Because Psychologically Healthy Workplaces Contribute to a Psychologically Healthy Population

An average full-time worker spends about 40 hours a week working. Assuming retirement at 67 years old, an average person will spend approximately 90,000 hours, or 10 years, of their life working. Given this, and the extent to which our work can shape our self-identities, it is not a stretch to say that psychologically healthy workplaces are critical for population mental health. That is, psychologically healthy workplaces meaningfully contribute to a mentally healthy population.

Before continuing, let’s define what we mean by “mental health.” The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.” To approach mental health as merely the absence of mental illness does not capture the complexity of our mental well-being. It is better conceptualized as a continuum that ranges from severe mental illness to psychological flourishing.

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Because Changing Behavior is Essential to Addressing Climate Change

Scientists across a wide range of disciplines agree that climate change is one of the biggest challenges currently facing our world. Climate change is now recognized as a dire threat to global public health, with a growing awareness of the mental health impacts. The discipline of psychology can contribute in multiple ways to the response to climate change, as described in the American Psychological Association’s recent report Addressing the Climate Crisis: An Action Plan for Psychologists. In this report, APA calls on psychologists to bring their expertise and experience to the fight against climate change and to collaborate with other disciplines and professions to magnify the impact of psychologists’ efforts. Psychologists have roles to play in helping society to mitigate climate change and adapt to it, as well as in building public understanding and attitudes and encouraging social action.

Mitigation, which is aimed at preventing further climate change, may involve the development of new technologies, alternative energy sources, and methods for removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (e.g., large-scale tree planting, carbon dioxide filtering devices) along with new ways of living and working. New mitigation strategies also present untapped possibilities for incorporating psychological science, including the development of energy-saving smart home technologies that are sensitive and intuitive, ensuring ethical deployments of artificial intelligence, and identifying and breaking down the mental barriers to electric vehicle adoption. Psychologists will be essential to rethinking our world, from aiding the transition to remote work, to reshaping communities to encourage more emission free transportation, to helping people transition to plant-based diets. More broadly, psychologists can contribute to policy development and decision-making about climate change to facilitate acceptance and adoption of new technologies, environments, and routines.

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Because It Can Teach Us How to Be Kinder to Ourselves

When you look back on your life, you may think about a time when you failed at something. Maybe there was a time when you failed an important exam, or a time when you messed up a big presentation at work. Maybe there was something you just can’t forget about, even though you wish you could.

Failures seem to be universal and inevitable in our lives, and they can be really impactful. However, people differ in how they perceive failures. Some people may think that failures are aversive—a thing that should be avoided or else may lead to depression. Other people may believe that failures are chances for personal growth, just like the inspiring, if cliched, quote, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

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Because It Can Help Employers Compassionately Plan for Returning to the Office

After a year of social distancing, mask wearing and – for millions – working from home, many employers are eager to bring their staff back to the office. But for many, the prospect of readjusting to in-person work is a daunting one.

A recent survey found that out of 4,553 office workers in five different countries, every single person reported feeling anxious about the idea of returning to in-person work.

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Because We Need to Grapple with How We Talk about Asian Americans

Just over two months ago, a white male entered three Asian-owned spas in the Atlanta area, and in the ensuing carnage, took the lives of eight individuals, including six Asian women. While America grieved the unnecessary loss of so many lives, many Americans were faced with confronting an uncomfortable truth that Asian Americans knew far too well—that this event was not surprising.

It was not surprising because anti-Asian sentiment is not new. The violence against our Asian-American brothers and sisters has not started as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but instead, is rooted deep within American understanding of Chinese immigrants tracing back over 150 years. When we talk about how Asians are “robotic” in their workplace rigor, we strip them of their humanity and reduce their complex emotional experiences, dreams, aspirations, and historical interactions into a single moment in time, a psychological concept we call “dehumanization.” Dehumanization can lead to a wide variety of outcomes—from discrimination in policies, to exclusion in social activities, to genocide and ethnic cleansing. When we claim they only reside in certain areas, or only hang out with their own group, we ignore the cultural and historical policy actions that played, assisted, and promoted that self-segregation in the first place.

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Because Leaders Need to Know How to Lead with Evidence

Being bad at math can kill people. Even experts who should understand medical science and help us make good health decisions sometimes fail. In December, a doctor—let’s call him Dr. Smith—advised a tweeter’s elderly mom not to get the COVID-19 vaccine because "99% of people fight off COVID, but [the vaccine is] only 93% effective.” This doctor is blatantly wrong. He doesn’t understand the math and is giving life-threatening advice. When even some experts struggle with numbers, it’s easy to see the problem.

2020 thrust a new world of statistics upon us—numbers of cases and deaths, false positive rates, and percentages of open ICU beds. Many of us track these numbers to stay informed and feel secure, but we don’t always understand or use them appropriately. Communicating facts isn’t always enough. But when facts are presented in forms that make sense to us—using the science of science communication—leaders can inform and motivate better choices.

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Because Controlling the COVID-19 Pandemic Depends on Vaccine Uptake

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused extraordinary devastation, claiming millions of lives and disrupting the economy and daily life across the globe. From the beginning, the course of the pandemic has depended on behavior – for example, whether people would engage in recommended public health actions like mask wearing and social distancing. Currently, the success of vaccination also hinges on behavior. While the successful development of vaccines is an incredibly important scientific breakthrough and their distribution and accessibility is critical, ultimately, the public’s willingness to get vaccinated will determine whether we bring this pandemic under control. Insights from the social and behavioral sciences can help ensure that efforts to encourage vaccination and address hesitancy succeed.

The Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Coordinating Committee at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), wanted to assist the public health community’s communication efforts to foster confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. To identify evidence-informed strategies for communicating about COVID-19 vaccines, we formed a trans-NIH working group consisting of behavioral and social science specialists across the NIH. On November 5th, 2020, the trans-NIH working group convened a multidisciplinary expert panel featuring 15 leading experts in public health and social science (e.g., communication, psychology, behavioral economics, health disparities, and anthropology). The expert panel was charged with identifying effective approaches for communicating about COVID-19 vaccines and suggesting ways these approaches could be tailored, targeted, and delivered to address the unique needs of diverse populations. The expert panel discussion formed the basis for recommendations about how government entities, such as U.S. federal agencies and partners at the state and local levels, could most effectively communicate vaccine-related information to a variety of constituents.

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Because It Can Help Us Cope with Pandemic Fatigue

As the pandemic drags on, following COVID-19 prevention guidelines can feel like more and more of a challenge.

This kind of fatigue is not unique to pandemic precautions like sticking with social distancing, masking up and keeping your hands washed. With all kinds of health-related behavior changes – including increasing physical activity, eating healthy and decreasing tobacco use – at least half of people relapse within six months.

Think back to the start of April. Much of the United States was under stay-at-home orders. New York City was experiencing close to a thousand COVID-19 deaths a day, and new cases of this previously unknown disease were popping up all over the country.

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Because Collective Behavior Change is the Only Way We Can Stop the Spread of COVID-19

The idea that led us to write the book titled Together Apart: The Psychology of COVID-19 was a very simple one. We reasoned that while waiting for an effective vaccine or a medical treatment for COVID-19, all we can do to stop the spread of the virus is to change our behavior. And what is more, because of the contagious nature of COVID-19, it is not just “my” behavior, it is the behavior of all of “us”— of all the groups that we belong to, of all our communities, and of society at large —that needs to change so that we can effectively control the COVID-19 spread.

In that sense, it is clear that the challenge that the COVID-19 outbreak poses is both huge and rather unique. It is unique in that, up until now, as social scientists, we have mostly focused on ways in which we can change individuals’ health behaviors. For instance, when a smoker wants to quit smoking, it is them as an individual we target because it is the individual who has to stop smoking. Likewise, when an individual wants to improve their physical fitness, we have to consider ways in which we can motivate them as an individual to, for example, join a gym. Even though the social environment that such individuals find themselves in is of crucial importance to facilitate such behavior change, it is ultimately an individual choice whether they quit undesirable habits and improve their physical health.

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Because Collaborating Across Cultures and Beyond Boundaries Leads to Progress on the World’s Biggest Issues

On Sept. 25, 2015 the United Nations (UN) established a historic plan entitled “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” which was agreed upon by the 193 Member States of the UN. The Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), each one addressing a critical world issue. Many of these, such as climate change, poverty, equal rights and quality education, are directly relevant to the field of psychology. Given the effort addressing the SDGs will require, it is important that psychology itself unite as a science and profession and join with other disciplines in order to reach the 2030 objectives.

How formidable is the challenge we are facing?

Recent data suggest it is extraordinary:

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Because It Helps Us Identify and Combat Misinformation

To make good decisions, we need good information. Every day, people form opinions on health treatments, political policies, and consumer products. Social sciences help us understand how people can separate accurate information from misinformation—information that is false or misleading. 

Communication researchers, psychologists, and political scientists have all provided valuable research highlighting the dangers of misinformation, the difficulties in correcting it, and the most effective strategies for resisting it. Social scientists are also tackling related topics like conspiracy theories and rumors.  

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Because Language Is Essential to Human Interaction

Every day, we use language to communicate, argue, learn, negotiate, document, legislate, and celebrate. In the industrialized world, we are bombarded daily by language from radios, televisions, websites, signs, and talking devices, while in less technological societies, knowledge is transmitted orally. A better understanding of languages (individually), of language (as a collective human ability), and of their speakers helps us to better understand how society functions and how to improve it, and this is the domain of study of linguistics.

The foundations of linguistics begin with descriptions of the sounds and structures of many languages, from languages of global exchange spoken by millions, to local dialects spoken in remote corners of the world. The grammars constructed by theoretical linguists help us to see the similarities and relationships between languages, and to trace their histories. The more languages we can study, the better picture we have of the depth and breadth of the human language faculty.

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