note, can you imagine if that’s how political talk shows actually did things? That is, instead of having that 50/50 split, when they were talking about something factual, the size of the box for the talking head espousing the nonfactual opinion would be smaller. Of course, there’s all kinds of problem that could be raised with regard to censorship, but it’s certainly creative.

Conflict of Interest: The Importance of Independent Inquiry

For the last couple of months on Sunday nights, Fox has been airing a documentary that will probably be watched in science classes across America (when there’s a substitute teacher or otherwise) — Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Among other things, the show has taken the viewer on a journey back to the beginning of time. In one of the more recent episodes, host Neil deGrasse Tyson explained to viewers how we’ve come to know the age of the Earth.

In short, this came as a result of the work of scientist Clair Patterson. As a result of Patterson’s journey to determine the age of the Earth, he discovered some alarming findings related to the presence of lead in the environment. Through testing, he determined that the amount of lead in the environment wasn’t naturally occurring and concluded that the increased presence of lead near the ocean surface had to be man-made. He then was able to determine that this increase in lead in the oceans was because of leaded gasoline.

You’d think that a discovery like this would be well-received by those with influence. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

At the time, there was a scientist “on the other side” of the debate who had published claims long ago that leaded gasoline was “safe.” In fact, one scientist in particular, Robert A. Kehoe. Why is this scientist significant? Because he was funded by the very people who were benefitting from the sale of leaded gasoline — oil companies.

My point isn’t to vilify Kehoe or extol Patterson. Instead, I want to highlight the fact that despite Kehoe was a scientist with credentials, at the time, it wasn’t always clear when he was speaking on matters related to leaded gasoline that he was being funded by oil companies. That is, he failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest.

This scenario perfectly illustrates the importance of disclosing conflicts of interest. If one’s funding is coming from the very industry that one is studying, then it’s important to disclose that. As an example: if you’re a chemist and you’re doing research on tobacco and you’re funded by Marlboro (or some cleverly named organization that represents a number of tobacco companies), there’s a better chance than not that your funders might not be pleased if your findings reflect “negatively” on their business.

Journalism, Republicans, and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I saw a post yesterday from Chris “The Fix” Cillizza that made me instantly think of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t include this as part of my series on biases in judgment and decision-making, but it’s certainly something to keep in mind. The post from The Fix was titled: “Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That’s far fewer than even a decade ago.” At first, I thought that number seemed kind of low, but after reading through the post (and the primary source), it makes sense — there are less Republican journalists because of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let me explain.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is exactly what it sounds like — a prediction that (in)directly causes that prediction to come true. For instance, if you say that you’re going to fail your finals over and over again, and then you fail your finals, that could be said to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, how have I concluded the results of this survey to be a self-fulfilling prophecy? “Mainstream media.”

This phrase — mainstream media — is often said in a pejorative manner by Republicans and conservatives who accuse news outlets of having a liberal bias. According to Wikipedia, the use of this term grew in the 1990s. So, if you had a desire to be a journalist and were coming-of-age when journalists were being grouped in with the “lamestream media,” do you think that this is a a career you’d want to pursue? If you did, there’d certainly be an element of cognitive dissonance to your choice. My guess is that you probably wouldn’t make that choice and that you’d steer clear of journalism as your profession. Or, if you did pursue journalism, you’d probably go into thinking of yourself as an Independent. Not surprisingly, as you can see from the graphic below, the number of journalists who identified as Independents in the 2013 increased more than 50%!

While this hypothesis might be difficult to (dis)prove, it’s certainly interesting to think about the ramifications of how the things we’re talking about today can and will affect the lives of those to come.

What I’ve Learned as a Fan That I Wish I Knew as a Player

In my youth, I played quite a bit of baseball. Well, actually, I played a number of sports, but baseball was the one I was involved with the most. Baseball is one of those sports where there is some level of subjectivity. For example, when the umpire calls a pitch a strike when you think it’s a ball. Or, when you’re sliding into second and you think you touch the base before the fielder tags you with his glove. Of course, with instant replay now instituted in professional baseball, some of these calls are more likely to be ‘right.’

Switching gears for a moment: this past weekend, the Brooklyn Nets beat the Toronto Raptors — by one point — to advance to the second round of the NBA playoffs. The Raptors trailed for most of the game and by double-digits deep into the 4th quarter. However, they made it really close at the end and, in fact, had a chance to win the game with less than seven seconds in the 4th quarter. The reason I’m bringing up this game and this series is because there were quite a few controversial calls by the officials. And that article only mentions the calls made in the last game.

When I was younger (and playing competitively), I would have stewed for hours after the game because of what I perceived as a “bad call.” I would have blamed the umpires for the part they played in my team “losing” the game. Even as a fan when I was younger, I would blame the officials of whatever sport I was watching for the poor calls that negatively affected the team I was cheering for.

After watching the series between the Nets and the Raptors, there were certainly times when I disagreed with the way the referees saw a play (and on many occasions, so did the announcers). Even still, as any good athlete will tell you, they’ve got to play well enough that a call by an official doesn’t mean a win or a loss. That doesn’t mean that a call from an official won’t disappoint you, but you’ve got to put it out of your mind and move onto the next play. I’m not implying that some of the poor calls affected the Raptors (or the Nets), but I’d be surprised if they didn’t even just a little.

With that being said, as a “fan,” it’s so much more enjoyable to watch a game and not stew about a bad call long after it’s over.

Why Not Saying “No” Might Get You Into More Trouble Than You Think

A quick Google Search will tell you that we have a hard time saying no — almost 70,000,000 results for the exact phrase of “how to say no.” A study published this last fall showed that our proclivity for not saying no might actually lead us into unethical behaviour.

The researchers begin by establishing that studies have shown how we tend not to say no when someone asks us to do something for them (i.e. engage in prosocial behaviour) and use this as the basis for testing whether this might also lead us to comply with unethical requests. To test this hypothesis, the researchers conducted four studies.

In the first study, students had to get another student to tell a “white lie.” The ‘recruiter’ was also instructed to predict how many people they’d have to ask before they’d find someone willing to tell this white lie. Results show that students had to ask approximately half as many people as they expected (8.5 vs. 4.4).

The researchers thought that telling a white lie might not have been “unethical” enough, so in the second study, they had students recruit other students to vandalize. As one would expect, students predicted that they would have to ask more people (10.7) before finding someone willing to help them out. However, as was the case with the white lie, it only took asking 4.7 people before they found someone to help them out.

In studies three and four, the researchers were trying to determine whether or not the people who were asking others do take part in unethical behavior were aware of their influence and whether the people partaking in the unethical behavior actually had a harder time “doing the right thing” if they were asked to partake in unethical behavior. In both cases, they found evidence for their hypotheses. That is, when we try to convince someone to partake in unethical behavior, we underestimate our influence and as the person doing the unethical behavior, we find it harder to “do the right thing” when someone suggests unethical behavior.

The key finding, according to the researchers:

The truly startling finding is the lack of awareness people appear to have of this tendency when they are in a position to influence someone else’s ethical behavior. Overall, the current research suggests that we may not recognize the extent which our words and actions affect others’ ethical behavior and decisions.

I’ve certainly written about the importance of our words. Although, it was in a different context. The finding from this study is, as the researchers’ say, startling.

Prior to reading the study, I wouldn’t have predicted that we would so easily be susceptible to partaking in unethical behaviour. In fact, one of my potential critiques was cross-cultural. That is, would results like these hold in different cultures? According to the researchers, yes. With that being said, I do wonder if conducting this study with a different population — Americans, rather than Canadians — might provide different results.

Bohns, V., Roghanizad, M., & Xu, A. (2013). Underestimating Our Influence Over Others’ Unethical Behavior and Decisions Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40 (3), 348-362 DOI: 10.1177/0146167213511825

Corporate Culture Directly Affects Financial Performance

The question as to whether corporate culture has an effect on financial performance has been asked before and it will likely be asked again. In a study published in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, research demonstrated a link between corporate culture and financial performance. However, not all corporate cultures are created equal. Some corporate cultures had a positive effect, some had no effect, and some even had a negative effect.

First, let’s look at the 4 kinds of corporate culture from this study (there’s a picture above for those that prefer to see it visually):

Market – (External, Controlled) – Tend to be results-oriented, with a focus on competition.
Adhocracy – (External, Flexible) – Tend to be dynamic and entrepreneurial, with a focus on innovation.
Clan – (Internal, Flexible) – Tend to be family-like, with a focus on mentoring.
Hierarchy – (Internal, Controlled) – Tend to be structured and formalized, with a focus on efficiency.

It’s important to note that the research was conducted on a group of hotels in South Korea, so the generalizability of the findings is a bit limited. Nonetheless, this research could provide a foundation from which future studies can be conducted. Here are the findings between culture and financial performance:

Market – no significant effect on financial performance.
Adhocracy – positive effect on financial performance.
Clan – positive effect on financial performance.
Hierarchy – negative effect on financial performance.

The researcher went one step further and tested how strategic orientation effected financial performance in the context of these corporate cultures. Before we look at the effect strategic orientation had on corporate culture, we need to look at how the researcher delineated strategic orientation:

Leading: always trying to innovate

Future analytic: focusing on research for future activities

Aggressive: undercutting competitors

Defensive: maintaining careful control

Adventurous: risk taking

Conservative: avoiding risk

Some of the strategic orientations have obvious clashes with corporate culture. For instance, a Hierarchy culture would be ill-advised to try and implement a Leading strategic orientation. Likewise, we wouldn’t expect an Adhocracy culture to successfully implement a Conservative strategic orientation. The research found that Clan, Adhocracy, and Hierarchical cultures could improve their financial performance if the adopted a Leading or Defensive strategic orientation.

The one finding that I found interesting had to do with the Aggressive strategic orientation. The researcher found that this strategic orientation didn’t have a significant impact on any of the culture’s financial performance. Meaning, undercutting a competitor in an effort to gain market share was not an optimal strategy for any of the corporate cultures. Of course, as stated earlier, this study was only conducted on Korean hotels, but it would be very interesting to see if this particular finding help up when studying hotels in a different part of the world. Moreover, I’d be interested to see if this finding would also remain true across industries. That is, some folks think that competing on price is the way to go (Hi Walmart!), so if this study’s findings can be replicated in another industry, it might have an effect on the way that some firms compete. In particular, it might dissuade some from competing on price.

Han, H. (2012). The Relationship among Corporate Culture, Strategic Orientation, and Financial Performance Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 53 (3), 207-219 DOI: 10.1177/1938965512443505