Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it resonates with you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means knowing ourselves first.
Happy Monday, founders,
Over the past few weeks, we looked at why we miss problems right in front of us, how the words we use can calm our body, and how to judge evidence more fairly.
If you missed an issue or want a refresher before the next one, here's a recap of the last few.
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In case you missed it:
We looked at a 2013 Harvard Medical School study in which 24 radiologists searched lung scans for nodules, and 83% missed a gorilla the size of a nodule placed inside the lung 48 times!
The piece explores why we miss what is right in front of us and offers three questions to help us find the gorilla in our own business…
We went back to a 2007 UCLA brain-scanning study that found putting a feeling into words lowered activity in the amygdala, the brain's threat detector.
The piece explains why the word we choose for a feeling changes how our body reacts.
In 1991, researchers gave 394 healthy volunteers nasal drops containing a cold virus and quarantined them.
Their stress level beforehand predicted who got sick. The piece explains why and what we can do when we catch ourselves shaming our own stress level…
We looked at a 1979 Stanford study where students with opposite views on the death penalty read the same two studies, and both groups came away more convinced of their original view.
The piece covers the one question that undid this bias and how to use it before we hire, sign a contract, or change our pricing…
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
Until next week,
Lavena
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