Generally Thinking

Category: Performance Psychology

  • Carlos Sainz and the Surprising Sadness of Second Place

    At the start of the 2021 Formula 1 season, Ferrari had a mountain to climb.

    Despite being one of the most well-funded and prestigious teams on the grid, they’d massively underperformed the previous year. Well, they were doing great, until… ahh, how shall I put it… a “potential irregularity” was discovered in how their engine was operating (others might say “They got caught cheating”).

    After this came to light, regulations were changed, engine adjustments were made – and then Ferrari’s performance dropped massively. They went from being one of the top 3 teams, to being just a middling one.

    This whole situation probably caused sleepless nights for a lot of people. But I’d wager none more than Carlos Sainz Jr.

    Picture of Calros Sainz Jr.
    Carlos Sainz Jr. at McLaren

    You see, 2021 would be Sainz’s first season at Ferrari. He’d moved there from McLaren, a British team experiencing quite the opposite turn of fortune in 2020 – previously middling, McLaren were now on the ascendancy, and were in contention to take Ferrari’s spot as the number 3 team on the grid.

    It seemed like Sainz had jumped ship… right onto one that was sinking.

    So you’d think, that if Sainz managed to finish in second place for Ferrari, he’d be ecstatic. This would be true of any race, but especially if it happened in Monaco, the most glamorous event of the calendar. Not only would it be a great personal achievement, it would suggest that perhaps Ferrari weren’t a sinking ship after all.

    So why, on May 23 2021, after he did finish second at Monaco, did Sainz describe the result as “Bittersweet”?

    This isn’t the first time that second place has been a source of sadness for Sainz. It happened previously in Monza 2020, when Sainz was still at McLaren. He was in second place and chasing down the leader, getting closer every lap… but unfortunately for him, he couldn’t get past.

    You can hear the radio chatter between Sainz and his engineer in those final laps of that race here (his comments start at 1:19).

    Not a happy chappy, is he?

    To put that Monza race in perspective, finishing fifth or sixth would have been a good result in that McLaren car at that time. To finish second was an incredible result. If you’d offered him that before the race weekend, he’d have bitten your hand off. He should have been over the moon, but he was disappointed. Why?

    Comparisons influence emotions

    A study published back in 1995 might have the answer. The idea is that the happiness we get from something isn’t based on an objective assessment of that thing. It’s based on what we compare it to.

    The researchers, Victoria Husted Medvec and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell, and Scott Madey of the University of Toledo, studied the happiness shown by medal winners of the 1992 Olympics. They had undergraduate students rate how happy each person looked in the medal ceremonies, and other footage from after the winners of the events were announced.

    If happiness was based on an objective assessment of circumstances, you’d expect gold medallists to be happiest, then silver, then bronze, right? But that’s not what they found.

    The gold medallists were happiness incarnate, as you’d expect. But weirdly, the bronze medallists were happier than the silver medallists. The reason for this might be what the athletes are comparing their results against.

    Top down map of the Monaco track
    The Monaco circuit – a source of both joy and sadness

    The silver sadness effect

    The researchers believe that when you win silver, you compare yourself to gold. You focus on the one single person in the whole entire world who beat you – rather than the billions of others over whom you just proved your superiority! This was clearly what was on Sainz’s mind after his second place finish at Monaco. As he said after the race:

    “You know, the bittersweet feeling is still there because I had the pace to put it on pole or at least to win this weekend, and the fact that in the end we didn’t quite manage, is not great.”

    The result was bittersweet because he’s changed his comparison point. Before the race fourth might have been a great stretch goal, and one he’d have been happy with. But due to a few mishaps, the fastest cars weren’t at the front where he expected them to be. Suddenly he found himself in second with a chance to win – and that became his new reference point. How he finished in relation to that reference point determined how he felt.

    The bronze bliss effect

    And why are the bronze winners apparently happier than the silvers?

    Perhaps it’s because they compare themselves downwards – not up. They are just happy to be up there on the podium, as part of the winner’s group – knowing that they were just one place away from not getting any recognition at all.

    This was clearly on the mind of Lando Norris of McLaren who finished third in Monaco, behind his former teammate Carlos Sainz. As Lando told Sky F1:

    “It’s incredible… it’s a long race, especially with Perez the last few laps, that pressure of seeing him in my mirrors after every corner. It’s stressful… I don’t know what to say! I didn’t think I’d be here today. It’s always a dream to be on the podium here, so it’s extra special.”

    As you see here, he’s comparing himself to fourth placed Perez – and he’s extremely happy with the result.

    (It’s not the whole picture obviously)

    Now of course there’s more to the story than purely finishing second vs third. And it’s not like every single person who finishes third is happier than the person in second. There are loads of other factors at play, like:

    • Who else is competing. It’d be interesting to see if there’s a difference when competing against uber-champs – like if you’re swimming against someone like Michael Phelps, would you be happier with silver because you didn’t see yourself as really in the running for the gold? (or maybe elite athletes just don’t think that way).
    • Your relative standing in the pack – if you’re a huge underdog who’d never dream of finishing 10th, never mind second, it might make a difference.
    • Your history – if you’ve never had a podium/medal, then getting that under your belt will bring its own happiness
    • How close the content was. If the best competitor was way out in front, and the second and third best grappled hard against each other with fourth place way behind them, then that second place might feel sweeter.

    So you have to think that this silver sadness effect is just one part of a complex web of factors that influence how athletes feel after the content.

    That’s if it exists at all, of course – we’ve only discussed one study here (although another study of judo fighters found the same thing). Still, the general idea that comparison affects our happiness (as well as things like our preferences and perceptions), is more broadly supported (whether you want to call it the comparison trap, the contrast effect bias, or whatever).

    Anyway, I guess the practical application of this is, try to look down on other people as much as possible.

    Just kidding!

    The practical application I suppose would be something like deliberately expressing gratitude, or trying to become more aware of the good things and people you have in your life. I think that often, if we’re a little pissed off or annoyed, we’ve talked ourselves into that state by focusing on all the crap that went wrong.

    So sometimes – not always, but sometimes – we might be able to talk ourselves out of it too, by changing our comparison point. Although, it might not work when you have more serious problems going on, or when things are super meaningful to you (like a racing career you’ve dedicated your whole entire life to).

  • The “hot hand” in basketball – is it real, or just an illusion?

    If you’re writing about the hot hand, it’s compulsory to include an NBA Jam “He’s on fire” screenshot. I don’t make the rules.

    Let’s jump in our DeLorean go back in time – not to 1984, but 1985. And instead of picking up a copy of Grays Sports Almanac, we’ll grab a paper published by Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky (GVT) that year.

    It’s called The Hand in Basketball – On the Misperception of Random Sequences, and it’s all about whether basketball players really have “the hot hand”.

    That is, do players hit a “hot streak” – a period of time where they’re playing better than usual, and they are more likely to successfully make baskets than they otherwise would be.

    Or, are such streaks just down to plain old-fashioned randomness?

    (I guess the title of the paper is a bit of a spoiler…)

    You cannot be serious

    Most people believe in the hot hand. And with good reason – think of all the evidence out there on how psychological states like flow and confidence can influence performance. This would all point in the direction of hot streaks being possible. Plus anyone who has ever played a sport or game has experienced a hot hand, a period of time where you’re just “on it”. And even if not, we’ve all seen examples of it on TV.

    Besides, we know that the “cold hand” is real. Players routinely have games, or parts of games, where they can’t seem to do anything right. It happens in every sport. Anything from missing an open goal, a hostile crowd, or a bad call from the umpire can put players on tilt, knock their confidence, and cause them to under-perform. So if there’s a cold hand, there’s gotta be a hot one too. It’s how the universe works, yin and yang and all that, right?

    Well here’s the counter-point. Take a completely random game like a coin toss. In a normal coin toss, with no tricks, you have no influence on the outcome. Yet, flip enough coins, and you’ll get some streaks. You might get 5, 6, or 7 heads in a row. And you might even feel like you’re doing it – maybe you’ll feel more confident, more focused, and “in the zone”.

    But ultimately, you’re being fooled by randomness. This is what Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky argue happens during a basketball game. When players take enough shots during a game, they’ll get some streaks. And it will feel to them, and look to others, like a hot hand. But in reality, it’s just the ebb and flow of randomness.

    So, which idea is right?

    Comparison to randomness

    This is a surprisingly tricky thing to study. You’d need to make a comparison to a random sequence of numbers, and see if the players’ performances ever deviated from that.

    With a coin toss, this would seem relatively easy. You know the baseline probability is 50% per outcome, assuming there are no tricks at play. With basketball shots, the probability of a successful basket isn’t known. Plus it varies with every shot, depending on things like:

    • The skill level of the player
    • The skill level of the opponents
    • Where the shot was taken from
    • The type of shot
    • The fatigue level of the player
    • The mental focus of the player at that time
    • If the player was carrying an injury
    • How far into the game it was
    • Whether the player was under pressure at the time

    …and so on.

    So how would you actually work this out?

    How do you get to that baseline, the equivalent of the 50% probability for the coin toss? As we’ll soon see, this is a crucial question.

    Recent hits and misses

    One one hand, if hot streaks are real, then all this variation and noise shouldn’t matter too much. I mean, if they are real enough for people to recognise them, then they should appear in the data despite all that. So the first thing GVT did was just see if players were more likely to make a shot successfully after a previously successful shot (or series of them), or after a previous miss (or series of them).

    The baseline was established simply by working out the player’s hit to miss ratio overall. So they didn’t separate based on free throws, shots under pressure, timing, or anything like that. They did the old statistician’s trick of throwing it all in one bucket and just taking the average.

    Now here’s another important point to note – these tests were based on data from 9 players in the 48 home games of the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1980/81 season. So we’ve got only a small sample of players here (sports wasn’t as data-focused back in those days).

    Here are the overall probabilities they found:

    Hit after 2 misses: 56%
    Hit after 2 misses: 53%
    Hit after 1 miss: 54%
    Overall probability of a hit: 52%
    Hit after 1 hit: 51%
    Hit after 2 hits: 50%
    Hit after 3 hits: 46%

    As you see, these figures are the wrong way round to what you would expect if hot (and cold streaks) were real.

    A fallacy is born

    And thus, the “Hot Hand Fallacy” – the false belief that a successful outcome increases your chance of further successful outcomes – was born. The argument went as follows: The human brain isn’t a statistical computer, and it doesn’t understand randomness very well. So when it sees a string of random outcomes, it assigns agency to them, even though it’s really just noise.

    GVT’s idea did have its critics.

    “Is nothing sacred?”, Larkey, Smith and Kadane said in their 1989 critique of the fallacy.

    “Nope,” GVT effectively replied, in their convincing rebuttal.

    The results of GVT’s original study were replicated a few times. Plus the “T” in GVT is Amos Tversky, who would have won a Nobel Prize for his work on cognitive biases, had he not passed away in 1996 (his research partner, Daniel Kahneman, did receive the award). So, despite many doubters outside academia (people in the world of sports didn’t tend to believe it), and some hold-outs within the ivory towers, the hot hand was generally believed to be a fallacy, a cognitive illusion.

    And so things remained, for around 30 years or so. Until Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo (let’s call them MS) came along.

    All about that base

    Never tell me the odds. (Photo by Joey Kyber)

    MS argue that the hot hand is real, streaks exist, and GVT simply made a mistake in their analysis. And the mistake, they argue, is an ironic one – it has to do with a misunderstanding of randomness.

    Let’s go back to that base rate probability I mentioned earlier. In the world of random coin flips, the probability of a head is always 50%. A previous flip of heads will have no bearing on any subsequent flip – so it’s always 50%.

    However, when you get outside the world of “standing there, coin in hand, ready to flip”, and into the world of “selecting a sample of flips from a previously completed sequence of coin flips,” your chance of selecting a head will only be 50% if:

    • The original coin flips were actually random (which again, we’re assuming here)
    • There is no bias in the way you select the flips

    MS argue, that selecting flips based on whether they follow a particular outcome (or series of outcomes) does introduce bias. In fact, if you look only at the outcomes that follow a flip of heads in a finite sequence of coin flips, the probability of getting another heads is actually lower than 50%.

    The more flips there are in the sequence, the closer to 50% it will be, but you still won’t actually get there.

    WTF?

    Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction too. But here’s how MS illustrate it:

    Let’s say you flip the coin three times. Is your chance of getting a heads higher in a flip, if you already got a heads in the previous flip? There are only a finite number of possible outcomes here, so we can work this out:

    HHH
    HHT
    HTT
    HTH
    TTT
    TTH
    THH
    THT

    First of all, the sequences TTT and TTH are of no use to us. In TTT there is no heads, and in TTH we got a heads, but it’s at the end of the sequence, so we can’t follow it with another coin toss (again – the fact that we’re looking back on a finite sequence of flips is introducing the bias – nothing MS are saying here has any bearing on how future coin flips with turn out).

    So, let’s take those two out. That leaves us with 6 sequences we can work with:

    HHH
    HHT
    HTT
    HTH
    THH
    THT

    The fact that we only have three flips in each sequence means that the last coin flip only useful as an outcome relative to the second flip. So we have 12 flips of interest here – the first two in each sequence.

    So, within each sequence, what are the odds that one of the initial two flips is a heads, which is then followed by another heads?

    Let’s see…

    Sequence Heads following heads Probability
    HHH 2/2 First two flips are heads, both followed by heads, so 2 out of 2, probability 1.
    HHT 1/2 First two flips are heads, one is followed by heads, so 1 out of 2, probability ½.
    HTT 0 First flip is heads, not followed by heads. Probability 0.
    HTH 0 First flip is heads, not followed by heads. Probability 0.
    THH 1/1 Second flip is heads, is followed by heads. Probability 1.
    THT 0 Second flip is heads, but not followed by heads. Probability 0.

    Since we’re assuming pure randomness, each of these sequences is equally likely to happen. That means we can simply take the average of each of these probabilities to get the overall probability that a heads will follow a heads:

    (1 + ½ + 1) / 6 = 2.5/6 or 5/12 if you don’t like decimals in your fractions.

    That’s less than 50%!

    Small and large numbers

    This doesn’t mean that randomness suddenly stops working. It just means that when you have a finite sequence of flips, and you are not taking a random sample of them, but instead only the ones that follow a streak, you’re introducing sample bias into your analysis.

    If the sequence of numbers stretched out to infinity, the law of large numbers would take over and the probability would be 50%. But since you’re dealing with a sample, you don’t get that protection.

    When MS reanalysed the GVT data with this bias in mind, they did indeed find evidence for the hot hand. In fact, MS not only think the hot hand is real, they think it’s a bigger effect because of another form of measurement error that is common in studies of the hot hand (read more of MS’s thoughts here).

    And MS aren’t alone in this – a number of other researchers have chimed in with work supporting the idea that the hot hand is real, and not just a fallacy:

    Statistical hot hand versus psychological hot hand

    It’s also worth mentioning that in all these studies the researchers define a hot hand as a series of successful shot attempts. This makes sense statistically, but it probably doesn’t represent the psychological reality of having a hot hand.

    Would your hot hand immediately go cold if you missed a single shot? Probably not. Also, if you have the hot hand, would your newfound confidence lead you to take more difficult shots, in situations when you’d probably play safer if you didn’t have the hot hand? It might be that the sequence of scores is interrupted not because the player lost their hot hand, but because they tried something a little fancy out.

    With all the data in sports these days, that’s something you can actually test for, and the study from 2014 I mentioned earlier did indeed find that players who were performing above their average tended to attempt more difficult shots in open play. And this study concludes that there’s evidence for the hot hand – but only after controlling for shot difficulty.

    Time could be important too. These studies don’t take the time that each shot was taken into account – and when we’re talking about a psychological state, this seems pretty crucial! Take the following sequence of shots:

    101010101

    Statistically, there is no streak here, no hot hand. But imagine this sequence of shots happened in the space of a short space of time, and the player wouldn’t ordinarily hit 5 baskets in that time span. Could that not be called a hot hand? If you only define the hot hand in terms of hits in a row, it clearly isn’t. But the player might be running rings around the other team, and getting into shooting positions more easily. If you define the hot hand in terms of hits within a given time period, they now start to look hot.

    One thing that doesn’t seem to be in dispute, is that players believe in the hot hand, and you might assume they’re more likely to give the ball to hot players. So you might also assume that defenders will try to crowd out hot players. In other words, a player could be hot in the sense that, whatever psychological and physiological changes relating to being hot are active, but this is not reflected in the hit/miss stats because the opposing defence is wise to them. Interestingly, that same 2014 study which found hot players taking harder shots also found that hot players face tougher defence. This is another reason that “hotness” wouldn’t show up if you only look at hit streaks, yet they could still be having an important influence on the game by drawing defending players towards them, and opening up space elsewhere.

    Yet another aspect of timing that might be relevant is the breaks in the game. For example, does a hot hand carry over between halves, quarters, or after time outs (or is it more or less likely to)? Should you start a streak from scratch at these points, or allow them to continue?

    So, we’re 30 years into this and we still have a lot of open questions. What do you think, is the hot hand real?

  • Daphne Bavelier gives a nice overview of the cognitive benefits of video games

    If you’re familiar with the research on the cognitive benefits of video games, you can probably skip this one. If not, here’s a good way for you to spend the next 18 minutes, and maybe break a few preconceptions you might have about the usefulness of gaming. Daphne Bavelier talks about how playing action video games like Call of Duty and Black Ops can improve various cognitive capacities.

    I was particularly surprised by these two interesting facts on gaming in general:

    • The average age of a gamer is 33 (makes sense — in the 80s, games were played almost exclusively by kids. How old are those kids now?)
    • One month after the release of COD: Black Ops, the game had been played for 600 million hours. That’s 68,000 years.

    There are a few problems with this research though, which I discussed here.

  • The problem with the gaming/cognitive functioning link

    As someone who spent countless hours in his youth playing Doom, Street Fighter II and other effective ways of making time speed up, I really want the link between computer gaming and enhanced cognitive functioning, which I’ve mentioned before, to be true. It would validate every hadoken, justify every gib. But although the evidence is promising – encouraging even – it’s not quite there yet. Walter Boot, Daniel Blakely and Daniel Simons published a review in 2011 pointing out the distance we have yet to go before we can be sure about StarCraft’s place in our cognitive training routine.

    Remember these guys?

    Firstly, we have the problem of demand characteristics in some of the non-experimental studies — the ones that take a group of gamers and compare them to non-gamers on various cognitive abilities. Gamers need to come out on top here to even consider video games as cognitive enhancers, of course, but even if they do, it doesn’t mean that games are causing the difference. Perhaps the gamers had these cognitive advantages to begin with, and that’s why they take so well to the games. Or perhaps they were more motivated to perform well during the testing.

    Many such studies specifically advertise for experienced gamers. Other research has shown that if you think you’re likely to perform well on a certain task, you’re sometimes more likely to do so. This problem is particularly relevant when you consider that many gamers will be aware of the news reports linking gaming to cognitive enhancement, and may have some idea that this is what the researcher is testing.

    The way around this is normally to do an experiment — take a group of people, preferable non-gamers, and give them a battery of cognitive test. Then randomly split them into two groups, tell one group to play video games for a few weeks and the other group not to, then give the same tests again. You’ll then see if the video gamers have improved relative to the non-gaming group.

    But the same problems exist as with the non-experimental studies. The gamers know they have been gaming and might deduce that they are supposed to perform better on the cogntive tests in a follow up. This is why placebo control groups are used — both groups would play video games, but the placebo group would play one that is not expected to bring any cognitive benefits, usually a slower paced game like Tetris. However, if the tests used more closely resemble the action video game than Tetris, you can make the case that the expectancy effect is still in play. The design of the experiment is not sufficient to pry the two possibilities apart conclusively (for example, by asking participants whether they expected to improve, although even this has it’s own problems), even though it might make more sense intuitively that the video games are working.

    Further muddying the waters, some studies have failed to find a difference between gaming and non-gaming groups in both experimental and non-experimental tests.

    Where to go from here

    This might be disappointing, but there is some evidence of cognitive benefits caused by video games. We just don’t know why, or what conditions or individual differences are most amenable to such effects. Boot, Blakely and Simons propose that future studies should meet the following criteria (no study yet published has managed to meet them all):

    • Covert recruitment (participants aren’t told the nature of the study)
    •  The paper should detail the recruitment method
    •  Experimental studies should be conducted
    •  Participants should be screened for familiarity with the idea that gaming brings cognitive benefits, and whether they expected the gaming they did in the study to enhance their test results
    •  The placebo control games should offer equal expectancy effects on the performance of the cognitive tests
    •  Neuroimaging should be used to help pry apart expectancy effects versus actual cognitive changes

    If gaming has any chance of non-domain specific cogntive enhancement, the results could be used to help fight age-related cognitive decline, help people in their personal development (working memory may be more closely linked to academic success than IQ), and give teenagers the world over valid excuses not to get off the PlayStation. So it’s worth spending the time andmoney getting to the bottom of this.

    Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go play Call of Duty. For science.

     

  • Can being an expert undermine your performance?

    As with bilingualism, it’s generally assumed that being an expert completely beneficial and has no downsides to performance. However we know that expertise tends to be domain specific, for example, chess grand masters can memorise chess boards far more quickly and easily that novices, but on standard cognitive tests tend to fare no better. In fact, if you arrange chess pieces to positions that would never be encountered in an actual game, again their recall is no better than chess novices, showing just how domain-specific expertise can be. But surely within a given domain, expertise can only be beneficial?

    Castel, McCabe, Roediger and Heitman suggest not. They gave 40 students a memory test consisting of eleven animal names and eleven body parts. The twist here was that all the animal names were also NFL team names, like dolphins, colts, seahawks and bears. After the memory test, participants were given an NFL quiz, and the group was split into two, those scoring above and below the median on this test, to give high expertise and low expertise groups in the domain of NFL knowledge.

    The results on the memory test for the two groups was then compared. Indeed, the NFL experts remembered more of the animal names than the non-experts, while there was no difference between groups on the body parts test. So far so good, however, the researchers also tested for incorrect answers — NFL animal team names and body parts that were not part of the original test. The results indicated that the experts were much more likely to make incorrect guesses than the non-experts. The authors suggest that this represents memory errors, the domain-relevant information of the experts got in the way of their accurate recall of the animal names. Since there was no difference between groups in body part experience, false answers were about even between groups on that test.

    Is this really the case though? Or was it that the experts consciously noticed that the animal names belonged to the NFL teams and simply reeled off as many as they could remember during recall. Perhaps it was not a case of the existing schema interfering with memory, but a recognition that they already know these names, so why bother taking the extra effort to think back and recall? Why not just reel off my schema? I wonder if the results would be the same if participants were told that they would score 1 point for a correct guess, but minus 1 point for an incorrect guess, which might increase the incentive to actually recall. In other words, maybe this effect is a conscious strategy used in situations where there’s no cost to an incorrect answer.

    However, there are other studies that support the authors’ conclusions, which I haven’t read so perhaps my question has been answered before or since. Either way, it’s an interesting thought that the knowledge base acquired by experts might be detrimental in certain tasks.

    ref:
    Castel AD, McCabe DP, Roediger HL 3rd, & Heitman JL (2007). The dark side of expertise: domain-specific memory errors. Psychological science, 18 (1), 3-5 PMID: 17362368

  • The cognitive benefits of playing video games

    It’s often said that the youth of our society wastes their time playing video games; ostensibly a purely diversionary activity with no inherent merit. However, as someone with a youth misspent in this way, I have to disagree. There are many ways I feel video game-playing may serve me well in the future. For example, should powerful aliens invade our planet and challenge our species to a Street Fighter II tournament, killing all those who they defeat, I for one would fancy my chances. However on a more mundane level, research published in Nature indicated that video game brings cognitive benefits that transfer to activities other than the game itself.


    Waste of time or brain trainer? credit: blindfutur3

    Flanker compatibility

    In this test, participants are distracted on a task by stimuli, which they have to ignore. The task becomes progressively more difficult, so it’s a good way of testing attentional capacity. When video game players were tested against non-players, they performed better on this task, suggesting they have greater attentional capacity.

    Enumeration task

    In this second task, squares flash on a screen briefly, and participants simply have to say how many there are. If there’s a small number of squares, you just ‘know’ how many there are. This is called ‘subitizing.’ As more and more squares are displayed you eventually lose your ability to subitize and must count the squares manually.

    Video game players could subitize greater number of squares than non players (4.9 vs 3.3 on average), again this is consistent with the idea that video games bring beneficial effects — or at least, that video game players possess these benefits. In this case, the benefit is being able to focus on more distinct objects at once.

    Widening the training zone

    The next task was the “Useful Field of View” task, where the aim is to locate a certain target amongst a field of distracting ones. However, the twist here is that the field of view is extended to three eccentricities — 10, 20, and 30 degrees. The field of view when playing video games typically reaches around 20 degrees, so this is a good way to see whether the attentional benefits video game players have extends beyond the range of view they experience whilst playing. The results indicated that the players outperformed non-players at all ranges.

    As with the previous tests, this is tricky to interpret. On one hand it could indicate that video games bring attentional benefits, and that these benefits extend beyond the normal field of vision experienced while playing. On the other hand, it could simply indicate that some people take to video game playing because they have better attentional qualities to begin with. Because this task is further from the conditions of the video game playing itself, you might reason that it is more in line with the latter. It’s impossible to say because this was a quasi experiment — there was no randomisation of group assignment.

    Quick thinking – the attentional blink task

    A common aspect of the games played by the participants is the need to act fast under pressure (see below for a list of games). To see if there was a difference on this ability between video game players and non-players, a variation on the attentional blink task was used.

    In this task, a stimuli is displayed, followed 200-500 ms later by another. Typically, people have trouble processing the second stimuli because of fixation on the first. In the variation, participants had to detect a certain following stimuli from a sequence which included a few distractors. Again, the video game players out-performed the non-players.

    Incidentally, experienced meditators also do better on this task.

    Experimental task

    As mentioned earlier, it’s impossible to determine cause and effect conclusively with this type of study. By selecting specific groups (players versus non-players) instead of randomising, you never know if you’re simply selecting groups who differ on the variable you’re studying to begin with. For instance, do video games attract or create people with enhanced attentional abilities.

    To get around this, and experimental task was performed, where a group was told to go play an action video game, while another went off to play a puzzle game. The action video game players did better on the enumeration, useful field of view, and attentional blink tasks after training.

    Video games are beneficial for attention?

    While these results are consistent with the idea that video game playing brings cognitive benefits, the studies do have some limitations. Mainly, the sample size was pretty low. The enumeration task had the highest number of participants, and even that had only 13 per group. The others has only eight or nine per group.

    For the quasi-experiments, this makes it even more likely that the results were due to the samples selected, despite the fact that they were highly statistically significant. For the experiment, the same applies. The significance levels were higher in the latter but that’s expected given it was only for 10 days.

    Also, the transfer is fairly similar. Action video games and these tasks still involve sitting and looking at a screen. We don’t know if the results would be different in other situations in more natural settings. But overall it’s nice that by video game playing might, possibly, have benefits beyond helping me defeat an invasion by 2D beat-em-up-obsessed aliens.

    Which games did they play?

    In the tests comparing video game players with non-video game players, here’s a list of games that the players were into. Note that this study is from 2003!

    • Grand Theft Auto 3
    • Half-Life
    • Counter-Strike
    • Crazy Taxi
    • Team Fortress Classic
    • 007
    • Spider-Man
    • Halo
    • Marvel vs Capcom
    • Roguespear
    • Super Mario Cart

    Reference:

    Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2003, May 29). Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature, 423, 534 –537.

  • Piracetam – The nootropic with many uses

    Piracetam is a nootropic – a compound used to improve mental performance in some way. They’re often called (and sold as) “smart drugs.” The name derives from the Greek words nous and trepein, meaning “mind” and “to turn” respectively. Or so Wikipedia says at least. You may be familiar with the concept of smart drugs as a result of seeing Face from the A-Team taking the fictional (but highly desirable nonetheless) drug “NZT” in Limitless.

    Piractam: Intelligence in one gulp? (or two if you’re a wussy who can’t swallow tablets)

    Piracetam is a prescription drug given for a range of reasons, but it only reached true fame and stardom after people on the internet started saying it made them smarter. Observe:

    “I am not used to have this much energy and now I could do things more easily. I even started to multitask, which is close to impossible in my regular state of mind. Now, ideas are popping up spontaneously and it is no effort to execute the corresponding actions. I also feel more self-esteem, confidence and feel in The Zone: Flow. I feel attentive, centered and motivated. My eyes are more energetic, powerful, wide open and present. I have glowing blushes on my cheeks, a smile on my face and I feel happy, it IS just great!!!” (source)

    Don’t get too excited. I’m in the skeptical camp on this one, especially when it comes to spectacular reports like this. And yes this does come from experience, of this any many many other smart drugs (but more on that another time).

    Effects on cognitive disorder


    Clever marketing for the Limitless film. Sadly, it’s not actually available! (photo credit)

    A good few studies have observed beneficial effects on people with age-related cognitive disorder, such as improved performance on memory tests. It might also reduce the deterioration that people normally experience when its taken over longer periods. According to one meta-analysis, 60% of patients taking piracetam saw improvements, while only 30% of those taking placebo saw improvements.

    This is well enough, but note that you can’t simply generalise results observed on clinical populations to healthy populations and expect the same results. In other words, just because it helps people with lower than normal cognitive function see improvements, doesn’t mean it will help people with normal function get even better. This is a general rule that you can apply to any intervention or treatment – the jury is out until it has been tested empirically. Whether or not piracetam actually works in healthy individuals is worth a separate post in itself, so I’ll leave that for now. But there are reasons to be skeptical, as we’ll see.

    Other Clinical Uses

    Not that you care, but piracetam also has shown itself to be a beneficial treatment for vertigo, cortical myoclonus, dyslexia, and sickle cell anemia, to varying degrees of effectiveness.

    Dosage

    The dose given therapeutically and in research varies depending on the condition. For cognitive impairment, 2.4g and 4.8g per day are common doses used in tests. For cortical myoclonus doses up to 24g per day are reported.

    Safety

    Piracetam is often noted as being one of the least toxic compounds ever discovered, if not the least. No toxicity has been found in animal studies after administering 10g per kilogram of the stuff. Which, for the average self-experimental nootropic user, probably amounts to more than he can afford. Some side-effects have been noted, less than 2% report nervousness, weight gain, depression and other symptoms (that’s less than 2% for each one), though I’m not sure what the severity of this was.

    It is not recommended in people with renal disease, since that’s the way its excreted, and it’s not recommended for pregnant or lactating women. If you’re a pregnant or lactating man, well there’s no evidence for your particular case but if I were you I wouldn’t risk it.

    Taste

    Disgusting.

    Pharmacodynamics and other more technical stuff

    Piracetam influences a range of neurotransmitter systems (cholinergic, serotoninergic, noradrenergic and glutamatergic) and yet has no affinity for any of the receptors in these systems.

    Think of receptors as locks and neurotansmitters as keys. When enough keys go into the locks, an electrical signal is passed along the neuron until it reaches the next synapse. Piracetam’s “key” doesn’t fit any of the locks in the systems where these neurotransmitters operate, yet still seems to have an effect on them. So it somehow works indirectly to this end.

    It may be that piracetam increases the number of receptors, or how efficient they are. Your money’s on the latter though, since membrane fluidity affects receptor binding, and that’s the likely way that Piracetam works.

    As noted earlier, Piracetam may have better (or perhaps may only have) effects where there’s reduced membrane fluidity to begin with. Another example of this is its ability to decrease membrane fusion and damage, which has been observed in studies of long-term changes in the brain due to alcohol use (in rates).

    Mechanism of Action

    Piracetam is a GABA derivative but its mode of action is thought to be completely different. In fact, exactly how piracetam works is unknown, though if you had to bet, put your money on its ability to restore cell membrane fluidity. That’s cells in general, not any localised area, so this idea fits with piracetam’s apparent Jack-of-all-trades effects.

    The lipid bilayer of cells can vary in state from a more fluid state where the phospholipid chains are moving more, to a crystalline state where the tails of the lipids are straight, extended, and tightly packed. However, the membrane still keeps its general shape. This fluidity is important for loads of other processes, like receptor binding. When fluidity is worse, so are neurotransmission, neuroplasticity and neuroprotection. These are three things you generally want more of if you want to be Limitless.

    That said, some evidence suggests that piracetam has a greater effect on membrane fluidity at times when normal fluidity is compromised, or perhaps even only at these times. For example, during ageing. For instance one study found increases in fluidity in old mice, but not younger ones with normal fluidity to begin with. If you’re skeptical about mice studies, another study found the same thing in Alzheimer’s patients.

    Bradley Cooper definitely wasn’t taking this stuff in those oddly transparent tablets, but it does have some uses. Whether its useful as a nootropic isn’t completely clear (unlike NZT, which is completely clear). Certainly not in comparison to other methods of cognitive enhancement.

    References

    I got 90% of this from Bengt Winblad’s excellent 2005 review Piracetam: A Review of Pharmacological Properties and Clinical Uses, CNS Drug Reviews, 11(2) 169-182.

    Learn more.

  • Why are some people more driven than others???

    Some people just have that “Get up and go” don’t they??? This goes by many names – self-control, grit, motivation, drive, persistence, work-ethic. When it comes to succeeding in a particular pursuit, this thing is a pretty important factor, too. One study found that self-reported grit was more important than IQ in predicting a number of outcomes in eighth-grade students:

    Self-discipline measured in the fall accounted for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and the time of day students began their homework.

    It’s a pretty common trait among successful people, too. Will Smith is a pretty successful guy by most standards. Why is that? Here’s what he has to say about success:

    Why are some people driven like this, while others are happy to tread water? Will Smith is clearly a very competitive guy with a huge work ethic. Where other people would be happy to take a day off, he keeps on working. Where other people slow down, he speeds up. Sounds exhausting! What is behind such a huge amount of effort?

    Genetics

    I don’t believe that this is a fixed trait, because different people in different cultures and environments will react differently. But I do think genetics play a role. Many traits studied by psychologists have a strong genetic component, according to studies of twins. So maybe the traits that lead to being driven also develop more easily in people with a certain set of genes. I’ve never believed the idea that “All people are created equal.” Clearly, some people are born with better aptitudes in different areas than others. We’re not all born with the same mental blank slate, onto which we can develop in different directions.

    Intrinsic Motivation

    I’ve talked before about the difference between intrinsic motivation (something you do for its own sake) versus extrinsic motivation (something you do for a reward). Could it be that lack of drive is simply a symptom of doing something for a reward, as opposed to doing it for the pure pleasure of doing it?

    Michael Jordan talks in his autobiography about how the massive amount of effort he put into training was fun. For him, getting up early every day to practice free throws was scarcely an effort. Not that it’s right to say he has no work ethic — of course not — only that what seems on the outside to be a strong work ethic and “forcing” of behaviours is sometimes less so from the inside.

    The key thing to keep in mind here is difficulty. In the video above, Will Smith mentions the idea of talent versus skill, of honing your craft for thousands of hours until you’re a master. This gels with Ericsson‘s work on deliberate practice, and the well-known (thanks to Malcolm Gladwell) idea that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach mastery, regardless of the starting skill level. Deliberate practice is different to just doing the activity. It is doing it at the outer limit of your ability. It’s working on those hard, frustrating aspects that actually take effort. If you find a pentatonic scale difficult but could jam along to “She Loves You” all day long, then working on the former contributes to your 10,000 hours but the latter does not.

    If your craft is something that naturally appeals to you, and you enjoy, so much the better, but you’ll still have times you don’t want to practice, or you’d rather relax, or where you’ve reached a plateau that is hard for you to progress past. Therefore, to the extent that skill level plays a role in success, it stands to reason that grit, persistence, and work ethic is going to play a role in success regardless of intrinsic motivation. As beneficial as it may be, don’t make the mistake of thinking that intrinsic motivation is necessarily synonymous with “high” motivation. I read books for intrinsic reasons, but I don’t always want to read.

    You could say therefore, that success can stem from something that you’re intrinsically motivated to do, but either doesn’t require high levels of skill, or you already have high levels of skill in. As long as it’s not something mundane like eating. If you can find something like that, you’re home free, so it’s worth considering if any activities like this exist for you.

    However, there is a trap here. If you’re looking for external success via something you’re intrinsically motivated to do, it could very easily switch to something you’re extrinsically motivated to do when you start seeing it as a path to external rewards. This is particularly dangerous, because as Dan Pink explains in his book “Drive”, motivation for activities only tends to be increased by external rewards when these are rote, boring, repetitive tasks. Ability on tasks that require creative thought or effort tends to be stunted by the promise of rewards. Maybe that’s why a musician’s second album is usually worse than the first?

    Purpose / Meaning

    Maybe some people have a greater sense of purpose behind them, and this provides the motivation for them to keep going even through difficult times. Survival is one such purpose. It’s hard to imaging Chinese factory workers doing 18 hour days in terrible conditions for any reason other than to survive. If they had a few million in the bank, that would seem like an absurd course of action.

    Being anchored to a purpose might keep people going. When they feel like they want to take a break, they remind themselves of what they are trying to do, and they suddenly feel the urge to continue. This makes sense to me. I think our bodies keep energy in reserve, even when we feel very tired, just in case something of high importance becomes salient. Many a times I’ve been walking down the street, tired and hunched, when I see a pretty girl walking the opposite way. Isn’t it funny? I suddenly find the energy to walk upright and stick my chest out a bit!

    I imagine this as a kind of evolutionary reserve power store, just in case something comes up that might influence our ability to survive our reproduce. But because our brains are adaptable, and self-programmable, we can “install” a number of rules so our brain learns other occasions it should access our reserve power. The ability to build a sense of purpose might be one such thing. Of the top of my head, I can think of one study that backs this up, where people who reviewed their core values did better in a self-control task than people who didn’t.

    The need for success itself might serve this role for some. Why would Will Smith rather die than get off a treadmill before you? You could imagine some negative motivations behind this, like not wanting to feel like a failure, or status consciousness taken to such an extreme level that people would rather try to beat everyone that simply deal with that issue. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. Competition can be a tool, something that you use to motivate yourself but deep down understand is essentially meaningless. Beyond competition, the desire to contribute and to serve might provide that purpose. There are many examples of people being willing to put themselves through hell, even to die, for a purpose. This is something we’ve been reminded of in recent years but the mechanism has always existed.

    If this is correct, the action step here is to install a purpose into yourself, to find the meaning behind what you want to do. There are two ways. One is to determine your values, beliefs and convictions, and pick your direction based on them. This makes sense but is very difficult. If you ask yourself “What do I value?”, “What do I believe?”, it would be hard to know if the answer is “real,” and not something that has been pushed into your head from one of the 10 zillion sources we’re bombarded from in daily life. How “deep” do you have to go to find your true purpose, if there is such a thing, and where does it even come from?

    The other way is to take your direction, and integrate your values into it. This strikes me as a temporary solution at best since the two probably won’t fit together very well. It’s unlikely you be pursuing a path that’s in line with your core values and not know it on some level. The reverse is probably true as well, if you’re going in a “wrong” direction there’s probably a little niggling feeling that pops up occasionally (but you bash it back down with the perks of the job).

    Have I missed anything?

    What do you think about this? Why are some people more driven than others? This isn’t an extensive list, just a few ideas – what have I missed?

    Also, what do you think about the “how” side of things. How does one install a sense of purpose for instance?

    Here’s another question – can the lack of purpose, motivation and genetic propensity be overcome through “techniques?” If you set goals, go over your values, plan your time, etc., is that enough?

  • How to identify your strengths. Part 1: Self-Reflection

    I recently made a case that it’s better to “stick to your strengths” than to do “whatever you set your mind to.”  The main thrust of my argument was that even if you could do anything you set your mind to, it’s a slower, longer, and more frustrating road to excellence if you’re not using your strengths.  So why not pick the more enjoyable journey?

    “If you’ve never applied your strengths productively, you might not realise you have any.”

    A strength is just a particular way of processing information that your brain is good at.  A strength has to be applied towards a productive outcome to be noticed as a strength, of course, so you might not realise you have any, or you might see it as a weakness.  For example, neurotic worriers are superb at anticipating negative outcomes, they can often do this all day long.  While this might not make them great people to sit next to on the bus, their natural caution and prudence gives them excellent potential for strategic planning roles.

    Maybe you’re looking to shape your life around your strengths, maybe you’re just reading out of interest.  Either way, you’re probably curious as to what your own strengths are.  Allow me to cater to your intrigue, by presenting the two ways you can discover them:  Self-Reflection and Questionnaires.

    These are each pretty big topics, so I’ll explain how to use self-reflection now, and review the best questionnaires to use in a future article.

    By “self-reflection”, I don’t just mean sitting and thinking “Hmmm….what are my strengths?”  Research has uncovered patterns in how people discover their strengths, and this gives you areas in which to focus your self-reflection.  This option would be best for people who have a high level of self-knowledge to start with, or people who dislike questionnaires generally. 

    The advantage of self-reflection is that you’re not limited to a fixed set of potential answers – a questionnaire can tell you which are your top five strengths out of a total of 24, but it can’t tell you about anything outside of that model.  Reflection is harder work, but gives you that extra flexibility.  You can discover your strengths by reflecting on the following five areas (1):

    1) Spontaneous Reactions

    If it is true that strengths are your brain’s efficient processes, you’ll probably use them as a kind of default response to various situations.  When a problem comes up, do you analyse the situation or jump straight in?  If you go to a party, is your spontaneous reaction to woo those people you don’t know, or spend time relating to people you do?  Looking for common spontaneous reactions over a variety of situations can give you clues to your strengths.

    2) Yearnings

    For whatever reasons, each of us is drawn to some activities but not to others.  There are some activities that turn us off, and some we get excited about.  This is partly because we get more satisfaction from activities involving our strengths, and it’s easier for us to get into a state of flow when we’re using them.  

    When we’re yearning to do a certain thing, it’s in part because of the good emotions we expect to get from it, so this is a good avenue to look at when trying to identify strengths.  Think about your yearnings, and find the commonalities, but beware of what Marcus Buckinham calls “misyearnings”.  For example, a yearning to be an actor because of the anticipated glamour and fame, not for the joy of acting.  The yearnings you look for should be those relating to an activity itself, not the end result of it – things that you’re intrinsically motivated to do.  If you’re unsure, it can help to interview someone already in the role you yearn for, to see what it’s really like.

    3) Rapid Learnings

    Unfortunately, this is something I’ve never really experienced!  I’m quite a slow learner, I can’t think of many things I’ve picked up easily.  But many people try something new and find they progress quickly and naturally in it.  This rapid learning is indicative of an efficient brain area, and therefore a strength.  Think back over times you’ve picked something up quickly, or found you were a ‘natural’ at something.  Your strengths may relate to the skills required by that activity.

    4) Satisfactions

    As positive psychologists have discovered, using your strengths makes you happier.  Reasoning backwards, we find that the things that make us happy may involve our strengths.  Of course, not everything that makes us happy can involve a strength, otherwise you’d come up with a rather silly list, maybe including “being surprised”, “drinking beer”, and “buying a carpet”.  Obviously, these are not strengths.  You have to use common sense and maybe look at activities that are challenging to some degree, activities that you’d like to do again.   

    5) Energy

    You’re more likely to draw energy from activities that use your strengths than those that don’t.  This is why it’s so hard to go against the grain of your strengths long-term – these activities are draining rather than energising.  Ask yourself where you get your energy from.  What activities give you a buzz when you’re doing them?  If you can think of some, they probably involve your strengths.

    “Looking for your strengths helps you to see yourself from the outside”

    As you’ll have noticed, discovering your strengths through self-reflection is hard work; not something you can do in an afternoon.  You might have to spend a few weeks noticing your spontaneous reactions and satisfactions, and remembering your rapid learnings.  You’ll have to be perceptive in order to discover where you get your energy from, and careful not to identify any misyearnings.  

    The advantage of all this, aside from figuring out what strengths you have, is the extra self-awareness.  You’ve probably never thought of looking at yourself from the outside, to see how your elephant naturally reacts to things when you’re not directly instructing it.  An exercise like this will greatly appeal to those of you seeking self-knowledge.

    Others will feel this is too much hard work!  For you people, there are some good questionnaires which are well supported by research; these will give you a good idea of your strengths.  There are also some crap questionnaires out there too, so next article I’ll review the best ones to use.

    Recommended Reading:


    References

    (1) The first four (Spontaneous Reactions, Yearnings, Rapid Learnings, and Satisfactions), are recommended in Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.  
    The fifth suggestion (Where your energy comes from), is Alex Linley’s advice, which you’ll find in the book Average to A+, you might also like this free pdf file: Alex Linley’s Strengthspotting Tips 

  • How to identify your strengths. Part 2: Questionnaires

    Previously, I’ve explained why it’s best to stick to your strengths, and explained how to identify your strengths through self-reflection.  In order to use self-reflection, you’d have to be aware of your body and mind, watch how they naturally respond to situations, and take some extra time to sit and reflect in the ways I outlined.  This is all well and good, and many people relish that type of self-analysis.  Others, including my own good self, don’t find that quite so appealing.  Personally, I’d prefer to just fill out a questionnaire and get the results.  If you’re like me then read on, and I’ll tell you where to go next. First of all – in case you’re unsure which way to go – here are the pros and cons of each:

    For Self-Reflection/Against Questionnaires

    Questionnaires are fixed and rigid – Although there are many thousands of possible outcomes from a questionnaire, it is still blocked into a framework, and cannot tell you about anything outside of the framework.  Self-reflection is more flexible.

    Questionnaires are focused on psychological and social strengths only – So you won’t discover any physical abilities like reaction time or balance except through reflection.  

    Self-Reflection is more personalised and focused on you – Its outcome is based on your real-life behaviour.  Questionnaires, on the other hand, give you a best-guess based on your answers to questions – this has potential for error.

    Increased self-knowledge – You’ll surely learn more about yourself from doing this.

    For Questionnaires/Against Self-Reflection

    You may not have the words – If you don’t have a good vocabulary to identify strengths with, you might miss some, or not realise that a certain consistent behaviour can be applied productively.  Once you’ve very familiar with the strengths vocabulary, you might even try your hand at Talent SpeedReading, which could be useful if you’re in a managerial position.

    Personal taste – Some people find self-reflection difficult or boring.

    Backed by research – Yes, responses are fixed into a framework, but there are good reasons that this framework exists.  These models are not arbitrary: research has been done to test their effectiveness.  

    Saves time and effort – 45 minutes to 1 hr, versus 1 or 2 weeks.

    Of course, you can always do both, and see how the results compare.  There are two dominant models in the field of personal strengths.  These are Values In Action, coming from positive psychology researchers, and StrengthsFinder, based on research by Gallup.  (Note: There is a third model, Realise2, coming out of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology on June 2nd 2009.  As I know very little about it, I’ll leave it alone for now.)

    Values In Action  

    Legend has it, a group of intrepid researchers went into the mountains one winter, taking with them food and every major scientific, philosophical and religious text ever written, from the north, east, south and west.  For a long time, there was no word.  Some feared the worst.  Then, the next spring, the researchers returned.  Exhausted and emaciated, they came down the mountain, carrying over their heads a glowing, 800 page tome entitled Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (CSV), which contained extensive information and background on 24 character strengths.

    I may have exaggerated this story slightly.

    In any case, these 24 strengths are grouped into six virtues.  To come up with this list of 24 strengths, the historical texts were examined, and commonalities were identified.  The researchers looked at what the great thinkers of our species agreed on, and tested these common ideas against a set of criteria of their own. 

    The end product is a model where the exercise and development of strengths leads to the achievement of virtue.  So it’s mainly concerned with developing good character.  

    The Values In Action model has an accompanying test, used to diagnose peoples’ “signature strengths”.  The test is called, inventively enough, the Values In Action Inventory of Strengths.  It is well supported by research, and a lot of effort has been put into making sure this is a valid and reliable reflection of human strengths. 

    For example, when the test is given to people in the military versus civilians, soldiers come out higher in strengths like teamwork, honesty and bravery (1).  Another example: executives tend to display less kindness and love, but higher leadership and self-control than their employees (2).  These findings and others like them are sensible; they show that the test is accurate.

    The VIA Inventory of Strengths can be taken at Authentic Happiness.  It’s free but requires registration (you also get access to a whole host of other tests) and it takes around 45 minutes to complete.  If you only take one test, take this one.  I recommend it because I’ve read much of the research using this model, so I know it’s been well validated and tested. 

    Also, studies have shown that when people use their signature strengths, as identified by this questionnaire, they get happier, and continue to get happier the more they use them (up to the 6 month point where the study ended, that is). (3) 

    StrengthsFinder  

    This is a more well-known approach to strengths, due to the popularity of the book “Now, Discover Your Strengths”.  Rather than focusing on good character and virtue, the authors have focused on the workplace, and job performance.  The model is based on a survey of 2 million people in just about all known professions.  Each participant was interviewed, then the data was analysed and compiled into what is known as StrengthsFinder.  

    If you’re interested in strengths to help you find or progress in your career, this is probably the model for you – it’s specifically designed for that purpose.  To develop strengths, you first must identify your talents.  Talents are defined as “any recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behaviour that can be productively applied”. 

    After discovering your talents, you practice them, learn complimentary skills and knowledge, and eventually the talent becomes a strength, which itself is defined as “consistent, near perfect performance in an activity.”    

    Like the VIA Inventory of Strengths, the test takes around 45 minutes to complete, and gives you an output of your top five strengths.  Unlike the VIA, the StrengthsFinder model includes a total of 34 strengths, rather than 24, and unfortunately it isn’t free.  

    To take the StrengthsFinder test you have to first purchase one of their books, StrengthsFinder 2.0 will give you access to the newer test, or an older publication like Now, Discover Your Strengths will get you into the older test (convenient links below).  These books are pretty cheap in paperback and worth getting if you’re interested in strengths.  Once you have an access code, head over to the StrengthsFinder website and log in!
     

     

     
    Recommended Reading:


    References

    (1) Matthews, M. D, Eid, J, Kelly, D, Bailey, J. K. S, Peterson, C. (2006) Character Strengths and Virtues of Developing Military Leaders: An International Comparison. MILITARY PSYCHOLOGY. 18(Suppl.), 57–68.

    (2) Character Strengths of Executives and Employees 

    (3) Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.