Homework

Let’s go ahead and watch the “happy” documentary film (2011). This documentary film also features the work of some of the scholars, whose work we’ve been covering in this course. For example, we covered Lyubomirsky et al. (2005)’s work on towards a model of happiness. As mentioned before, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade (2005) indicated that an individual’s chronic happiness level is governed by 3 primary elements: 1) a set point for happiness that is genetically determined, 2) circumstantial factors that are happiness related, and 3) activities and practices that are happiness related. This documentary also covers Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work, who also studies peak performance and peak experiences. As mentioned earlier in the course, one way in which individuals can become happier is by living a challenging and exciting life. For example, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s work indicated that “the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Climb to the mountain is what we are designed for.

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There are three basic foundation blocks or basic principles that we rely on for the current course on “happiness at work”. These general principles and ideas are taken from Tal Ben-Shahar’s course while he was teaching his happiness course in the Psychology department to several hundreds of students at Harvard University.

It is very important for us to try to build connections and bridges between academia and the world of practice. As Tal Ben-Shahar also indicated in his courses, we need practical idealists – those individuals or groups of people who desire to make a difference and who possesses the knowledge to do so in an effective way. In the current course, like Tal Ben-Shahar’s course, we also challenge the notion that happiness is entirely determined by our genetic setup or early experiences we have had, or that we have a fixed level of happiness. We rely on the belief that as individuals, we can create meaningful and significant changes in our wellbeing, joy, and happiness, as well in other individuals’ lives. Another assumption we rely on is that how ready we are to experience happiness or the potential we have to experience happiness is primarily reliant on our state of mind, which are internal factors, and not the prestige we have in our society or how much money we have in the bank, which are external factors. Finally, we also make the assumption that a life without painful or negative emotions is neither possible or desirable. It’s important that we give ourselves permission to be human and accept our negative and painful emotions as natural. This allows us to overcome these emotions and open ourselves to increased levels of wellbeing, joy, and happiness. There are many important

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benefits of happiness beyond just feeling good. These benefits are increased creativity and motivation, generosity and kindness toward others, better physical health, and overall success, among others.

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Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and interpret information.

There are three aspects to perception:

a) Selection or attention: As we perceive our environment, we select and focus on certain information and ignore others. Of course, sometimes you also miss things that you should not have missed. A good example for selection/attention is a police officer looking at the shadows, which is not noticeable by regular people. By training, the officer notices these people who lurk around in dark corners.

b) Organization: After you perceive an event, you classify it. For example, a police officer may draw a connection between the big truck partly covering the person in the shadows and the person in the shadows. Organizing the information changes how you perceive things.

c) Interpretation: Interpretation refers to assigning meaning to the event. A lot of things can bias our interpretation such as our stereotypes, background, and individual differences. Given the differences in our background, personality, etc., we may organize the different pieces of the event differently and therefore tell different stories about the same event. We see what we expect to see. Interpretation can be very different from person to person. It can be influenced by things that are salient or more noticeable. For example, if you’ve been criticized at work, you may be more sensitive to criticism—you might be more

likely to mis-interpret comments as being personal attacks.

Selective perception is the tendency to focus on some aspects of environment while ignoring others. Going back to the police & shadow example, given their training, police officers are likely to pay attention to a big truck partly covering the person in the shadows while ordinary people may not even notice it. Due to our background, personality, and other characteristics, we perceive certain things about our environment with the exclusion of others.

Scientific advancements tell us that the chair we see is a moving energy and lots of space. There are sound frequencies that our ears cannot identify. There are things around us that our eyes cannot see because they are too small or in a form that our eyes cannot make sense of. So, what is really real? And, what is really, simply our mere perception?

We’re constantly perceiving the world around us. We’re looking, seeing, hearing, reading, talking, thinking, feeling, etc. We’re always perceiving. We’re always giving and receiving information to and from ourselves and others. We’re always perceiving. Everything is perception. And, we behave/act accordingly. And, how we behave/act also shapes our perception.

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To demonstrate perception and perceptual differences, we’ll go through a few optical illusions.

What do you see in this picture?

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In the picture, you can see a face as well as the text: “liar.”

% 10 of the people see the writing, “liar,” first. The way “liar” is written has a weird angle and people don’t generally spot it right away.

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What do you see in this picture?

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In this picture, there is a man playing a sax. You can also see a woman’s face.

All of these are optical illusions. We are all looking at the same set of pictures. Yet, we don’t always see the same thing even though we’re looking at the same ‘objective’ information! Some of us see the man playing the saks, whereas others see the young woman, etc. So, we don’t even perceive ‘objective’ piece of information in the same exact way. In a way, our ‘reality’ is based on how we perceive the world around us; our perceptions become our reality.

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In summary, keep in mind that perception is a subjective process. The same two people can look at the very same event and interpret it differently. For example, you and your friend may witness a car accident and interpret what happened differently and therefore tell different stories about what you have seen. No two people look at the same thing and interpret exactly the same thing. As your Robbins & Judge’s textbook on essentials of organizational behavior (2012) puts it, none of us sees reality. What we do is interpret what we see and call it reality.

Scientific advancements tell us that the chair we see is a moving energy and lots of space. There are sound frequencies that our ears cannot identify. There are things around us that our eyes cannot see because they are too small or in a form that our eyes cannot make sense of. So, what is really real? And, what is really, simply our mere perception?

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We do not see reality. There is “our” version of reality which is essentially our perception.

We can choose how to respond to events in our lives. Two different individuals may choose to see a positive or a negative event in completely different ways. How they choose to see these events are likely to affect how they will respond to these events. We may or may not always have control over what happens in our lives, but we can have some level of control over how we choose to respond to these events.

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Our perceptions can affect our behaviors. For example, If I have the perception that people at work are helpful and supportive, then I’m more likely to be helpful and supportive to them, which may bring about them being even more and helpful and supportive to me! Please feel free to go ahead and finish the other sentences on the slide. Think about how you would behave if you had such perceptions.

Notes for the professor:

The story of a man who always gets cut in traffic  Getting cut in traffic is all this man thinks about, feels about, and talks about. He feels resentful and frustrated. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because he strongly expects to be cut in traffic, sure enough he consciously and/or subconsciously does things that lead to him to continue to get cut in traffic (and him perceiving it so). But, he is very successful in some other areas of his life. This is because he thinks and feels well about these other areas of his life. Again, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because he thinks and feels positively about these other areas of his life, he consciously and/or subconsciously acts in certain ways that bring about positive instances, events, and experiences in these other areas of his life.

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Beliefs often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Self-fulfilling prophecy is the process through which the expectation that an event will happen increases its likelihood of happening (Eden, 1994). Our expectations about future events lead us to behave in specific ways, which cause the expected event to occur If I believe that work is a meaningful and pleasurable aspect of life, then I’m more likely to seek and thus get work that is meaningful and pleasurable to me. If I believe that people at work are helpful and supportive, then I’m more likely to be helpful and supportive to them, which in turn would increase their helpful behavior towards me.

Notes for the professor:

“The leader expectation effect is a special case of self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP). Merton (1948) gave us the SFP concept. SFP is the process through which the expectation that an event will occur increases its likelihood of occurrence. Expecting something to happen, we act in ways that make it more likely to occur. (Note the misnomer; the prophecy does not fulfill itself. Rather, it is the prophet who, due to his expectations, acts unwittingly to bring about the expected event. This makes it appear to be selffulfilling.) SFP is ubiquitous in human intercourse (Jones, 1977)” (Eden, 1994:272, Leadership Quarterly).

“The Pygmalion effect is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) in which raising manager expectations regarding subordinate performance boosts subordinate

performance. Managers who are led to expect more of their subordinates lead them to greater achievement.” (Eden, 1994:271, Leadership Quarterly).

Tal Ben-Shahar stated the following in his courses on “happiness” at Harvard University. Oftentimes, beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies. If we have confidence in other individuals, we are likely to bring out the best in them. If we believe we’re a certain way, we’re likely to bring out that way in us. There are a lot of self-help books that have addressed how powerful beliefs are. While some of the ideas in these books are sound, others may be misleading and harmful. We may benefit from looking at scientifically proven tools and techniques for raising beliefs in ourselves as well as in other people, and thus, coming closer to fulfilling our own as well as others’ potential for success, well-being, and happiness.

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Prof. Richard Wiseman’s research “…revealed that lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.” (Wiseman, 2003, “The luck factor,” Skeptical Inquirer – Richard Wiseman is a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire). In terms of being skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, for example, you’re studying for an assignment, but you get a bit tired and decide to play a little bit of golf with a friend. In front of both of you, you see two lovely women. You start talking to them and actually end up being married to one of them later on. In terms of making lucky decisions, you listen to your intuition (your gut-feeling). In terms of creating self-fulfilling prophecies, you expect positive things to happen and, thus, end up behaving ways that are positive, and sure enough bring about positive things into your life. In terms of adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good, when you come across a negative event, you’re thinking that it could have been worse. If the bank you were visiting gets robbed while you were in there, instead of believing and feeling that you are a very unlucky person to be in there at that time, you believe and feel that you’re very lucky since nothing bad happened to you; you’re thinking that it could’ve been worse, that something bad could have happened to you, etc. So, research has found that these are the things that people who rate themselves as “lucky” are doing in their lives, whereas those who rate themselves as “unlucky” are not. To summarize, we can create our own good fortune by getting skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities,

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making lucky decisions by listening to our intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations, and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good luck.

Notes for the professor:

If time left, please go ahead and read the examples given in the reading “the luck factor” by Prof. Richard Wiseman (2003, Skeptical Inquirer).

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Choice anyone?

Can we choose how to respond to life’s events? Can we make a new choice on anything in life? Can we choose to be happy/happier? Let’s say that we made a new choice, which is we made a decision that from this moment onward, our happiness is our first priority (remember, happiness is both pleasure that comes from the present but also meaning that comes from sense of purpose, from future benefit – so, when we talk about happiness we’re talking about creating a life where we are happy now but also in the future!!! We’re trying to make choices that are going to make us happy not just now but also in the future as much as possible.) What are we likely to think, feel, and do if we made that choice? What is likely to happen? If we made being happy our priority, then the chances are that we will choose situations, events, people, and opportunities that make us happy rather than not. We’re likely to spend more time with the people we love and doing things that are meaningful for us rather than not. We’re likely to say yes to things that we may not have said yes to before, and no to things that we may have not said no to before. We’re more likely to seek people and situations that make us happy. When challenging things happen in our lives, we may be more likely to seek social support as well as see the good in every situation and focusing on that, as tiny as it may seem. This is all because we made a decision that said “happiness is my priority.”

What new choices would you like to make today? Would you like to make a decision to be happy (i.e., choosing to be happy)? We all deserve to be happy as

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much as anyone else. And, making a commitment to be happy (or making happiness one of our top priorities if not the top priority) can help us increase the quality of our lives. Choosing new perceptions and beliefs that are aligned with happiness can enhance the overall quality of our lives. Enhancing our own quality of lives are likely to bring riches into the lives of those around us as well.

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“In their article “Optimal Experience in Work and Leisure,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevre show that people prefer leisure to work, a conclusion that no one would find startling. However, they also discovered something else: that people have more “flow” experiences at work. Flow is about being in “the zone,” fully immersed in whatever it is that we are doing, performing at our best (peak performance), and enjoying ourselves (peak experience)…………….When we automatically and regularly evaluate positive experiences at work negatively, simply as a learned response, we are severely limiting our potential for happiness–because in order to be happy we must not only experience positive emptions but also evaluate them as such.” (all from “Even happier: A gratitude journal for daily joy and lasting fulfillment”, page 13, by Tal Ben-Shahar, 2010)

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