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Disagreements Improve Team Perception

Disagreements Improve Team Perception

by | 2022 Oct 17 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

team performance

When it comes to teams, we like to think of team cohesion and getting on well together which often aligns with team performance. In fact, we at leading brains have developed team assessments measuring just this.

We however, also state that a certain amount of misalignment, diversity of opinion is a good thing – just too much misalignment and disagreement blocks effectiveness of the team. And this research into military teams also shows something interesting in disagreements.

The researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory investigated identification of armoured vehicles in 29 two-person teams. Identifying types of armoured vehicle is essential in combat: you could fire on a friendly vehicle or let an enemy vehicle pass. Armoured vehicles are also difficult to distinguish apart particularly when viewing with limited angles or under time pressure.

What they found is that teams that disagreed more were better at combat identification. This may seem slightly counter-intuitive – with the assumption that high-performing teams would be better at first-off identification and therefore disagree less. However, it seems that disagreeing with a first guess forces people to justify their opinion, and this created more clarity and potential corrections.

This raises an interesting perspective in business teams that disagreeing with a person’s point of view could lead to better discussions and therefore better decisions. Assuming this can take place with the right atmosphere. So, disagreeing should be seen as a positive thing to do to engage in better decision-making.

Another note is that in this particular study they did further analysis of the abilities that contribute to correct identification. What they noticed is that spatial abilities are important to identification of the correct vehicles, unsurprising. But also, that the ability to communicate was essential.

In addition, they analysed gender and saw no correlations to gender composition of teams. So individual spatial skills and ability to communicate were the key factors irrespective of gender.

So, all in disagreements are good, specific skills also, and communication abilities are key.

This was in a very specific scenario, I know, but I assume much of this translates to functional teams of all sorts in the military and business. Indeed, plenty of other research has also pointed to these as being essential attributes of high-performing teams. So go ahead and disagree at your next meeting.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Anthony L. Baker, Joseph R. Keebler, Emily C. Anania, David Schuster, John P. Plummer. 
Team Combat Identification: Effects of Gender, Spatial Visualization, and Disagreement. 
Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2020; 001872082090228
DOI: 10.1177/0018720820902286

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Brain Cells Adapt to Help You Stay Awake

Brain Cells Adapt to Help You Stay Awake

by | 2022 Oct 14 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

sleep brain

Falling asleep is a funny thing – you don’t need to think about it when it happens but can cause many people who can’t incredible frustration, not to mention the negative cognitive and health impacts that ensue from lack of good sleep.

You may know of the brain chemicals that help you to sleep, specifically melatonin, that you can also buy at your local drugstore to help you sleep. But as with all things in the brain it is never quite that simple. I reported previously on how toxins build up and genetic rubbish also that makes you tired. But recent research into fruit flies has given us some more fascinating insights.

You may think fruit flies are not really a good proxy for us human beings, but they are commonly used in research. They have simple brains, ethically it is unquestionable, but they also have a lot of similarities when it comes to daily patterns to us human beings.

Fruit flies are active in the day, sleep at night, and like to take a little nap in the afternoon, particularly on hot days. Caffeine keeps them up, and drugs that put us to sleep work on flies, too. So all in suitable to research.

They researchers around Stephane Dissel at Washington University of Medicine zoomed in on 24 neurons that help regulate sleep in these flies and particular the chemical reactions between them which include dopamine that promotes wakefulness, and something called allatostatin A, plus glutamate, a transmitter that in this area promotes sleep.

The researchers looked at two scenarios that are similar to human beings. One is that learning or intellectual challenge makes us tired, this can be through holding meetings, studying or bashing through business case studies. The subsequent sleep helps us consolidate this learning.

What they noticed in the flies is that when flies were in a crowded social environment or learned a new behaviour this changed the responsiveness of the neurons to dopamine (less responsive) therefore making them sleepier. This is in itself already fascinating because it isn’t he build-up of toxins which we would assume could make us tired but a change in responsiveness of a neurons to the chemical transmitters in the brain.

The second scenario involved stressing the flies, translating into stress or fear reaction in human beings. In flies simple, shake the vile you are keeping them in to stress them out. In this situation the flies’ brains produced both allatostatin A and glutamate – actually opposing signals but this helped the flies to stay awake.

This shows that it is the chemicals in the brain allowing alertness to stress or fear that can keep you awake.

The research however, discovered a few other fascinating features that could apply to use human beings also. They also identified naturally insomniac flies those that slept a lot less – their brain cells had abnormal reactions to those chemicals that influence sleep. This therefore suggests there is a genetic disposition to insomnia.

But a surprising answer to help this problem is that of time-restricted feeding. When the flies could only eat between 8 am and 5 pm the sensitivity to dopamine changed in their neurons. The flies still slept less but they didn’t show signs of tiredness therefore suggesting that their sleep quality was good. This effect also persisted for weeks after they returned to normal feeding routines.

So, there you go – your brain cells control sleep in ways we hadn’t considered. Stress and fear will keep you awake, no surprise, but if you’re having trouble sleeping time-restricted feeding might help sleep quality.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Stephane Dissel, Markus K. Klose, Bruno van Swinderen, Lijuan Cao, Melanie Ford, Erica M. Periandri, Joseph D. Jones, Zhaoyi Li, Paul J. Shaw. 
Sleep-promoting neurons remodel their response properties to calibrate sleep drive with environmental demands. 
PLOS Biology, 2022; 20 (9): e3001797
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001797

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Dad Brain is Real

Dad Brain is Real

by | 2022 Oct 13 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

father dad brain

We know that mothers go through multiple physical and psychological changes after birth (and before) including change in brain structures. That may sound surprising to the uninitiated – and it is fascinating. But that has been reasonably well researched.

What, however, has not been well researched, barely at all is that of the father. There have been some psychological studies showing that men do become more caring, but also that their testosterone does also drop. Presumably to help prime the body and brain for more caring – though I reported previously on the complicated role of testosterone.

But is this matched by changes in the brain – here at leading brains we know that if there is a behavioural change there will be a biological, brain, change. And this is precisely what a group of Spanish and US researchers around Magdalena Martínez-García have found out and described in a recently published paper.

The findings are interesting also because they do not show change to some regions we might expect. For example, in mothers changes in the brain limbic regions has been noted. This region is considered our emotional centre so unsurprising. But this region did not seem to change in fresh fathers.

What was, however, seen are small changes in the prefrontal regions, particularly in areas that are associated with something called the default mode network. This is a region that is active when doing nothing but also is involved in so-called mentalizing tasks i.e. being able to think about what other people think – this could be seen as an increase in ability to empathise. Similarly, some of the changes in the prefrontal regions are in regions that are associated with social functions in human beings.

Another area that showed changes was in the visual area – this suggests a change in visual capabilities maybe referring to sensitivity in responsiveness to different visual cues i.e. of a little baby rather than hunting for deer.

The study involved 20 men whose brains were scanned before or after the birth of their first child and a control group of 17 childless men. So, it wasn’t a large scale study but gives us our first glimpse into the changes that men’s brains go through with the birth of their first child.

This hints at increased empathy, changed sensitivity to visual stimuli, and increased social functions. All in pretty good.

On a different note, in case, any of you men are worried, is that men are seen as more positive as fathers, and interestingly “manly” traits (such as strength) are still associated with fathers but also in addition with more caring traits – and this shows in the brains.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Magdalena Martínez-García, María Paternina-Die, Sofia I Cardenas, Oscar Vilarroya, Manuel Desco, Susanna Carmona, Darby E Saxbe,
First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples
Cerebral Cortex, 2022;, bhac333
https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac333

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Mask-Wearing Makes You Better Behaved

Mask-Wearing Makes You Better Behaved

by | 2022 Oct 11 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

mask wearing behavior china

This is a fascinating study that shows that wearing masks changes behaviour in subtle but important ways. There were reports at the start of the pandemic that mask wearing increased social distancing most likely because there is a physical reminder of hygiene.

This study in China focused on how wearing masks influences so-called deviant behaviour. That’s not as bad as it sounds, it just means going against norms and rules such as running red lights, violating parking rules, but also cheating for money.

There is, however, an argument that wearing masks increases anonymity and therefore could increase this deviant behaviour. The researchers from MIT analysed this in 10 separate studies.

First off, they analysed data from traffic cameras to see how motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians with and without masks behaved. They noticed that pedestrians and cyclist who wore masks were less likely to run red lights compared to those who were maskless.

However, this could be down to those who wear masks being more cautious and safety conscious – so further experiments were carried out to see if they could find causality.

One of these was focused on parking spaces for bicycles – something that does not affect safety. They found that those wearing masks were more likely to follow the rules and park in the formally assigned spaces.

Another experiment was also conducted with participants randomly assigned to mask-wearing and non-mask-wearing groups and played games for small amounts of money – with an ability to cheat to win. Those wearing masks cheated less.

This was a large-scale study with 10 experiments with about 68’000 observations, so the results are pretty clear that wearing masks increases following rules and norms to a small but significant degree.

Obviously, this was only focused on China so this may not generalise to other countries particularly where mask wearing has become a political statement such as in the USA. The researchers note that in China mask-wearing is seen as a moral behaviour.

Nevertheless, fascinating that there is a positive knock-on effect in society – I’d certainly be interested in data from other countries.

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Jackson G. Lu, Lesley Luyang Song, Yuhuang Zheng, Laura Changlan Wang. 
Masks as a moral symbol: Masks reduce wearers’ deviant behavior in China during COVID-19. 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (41)
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2211144119

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Coffee Can Help You Live Longer

Coffee Can Help You Live Longer

by | 2022 Oct 10 | Public, Quick Hits

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

coffee aging health

Yes, that is good news for you (us) coffee drinkers. This supports plenty of more recent studies which have shown the health benefits of coffee which is still overcoming a bad reputation.

So, what did these researchers actually find?

This was a large-scale observational study spanning a time period of 12.5 years and following 449’563 participants: coffee drinkers were compared to non-drinkers for the incidence of arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease and death, after adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea, smoking status, and tea and alcohol consumption.

The coffee drinkers were categorised into different groups depending on their daily consumption.

What the researchers saw is that all coffee drinkers were inked with a reduction in death of any cause. This includes those who drank only decaffeinated coffee (14% reduction).  There also differences between ground and instant coffee with the largest effect seen in group coffee (a dramatic 27% reduction) and those who drank two to three cups a day.

Similarly cardiovascular disease is lower in those who regularly drink coffee of any sort with the same pattern as above: ground coffee (a 20% reduction) and two to three cups a day had the lowest correlation.

Interestingly arrhythmia was correlated only with caffeinated coffee with the largest impacts again in those with ground coffee (a 17% reduction) but here more coffee seemed to be better with the strongest correlation seen in those who drink four to five cups a day.

Though much research has focused on the nature of caffeine in coffee it must be noted that coffee has many biologically active compounds, as a natural product, and similar to many other pulses, beans, and fruits. It is likely that these compounds are the reason behind these positive correlations.

So, all in there is certainly no need to feel guilty at your coffee consumption, or rather, it may be recommendable to drink coffee if you don’t already – as a health measure. And fresh ground coffee seems to be the most potent. Happily, I have been doing that for nigh on 40 years – hopefully that will also help me!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

David Chieng, Rodrigo Canovas, Louise Segan, Hariharan Sugumar, Aleksandr Voskoboinik, Sandeep Prabhu, Liang Han Ling, Geoffrey Lee, Joseph B Morton, David M Kaye, Jonathan M Kalman, Peter M Kistler. 
The impact of coffee subtypes on incident cardiovascular disease, arrhythmias, and mortality: long-term outcomes from the UK Biobank. 
European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2022
DOI: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwac189

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Big Kids Die Earlier!

Big Kids Die Earlier!

by | 2022 Oct 7 | Public, Quick Hits

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

fat child obesity aging

Before you panic – the conclusion in the title is based on research into mice not human beings – but there could potentially be some important insights for us human beings as well.

The researchers in a collaboration between the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) were looking for genetic markers of ageing to get a clearer insight into how genes influence ageing.

This was a large-scale study: first off, they analysed the genetic data from 27,574 mice studied each of which was a full sibling, sharing half its genetic inheritance with each other mouse in the program, and each has a known lifespan, making them an ideal system to study.

They then measured the genetic makeup of over 3’000 mice all of which were also brothers or sisters, sharing genetics. They were then allowed to live their natural lives. The genetics were then compared to their lifespans. With some intriguing results.

First off, they found that much of the difference was due to sex-based differences with females having a genetic stretch on chromosome three that seems to affect lifespans (making females live longer). So far nothing new to learn here. However, they also noted when they took those that died early out of the data that some genes seem to only become active or be influential after a certain age.

This is a bit of a surprise showing that there are genetic interactions that can last over a lifetime and not just from the starting genetic makeup.
What’s more they also discovered that mice who were larger as youngsters lived shorter lives. These larger mice came from smaller litters and therefore had more access to mother milk and grew more while younger – this negatively affected lifespan. Those who came from larger litters and therefore had more competition for food and less of it, and were hence smaller, liver longer lives.

This seems a pretty big deal – if this translates to human beings which it might well, it would mean that well-fed babies, who become larger children will live shorter lives. Oh dear! It goes against some logic i.e. that having plentiful nutrition in early years is critical for lifetime health.

However, there is a big difference between under nutrition, a healthy diet, and being overfed. Maybe this is something we should pay more attention to!

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Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Maroun Bou Sleiman, Suheeta Roy, Arwen W. Gao, Marie C. Sadler, Giacomo V. G. von Alvensleben, Hao Li, Saunak Sen, David E. Harrison, James F. Nelson, Randy Strong, Richard A. Miller, Zoltán Kutalik, Robert W. Williams, Johan Auwerx.
Sex- and age-dependent genetics of longevity in a heterogeneous mouse population.
Science, 2022; 377 (6614)
DOI: 10.1126/science.abo3191

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