Progress-focused

Recently I wrote an article on a paper in Science by Nicolas Light et al. (2022) . The article showed that people who disagree most with the scientific consensus on topics such as climate change, vaccination and evolution have less knowledge about these topics than people who believe in the scientific consensus when they think they know more about it. They have an illusion of understanding . In other words, they have a high subjective knowledge (this is your own judgment of how much you know) but a low objective knowledge (this is how much you actually know). Two interesting questions arose about that article. You can read those questions and my answers below.

Recently we gave a training in progress-focused working to directors of secondary schools. We had also had these people in training courses in the past (some already several times). One of those present said that, following the first training session, he and a colleague went on a progress walk twice a week.

How can you effectively deal with difficult behavior? Amy Gallo is author of the book Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People) . An article about that book states that Gallo identifies 8 types of difficult people. The article focuses on one of those tricky types, the passive-aggressive, and describes dos and don'ts for dealing with them effectively. I have some critical comments on her typology but find her recommendations interesting.

In an article in The Washington Post , Tracy Dennis-Tiwary , a professor of psychology and neuroscience argues against perfectionism. A perfectionist herself, she writes, “The standards to which perfectionists hold themselves are unrealistic, overly demanding and often impossible to achieve. And when perfectionists fail to achieve perfection? We beat ourselves up with harsh self-criticism and are less able to bounce back and learn from mistakes. We’re also unlikely to celebrate our achievements or take pride in improving on our personal best. To a perfectionist, it’s all or nothing — you can be a winner or you can be an abject, worthless failure, with nothing in between.” 

Should salespeople be dishonest? Is cheating in commerce acceptable or even necessary to be successful? Years ago I spoke to someone who sold a product that was said to be good for health. He told me he mentioned on the packaging: “Clinically tested!” Laughing, he added: “Ha, ha, clinically tested! You can just put that on there, but that doesn't mean anything!" He pronounced it in a look-how-smart-I-am tone. Underlying such an attitude is the thought that if you want to sell something, a little deception should be allowed and may even be necessary. Seems like a dubious argument to me. I understand that the seller wants to sell, but it seems to me that the buyer does not want to be misled. 

We value honesty and condemn cheating. Understandable, because honesty has many benefits and lies and deceit can do a lot of damage. At the same time, we realize that no one is always completely honest. Everyone lies now and then. And I'm not even talking about hiding what you think or saying something that is true yet misleading. I'm talking about consciously saying things that we know are not true. And we all do this from time to time. Why do we do that? And when is it acceptable to lie? Emma Levine and Matthew Lupoli explain this clearly in a new article .

Various studies have shown that the quality of motivation of students usually decreases during a school year. This declined motivation is accompanied by feeling less well and functioning less well (in terms of behavior and grades). Rinat Cohen et al. (2022) investigated the reasons for this declining motivation. 

When do students benefit from a growth mindset and when do they not? When do growth mindset interventions work well and when don't they? A new study by Cameron Hecht and colleagues uses some cutting-edge insights and techniques and comes up with relevant answers.

We often see willpower and self-control as the same thing, namely, suppressing impulses and resisting temptations and forcing yourself to do what is necessary. But research has uncovered ways of self-control that don't rely on self-compulsion.

A concept that has regularly cropped up in publications in recent years is toxic positivity . Perhaps a surprising term. Can positivity be negative? What's up with that? Let's take a closer look.

The CPW 7 steps approach (Visser & Schlundt Bodien, 2005; 2013 ) is a progress-focused interview structure that is used by many coaches. Both for beginning and experienced coaches this structure is a useful tool to guide their conversations with clients.  Not to be used rigidly  These steps can be used in individual coaching, in sessions with groups, and even in self-coaching. The sequence of questions is usually perceived by clients as logical and helpful. But the structure is not restrictive or rigid. In other words, it is not strictly required to always follow the structure. If you have little time, you can decide to use only a few of its steps. And if clients, by what they say to you, use a different sequence then it is quite alright to follow their sequence. The structure allows clients to bring forward anything they like. At the same time, it gives a useful direction to their responses. Through the questions, clients are led from where they want progress to how they ...

People are not black or white, nor are they red, yellow, green or blue? People have many things in common, but of course there are also countless individual differences between people. Two ways we can think about these individual differences are dimensional thinking and categorical thinking. The dimensional way means that you look at a number of dimensions in which people can differ and then look at individual how they score on each of those dimensions. The categorical way means that you define a number of categories and then look at each individual to determine to which category they belong. 

The Social Progress Index (SPI) of 2022 has been published. The 2022 Social Progress Index® uses 12 components and 60 indicators to fully measure the social performance of 169 countries and partially measure the social performance of an additional 27 countries. The index helps us understand how people around the world live, who is left behind and how we can accelerate progress.

Previous research into the growth mindset has mainly focused on the benefits of a growth mindset regarding one's own abilities and traits. In a new paper, Justin Berg et al. (2022) argue for a dual growth mindset.

Maya Tamir and her colleagues are doing interesting research on emotions. Emotions are not simply states that overwhelm us and that we are at the mercy of. Nor is it the case that by definition we always simply want to feel happy or good. The story is more complex. As humans, we appear to have emotion goals and we construct and are able to regulate emotions.

Depression can be tough. But psychologists speak of a phenomenon called depressive realism . They often say that depressed people are more realistic in their assessment of their personal and social world than non-depressed people. Non-depressed people would think unrealistically optimistic about themselves and their circumstances.  This idea has also become familiar to many non-psychologists. It seemed a kind of consolation: while depression is very annoying, at least on the other hand, depressed people are more realistic. Is it true? Amelia Dev and colleagues investigated it. 

Two pervasive problems that have received a lot of attention lately are loneliness and polarization. Loneliness is relatively common, especially among young people. Polarization seems to be increasingly occurring in society and even tearing families apart.  Geoffrey L. Cohen , professor of psychology at Stanford University, has written a book relevant to these issues. The title is Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides . In this book he shows that the feeling of belonging is not only a consequence of being successful, but also a condition for success.