Being Happy Makes You Less Productive. Sometimes.
Might not be the best person for the job. Then again, she might.
We all want to be happy. At least in the States, being happy is the closest thing to Nirvana. But it turns out that research has shown that sad workers will often out-perform happier ones.
Two psychologists at the University of Alberta, Professor Robert Sinclair (now with Laurentian University in Sudbury, ON) and PhD student Carrie Lavis, published some research in 2001 on work they did with workers in a printed circuit board factory. They made some of the workers sad, about as sad as one would get after watching a sad movie. These workers didn’t make more boards, but had fewer errors, and therefore made more usable product (less rework).
It seems that sad people use work to distract themselves from their sadness. They may also be more reflective. Happy workers see work as a distraction, too, but from their happiness.
Of course, there are several caveats.
November 9, 2009 2 Comments
