Friday, December 13, 2013

Relieving Subvocal Tension in the Vocal Cords by Muting the Internal Monologue






Monday, December 9, 2013

Temporarily Forgetting what it is You are Excited About


Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Controlling Our Negative Thinking










The Costs of Workplace Incivility

Workplace disharmony has been documented by recent research to be a substantial economic cost for American business that is largely preventable but rarely addressed. Managers and executives looking to streamline business processes routinely miss the underappreciated expense of inappropriate behavior. This substantial cost is unknown to many, and is rarely included as a topic for meetings or in the books as accounting tallies. Studies show that very few people report uncivil treatment to Human Relations (HR) or Employee Assistance Programs (EAP), despite the fact that they may be highly affected by it.

An accepted definition of workplace incivility is “the exchange of inconsiderate words and deeds that violate conventional norms of workplace conduct” (Anderson and Pearson, 1999). Often inconsiderate actions seem inconsequential at the time, but they are known to frequently have lasting effects. It is important to remember that incivility is not an objective phenomenon and that it is subject to the target’s subjective interpretation.

Everyone loses when it comes to bad behavior in the workplace: the targets, the offenders and the firm. It is extremely important to a business for workers to give each other feedback, criticism, advice and support.  However, they should not be done in ways that are insensitive, politically incorrect, or that impact a target’s self-worth. Targets of bad behavior lose work time worrying about the incident with the offender, and about their future interactions. This worrying has been documented to lead to avoidance behavior, reduced commitment to the organization, lower effort at work and less time spent at work (Pearson and Porath, 2009).

Relevant Statistics

          Job stress has been estimated to cost U.S. corporations $300 billion annually (Cascio and Boudreau, 2008).

          One in five people claim to be the targets of workplace abuse at least once a week.

          Ten percent said they witness workplace abuse every day.

          Strong relationships have been found between having an inconsiderate or incommunicative boss and certain medical illnesses including anxiety, depression and cardiac conditions (Smith, 2008).

          80 percent of respondents to one poll claimed that they “get no respect at work.”

          A recent Gallup poll revealed that 73 percent of workers “don’t feel good” and a large number of these individuals actively disengage from work; 14 % admitted to “undermining the goals of the company” as a result.

          About 60% of the time, the offender has a higher job status than the target (Pearson and Porath, 2009).

          Men are nearly twice as likely to be offenders, but women’s offenses are often just as serious.

          Most offenders are older than their targets, and targets are often not new hires.

          Research from eight thousand business units from thirty-six companies found that groups with positive attitudes were 50% more likely to establish above-average customer loyalty, and 44% were more likely to establish above average profitability (Harter et al., 2002).

Incivility Detracts from Performance

If there are no organizational repercussions for negative behaviors, and the behaviors are seen as necessary or inconsequential, they can quickly become a part of the business culture. This can easily lead to similar treatment of strategic partners outside of the business and to customers. Often assistants to a boss or manager become “kiss-ups” who welcome abuse from the boss.  Yet they in turn act unfairly, on behalf of the boss, toward lower-status employees; this is often referred to as “kiss up, kick down”. Upwardly aimed incivility is usually covert and is insidious because it often involves sabotage and is damaging to the business infrastructure. Incivility rarely works upward, often travels laterally, but usually flows downward. Downward cycles of negativity inevitably cascade toward the frontline workers, and there has a tendency to be transferred to customers, clients and patrons.

Studies have found that targets of incivility reduce their performance to punish the organization. When job satisfaction wanes, disgruntled workers intentionally cut back effort, quality and time. Often uncivil environments naturally distract employees and lead them to ruminate about their condition and discuss it compulsively with friends, family members and coworkers, all on the company’s time. Many people will take vengeful action when they feel they have been a target of abuse. Most targets will attempt to damage the offender’s reputation by telling a neutral party. People spend time reassuring themselves of their superior moral standing, and they often spend time mulling over how they expect to respond to the next act of incivility mounted against them. It is clear to see how bad acts lead targets to thinking obsessively about how to mount their own negative, vengeful responses. These negative thoughts recur frequently, and each time cause the worker to lose task focus.

Even more troublesome is the fact that targets often hide their resentment and true feelings from higher-ups, concealing the problem from the people that could make a difference. Moreover, there are many anecdotal and documented cases where hourly workers hear second-hand about incivility focused on one of their own and retaliate against the company by reducing work intensity (Bennis & Biederman, 1997). Managers and executives at Fortune 1000 firms spend as much as 13 percent of their total work time mending employee relationships and replacing employees that left (Connelly, 1994). Incivility detracts from teams, even teams of two people, because the offender and target cannot work together as smoothly anymore. Biological Behavior Assessments LLC will actually calculate an estimate for you as to how much money you lose on a yearly basis to incivility in the workplace. Our calculations are based on accepted research, industry standards and detailed information from your accounting and HR departments.

In a psychology laboratory, student volunteers experimentally exposed to social mistreatment show decreased ability to perform simple tasks, distracted attention, impaired working memory, diminished creativity and reduced helping behaviors (Porath and Erez, 2007).  According to a poll taken by Pearson and Porath (2009) of mistreated managers and employees in a large diverse national sample:

          Forty-eight percent intentionally decreased work effort.

          Forty-seven percent intentionally decreased time at work.

          Thirty-eight percent intentionally decreased work quality.

          Eighty percent lost work time worrying about the incident.

          Sixty-three percent lost time avoiding the offender.

          Sixty-six percent said their performances declined.

          Seventy-eight percent said their commitment to the organization declined.


When treated uncivilly, targets will be less likely to seek feedback on their decisions and less likely to inform each other about actual or potential problems. On the other hand, historically remarkable teams usually grant their members freedom to do their best and use their creative energy without fear. All team members need leadership and guidance but they need respectful, guidance that they do not feel afraid of.

What can be done about this? Contact us at BBA. Biological Behavior Assessments LLC provides employment assessments that are effective in identifying and mediating inappropriate workplace behaviors. Our innovative system offers a straightforward testing program, administered online, that provides essential perspective on workplace functioning. We prepare customized reports that provide personal development suggestions for the test takers. These detailed reports are easy to understand and interpret, and offer guidance based on established neuroscience and leading clinical methods.

Solutions For Dealing with Incivility

Below are a number of excellent solutions for dealing with mistreatment in the workplace. The first group focuses on how to best respond to incivility in coworkers and the second group focuses on how to curtail uncivil tendencies that you may have.

Solutions for Dealing with Uncivil Coworkers:

          Feel comfortable apologizing and offering clarification on your own behaviors.


          Recognize that there is extensive power in maintaining your composure.


          Meet in communal groups outside of the workplace.

          Avoid implicitly condoning acts of improper treatment that you witness.

          Lower your constant guard against perceived diminishment and loss of ego.

          Reframe the faults of others as mistakes in priorities, judgment, social maturity and word choice.


          Retain your peace regardless of the other person’s disposition; this is the only way to “win.”

          Realize our brain’s circuits are overloaded with work concerns, so we must consistently remind ourselves to be nice.

          Recognize in advance when two people’s dissenting opinions might clash.

          Do not let your first emotional judgment of another’s work cloud other redeeming aspects of it.


          Listen to and understand others’ perspectives without interrupting

          Assume the best or neutral motives in others.

          Maintain an objective stance when conflict arises.

          Ask friends, family members or even colleagues for their interpretations of a confrontation. They are sure to give you recommendations and support that could lift your spirit and reduce your stress.


          Approach the person offending you and schedule a meeting if you have to. Don’t treat it like a confrontation, but instead treat it like a follow up. Do not expect to win and do not provoke.


Solutions for Dealing with Your Own Uncivil Tendencies

          Remember that many hostilities stem simply from incompatible personalities. When this happens it is neither (or both) person’s fault.

          Make a note of your behaviors that seem to shut other people down, and that lead them to make a face or turn away. These are the ones you need to attend to.

          When you mistreat others, it costs your firm but it also costs you friends, good treatment, smooth interactions and even promotions and job perks.

          People stop listening to you and you lose leverage and authority when you undermine your own credibility by being rude.

          The office place is not the military.  You are not responsible for treating new hires the way you were unfairly treated as a “newbie”.

          Enlist a trusted friend to give you feedback about your social habits.

          Listen more carefully. People are easily offended when they can tell by your response that you were not listening to what they were saying.

          Remember that being considerate may not pay off in the short term, but it nearly always does in the long term.

          Refrain from one-upmanship, sarcasm and wisecracks. People almost always take them more seriously than you intended.
Find out more at:

Biological Behavior Assessments LLC: Workplace Solutions

Who We Are and What We Do


Innate survival behaviors have been programmed into our genes and brains due to the severe conditions that our ancestors faced as hunter-gatherers. Our minds are prepared to negotiate conditions characterized by scarce resources and life-threatening dangers, despite the fact that our modern work environment is almost never physically adverse. Because certain negative propensities are very much ingrained in our biological makeup, problematic or dysfunctional behaviors lurk outside of our everyday awareness. They routinely cause uncivil workplace behavior, undue stress, and operational inefficiencies documented to be an alarmingly significant financial and legal liability in American businesses.

Negative innate responses are triggered through our unconscious, evolutionarily-old, visual, auditory and emotional regions of the brain. These brain areas are continually in search of safety, trust and reward and when they cannot find them, they act selfish, paranoid and opportunistic. These are the insidious ingredients for stifling corporate communication, productivity, and bottom-up growth. There is significant therapeutic power in understanding our own negative tendencies, where they come from, how they are maintained, and how we can recognize them when they occur. Biological Behavior Assessments uses a proprietary system based on cognitive neuroscience that evaluates problematic behaviors of your workers, reports on these propensities, and determines the extent to which individual lives are being controlled by harmful, and unconscious processes.  In other words, we find and expose signs of hostility, territoriality, impulsiveness, defensiveness, status-seeking, etc., and give management and employees personalized feedback and recommended solutions to manage and mitigate the behaviors.

Mismatched: Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies

Why are we the way we are?  10,000 years ago, humans developed purposeful agriculture. This initiated the transformation of hunter-gatherer groups into the civilizations of the working world today. We went from foragers that traveled in small, often nomadic bands, to citizens of large cities. It is thought-provoking to consider how much our technological and industrial accomplishments, all of which occurred in a very short period of human history, have altered our environment. The agricultural, industrial and computer revolutions happened so quickly that humans did not have time to adapt to them through natural selection. In fact, modern humans live in a vastly different environment from the one we were designed to inhabit.  Because of this, the environment we are born into is not the one that our bodies are expecting. In a biological sense we are cavemen living in the information age.

We are mismatched with our environment in several ways, including psychological and metabolic ones.  For instance, the same genes that cause humans to be susceptible to diabetes, heart disease and obesity in modern times may have protected us from starvation and famine during ancestral times. These kinds of disparities also exist in our psychological tendencies. In fact, we sometimes have instincts to act like barbarians in a civilized world. As the table below describes, our behaviors such as anger, competitiveness and anxiety may have been beneficial in the past, despite the fact that they are generally maladaptive today.

Adaptive Behavior Then and Now:

Psychological State
Implications for Foragers
Implications for Modern Societies
Healthy self-promotion and protection
Social isolation and negative relationships
Drive to attain food and mates at the expense of others
With little competition for food and mates, competition with coworkers is unnecessary
Self-protection and healthy suspicion of others
Unnecessarily high paranoia or fear of others intentions
Drive to quickly attain food and resources
Diminished capacity for patience and reflection
Stress and Anxiety
Healthy caution. Motivation to struggle, fight and survive
Unhealthy bodily effects and unnecessary psychological discomfort

So what can we do about this predicament? Well, thankfully we are highly intelligent, highly adaptable creatures and a little knowledge about our innate instincts can help us to recognize them, and modify them where appropriate.

How We Can Help

Our assessments were designed during four years of neuroscience and evolutionary research into how specific human neurological pathways evolved. This research revealed 12 behaviors that control modern human responses and decisions, in both our personal and workplace lives. These instinctual behaviors cause us to respond prematurely to simple stimuli, often without thinking. When these innate responses occur without conscious awareness they can disrupt productivity, communication, and contribute to counterproductive work behavior.

11 Behavioral Impulses that We All Share:

-           Anger                                      - Bullying           

-           Competitiveness                     - Defensiveness

-           Gossip                                      - Impulsivity

-           Prejudice                                 - Resisting Change

-           Risk Taking                              - Status

-            Territoriality                  

This unique enterprise provides employees with the information, professional feedback, and thought provoking advice necessary to design and maintain a happier, healthier workplace environment. The workplace training industry has neglected the avenues of evolutionary biology, clinical psychology and emotional intelligence. Our consulting products offer various tools and techniques necessary for the amelioration of adverse or hostile workplace atmospheres. Our product line includes a range of premium solutions - more effective alternatives to in-house resources for conflict resolution, aggression remediation, and culture management.

Instead of focusing on negatives, we focus on turning negatives into positives. We help staff to learn more about themselves and managers to learn more about their employees. Biological Behavior Assessments provides tools that help your employees understand themselves better, improve their quality of life, and elevate productivity in the workplace. Our business model helps to improve communication skills, interpersonal competence, job suitability, leadership aptitude, conflict resolution, psychological wellbeing, personal health, emotional intelligence and many other crucial workplace factors. Reconceptualizing shared dysfunctions provides a clear viewpoint on previous, unexamined work habits. We all share the same fundamental faults, and for this reason, we should face them together as a common problem to be solved. 
Visit for more information.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Is Association Cortex Capable of Holding Mental Imagery?

Antonio Damasio has proposed that early sensory cortices construct “image space” and that association cortices construct “dispositional space.” He believes that association cortex does not hold any imagery itself and that everything we see in our “mind’s eye” is constructed in sensory cortex alone. I, on the other hand, believe that association areas are capable of holding imagery that people consciously experience. In my opinion association cortices hold imagery of higher-order concepts that are disoriented from spatial mapping or retinotopic coordinates. The imagery created in association cortex probably embodies conceptual relationships and perceptually transcendent concerns. Association areas may hold true imagery in the sense that they can invoke high-level perceptions of things of which the person can become conscious. Thus, cortical areas involved in visual processing - from the posterior occipital pole to the anterior frontal pole – lie together on a continuum with coordinate bound maps on one side and abstract, conceptual imagery on the other.

Consistent with Damasio; however, I agree that association areas do not possess all of the information held in the early sensory cortices that converge upon them. In other words, the firing of a grandmother neuron in the anterior temporal cortex alone does not produce a conscious visual depiction of a grandmother in the mind’s eye. One can probably not visualize a spatial, line-bound image of one’s grandmother without early visual cortex. The mental imagery of our grandmothers produced by association cortex would be much more abstract and invariant, and may include behavioral predispositions such as the way we feel, act and compose ourselves when we are around our grandmother.

What would imagery mappings in association areas such as the dlPFC look like? Early visual areas create retinotopic visual information because the inputs to the cortex correspond to the geometric arrays of photoreceptors in the retina. The dlPFC does not contain an objective input geometry that maps directly onto something real in the environment. Instead, the input, and thus the maps correspond to the placement and relative orientation of the lower-order projection inputs that were arranged during the mammalian evolution of the neocortex. Thus, the question regarding the spatial architecture of higher order thought and its imagery can only be answered in the future by neurocartographic investigation of the unique connectional geometry found in higher-order areas.

I believe that the early visual cortex activation creates vibrant, experiential imagery simply because it has become correlated with the appearance of this imagery in the environment. Brain cells create a theatre of the mind because they have “taken on” certain external properties. If this is true, then imagery must be held everywhere because each part of the brain has become correlated with some type of environmentally induced experience. Like the neurons responsible for the sensations in a phantom limb, early visual neurons “hold” the experiential properties of experiences with which they have been correlated with in the past. Surely anterior association areas have also correlated with experiences, albeit abstract ones. Thus, purporting that association areas do not hold true imagery is like saying that imagery is held in the “dots” of primary visual cortex but not in the “contours” of secondary visual cortex. When you imagine things, from simple objects to abstract concepts, you experience them again because you fire the same neurons that fire when it was experienced. This thinking then frames consciousness as a jumbled up reflection of environmental occurrences. It is fascinating that we are able to construct a cohesive percept from a hodgepodge aggregate of previously distinct microrepresentations.

The idea that association areas may hold their own brand of abstractly mapped imagery frames the brain as a system of interacting modules specializing in mapping different topographies that are all trying to generate their best interpretation of what the other modules are doing. Because some of these modules have assemblies that fire for sustained periods, they are better positioned to direct activity through time. The dorsolateral PFC is a good example of a module with the capacity for sustained influence over modules specialized for visual and auditory processing, whereas an area such as the orbital PFC may direct maps generated by emotional and reward-related modules. Further research into the deficits and intact abilities in patients with damaged association cortex may better elucidate this issue.

I have published an article on this issue that you can read here: