Category: Occupational

Occupational September 3, 2020

Black Women With Natural Hair Face Biases From Potential Employers

Stories about discriminatory practices against Black people with natural hairstyles (e.g. afros, twists, dreadlocks, braids and cornrows) abound. At school, having natural hair has led to detention, punishment and even exclusions, and previous research has also found serious stigma around natural hair when it comes to desirability and professionalism.

A new study in Social Psychological and Personality Science backs this up, finding that such biases can tangibly affect Black women’s chances with potential employers. Christy Zhou Koval at Michigan State University and Ashleigh Shelby Rosette at Duke University found that Black women with natural hairstyles were seen as less competent and less professional than White female applicants or Black applicants with straightened hair — and that they were less likely to get job interviews, too.

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Mental health, Occupational, Qualitative July 14, 2020July 14, 2020

Eating Lunch At Your Desk Again? Study Examines Why Workers Don’t Always Take Breaks

By Emily Reynolds

If you work for more than six hours a day in the UK, you’re legally entitled to a rest break of at least twenty minutes per shift. Many workers get more; if you work an eight hour day, it’s likely your employer will give you an hour-long lunch break.

Whether or not you actually take that break, however, is a different matter. Despite the fact that breaks can increase motivation and productivity and decrease potentially damaging inactivity, research has indicated a growing trend of workers eating their lunch at their desks or not taking their rest time. Some figures suggest 82% of workers don’t always take their breaks — a significant proportion of the workforce.

So why is it that we’re so often eating al desko? A study published in Psychology and Health has some insights.

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Gender, Lying, Occupational June 2, 2020

Women Are More Likely Than Men To Be Told “White Lies” In Performance Reviews

By Emily Reynolds

It’s not uncommon to tell a white lie at work: why you took a slightly too-long lunch break or how much you’ve really done on that big project. Often, white lies are socially useful — telling someone that you like what they’re wearing is probably a kinder option than admitting that you hate it, for example.

When it comes to performance reviews, however, white lies are less beneficial. The whole point of such a review is to help improve how someone is working and identify and mitigate potential problems, so lying defeats the object. And according to a new study from Cornell University’s Lily Jampol and Vivian Zayas, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, it’s women who most often bear the brunt of untruthful performance reviews.

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Decision making, Occupational March 25, 2020

Behavioural “Nudges” Are Ineffective At Encouraging Commuters To Carpool Or Take The Bus

By Emma Young

You’ll probably be familiar with the idea of behavioural “nudges” — interventions that encourage people to make better choices, without changing the actual options available. As a concept, nudging has become hugely popular, with at least 200 “nudge units” in governments and institutions around the world. We’ve certainly reported on a few studies finding that simple nudges encourage people to give more to charity, and help people to make healthier soft drink choices from fast food menus, for example. You might be forgiven for thinking, then, that there are no limits to what nudging can do….

Well, a recent set of studies designed to “nudge” commuters’ behaviour, published in Nature Human Behaviour and involving a total of almost 69,000 people, has found that there definitely are limits. “The failure of these well-powered experiments … highlights both the difficulty of changing commuter behaviour and the importance of publishing null results to build cumulative knowledge about how to encourage sustainable travel,” write Ariella S. Kristal and Ashley V. Whillans, of Harvard Business School.

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Cognition, Occupational, Technology March 16, 2020

Looking At Your Phone At Work Might Make You Even More Bored

By Emily Reynolds

There are plenty of things you can do in a five minute break at work — talk to a colleague, make a cup of tea or coffee, or even go outside for some fresh air. But with the advent of digital technology, many of us now spend the short lulls in our day doing something else: looking at our phones.

Previous research has already suggested (fairly unsurprisingly) that smartphone use increases as we get more bored or fatigued. It makes sense: if you’re doing a particularly tedious task at work, you’re much more likely to want to spend a few minutes scrolling on your phone than if you’re doing something deeply engaging.

But does looking at your phone actually relieve boredom? A new study from Jonas Dora and colleagues at Radboud University, available as a preprint at PsyArXiv, seems to suggest not.

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Gender, Occupational November 19, 2019November 19, 2019

Companies Are Judged More Harshly For Their Ethical Failures If The CEO Is A Woman

By Emily Reynolds

Gender inequality in the business world has been much discussed over the last few years, with a host of mentoring schemes, grants, business books and political activity all aimed at getting women into leadership positions.

But what happens when this goal is achieved? According to new research, unequal gender dynamics still prevail even at the very top. Nicole Votolato Montgomery and Amanda P. Cowen from the University of Virginia found that women CEOs are judged far more harshly than their male counterparts when a business fails ethically. However, when a failure is down to incompetence, they find, women receive less negative backlash.

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Occupational, The self October 8, 2019

People Prefer Their Jobs To Be Taken By Robots, Not Other Workers

By Emily Reynolds

The rise of automation has already had a significant impact on the work lives of millions of people — and it shows no signs of stopping. In a study released earlier this year, the Office for National Statistics found 1.5 million workers in Britain at “high risk of losing their jobs to automation”, with women and low-paid workers bearing the brunt of the risk. And another paper published in Social Science and Medicine found that exposure to automation risk exacerbated poor health: higher risk of automation meant higher job uncertainty and subsequently a greater chance of physical and mental health problems.

All of which makes the findings of a new Nature Human Behaviour study on almost 2,000 North American and European participants even more surprising. While most people prefer it when workers are replaced by humans, not robots, the majority of those surveyed said that if their job was at risk, they would find it less upsetting for it to be handed to robots rather than other employees.

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Occupational October 7, 2019July 13, 2020

Spending More Time On Your Hobbies Can Boost Confidence At Work — If They Are Sufficiently Different From Your Job

By Matthew Warren

None of us enjoys having our job cut into our leisure time. So the next time your boss asks you to work late and miss your band rehearsal or board game night, point them to a new study in the Journal of Vocational Behavior. Researchers have found that spending more time on a hobby can boost people’s confidence in their ability to perform their job well. But watch out — if your hobby is too similar to your work, then increased time on leisure activities may actually have a detrimental effect.

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Gender, guest blogger, Occupational, Reading October 3, 2019

Reading Between The Lines: Why Girls’ Superior Reading Skills May Be Lowering Their Future Salaries

Smiling and cheerful schoolgirls reading a book together at school

By guest blogger Louisa Lyon

In many countries, the proportion of girls opting to pursue careers in lucrative fields such as engineering and computer science has stagnated. Despite the best efforts of schools, universities and governments, women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called “STEM” subjects. The shortage of women is particularly acute in professions with a heavy focus on maths. But why?

A recent study in PNAS suggests that the answer may lie in differences in ability between boys and girls. But surprisingly, the ability in question is not maths, but reading. In a nutshell, girls who are good at maths tend to be even better at reading, and as a result, many turn away from maths and opt instead to pursue careers that utilise their even stronger language skills. By contrast, boys who are good at maths tend not to show this same advantage in reading, making their decision to stick with STEM subjects much more straightforward.

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