A used college textbook I picked up at the unfortunate end-of-life sale of a Durham, N.C., bookstore has been feeding me some interesting insights into the book's namesake, Human Motivation (Brooks/Cole Publishing Co.: Belmont, CA, 1994). Written by Univ. of Calgary psychology professor Robert Franken, for a study wonk like me it is a pleasant way to get my research fix without having to work quite so hard. Most of my research involves going through "primary research," meaning scientific journal articles, most of which are written as if a computer were programmed to spit out as much multisyllabic jargon as it could within something resembling English. "Secondary research" like this book, in which an expert reviews the work of other experts and sometimes dumbs it down a bit, makes life easier for "tertiary" researchers like myself. My job is to explain the heavy stuff to the popular audience--in my case, the customers for my training services and you, dear reader.
I was going to dive into the science of stress from the book at this point, but instead I think I'll reduce my own holiday stress by indulging in a rant. As alluded to in an earlier post, I have little patience for people who step outside their areas of expertise and report scientific findings without learning the context. When Greg Hyer was nice enough to "spotlight" me in his recent LinkingRaleighNC newsletter, I made the point that I spent thousands of hours using my old journalism skills to review the scientific literature on teamwork. Although I keep up with other topics in the business world to make sure my solutions remain relevant in the real world, I don't comment on those topics as if I were an expert. That's not to say I'm shy about expressing my opinions, but I don't claim they come from any special knowledge of the topic.
The danger is that listeners who assign a level of credibility to someone based on their knowledge in one area do not easily distinguish it from what is realistic in other areas. That is, credibility tends to be "one size fits all." Physicist Edward Teller, considered by many the father of the hydrogen bomb, practically caused the Cold War (in my nonexpert opinion) with the help of people who gave him too much credibility in the areas of foreign and military policy based on his expertise in physics. Whenever a speaker uses a law of quantum physics in a talk about management, I see pens scribbling madly. But the whole reason quantum physics has been so controversial and fascinating in the scientific community is because those laws at the subatomic level do not apply to objects the size of atoms--or humans.
For example, I've heard several people try to apply something called the Principle of Uncertainty to human relations. They say it means that an observer has a direct physical impact on the actions of the observed person. This is neither an accurate statement of observed effects, or even the correct principle to apply to the asserted effect.
When you look at a car going down the road, you can tell where it is, what direction it is traveling in, and roughly how fast. This does not appear to be the case for the particles that make up atoms and their cousins. A scientist cannot, for example, be absolutely sure where a particle is and absolute sure how fast it is going. The more sure she is of one, the less sure she is of the other. Quoth Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, "Articulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, it applies only at the small scales of atoms and subatomic particles and is not noticeable for macroscopic objects, such as moving vehicles."
The effect of the observer plays a role, but is not the point to the Uncertainty Principle. The "observer effect" is more accurately tied to a another physicist who gave the analogy of a cat in a box who may or may not be dead. In our observable world, whether the cat has died has nothing to do with when somebody decides to open the box. In the quantum world that operates on mathematical probabilities, the "cat" would not definitely be dead or alive until the observer opened the box. There's also a concept speakers may be thinking of in which changes to one particle can effect another particle long after they bump into each other. ("Long after" in relative terms; we're talking tiny fractions of a second).
Regardless, in the human world, a team member is going to do what the team member wants to do. Obviously, it is possible to influence somebody else's moods or decisions, otherwise my "Art and Science of Persuasion" class would be a big waste of time. But it requires old-fashioned communication skills and basic psychology, not concentrating on their brain waves as you sit alone in your office. Even then, the best you can do is hope your efforts overcome the myriad of influences on their decision-making from genetics, parenting, earlier experiences, current environment, and everyone else who is trying to change their thinking. But quantum-level effects are not a concern.
My point is this: when trying to decide who to listen to on a given topic, caveat emptor ("buyer beware"). Speaking of that, I'll share Dr. Franken's expertise on the science of stress next time.
