MJ captivated thousands with his emotional music.Source:Wikimedia Commons.
If you watch any video of Michael Jackson, you’d be amazed at how he creatively uses his emotions – his voice, face, hands and body movements – to convey messages that are meant to influence you. Emotions are not only meant to influence others in social relations, it also determines our reactions and personal feelings. Take for example a man who sees a snake on his path. He feels the emotion of fear and decides either to run or look for a stick to kill it. Emotions regulate and coordinate humans and their relationship with others. Emotions could trigger a fight or a flight response.
A nation could go to war riding on the wave of emotions.
Understanding how our emotions determine our existence and using them to human advantage both at an intrapersonal and interpersonal level is then important. This end-of-year special series of blog articles will describe a model developed by Van Kleef that was developed towards this end, but on the interpersonal level. The model is named Emotions As Social Information (EASI) model.
The EASI describes human emotions as signals from one’s face, voice, bodily posture, choice of words etc that were expressed to influence the observer and trigger either an emotional response or trigger his brain to make deductions on what message(s) the emotion was meant to convey based on his information processing ability and social context.
The six series of blog articles that are focused on this theme are:
What is X?
Hint: You can change the angle of view - 90, 180 degrees, turn it upside down, whatever, to make out a different series.
I can't wait for the first correct answer!
It is not always possible to suppress emotions like anger or sadness during a crisis. When corporate image is at stake, it is rather that conventional wisdom be rethought. For the sake of the public image, to motivate the workforce, and for so many other seemingly positive reasons, demonstrating negative emotions was perceived as against the corporate good. Does it mean that all negative emotions are bad? When angry employees voice their opinions are they rebels who should be shoved out the door? Positive management leads to positive leadership.
Sometimes, the prevailing attitudes do not reflect desired positive outcomes (pdf). Sometimes, the status quo could be wrong although there are exceptions to every rule.
Bereavement could build social connections. Source: Wikimedia Commons
When, could expressions of negative emotions at the corporate arena be a force for positive results or positive changes? Management should evaluate these facts when making a decision.
Every situation is unique:
Sometimes, workers should be encouraged to express negative emotions. Managers should ensure that such negative demonstrations are constructive and for the “common good. Even positive emotions like compassion, a positive emotion, when taken to extremes, can lead to what is termed “compassion fatigue,” which has been shown to induce stress in perfectionists and overly conscientious individuals. No two situations can be the same.
Political nature of the situation:
When workers perceive injustice or unfairness, they usually have channels for lodging complaints. When these channels become unfair or inefficient, employees organize themselves. The consequences for doing so could be grave or positive; the outcomes depend on the individuals involved, their corporate political ambitions, the genesis of the negative emotion as well as other factors.
Organizational leadership style:
When management is ineffective, would it be wrong for workers to voice their complaints with a view of eliciting change? A company whose personnel department is inefficient could be recruiting workers who are unfit for the roles employed. It has been found that when followers in the organization highly agree with the top management leadership style, staff response to negative emotions turn out most times to be more positive than negative.
How the emotion is directed:
Some emotions like sadness motivates the positive behavior of building social connections when motivated by social loss rather than status loss. Corporate workers want to appear in control of their emotions so they’d rather do away with negative emotions. Yet, when a loss is shared with others, whether positive or negative, it offers an opportunity for openness and intimacy, for expanding personal corporate social circles.
Status associated with the job function:
Some workers like teachers and helpline workers are looked down upon in the society. These are negative emotions directed maybe to them as individuals and/or to their job functions. People do not want to be associated with those “kinds of jobs”. Helpline workers who deal with isolated, upset, abusive or suicidal individuals are perceived as carrying social “dirt” and they’d rather not be tainted with it.
How the emotion is perceived:
Just as every situation is unique, the individuals to which the emotion is directed to are also unique. Everybody reacts differently to anger and happiness. Some show a strong sense of affection for emotions that are directed towards them while others tend to interpret extreme and moderate meanings to emotional situations, depending on their ilk.
Positive corporate leadership desires outcomes to positive and negative emotions that reflect the expected bottom line: motivated employees, agreeable follower-ship, emotionally healthy workforce and profits. It would be conventionally wise then for management to recognize the existence of negative emotions and their place in corporate life.
These images look archived but I liked them that was why I'm having them on my blog. For sake of the memories.
Actually, I was tinkering with R software after a little lull in the Probability and Statistics book I am presently reading: Probability and Statistics for Engineering and The Sciences by Jay L. Devore.
Then I chanced on a Venn Diagram Package made for R Software.
Looks like four atoms juxtaposed. 4 sets intersecting actually.Venn Diagram Package, R Software
As the caption says, it looks like atoms falling on themselves like noodles. I just loved it. Hmmm! It is actually four sets intersecting. Very good work!
Then the second one, like a spacecraft. Funny, right?
5 sets intersecting, a quintuple, but looks like a spacecraft. Venn Diagram Package, R Software
The graphics might not be state-of-the-art, but I love them.
If you simultaneously browse the Web, listen to music, play video games, use e-mail or talk on the phone while watching TV, then you are a victim to media multitasking. By engaging in this practice, you leave yourself open to losing control of cognitive and emotional abilities that are essential for resolving anxieties and depression. This is because media multitasking decreases grey matter in the brain controlling these functions.
MRI. Side of the head. Ranveg
It’s true. A negative relation has been found between media multitasking and grey matter density. To refresh your science, grey matter is in the brain and includes regions involved in muscle control and sensory perception such as seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision making and self-control. By engaging in activities that can decrease your grey matter density, you could lose control of important functions such as enduring stress, ability to maintain your sense of balance under distraction and also make yourself open to much emotional problems.
In a first of its kind study, two researchers have found only a link, and not a causality chain, between grey matter density and media multitasking. A decision on causality has not been reached for two reasons:
Low grey matter density is linked to lose of cognitive and emotional control
Persons with low grey matter are more attracted to media multitasking.
Exposure to multitasking can result in reduced grey matter density.
It’s been found that a high and regular use of several medias do reduce grey matter density by altering the structure of the brain.
So, it’s like the chicken and the egg problem. Which caused which?
This question is particularly pertinent since the use of social media through various channels is on the rise and this is believed to be likely addictive.
If you often media multitask and you cannot help it, take back control of your life. You could be losing your grey matter. You can reclaim it though through various activities that can change the plastic structure of the brain like learning to play music and studying to be a mathematician. In fact, studying mathematics increases grey matter density in the frontal part of the brain if studied for a long time, improving your ability to handle complex problems. Learning to juggle and understanding the maps of a city are also of help in increasing grey matter density.
This calls for discretion in the use of media. Activities like media multitasking that can cause brain structure alterations should be approached with care, otherwise you’d be faced with permanent brain damage.
The list is growing of the number of measurable characteristics for which labeling and description could be applied to you and I – fingerprint, vein scanning, DNA, face recognition, retina, body scent etc. In a unique way, a Swedish engineering student has made biometrics currency.
The innovation, scanning your palm to pay for items in a supermarket, scans the vein pattern on your palms for a payment to go through. Faster, easier and cheaper than a credit card.
Thumbs up to Fredrik Leifland. Your palm can now rest in your purse.
