Welcome to The Spark, bringing you the world's best behavioral science. 

With the successful launch of the Vault in July and August (woohoo!), the last two Sparks were largely dedicated to updates on that front of Applied Scholar. With this Spark, we return back to the usual focus on the broader world of behavioral science. Here’s the top four items we recently came across, plus an added fifth on a lighter note. If you only check out one or two of these, we highly recommend checking out #1 and #2 below, they are very very good!

#1 - Switching Apps and Digital Fragmentation: A very recently released Harvard working paper - titled “Digital Fragmentation and Generative AI Use Across 103 Million Application Events” - provides us with some amazing insights into the digital routines of knowledge workers. The researchers analyzed the second-by-second digital activity of 1,000 knowledge workers across eight different companies. Using that data, they were able to generate some really useful findings on a variety of interesting and applicable questions. This is worth reading!

 #2 - What Does Fake Research Look Like? For those of us trying to make use of research in the real world, it sure would be nice if all the researchers held themselves to the highest of academic standards. Welp, that's not the world we live. And that's why we really appreciate the efforts of Data Colada to, in many ways, help police the behavioral science community in creating high-quality research. Here is Data Colada's fantastic write up uncovering fraud in a highly-cited paper led by Dan Ariely. This is what fake research looks like.

#3 - Pew’s Amazing Take on Generational Research: As you might already know or suspect, most of the “Oh my, Generation [insert name here] is [insert alarming claim here]” is a bunch of marketing fluff without any real grounding. Yes, it is technically possible to have generational differences (e.g., Flynn Effect), but the click-bait stuff is either wrong, fake, or fraudulent. That’s why we can’t say enough good stuff about Pew Research’s new guidelines for discussing generations. This is an insightful read. Well done Pew!

#4 - How Work Performance and Personality Influence Each Other: We tend to frame personality as a set of stable traits, but of course, our personality and behavior are far more nuanced and context dependent. This fascinating research paper (paywall for full access) gives us insight into a very cool phenomenon - when your job satisfaction increases, it can influence your personality to exhibit more of the behaviors (like higher conscientiousness or emotional stability) that can lead to even more job satisfaction. A mutually reinforcing system, with job satisfaction and personality influencing each other. There’s so much more to personality in the workplace than MBTI or DISC would like us to believe.

#5 - Darth Vader, MBTI, and a Successful Lawsuit: Speaking of workplace personality, and on a lighter note, we were recently reminded of this wild story. It’s a great example of just how weird “team-building” exercises can be (yikes!), and why we choose to stay away from MBTI in any form. The quick version of what happened: a team-building exercise includes a Star Wars-themed MBTI assessment (really??), an employee steps out and someone else completes her assessment with the result being “you’re Darth Vader,” jokes and commentary result, employee sues organization and is awarded 29,000 Pounds. Maybe don’t use Star Wars-themed MBTI for team building??

A PEEK INTO THE VAULT

Ever wondered how rational you are?

Rationality Quotient (RQ) is one of the lesser-known concepts in behavioral science. You may have come across it before, but we suspect that for most subscribers, RQ will be a new or vaguely known concept. Despite its lack of popularity, we have found RQ to be one of the most helpful mechanisms for understanding human decision-making. 

For that reason, we chose to list it as one of the 19 factors influencing behavior and performance in our Foundations of Behavior and Performance flagship collection. RQ is #2 on the list of 19, in the category of “Cognitive Characteristics.” There’s a largely secret assessment that actually gives you a numerical score for your rationality. We got our hands on it years ago by reaching out to the top researchers on the project and really enjoyed diving in.

If you’re interested in learning more about RQ and the other 18 factors that influence yours (and others) behavior and performance, the Foundations of Behavior and Behavior is for you.

For the cost of two books a month, unlock the Vault!

 We hope that you enjoyed this edition of the Spark. See you again soon!