3 Things I Learned in Grad School ~ Feb 26 2017

This is easily the most intriguing 3Things that I've put together. I learned something super practical in the Delphi Method and Cognitive Reappraisal and I'm taking another stab at Self-Determination Theory because I learned it in a different way from a month ago.

Cognitive Reappraisal and Emotional Suppression
A game changer. I learned this skill at 27 but didn’t know what it was called and it literally changed my life. The ability think through your emotional reaction basically releases the pressure built up by the emotion. Examples I read about include simply seeing your reflection when wanting to gorge out on a bowl of candy or writing the word ANGER in big letters on a piece of paper when you’re angry. Attaching a cognitively derived thought and action to an emotional reaction will release the power that emotion is bringing to your brain and self.  This is probably one of the most important thing I’ve learned in the last 8 years for myself and now I have a label to attach to it and research it more. Here’s a definition of what it is:
“Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy that involves changing the trajectory of an emotional response by reinterpreting the meaning of the emotional stimulus. Emotion regulation is defined as follows: "the use of deliberate and effortful processes to change a spontaneous emotional state.” For example, a person may fail a series of tests and think negatively about his or her performance upon first receiving the results. The person revisits his or her emotional response to the situation and later views the results as a way to challenge and better him or herself.
 
This process involves two parts: a) recognition of one’s negative response, and b) reinterpretation of the situation to either reduce the severity of the negative response, or exchange the negative attitude for a more positive attitude. This strategy is one of the three broad categories of coping which include appraisal-focused behavior, problem-focused behavior, and emotion-focused behavior. It differs from the other two methods of coping because it primarily addresses an individual’s perception of a situation, rather than directly altering environmental stressors or emotional responses to those stressors.”
 
The crazy part about this is that we reappraise re-narrate any action or event that occurs anyway – we can’t help it. To make an action or event make sense to the construct of your brain you have to translate it into something that makes sense. You just do this. So, instead of allowing a magical and unknown process occur that does this for you, why not develop a cognitive and thoughtful process to translate that event to benefit your goals of self?
 
 
Self-Determination Theory
Have you ever had a boss tell you to do something you didn’t want to do and then you have to talk yourself into doing it? Has that same boss ever told you you’ll get overtime for it? Or maybe in your performance review – even though it was mostly good- they offered “tangible rewards, threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations, and imposed goals” and all you wanted to do was give them the finger and walk out? Maybe, like me, you have both been that asshole boss and been the employee who walked out and been confused about what is going on? It comes down to the paradoxes of Self-Determination Theory.
 
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation and personality that concerns people's inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs. It is concerned with the motivation behind choices people make without external influence and interference. SDT focuses on the degree to which an individual's behavior is self-motivated and self-determined. Here are my bullet points from reading one of the founding articles on it:  

• findings have led to the postulate of three innate psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness
• the fullest representations of humanity show people to be curious, vital, and self-motivated – agentic and inspired, striving to learn, extend themselves, master new skills, and apply talents responsibly
• human spirit can also be diminished or crushed and people reject growth and responsibility
• motivation concerns energy, direction, persistence, and equifinality – all aspects of activation and intention
• people who have authentic motivation have more interest, excitement, and confidence which manifests as enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity
• Intrinsic motivation – natural inclination toward assimilation, mastery, spontaneous interest, and exploration (that is essential to cognitive and social development
• tangible rewards, threats, deadlines, directives, pressured evaluations, and imposed goals diminish intrinsic motivation because they conduce toward an external perceived locus of causality
• whenever a person attempts to foster certain behaviors in others, the others’ motivation for the behavior can range from amotivation or unwillingness, to passive compliance, to active personal commitment.
• introjected regulation- a second type of extrinsic motivation – taking in a regulation but not fully accepting it as one’s own – controlled form of regulation in which behaviors are performed to avoid guilt or anxiety or to attain ego enhancements such as pride- regulation by self-esteem
• regulation through identification – a conscious valuing of a behavioral goal or regulation
• integrated regulation – identified regulations are fully assimilated to the self – they have been evaluated and brought into congruence with one’s other values and needs – actions characterized by integrated motivation share many qualitites with intrinsic motivation although they are still considered extrinsic because they are done to attain separable outcomes rather than for their inherent enjoyment

Here’s a graphic to explain it:

I guess the trick is make the goals of the business become the intrinsic goals of the individual. I don’t know how to do this but if you learn how, let me know.
 
Delphi Method
Anyone who has ever been a part of a decision-making process needs to know of the Delphi Process. This is incredible. I swear it would have saved tens of thousands of dollars in planning projects I’ve been involved in if I knew this. Here’s the idea (pay attention to the 3rd step where you anonymize experts’ reflections):

Wikipedia has a long and tedious but good explanation below but basically the Delphi Method gets expert opinion on an idea, anonymizes the comments (thus removing self-censure and unconscious bias in response to others’ ideas), and proceeds with group analysis from there. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

​ the Delphi Method is “a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator or change agent provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results. Delphi is based on the principle that forecasts (or decisions) from a structured group of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups.”