#workmyths — Public Fediverse posts

Eustress in humans is poorly studied, some make the case it doesn't exist: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201900238, while others https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8872528/ are attempting to measure it.

My takeaway - at worst it doesn't exist. If it does exist, then it isn't yet well enough defined to be useful.

(1) Yerkes, R.M., and Dodson, J.D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit formation. _Journal of Comparative Neurology of Psychology, 18_(5), 459-482.

#NeuroMyths #WorkMyths
4/4

I recently saw an article that invalidated Yerkes-Dodson Law: https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2024/2/29-1 in the context of education. And I thought, that's Eustress.

All sources I could find for Eustress point back to Yerkes-Dodson Law as the source for the idea (1). This is a paper from 1908. The age isn't in itself a problem.

Instead:
1. The original only showed the inverted U shape response to stress in one of three experiments.

#NeuroMyths #WorkMyths
2/5

Eustress is a popular idea in the world of work. The idea that some stress can be positive (improving performance) to a point and then past that point the stress hurts performance.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56acc1138a65e2a286012c54/223fd63d-1212-49f5-999c-6c0722255472/HebbianYerkesDodson.jfif?format=1500w

I can just imagine some leaders I've met sizing individuals up and asking themselves (cue the cackle): "How much pressure can I apply to this person for better performance."

#NeuroMyths #WorkMyths

1/5

@tarheel FWIW I like people who probe more. Our work only gets better with testing.

Also note I’m a psychologist. I just get bugged by the number of #WorkMyths that get quoted without question. Like the famous number of unused features in product development

…The models come from fluid dynamics, modelling the behaviour of particles in a system. Particles in a system have no memory of the state they were in a second ago. People at work remember a snide remark many months later.

Since the, Brown, Sokal, and Friedman rebuttal was published the American Psychologist has retracted the mathematical parts of the paper, rendering the whole ratio invalid….

#WorkMyths #Myths

3/4

Then they tracked the affect of these comments on others.

The paper suggests that people need at least 3 times as many positive as negative. Above 11:1 would be too high and disrupt flourishing.

The core criticism of the paper is that models used weren’t applicable to data in question.

#WorkMyths #Myths

2/5

#WorkMyths #Myths Critical Positivity Ratio (also known as the Losada Ratio) is a concept in positive psychology that claims, a ratio of positive to negative emotions of 2.9013 defined the difference between flourishing and languishing people. It was proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada in 2005 paper. The original paper was based on observations of 60 management teams making strategic plans. Comments were rated as positive or negative.

1/5

#WorkMyths Dunbar's number. Fun idea, not supported by data:

"The estimate from this analysis indicates a human group size average of 69.2 individuals, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from 3.8 to 292.0 individuals. This is not very informative."

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2021.0158

Stay tuned for other randomly discussed #Myths we love in the world of #Agile