Is your Negativity Bias Making you Unhappy at Work?

Is your Negativity Bias Making you Unhappy at Work?

Guest blogger Dr Mike Forsythe writes….

The tally chart scribbled on the back of an old patient information leaflet sits on the desk in front of me, and it doesn’t make any sense. There’s a happy face on one side, a sad face on the other, and beneath each poorly drawn emoji a collection of dashes providing a pictorial representation of my morning clinic; a clinic that has left me exhausted and demoralised.  There were sixteen patients in all, and I have been left with the overwhelming impression that the morning has been an unmitigated disaster.

Why Altruism Will Make You Happy and Healthy

Why Altruism Will Make You Happy and Healthy

Altruism provides something of an evolutionary conundrum. Darwin told us that the fittest will survive to reproduce and pass their genes onto the next generation. Logic tells us then that people should try to maximise their fitness in order to maximise their chances of reproducing. But altruism is a willful act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of someone else. It is deliberately reducing your own fitness to help someone else.

Love, Loyalty, and The Trolley Dilemma

Love, Loyalty, and The Trolley Dilemma

As humans we are pre-disposed to bonding in groups. We all know the joy in belonging, whether that’s to a family group, a sports team, or some kind of club or society. We rapidly develop a sense of loyalty to groups to which we feel we belong, this is known as ‘in-group loyalty’. At its most intense in-group loyalty takes the form of ‘identity fusion’ which is when a person feels a visceral sense of belonging to a group, a sensation so strong that the person primarily identifies themselves as a member of the group rather than an individual (1).

Depression or Burnout?

Depression or Burnout?

Depression, anxiety and other mental health problems are incredibly common. It’s estimated that around 1 in 6 people suffer from problems such as these in any given week in the UK(1). Nearly a million people each year are treated by NHS psychological services with an ambition to treat 1.5 million by the year 2020/21. Rates of antidepressant prescriptions are also rising with about 82 people out of every 1000 in the UK now taking antidepressant medication (2).

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