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Competency Coordinates: Adapting Knowledge to Context

Examining and applying in practice good social performance initiatives, transferring appropriate theoretical and methodological knowledge, being up to date with relevant local news.

Are you feeding your mind with healthy information?

  • Back in 2004 the director Morgan Spurlock did a social experiment with fast-food. He subsisted during 30 months eating only fast food, three meals a day. The director ended increasing his weight by 11kg, his fat mass by 13%, and to experience, decrease in energy, mood swings and other psychological symptoms. It took Morgan 14 months of rigorous diet to recover his original weight and health. Without getting into all the praise and critiques the movie instigated, it offers a caricature of the idea that we are what we eat. What if Morgan, instead of food and physical health, used information and mental health? What would happen to someone was regularly exposed to fake news without having much of a chance of fact checking?

  • A critical element in human cognition is knowledge. Every decision we take, from what to dress to how we lead, is based on our knowledge about the situation. Knowledge is pretty much like food for our thoughts. Research shows that people listening to sensationalist news (i.e., focused extraordinary and unusual events portrayed with an emphatic and emotional discourse) experience greater emotional arousal and have less complex and more polarized representations of the world. Research also shows that people exposed to fake news (i.e., news that lack evidence of go against existing evidence) are associated with biased trust dynamics (e.g., lower trust in media and higher trust in power status).

Perfectionism… enemy number one of adaption!

  • In a job interview, when the interviewer asks the applicant “Can you tell me about your imperfections?”, one of the most common answers is “I am perfectionist!”. Well, this not exactly an imperfection! It is more like the person is good at sacrificing herself to excel at work. Perfectionism is associated with being a high achiever, setting high standards, showing hard work, and receiving great rewards. It is so widely accepted in society that you can even use it in a job interview as a kind of “imperfection”. It is so widely accepted in organizations that people do not see as a problem to impose, or be imposed on, perfectionism.
  • Here is what we know from scientific research – with perfectionism a little is enough, and lot is worse than bad. Perfectionism is a combination of excessive high standards and excessive self-critical evaluation. Taken together, they create the condition for unattainable expectations, failure, blame. Even more alarming, it sets a perpetual loop for failure by motivating the compensation for failure with even more excessive expectations! Perfectionism is associated with resistance to trying optimal alternatives, with experimenting (e.g., trial and error), and with creativity. On top of this, it is not surprising that perfectionism is also associated with professional burnout and lower mental health.
  • What does it mean that “a little perfectionism” can have a positive impact on performance? High standards are important, but it is necessary to strike a balance. Goal Setting Theory shows that people are much more motivated by difficult and attainable tasks than by either easy and attainable or difficult and unattainable ones. Also, being self-critical is important but too much becomes self-sabotaging. Knowing how to exert self-compassion provides a great way to acknowledge your limitations but in a positive way.

Become simultaneously more knowledgeable and pragmatic

1. Develop healthy knowledge structures

Feeding our mind with healthy information is the cornerstone for healthy knowledge structures. How can you accomplish this?

  • Check your sources. Battle against the passive receiver within you. Search for credible and diverse sources of information. Use news outlets and podcasts known for impartiality, scientific divulgation journals, or even scientific journals from relevant areas of specialty. There is many information available but you can start looking here for unbiased world news sources and here for the top scientific journals on human behaviour. Try developing regular reading habits by taking a moment of day to scrolling through the news or by signing up for news feeds and receiving a daily digest on the email.

  • Think critically. Develop your own, personal critical perspective about relevant themes. Writing in a journal is a very helpful. Use simple layouts like “pros and cons” of a point of view, “borderlines” regarding a negation of a decision on topic, or “needs” to identify your blind spots. Writing is a very helpful way of concretising and gaining a critical perspective on your own thoughts.

  • Challenge yourself. John Donne said “No man [or woman] is an island entire of itself”. Ideas, for man and woman alike, also are no islands! Sharing and confronting your perspectives with other people is a healthy exercise to broaden and strength your knowledge structures. Debate groups, workshops, or even friends are all great contexts to test our beliefs.

2. Exercise self-compassion

If mental health was a straight-line balancing on the top of a triangle, perfectionism and self-compassion would be on the opposite sides of the line, cancelling out the excess weight of each other. Learn more about both and on how to exercise self-compassion in a healthy way and become less anxious, less conflict prone, and more at peace:

  • Learn more about the dangerous obsession with perfectionism with the Social Psychologist Thomas Curran in his TED talk, here.

  • Learn more about self-compassion with the Educational Psychology Kristine Neff on a podcast The Science of Success, here.


References
  • Hill, A. P., & Curran, T. (2016). Multidimensional Perfectionism and Burnout: A Meta Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(3), 269–288.
  • Jacobs, L., Meeusen, C., & d’Haenens, L. (2016). News coverage and attitudes on immigration: Public and commercial television news compared. European Journal of Communication, 31(6), 642–660.
  • Ognyanova, K., Lazer, D., Robertson, R. E., & Wilson, C. (2020). Misinformation in action: Fake news exposure is linked to lower trust in media, higher trust in government when your side is in power. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 1(4), 1–19.
  • Vettehen, P. H., Nuijten, K., & Peeters, A. (2008). Explaining effects of sensationalism on liking of television news stories: The role of emotional arousal. Communication Research, 35(3), 319–338.