Moving outside the board room: A proof-of-concept study on the impact of walking while negotiating

PURPOSE

Negotiation is a consequential activity that can exacerbate power differentials, especially for women. While traditional contexts can prime stereotypical gender roles and promote conditions that lead to performance differences, these can be mitigated by context shifts. This proof-of-concept study explores whether an easy-to-apply context shift, moving from seated indoors to walking outside, can help improve the quality of negotiated interactions. Here we examine walking's effects on negotiation and relational outcomes as well as experienced emotions, moderated by gender.

DESIGN

Same-gender pairs were randomly assigned to either sitting or walking as either candidate or recruiter negotiating a job offer.

PARTICIPANTS

Eighty-one pairs of graduate students or community members participated: sitting pairs: 27 women, 14 men; walking pairs: 23 women, 17 men.

INTERVENTION

Participants negotiated either while seated (across from each other) or walking (side by side along a path).

MEASURES

We measured: negotiation performance (total points) and outcome equity (difference between negotiating party points); subjective outcomes of positive emotions, negative emotions, mutual liking, and mutual trust. With mixed effects models, we tested main effects of condition, gender, and interaction of condition x gender.

RESULTS

Relative to sitting, walking was associated with: increased outcome equality for women, but decreased for men (B = 3799.1, SE = 1679.9, p = .027); decreased negative emotions, more for women than men (IRR = .83, 95% CI:[.69,1.00], p = .046); and greater mutual liking for both genders (W = 591.5, p-value = 0.027). No significant effects were found for negotiation point totals, positive emotions, or mutual trust.

CONCLUSION

This study provides a foundation for investigating easy-to-implement changes that can mitigate stereotyped performance differences in negotiation.

The Acute Effects of Standing on Executive Functioning in Vocational Education and Training Students: The Phit2Learn Study

Research suggests that sedentary behavior (SB) is negatively associated with cognitive outcomes. Interrupting prolonged sitting has been shown to improve cognitive functions, including executive functioning (EF), which is important for academic performance. No research has been conducted on the effect of standing on EF in VET students, who make up a large proportion of the adolescent population and who are known to sit more than other students of this age. In this study, we investigated the acute effects of reducing SB by short time standing on EF in vocational education and training (VET) students. In a randomized crossover study, 165 VET students were first taught for 15 min in seated position. After this, they performed while seated the Letter Memory Test for updating, and the Color Shape Test for shifting and inhibition. Students were randomly assigned to a sitting or standing condition. All students were taught again for 15 min and then took the same tests in the condition they were allocated to, respectively, standing or seated. After 1 week, the test procedure was repeated, in which students switched conditions. Mixed model analyses showed no significant effect of sitting or standing on updating, shifting, or inhibition. Also, no significant differences were found for the order of condition on updating, shifting, or inhibition. Our results suggest that 40 min of standing does not significantly influence EF among VET students.

Biopsychosocial Functions of Human Walking and Adherence to Behaviourally Demanding Belief Systems: A Narrative Review

Human walking is a socially embedded and shaped biological adaptation: it frees our hands, makes our minds mobile, and is deeply health promoting. Yet, today, physical inactivity is an unsolved, major public health problem. However, globally, tens of millions of people annually undertake ancient, significant and enduring traditions of physiologically and psychologically arduous walks (pilgrimages) of days-to-weeks extent. Pilgrim walking is a significant human activity requiring weighty commitments of time, action and belief, as well as community support. Paradoxically, human walking is most studied on treadmills, not ‘in the wild’, while mechanistically vital, treadmill studies of walking cannot, in principle, address why humans walk extraordinary distances together to demonstrate their adherence to a behaviourally demanding belief system.

Pilgrim walkers provide a rich ‘living laboratory’ bridging humanistic inquiries, to progressive theoretical and empirical investigations of human walking arising from a behaviourally demanding belief system. Pilgrims vary demographically and undertake arduous journeys on precisely mapped routes of tracked, titrated doses and durations on terrain of varying difficulty, allowing investigations from molecular to cultural levels of analysis. Using the reciprocal perspectives of ‘inside→out’ (where processes within brain and body initiate, support and entrain movement) and ‘outside→in’ (where processes in the world beyond brain and body drive activity within brain and body), we examine how pilgrim walking might shape personal, social and transcendental processes, revealing potential mechanisms supporting the body and brain in motion, to how pilgrim walking might offer policy solutions for physical inactivity.

The effects of standing in tutorial group meetings on learning: A randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Standing desks have been brought into the education environment to reduce sedentary behavior among students. The current study explored the effects of standing in tutorial group meetings on learning among undergraduate students.

METHODS

Ninety-six participants were randomly allocated to a Sit or Stand group, with 2 h tutorial group meetings scheduled, once or twice per week, for nine weeks. Learning was analyzed using exam grades, concept maps, and tutorial interactions.

RESULTS

Overall, the Sit and Stand groups did not differ from each other in terms of learning, measured through their exam, concept map, and the use of learning-oriented interactions.

CONCLUSION

Standing in tutorial group meetings neither enhanced nor compromised learning. Considering the health risks associated with prolonged sedentary behavior, offering standing tutorial group meetings to undergraduate students is a recommended solution to break up prolonged sedentary behavior and encourage more physical activity, while maintaining the learning performance of students.

A Multilevel Study of Group Affective Tone and Team Innovation: A Moderated Mediation Model

Drawing on broaden-and-build theory and threat-rigidity hypothesis, we theorized and tested a multilevel model to examine the moderating effects of transformational leadership (TFL) on the team-level process that links positive/negative group affective tone (PGAT/NGAT) to team innovation via information elaboration. Data were collected from 299 team members and 65 leaders from Taiwanese companies at two time points. The multilevel path analysis demonstrated support for a positive indirect effect of PGAT on team innovation via information elaboration and a negative indirect effect of NGAT on team innovation via information elaboration. The positive indirect effect of PGAT on team innovation via information elaboration was found to be stronger when TFL was high rather than low. However, TFL did not attenuate the negative effects of NGAT. Negative group affective tone was negatively related to information elaboration when TFL was high, whereas NGAT had no significant relationship with information elaboration when TFL was low. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Stand up to action: The postural effect of moral dilemma decision-making and the moderating role of dual processes

Previous studies have demonstrated the possibility that when people are in standing rather than sitting postures, they have a stronger cognitive control propensity, making them inclined to agree more to sacrificing one innocent person and saving more people. Furthermore, this postural effect can be moderated by dual processes. In three studies, participants read dilemma scenarios followed by a proposed behavior to sacrifice one innocent person and save five or more people. The participants in sitting or standing postures were asked whether the described action was morally acceptable (moral judgment) and whether they would perform the described action (moral action). The results demonstrated that participants were more approving of the behavioral proposal in the moral action perspective than in the moral judgment perspective across the three studies. The hypothesized postural effect was found in a field study (Study 1) and replicated in a preregistered replication study (Study 2), and was further supported in an experimental study (Study 3). Compared with those in sitting postures, participants in standing postures expressed higher approval of the behavioral proposal compared to their sitting counterparts. Furthermore, the postural effect was dismissed when participants made moral decisions with a dual task to increase cognitive load, and it was reversed when they made moral decisions after deliberate consideration of the behavioral proposal (Study 3). The present research supports and extends the dual-process morality theory by demonstrating that body posture can affect moral decision-making; it also offers novel evidence revealing the moderating role of dual process on embodiment effects. It enriches our knowledge that morality is evolutionarily embodied in postures and that the dual process can moderate embodiment effects.

A Physiological Perspective on Treadmill and Sit-to-Stand Workstations

Active workstations, such as treadmill and sit-to-stand workstations, enable office employees to break prolonged sitting with bouts of light-intensity walking and/or standing. Compared with sitting, walking and/or standing accumulated during the workday using these workstations will increase muscle contractions, which may influence blood flow, energy expenditure, metabolism, musculoskeletal health, and brain function. Physiological responses when using treadmill and sit-to-stand workstations may vary due to differences in muscle contraction type (dynamic vs. static) and may thus affect cardio-metabolic and musculoskeletal health and brain function in different ways.

Group Affect

Over two decades of research has indicated that group affect is an important factor that shapes group processes and outcomes. We review and synthesize research on group affect, encompassing trait affect, moods, and emotions at a collective level in purposive teams. We begin by defining group affect and examining four major types of collective affective constructs: (a) convergence in group affect; (b) affective diversity, that is, divergence in group affect; (c) emotional culture; and (d) group affect as a dynamic process that changes over time. We describe the nomological network of group affect, examining both its group-level antecedents and group-level consequences. Antecedents include group leadership, group member attributes, and interactions between and relationships among group members. Consequences of group affect include attitudes about the group and group-level cooperation and conflict, creativity, decision making, and performance. We close by discussing current research knowns, research needs, and what lies on the conceptual and methodological frontiers of this domain.