Category: Entrepreneurial
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Sense of “Fairness” & its importance in human emotional responses
David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” makes a mention of “Fairness” as one of the key factors in his SCARF framework to influence the human brain emotional responses.
Human brain is naturally oriented towards fairness and hence unfairness is treated as a negative emotional response.
The “limbic brain” inclusive of amygdala & associated parts e.g. nucleus accumbens which are key to the reward circuitry in our brain gets turned on by fair and just behavior , actions & environment in general.
Hence fairness is considered as a key in stimulating positive human behavior.This is why work places that encourage transparency and fairness in professional work environment are able to get the best out of their workforce.
Its has been proven by research that “fairness” leads to release of “dopamine” , “serotonin” as well as “oxytocin” and hence goes a long way in stimulating long lasting positive behavior and outcomes.
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Expectations and their relationship with “Dopamine”
David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” talks at length about the relationship of human expectations & their interrelationships with the limbic brain.
“Dopamine” is a neurotransmitter which is conjunction with nucleus accumbens plays a major role in reward and motivational behavior in humans.
Amygdala is the region of the brain responsible for the release of this hormone “dopamine” which plays a very key role in motivational behavior out of risk/reward situations.
Limbic brain follows a “toward” approach for good emotions when the expectations are met and “away” approach when whatever is expected is not achieved.
When our expectations are met , the “dopamine” flow results in motivational behavior helping us achieve good results.
Unexpected rewards can cause much higher level of “dopamine” flow and hence can help us achieve much beyond our potential at times.
Worst effect happens when we imagine and expect rewards out of a situation but the actual results are far away from our set expectations and targets.This is what results in huge level of stress and downgraded performance.
Hence the best way out to avoid such kind of stressful situations is to lower our expectations to ensure that come what may the results would match our expectations.
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Old Brain vs New Brain – Unknown facts
Our limbic part of the brain has been inherited from apes and is known as the “Old Brain”.This understands only symbols & signals and has no power for rational thinking.
A couple of noteworthy components are HippoCampus & Amygdala.
Whereas hippocampus stores long term emotional memory for later recall and reflection , Amygdala acts as the thermometer of feelings.
The rational brain is a later addition and helps in rational thinking and hence known as “New Brain”.This is what separates humans from other animals.
The quirky part is that both “Old & “New brain” work in the opposite direction. A high emotional arousal leading to high limbic activity results in low rational state and vice versa.
Knowing these quirks can help us focus on top performance.
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Handling high state of “emotional arousal”
The limbic part of our human brain is responsible for all emotions.
A high state of emotional arousal is when performance starts deteriorating out of stress , tension , anxiety.
A basic principle of the human brain suggests that a negative emotion has a far lasting impact than a positive emotion.
Since the limbic brain and rational brain work inversely , in a state of high emotional arousal i.e. negative , effective use of symbols instead of elaborate messaging can go a long way in giving control to the prefrontal cortex as against the linbic brain to reduce the arousal.
This is how great leaders are able to stay calm and use their rational senses when confronted with difficult and emotionally charged situations.
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Working memory of brain is limited – Use it judiciously for top performance
Our brain’s working memory like a computer’s RAM is of limited capacity.
Though there is still dispute on maximum number of items that can be kept in working memory at one time , the number 4 is the mostly accepted number.
This being said a lot of the great personalities can efficiently multi task for top performance.
How this is done is through rigorous practice , to convert mundane work into routines that become habit patterns in the basal ganglia.
Habits do not occupy the conscious mind and can operative out of our subconscious mind , thus enabling efficient multi tasking by tricking the brain.
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Brain circuitry and their types
David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” introduces us to the circuitry in our brains.
Whenever we are faced with a situation it is human nature to activate our mental maps and try to find similar situations we have faced in the past.This is where our default circuitry inclusive of basal ganglia(habits) & hippocampus(long term memory).
But when we are starting from scratch , this default circuitry is seldom of any use.This is where “direct experience” circuit that learns by doing actions on the fly is needed.This circuit requires lot of space to do problem solving.Medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex dominate.
Use of the relevant circuit needs to be chosen judiciously depending on a case to case basis.
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Practice “Mindfulness” for better problem solving
David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” talks two very catchy terms namely “mindfulness” & “interoception“.
Both relate to that circuit of the brain that helps us focus in the present , live for the present moment.Practicing “Mindfulness” through techniques like meditation help us understand and interpret all our incoming brain signals.
This keeps us in better shape in tackling problems and taking resurrective action.