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Home › Executive Knowledge Series ›

How Technology Threatens Mental Health – Especially if You’re Inauthentic

Pawel KorzynskiJanuary 18, 2021

When the personality you show the world doesn’t match your true self, it can sap the energy you would otherwise need to deal with technostress. The word technostress is often credited to Craig Brod, an American psychologist who authored a book about the stress brought on by rapid changes in technology. It was published in 1984, the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected president of the United States, cinema-goers were flocking to see Ghostbusters and the original Apple Macintosh went on sale. Fast-forward 36 years. In 2020, thanks to Covid-19, it’s likely that the bulk of your life – from working and studying, to socialising and even seeing a doctor – was or continues to be dependent on a tech device. And whilst in 1984, your worst tech-related frustration might have been remembering the WordPerfect command to bold your text, it is quite possible that technostress – now defined as the difficulty coping with the constant demands of tech devices – is preventing you from having a proper night of sleep. Perhaps it has turned you into a cynical, exhausted employee. Bosses should take note: Health insurer Cigna’s 2019 global 360 Well-Being Survey revealed that 84 percent of workers feel stressed and 13 percent consider their stress unmanageable. In some cases, the habitual checking for messages, emails or missed calls can devolve into mental health issues, such as uncontrollable compulsive behaviours or addiction. Know thyself, know your risk A few years ago, we published research (described in this Knowledge article) that looked at how specific personality traits affect how people experience spending so much of their time “connected”. Using self-rated and observer-rated personality questionnaires, we found that tech was beneficial to introverts. It allowed them to communicate with a broader audience without having to physically participate in large social gatherings. However, we suggested that extroverts should watch their tech usage as they may find it more difficult to disconnect. Meanwhile, high self-esteem provided a buffer against techno-insecurity – the stress brought about by fears one will lose their job to someone with greater technical skills. Building upon these findings in a new paper, we used similar questionnaires to investigate how conscientiousness – the opposite of laissez-faire – is associated with workplace technostress. We found that this personality dimension, which is related to carefulness, thoroughness and the tendency to plan ahead, does increases a person’s risk of experiencing technostress. This is because conscientious individuals might feel more compelled than others to respond immediately to messages and other tech-related demands. Most interestingly, we found that a gap between an individual’s self-ratings and their observers’ ratings (whether the rating concerned extroversion, conscientiousness or self-esteem) was associated with technostress. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study of technostress to include observers’ perceptions of an individual’s personality traits. Take pseudo-extroverts – people who consider themselves introverts but have learnt to act like an extrovert when the context requires it. This is commonly seen in top leaders of companies: They’re successful at what they do because they have the qualities of both, depending on what is necessary. But it could also be the other way around: Consider an extrovert manager who, wary of groupthink, is attempting to ensure that everyone contributes in a meeting. This person may need to expand extra effort in order to practice active listening (as opposed to merely waiting for others to finish talking). The Covid crisis has forced many of us to use information and communication technology (ICT) devices in our homes for work purposes. Some people who might have maintained a quiet presence in the office may now feel a need to ensure their visibility through liking, commenting or otherwise reacting to their colleagues’ online posts and comments. Whenever there is a significant gap between what you perceive yourself to be and the persona you are projecting, it means you are probably putting a lot of effort into presenting yourself in a way that is not natural for you. This energy drain makes you more susceptible to technostress. Who’s responsible for managing the risk of technostress? The experience of technostress varies significantly among individuals. Technostress relates the perceived ability to set priorities and make choices. Think of it as an energy equation that each one of us must be aware of and manage. This is the essence of the difference between added value and added stress through the use of information and communication technologies at work. While managing technostress is ultimately the responsibility of each individual, organisations must be involved too. For instance, HR could offer personality audits and related workshops to share which traits can make people more prone to technostress. This could include a 360° assessment of potential gaps between personality self-ratings and observers’ ratings. Of course, it is not enough to be aware about one’s susceptibility to technostress. Should a high predisposition be uncovered, the company’s culture should provide enough room for employees to do something about it. Perhaps employees should be allowed to set stronger boundaries about the use of tech devices in their particular role. Rules such as avoiding answering emails on weekends should be set down and modelled by the organisation’s senior leaders. Companies need to acknowledge personal preferences when it comes to setting ICT usage and guidelines. For example, they should not expect all employees to be active on all corporate WhatsApp groups or Microsoft Teams channels. Some employees might feel safer with a code of conduct on social media. Others might prefer to receive a detailed plan of social media activities. If companies do not consider personality preferences and expect only one set of online behaviours, employees will eventually adjust, but there will be a human cost, i.e. technostress. Employees should be able to feel a sense of self-efficacy. While HR can help employees gather information about themselves, the organisation must be willing to accompany staff as they figure out the best way to manage their own technostress. Pawel Korzynski is a Visiting Scholar at INSEAD as well as an Associate Professor at Kozminski University in Poland, where he teachers Leadership and Online Influence. Caroline Rook, a former INSEAD Dutch Alumni Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar, is a Lecturer in Leadership at Henley Business School. Elizabeth Florent Treacy is on the core faculty team of INSEAD’s Executive Master in Change degree programme. She supervises thesis projects, working with participants to design and carry out projects that combine academic rigour with real-world application. Manfred F. R. Kets De Vries is the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus.

By Pawel Korzynski   When the personality you show the world doesn’t match your true self, it can sap the energy you would otherwise need to deal with technostress. The word technostress is often credited to Craig Brod, an American psychologist who authored a book about the stress brought on by rapid changes in technology. It […]

What Fuels Rumours and How to Put Them Out

Enver YücesanJanuary 18, 2021

What Fuels Rumours and How to Put Them Out

By Enver Yücesan   Unfounded rumours can be spread far and wide by anyone who knows their way around social media. We can’t stamp it out but we can – and should – fight fire with fire. As a spikey virus raced around the world this year, another insidious contagion of misinformation, conspiracy theories and rumours […]

Why Putting Your Phone Away Isn’t the Answer

Alixandra BaraschJanuary 11, 2021

Interaction on social media during an event increases our enjoyment in the moment and beyond. The admonition to “Put your phone away!” while attending an event is universal. We all have the sense that if someone is fiddling with their phone or texting during an experience, their attention isn’t where it should be. And indeed, previous research does show that using technology to multitask during experiences can reduce feelings of immersion and enjoyment. Yet people persist in texting or posting on social media during experiences of every variety. For example, during the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, over 5 million tweets were posted during the 30 minutes Lady Gaga was onstage. And Eurovision viewers in 2017 generated about 5 million social media interactions during the show. Are all these people really undermining their own enjoyment? And is it really the case that generating content during experiences is necessarily detrimental? Our recent work indicates that these assumptions may not reflect how most consumers actually generate content during experiences. The concerns so regularly expressed by the popular media may be greatly overstated. Time flies when you’re having fun In our paper, “Generating Content Increases Enjoyment by Immersing Consumers and Accelerating Perceived Time”, published in the Journal of Marketing, Gabriela Tonietto (Rutgers Business School) and I found that those who generate relevant content during an experience enjoy it more than those who don’t. We ran a series of nine studies to show that generating content during an experience increases feelings of immersion and makes us feel like time flies, which in turn enhances our enjoyment of the experience. That is, when we write a text or a social media post about an ongoing experience, we actually use our phones in a way that complements, rather than interferes with, what we are experiencing. And left to our own devices, that’s exactly what many of us do. Our studies encompass a broad array of experiences, both inside and outside the lab, that vary in duration from a few minutes to several hours, including the Super Bowl halftime show, holiday celebrations, a dance performance, virtual safaris and bus tours, and a horror film. During all these experiences, we consistently found that generating content led people to feel more engaged in their experiences. This was true regardless of whether people tended to say positive or negative things about their experiences. In addition, when people created content in response to a positive experience, they enjoyed it even more. For negative experiences, though, this effect on enjoyment did not emerge. Because generating content draws people into an experience, doing so during a negative experience might ignite negative feelings. Generating content as a participatory activity In a representative study from our paper, 1,212 Amazon MTurk participants who planned to watch the Super Bowl halftime show were given instructions in advance. To examine the natural content creation of consumers, we randomly assigned them to different content creation conditions: One group was asked not to create content while watching the show, another group was asked to create content about the show itself, and an additional group was asked to use their phones in ways that were unrelated to the halftime show. After the halftime show, we asked our participants a series of questions and found that those who created relevant content enjoyed the experience more than those in the two other conditions. This effect was driven by how immersed participants felt in the experience. Creating relevant content allowed people to become more absorbed and lose themselves more in the experience. Strategies for creating an immersive experience How can organisations promote these immersive feelings by encouraging consumer content creation? We wanted to understand if this behaviour must be organic to be beneficial, or if consumers can still gain the same rewards when marketers prompt them to generate content. Several of our studies tested this possibility. We systematically tested two key strategies for encouraging content creation and examined whether they effectively increased this behaviour and whether those who created content in response to those strategies reaped the same experiential benefits. The first strategy is incentivising content creation. In one study, participants were told that if they created content related to a particular experience, they would be entered in a raffle for a chance to win a small amount of money. We found that consumers who were incentivised to create content were about two to three times more likely to create content than those who were not. Perhaps even more importantly, those who created content because of an incentive also reported greater feelings of immersion and enjoyment than those who weren’t offered an incentive. The second (even cheaper) strategy is using a norm nudge, or communicating that a key behaviour is extremely common. For example, in one study, participants were told that they were going on a bus tour with a company that provided an app enabling consumers to create content during the experience. One group was presented with a “high” social norm, indicating that 90 percent of their fellow customers downloaded and used the app, while the other group was presented with a “low” social norm, indicating that only 10 percent of customers used the app. We found that consumers were approximately twice as likely to generate content when they were told that many of their fellow customers used the app. Moreover, those who chose to generate content again felt more engaged and enjoyed their experience more as the result of this norm nudge. Overall, consumers who were encouraged to generate content from a marketing communication reaped the same benefits as those who created content organically. The implications for marketers are quite clear. Consumers who enjoy themselves are more likely to recommend an experience to friends and repeat it themselves. Thus, by encouraging content creation, marketers can not only help their consumers gain more from an experience, but also benefit downstream. Accordingly, content generation can be a win-win for marketers and consumers. Beyond offering an incentive or communicating a social norm as described, marketers can also reap these benefits by using branded hashtags (#INSEADForGood) and ensuring that their brand is active on social media. Once in-store experiences are possible once again, other options might include pushing suggested posts to those who have signed up via email or text, providing an Instagram frame prop with information about an event, or running polls during an event. The emergence of customisable sharing platforms that enable consumers to connect with each other during experiences, such as Whova for conferences and ShortStack for contests, provides more options still. Indeed, firms have a tremendous amount of tools at their disposal for helping consumers create content and helping themselves in the process. Consumers can also take comfort in the knowledge that texting or posting during an experience need not come at the expense of their immediate enjoyment. So the next time someone asks you to put away your phone and “live in the moment”, remember that it’s not whether you use your phone, but how you use it that matters. Alixandra Barasch is a Visiting Associate Professor of Marketing at INSEAD. She is also an Assistant Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business.

By Alixandra Barasch   Interaction on social media during an event increases our enjoyment in the moment and beyond. The admonition to “Put your phone away!” while attending an event is universal. We all have the sense that if someone is fiddling with their phone or texting during an experience, their attention isn’t where it […]

How Start-ups in Emerging Markets Succeed Despite Scarcity

Bala VissaJanuary 11, 2021

How Start-ups in Emerging Markets Succeed Despite Scarcity

By Bala Vissa   When the going gets tough, bring on improvisation and learning. 2019 was a record year of venture capital funding for start-ups in emerging economies from Latin America, Africa to Southeast Asia. This year, well, it’s safe to say the money is not exactly sloshing around, and the pace is likely to remain […]

How Operations Can Stop Labour Violations Before They Happen

Sameer HasijaJanuary 4, 2021

How Operations Can Stop Labour Violations Before They Happen

By Sameer Hasija   Three business characteristics can serve as leading indicators of possible human-rights abuses in the making. For decades, policymakers and corporate CSR departments have undertaken sustained, sincere efforts to clamp down on labour abuses such as slavery, perilous working conditions and wage theft. Sadly, the results so far appear limited, if recent […]

Making the Shift to Digital Sales in B2B

Joerg NiessingJanuary 4, 2021

By Joerg Niessing   The old methods of demand generation won’t work in the always-online era. A new, digital era of B2B sales and marketing is upon us. It’s driven by corporate customer demand for online access to their suppliers’ offerings and expertise. Taking advantage of this shift is challenging because it requires moving from […]

Workplace Mental Health Is a Business Asset. Treat It That Way

Enoch LiDecember 28, 2020

Workplace Mental Health Is a Business Asset. Treat It That Way

By Enoch Li   The most successful initiatives deliver employee well-being programmes as a strategic “product”, with four fundamental planning considerations. Mental health in the workplace is not a new topic. It is well documented by now that an investment of US$1 into workplace mental health yields approximately US$4 in return. Even though this dialogue is […]

Hold the Emoji and Other Tips for Successful Email Negotiations

Alena KomaromiDecember 28, 2020

Hold the Emoji and Other Tips for Successful Email Negotiations

By Alena Komaromi   Tactics for increasing B2B sales. When your own inbox is overflowing with unread messages, it may not seem like the best tactic but with the right approach, email can be a powerful negotiation tool, not least in the B2B realm. According to 2019 research by IACCM, a global contract management association, […]

How to Be a Blue Ocean Strategist in the Post-Pandemic World

W. Chan KimDecember 21, 2020

How to Be a Blue Ocean Strategist in the Post-Pandemic World

By W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne   A blue ocean mindset uncovers hidden opportunities amid the Covid-era economic crisis. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to evolve, managers around the world are bracing for new challenges ahead. Many of them wonder whether the strategic approaches that proved to be successful in the past will still […]

Four Steps to Business Model Innovation

Sameer HasijaDecember 21, 2020

Four Steps to Business Model Innovation

By Sameer Hasija   Success in this new era of accelerated disruption requires a holistic approach to technology. In the current era of disruption, recently accelerated by the pandemic, firms must be in command of cutting-edge technologies; otherwise, they face potentially mortal danger. That is why I counsel corporate leaders to imagine how an agile, […]

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