For better or worse, products and the designed world are used as tools for self-determination. In childhood, toys become part of a playful process of becoming ones’ self. Child psychologists have known for decades that through play, children learn empathy, “try on” identities, and experiment with their place in the world. Essentially, in childhood we play our way through discovering who we are. Unfortunately for kids today, the designed world doesn’t leave much room for them to explore. Most toys come with pre-defined identities and stories, which rob children of the joy of imagining these things. There is also a dearth of open-ended toys, or toys without instructions and right and wrong answers. This leaves few opportunities to figure out how to use a toy, experiment, fail, and invent the story of where it came from, and why it does what it does. READ MORE: The Case For Letting Kids Design Their Own Play | Co.Design | business + design.
Tag Archives: psychology
New Study Confirms Every Female Boss’ Fear That She Just Can’t Win | Mashable #genderequality #women #leadership
There is no shortage of advice for professional women on how to succeed and lead in the workplace. Women are constantly told to lean in, take charge and be confident, and that gender equality will follow.
But what if the bias against a female boss is so deeply ingrained in some of her male charges, that they find her leadership role threatening and begin advocating for their own self-interest more aggressively?
A study published Thursday in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that happens more than we might like to admit and shows exactly how narrow a tightrope a woman must walk in order to gain the trust and respect of her male employees. READ MORE: New study confirms every female boss’ fear that she just can’t win | Mashable
Top Complaints from #Employees About Their #Leaders | HBR #leadership #emotionalintelligence #communication @HarvardBiz
If you’re the kind of boss who fails to make genuine connections with your direct reports, take heed: 91% of employees say communication issues can drag executives down, according to results from our new Interact/Harris Poll, which was conducted online with roughly 1,000 U.S. workers.
In the survey, employees called out the kind of management offenses that point to a striking lack of emotional intelligence among business leaders, including micromanaging, bullying, narcissism, indecisiveness, and more. In rank order, the following were the top communication issues people said were preventing business leaders from being effective… READ MORE: The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders | HBR
Roxane Gay: Confessions of a Bad Feminist [Video] | TED.com #feminism #women
Caring Pepper Robot Hits the Market, Sells Out in a Minute | CNET #robots #empathy
The adorable Pepper robot unveiled a year ago by Japan-based mobile and telecommunications company SoftBank has finally been made available to consumers, and it’s been a roaring success.
According to CIO, the robot was launched on to the market at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 20. Within a minute, all 1,000 robots in the first wave had been snapped up by customers, going for 198,000 yen (around $1,610) apiece.
Pepper aims to act as a household companion. It is programmed to communicate with users, follow vocal commands, and, in what SoftBank claims is a first, read human emotions and react accordingly. Pepper is not built for physical tasks. The robot’s role is more emotional. READ MORE: Caring Pepper robot hits the market, sells out in a minute – CNET
Google’s Guide To Designing With #Empathy | Co.Design #design #accessibility #tech #UX
According to the World Health Organization, more than 1 billion people worldwide have a disability. To Astrid Weber and Jen Devins, Google’s resident accessibility experts, that stat should be stamped on the back of every designer’s hand, because it means that one out of every seven people on the planet is potentially left behind by thoughtless design decisions. At this year’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, I sat down with the two UX experts and asked them what designers could do to make their apps more accessible. The key, they told me, was using your imagination and having a little more empathy. Here are six ways designers can reach that extra billion.
READ MORE: Google’s Guide To Designing With Empathy | Co.Design | business + design.
Can #Reading Make You Happier? | The New Yorker #books #psychology #therapy
Several years ago, I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life, which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence. I have to admit that at first I didn’t really like the idea of being given a reading “prescription.” I’ve generally preferred to mimic Virginia Woolf’s passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries, delighting not only in the books themselves but in the randomly meaningful nature of how I came upon them (on the bus after a breakup, in a backpackers’ hostel in Damascus, or in the dark library stacks at graduate school, while browsing instead of studying). I’ve long been wary of the peculiar evangelism of certain readers: You must read this, they say, thrusting a book into your hands with a beatific gleam in their eyes, with no allowance for the fact that books mean different things to people—or different things to the same person—at various points in our lives. I loved John Updike’s stories about the Maples in my twenties, for example, and hate them in my thirties, and I’m not even exactly sure why.
But the session was a gift, and I found myself unexpectedly enjoying the initial questionnaire about my reading habits that the bibliotherapist, Ella Berthoud, sent me. Nobody had ever asked me these questions before, even though reading fiction is and always has been essential to my life. READ MORE: Can Reading Make You Happier? | The New Yorker.
Myers-Briggs Personalities: A Book for Every Type | Flavorwire #MBTI #books
HuffPo: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Young #Women and Likability + Roxane Gay: ‘We Demand Perfection Of #Feminists. We Do Not Need To Do That.’ #feminism
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Thinks It’s Bullsh*t That Young Women Have To Be ‘Likable’ | Huffington Post
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is here to remind young women that whoever likes you or doesn’t like you should have no effect on your self worth. On May 19, the Nigerian author was honored at the 2015 Girls Write Now Awards, where she gave a riveting speech directed at young women — reminding them that their stories and their voices matter. “I think it’s important to tell your story truthfully and I think that’s a difficult thing to do — to be truly truthful,” Adichie told the crowd in New York City.
She said that it’s hard for women to be truthful when telling their stories because we’re conditioned to be concerned about offending people. Adichie told the young women in the crowd to forget about being liked. “If you start off thinking about being likable you’re not going to tell your story honestly because you’re going to be so concerned with not offending and that’s going to ruin your story. Forget about likability,” she said.
Roxane Gay: ‘We Demand Perfection Of Feminists. We Do Not Need To Do That.’ | Huffington Post
Roxane Gay has become known as a ‘bad feminist.’ The label comes from her August 2014 book’s title, a collection of essays which challenged how we define and interact with feminism. In it, Gay discusses why she doesn’t live up to the label, all the ways she’s a contradiction and how feminism, in many ways, is broken.
She took the stage Thursday at TED Women in Monterey, Calif. to break down how identifying as a “bad feminist” — originally an inside joke she had with herself — became a thing. In her 11-minute talk, she was funny, self-deprecating and painfully honest. That raw honesty awarded her a standing ovation.
However, it was her moving story of how feminism saved her that brought the auditorium to a hush.
Note: The video of Roxane Gay’s TEDWomen 2015 speech is not yet available.
Video Game Link to Psychiatric Disorders Suggested by Study | The Guardian #gaming #psychology
People who regularly play action video games could be at increased risk of developing neurological and psychiatric disorders, a study suggests.
The research, published in a Royal Society journal on Wednesday, found that people who played games such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto V and Tomb Raider were more likely to employ navigational strategies associated with decreased grey matter in the hippocampus part of the brain.
Decreased volume in the hippocampus has been associated with disorders such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.
The lead study author, Prof Greg West, from the University of Montreal’s department of psychology, said the paper indicated that benefits of video games, such as improved attention and perception, highlighted in previous studies, could come at a price.
READ MORE: Video game link to psychiatric disorders suggested by study | Technology | The Guardian
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