#obhr

By Gong Yaping, Professor in Department of Management Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Presented at NTU on 20 October 2015.

Two learning points:

Motivational orientation is usually considered as a state, but the recent developments in literature propose that it may be an individual difference. It being a state and an individual difference can co-exist, and may play a complementary function in the individual.

Too strong creative goals can result in high conscious engagement, due to the importance and salience of these goals. Yet, unconscious work is needed for complex tasks, such as radical creativity. 

Two after-thoughts:

Simple to moderately complex tasks require conscious thinking, while moderately to very complex tasks require unconscious thinking. In order to move from incremental creativity to radical creativity, the unconscious thinking needs to be engaged. After personal introspection, now I understand why I struggle with multi-thinking on two very varied content domains, both requiring radical creativity.

By Dr Liu-Qin Yang, Assistant Professor Portland State University Presented at NTU on 24 October 2014.

Three learning points

Interactional injustice leads to increase in cortisol levels, which can impact cognitive processing, which increases deviant behaviour and risk-taking behaviour. This happens because the increase in cortisol reduces the resources to regulating behaviour, which leads to lack of resources to control impulses. 

Previous research has shown that the emotional route is separate from physiological route. 

Procedural injustice leads to chronic increase in cortisol, which affects how quickly the cortisol levels resumes to normal level. This leads to withdrawal, avoidance-related behaviours. On the other hand, distributive and interactional justice often leads to acute increase in cortisol, which increases approach-related behaviour. 

After-thought

By Dr Xiao Chen, Assistant Professor Tsinghua University Presented at NTU on 4 November 2014.

Four learning points:

When a person already knows how to complete a task, performance goals should be set. The mediator of this relationship is motivation, and it spurs a person on to achieving high performance. This forms the "What" question. When a person does not know how to complete a novel task, focusing on performance goals might result in negative outcomes instead. Learning goals should be set, which will lead to higher performance. The mediator of this relationship is ability. This forms the "how to" question.

There are four moderators of goal setting theory: goal commitment, ability, task feedback and resource availability.

Findings: Priming a context-specific goal indeed resulted in highest performance even after a 4-day delay, followed by a generic goal, and lastly, a neutral prime. All these occur at the subconscious level.

Four ways of testing the success of a prime: Awareness check (most often used in social psych), projective test (check using content analysis of an essay written after the prime), affective arousal and mental representation/semantic construct.

Three after-thoughts: 

Need to perform pilot studies for my own research, especially if looking into behavioural strategy. For the presentation, even the picture to be used for the experiment was tested through a pilot study. The picture of a Rodin Thinker was presented in 8 different angles before finalised. 

When presenting of research, I can consider showing actual pictures of the experiment and results. For example, if a team is working together to create something, anonymous pictures of the actual experiment room and actual creation can be shown (if add value to presentation). This is engaging for me personally, because I can see the actual difference in the result.

What kind of goals should I set for myself, my future students and children?