Effective or ineffective leadership in apocalyptic situations

As a professor of management, I infrequently get to discuss zombies in class. The topic rarely arises and though zombies have been taken more seriously in the last decade as a mainstream horror element. But a recent re-watch of Criterion’s excellent re-mastering of Night of the Living Dead, I though a modern Organizational Behavioral perspective might be interesting to take in discussing the actions (and inactions) taken in that film. For those who have not seen it, it isn’t nearly as gratuitous as you may think though the subject matter deals with topics still taboo and one or two scenes I still find unsettling. There will be plentiful spoilers below but the film is available widely for free (check archive.org) or the above mentioned Criterion release is a great option.

The film opens with two sets of dyads. Barbara and her brother (Johnny a know-it-all unsentimental jerk) are together and later Barbara finds herself in a large house with Ben (a fellow survivor who is scrappy and full of ingenuity). Though Barbara begins the film as reasonably relatable and quick-thinking, she is so deeply unsettled by the first 10 minutes to be wallpaper for a large chunk of the film. This is regrettable from a modern perspective where we would hope that individuals would have the internal fortitude to rationally recognize their situation and respond with action as opposed to shutting down. Harry, loud-mouthed though castigated coward, has a very similar reaction, hoping to put his head down (in the cellar) and wait for things to end. Barbara is waiting and witless due to shock (which she eventually comes to terms with) but Harry is just as wonton as Barbara through his actions. There are other characters (the young lovers Judy/Tom) and Harry’s longsuffering wife Helen who receives an unnecessarily violent end at the hands of her daughter (Karen) but they will factor less into this essay.

Ben quickly asserts himself as the leader of the group after the other players arrive. This was notable at the time as Ben is African American, though this is only subtly commented on by the other characters. Harry appears unwilling to take or accept orders but it is not made explicit that this is due to Ben’s ethnicity or some other characteristics. Ben takes command and begins making orders. Ben is a task-focused leader, primarily focused on distributing work to other individuals within the small collective of survivors. “Find me some nails, the longer the better” he tells Barbara, which is the only task she accomplishes before falling into a fit. Later in the film, Harry criticizes Ben’s work on boarding up the house, attempting to assert his opinions on the value of returning to the basement as the most reasonable option. Some commentators note that a retreat to the basement ends up being what saves Ben at the end of the film, but I agree that staying in the basement was not a good plan in general.

So, now to the question at hand. Is Ben a good leader? I think it is important to consider that our characters have limited information about the world. So success or failure are not entirely determined based on their actions. Reasonable actions could lead to failure when given incomplete or inaccurate information. The survivors are unaware that there are teams within their area working to secure the countryside of the dead. They are explicitly told that they should seek out the rescue centers and not wait for help. They chose to trust the newscasters and this led them down a risky set of activities. If they had instead waited for the sheriff’s posse on the first floor of the house, they would have been able to alert the posse of their state as survivors before they were in as much danger. The slow, careful emergence from the basement as Ben made at the end of the film would have surely meant death for some if not all of them if they had agreed with Harry’s plan.

So, Ben and several of the others decide that no help is coming but that help is available nearby. They construct a plan based around the need for transportation, and enact it. Several issues arise in Ben’s decisions at this point. Tom states that he is familiar with the truck though he still struggles to get it started. Ben’s assertion that he is unfamiliar with it strikes a wrong note as he had driven it at least a few miles to get to the farmhouse. Judy, at the last minute decides to come along. This addition to the team wouldn’t have necessarily caused a problem, but the unplanned nature led to a more hurried escape then they may have otherwise experienced. Ben over-reacts to this hurried nature, firing at the locking mechanism on the gas pump, leading to a leak that inevitably catches the truck on fire, due to Ben’s careless placement of the torch. These issues, though inadvertent and based on Ben’s situational awareness, led to a much worse situation for the group.

Was Ben a good leader? Ben identified an issue, built support for it, and enacted a plan. Ben, however, did not seek or receive group consensus on the actions. The women in the film are not given their own agency (a film can only I have so many progressive elements I suppose) and thus their reactions to their own circumstances are, in part, treated as independent of the influence of the male protagonists. The women accept orders but are not necessarily happy about it or share their own thoughts fully (except for Helen though she serves as Karen’s nurse for much of the film and is therefore out of consideration). A better leader might have tried to determine what other’s thoughts were about his plans. Instead, Ben is strong and firm, but ultimately leads an unsuccessful attempt to fuel the truck. As I mentioned earlier, the premise of the mission was less necessary than the survivors thought (rescuers appear the next morning) but I can’t help but think that more careful consideration by Ben could have made all the difference.

It is hard to tell how we will each react in stressful circumstances, many of which we experience are not nearly as dangerous as those faced by the protagonists in Night of the Living Dead. But, creating a positive leadership mentality of consideration and analysis can help encourage us to default toward better decision making practices in general, especially in high stress situations. Taking some time to think through whether or not all opinions are heard in an everyday circumstance takes thought but is easy. Taking that same action in a high stress environment may be tougher, but is just as valuable if there is time to consider multiple options.

The Kinds of People in a PhD Program

When I joined the PhD program, I was unsure what kind of other people would also be getting their PhD. I decided that I wanted a PhD before I left undergrad so I entered the program the Fall after I graduated. When I visited the PhD program at the university I am now attending, I knew there was some variety in the other candidates as well as in the students currently in the program I met. In the program I joined, maybe a third of the students in OB came directly out of an undergrad program. I have been told that there are some programs in management that typically require you to have a masters degree (in business, statistics, mathematics, etc.) to get real consideration.

When I entered the program, the student that began with me had been a consultant for a number of years after getting an MBA and was also married with a child. Though I think a lot of the other students that started the year I did were unmarried, many had had some background in  a job or had done some higher education already. Also, I was a bit surprised by the number of students from South America. As an undergraduate, most foreign students I knew were from Asia or Africa, so I was a little surprised.

More generally, I'd like to give an idea of the kinds of social types of people that are in the PhD program I am in. Though all of them are loosely doing some kind of social science, some groups are much more analytical than others.

Because of the wide range of backgrounds of the students I encounter, there are some rough categories that my social experience kind of classifies them into. Those that have families I see around less in the building itself (for the first 3 years I spent at least some time in the office nearly every day). They often come to social functions that this is where I see them the most often. On the opposite side are those that I always see in the office that also typically don't go to social functions like BBQs (except for the free food). Though I think this is partially because many are working very hard, I think that some like being i the office more than being at home. I have seen students spend time in their office playing games, or surfing the web but also staying until very late hours. I had an office mate at one point that was much like this. I had a running joke that one of us was in the office 24/7 for a while. When I would leave at 10 or 11pm some nights, he'd still be there and he'd still be there when I returned at 8am but would soon leave for a large part of the rest of the morning.

Students that are in joint programs are typically pulled between multiple departments and sometimes multiple buildings, spending half of their time in each place.

There are a lot of experiences in a PhD program - based on my anecdotal experience - and you'll likely encounter a bunch of people with a variety of backgrounds and experiences if you ever join one.

The publication system of progress

As I think I mentioned before, different parts of the social sciences have very different norms about what kinds of things 'count' as viable work and what kinds of publications are the most prestigious. In management, my area, journal articles are the most prestigious in general. High quality management journals are the most prestigious, followed by psychology journals, and then lower quality management journals. Though it may seem like there is some big differences between management and psychology journals, they truth is, the kinds of articles in them is mostly overlapping Venn diagrams. The content is mostly the same though the focus may be a bit different. You may see two very similar articles about employee turnover, for example, one in a management journal and one in a psychology journal. Though all of the methods, scales, and structure of the writing is similar, their outcome variable is likely different. Turnover in management is typically studied from either the desire to reduce it or determining what effects it has on performance. Psychologists may not care as much about reducing turnover and focus their effort on just determining why it occurred. Their outcome variable is more likely to be not based on performance and is instead about the emotional state of the group that lost a member or the member who left.

Because the work itself is so similar, their is a lot of cross publishing by authors who target the journals to which their work is the most similar. It varies based on the school, but faculty in many business schools are sometimes given a list of approved journals. They are not forbidden from publishing in other journals but they are informed that publications in journals not on the list won't be considered when that faculty member is up for review. This process of generating a list seems very perverse in some respects but it has a reason for existing. Because an institution wants to make sure their faculty are doing good work, they make a list of places where, the assumption is, only good work can be published. The school also wants to assure that their name is seen prominently in good articles. The criticisms that I have heard of this system are two-fold: the lists don't change to reflect the current prestige of the journals and there are penalties for doing interdisciplinary work. Because I feel that my work is interdisciplinary, I may run into situations where I send work to a journal where the fit is not as good as some other journal if that second journal isn't on the list.

There is a secondary disparity that is interesting though I will not discuss it deeply. Though there is some extent of crossover between psychologists and management in our publications, there is less in actual placement. A professor mentioned to me once that psychology is somewhat protective of their positions and that jobs in psychology departments typically require you to have graduated from a core psychology program as opposed to a applied field such as management. The majority of the faculty in my own department, however, are also from core disciplines, psychology and sociology. It does seem a bit strange then that those of us working toward applied degrees might be unable to get a job at the institution we are studying at because we are earning applied as opposed to core degrees. It will not matter for most of us, but it does seem a bit strange to feel that opting for organizational behavior as opposed to social psychology could have reduced future employment options.

Learning to do a meta-analysis

My last post about what a meta-analysis is, was partially because I decided to learn how to do a meta-analysis. I decided that while I was walking home last Friday and I realized I could have more than one blog. I quickly came up with a fantastic name for a new blog that had something to do with meta-analyses and then promptly forgot about it. I don't know if I'll start a whole new blog to discuss my process of learning about and/or carrying out a meta-analysis but I figured I would start blogging here.

I have a tendency to want to learn about new statistical techniques without then using them to do anything. I think I have to agree that actually using (or thinking about using) a new technique is much more useful in the end. Kind of like you may not think that doing example problems will help you understand a concept but (at least when going through some of the meta-analysis material I've been looking at) it can be really helpful. I have decided that the question I am going to plan / actually pursue is transactive memory's role on performance and turnover's role as a moderator. Not only is this an area I am interested in so I have a lot of understanding already, but there are not any meta-analyses I know of looking at this topic. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus did a meta-analysis in 2010 about team cognition which encompassed TMS but I think that a more narrow approach may be enlightening.

I am basing my current exploration on of the article I mentioned in my last post "How to do a meta-analysis". The accompanying website for the article is not super easy to find but is here: resource page. The first author's website, Discovering Statistics (aka Statistics Hell) seems to have a lot of good resources as well. The researchers who wrote the article, also wrote several scripts that can be used in SPSS and R (two statistical packages, the second is free). The webpage doesn't describe the process of preparing the data (you'll want to read the paper or this short article for that) but it does provide some example data for you already. The authors claim this data is (or is based on) published articles, so I'm guessing that I should be able to replicate the work those researchers did.

If I continue this exploration further, I'll keep you all in the loop.

What is a meta-analysis?

Many of you may have heard the term meta-analysis either in this blog or other places on the web. Because of the amount of data and the power of our analysis software, these kinds of analyses are done fairly frequently in a lot of topics. So what is a meta-analysis? Essentially, it is a statistical way of adding a bunch of different studies together that are looking at the same thing to determine what the real effects are. Let me use an example.

If you are looking at 2 studies (or 2 articles reporting on studies) that are looking at the same question but come to different results, what can you use to determine which is the most valid? There are a few general rules of thumb. If one of them comes from a more notable research institution, it may be better because these schools typically have stricter institutional controls. Another important factor is sample size and population. If the sample is entirely college students, there are reasons why you might not trust that finding as much as if the sample was more diverse. Also, if one study had 50 people and the other had 500, then you might trust the larger one more.

It may seem obvious, but why actually do we trust the more diverse or the larger studies? Studies where they find effects even with diverse samples suggests that the effect is likely to be more prevalent. Diversity always adds some amount of variation to human subjects research. In a study I am running, we are using computers and we found that it was a good idea to limit the age of participants because some participants had much more trouble since they were not as familiar with computers as the younger participants. So, reducing the diversity of the sample can let researchers narrow in on results they are interested in. Sample size effects the likelihood of finding an effect to begin with. As the sample size increases, a number called the standard error decreases in the analyses. This means that the analyses can become more confident of the effects each variable has.

What a meta-analysis is, is a tool that lets researchers combine multiple studies together. Through that process, the sample size gets bigger which allows us to be more confident and, due to the aggregation process, the sample also becomes more diverse because studies will have used different kinds of people and possibly different methods in carrying out the experiment. Meta-analyses can be done incorrectly and can be misleading, but a good rule of thumb would be to trust a meta-analysis about a topic more than any single study.

Extra Fun Facts: File-Drawer Effect

The process of doing a meta-analysis of course adds some difficulties for the researcher in trying to 'wash out' the potential added noise (a term for unintended variance) from the analysis. There are many possible problems such as the 'file-drawer effect'. It is well-known that a lot of the work that scientists do never gets published. A big factor of this is non-significant effects. If you run an experiment, for example, and do not find what you are looking for, you may assume that you did something wrong. One professor I had mentioned that he ran one study over 3 times, never quite finding the effects he was interested in. Because of this, he never published any of the studies. [Later on he did a small meta-analysis of just these experiments and found that there was a small effect that he was only able to see when adding all of the data he had collected together.]

There are two main reasons for the file-drawer effect. Researchers may be embarrassed or not see value in proclaiming to the world that they found nothing (significant effects are 8 times more likely to be submitted), and academic journals are hesitant to publish articles without significant effects for the primary variables of interest (7 times less likely to be published). There are some legitimate reasons for this hesitancy. A study can fail to find effects for a lot of different reasons (actually no effect, poor design, too small sample size, inappropriate analysis, etc.), but there are fewer conditions under which a study will find effects when there are none. Therefore, if you did a meta-analysis only using the data that were published, there may be an over-representation of the actual effect than in reality. If you are trying to determine the average grade for the class but only included students that made above a certain grade or attended every class session, you will get an average that is likely to be different from the actual average. There are various and sometimes complex ways that researchers try to deal with these problems but it is always a concern.

* I used Field & Gillett (2010) "How to do a Meta-Analysis" significantly in this post.

A refreshed view of the scientists in Godzilla

Last night I went to see the new Godzilla. As I had recently discussed the original Godzilla, I thought I'd discuss the new film as it also touches some on the presentation of the scientist. I do not intend to spoil the movie in this commentary but there may be some spoilers for those who have not seen it. I thought it was good though I agree with the friend I went to see it with (a professor of film history) that the new Godzilla has much less to say about the world than the original did.

One of the main characters of the film is a nuclear engineer played by Bryan Cranston. The character becomes obsessed at one point that the failure of the nuclear plant he was working at was not a natural disaster or an accident but something else entirely. His apartment it littered with newspaper clippings as well as charts and graphs of newly collected data that he is convinced represents an imminent second event. His son at one point picks up a book on echolocation that the father does not explain but states that it is important. The father is adament that something is happening that is being covered up but that he needs data from the first event to be sure.

This is an interesting representation in the film. We, the audience, know that this is a monster movie so we can assume that the father is right, that there is something being covered up. But, the character is acting a bit crazy and much like a raving conspiracy theorist. But, this conspiracy theorist is seeking out hard, reasonable evidence, which I thought was a surprising portrayal.

Later on, the son and father enter the ruins of the nuclear plant to retrieve the data he needs to prove his case. They are caught by the authorities and brought to the scientists in charge of the coverup because the father "said he used to work here". Bryan Cranston's character then states several that there will be an EMP at some point which I don't recall there being any evidence for before. The movie's Dr. Serizawa begins to take everything Bryan Cranston says as gospel and seems to throw out his legitimate observations for the ravings of Bryan Cranston. Granted, the father turns out to be right though it is too late.

The new Dr. Serizawa, though matching the character of the original is much different in other ways. He is a solumn individual (played by Ken Watanabe) who has been following the prehistoric beasts of the film, particularly Godzilla for many years. He ends up not affecting the action of the script much as his suggestions are dismissed by the military authorities in the film. His primary role seems to tell the viewer that Godzilla could be a good guy who will bring balance to the word. In the original, the Dr. Serizawa character had the key, the answer but thought it was too dangerous to use. In this version, Dr. Serizawa seems to helplessly look on as mistake after mistake is made.

There is another undercurrent of the film, nuclear power and weapons. In the first film, Godzilla is literally woken up by a nuclear weapons test. In this film, different monsters are awoken as there is more radioactivity in the environment. Dr. Serizawa points out that they could be made stronger by a nuclear weapons attack because they may consume the radioactivity becoming stronger, a concern the military dismisses. Dr. Serizawa almost seems to represent the lack of respect science is given in this situation which the military deems to be under its "sphere of influence" (a term used in the film). Granted, Dr. Serizawa isn't really much of a scientist.

Though I doubt this was the filmmaker's intention, an overwhelming feeling I have at the end of writing this post is that the world as represented by the filmmaker is one in which we are helpless to change our fate. Though the characters effect the world, they do not save the world on their own. The only situation in which the characters save something, it is saving San Francisco from their own poor judgement.

Update:
Yesterday I was listening to an episode of "Pop Culture Happy Hour" on NPR where they also discussed Godzilla. They mentioned that one critic had called Godzilla "the first post human blockbuster." He said this partially because of the use of non-human characters to tell the story, the lack of empathy for the human carnage that unfolds, and the lack of the humans from making a significant difference to the outcomes. I think these concepts were also my initial takeaways from my analysis of the film. I just thought it was nice to have someone with a similar kind of perspective :)

The Skeptical Outlook and Life After Death

I have recently begun to consume a lot of skeptical media such as the podcasts Skeptoid and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I like these shows because they have a slightly different worldview than I am used to and because they have a lot of interesting science content. Skeptoid focuses primarily on discussing events or concepts to see what explanations fit the facts and known science. The skeptics guide contains a variety of sections, mostly composed of science discussions or skeptical opinions about current news stories. When I say skeptical opinions, I mean that they attempt to deduce an explanation that fits science and the facts and do not feel that supernatural phenomenon or unmeasurable forces need be included for a full explanation of the situation. I think the colloquial interpretation of skeptic means more that the person is judgemental, negative, and doubtful about some large part of our experience. This perception ignores the foundational tenants of skepticism making it seem more bleak than I think it is.

It is somewhat ironic that the increase in my consumption of and agreement with much of this media goes nearly hand-in-hand with my own recommitment to attending church and exploring my own spiritual life more fully. It is still unclear to me if the two factors of my life are compensating for one another or if they are just merely compatible in a way that certainly the skeptics community does not agree with.

When I was in a writing workshop, my senior year of college, the first assignment we had was to write down our favorite book and explain why it was our favorite on a piece of paper. As I am wont to do, I wrote down my actual favorite book as opposed to one that I actually wanted to discuss or defend [once at my family's Christmas celebration we were asked to write our favorite Christmas song down and then asked to lead a singing of it. I chose my favorite song, which I didn't know the lyrics to, and which was too obscure for any of my family to know]. I wrote Stephen J. Gould's Rocks of Ages as my favorite book. It has been many years since I read it, but a core argument of the book was essentially: Science is good at answering some questions and Religion is good at answering other questions. When they attempt to answer questions that are in the other's domain, there are typically problems. He called this idea: Non-Overlapping Magisteria or NOMA. This idea has been criticized by other scientists but I found it quite interesting and compelling. I had never had severe concerns that science and religion were conflicting in my real life. If I believe in an all powerful diety, then I do not know why many Christians (typified by the young-earth creationists) feel the necessity to defend God.

I listen to quite a lot of podcasts (I am subscribed to 33) one which is called Intelligence Squared US. It is a debate program that typically addresses points of law or policy. In the most recent program, however, the item on the docket was "Death Is Not Final" When I first saw the title, my first thought was that this was not a topic that is really a debatable topic. I believe that it is not a topic that we can know until we die and that it does not fit within the magestria of science. The slant the debate ended up taking (I think agreed upon beforehand by the debaters) was the validity of claims from those that have experienced near-death experiences as proof of an afterlife. Those arguing for the motion were the man that literally coined the term near-death experience (NDE) and a man that experienced one. Those against were a physicist and academic neurologist (Stephen Novella who also hosts the Skeptics Guide to the Universe). From this panel makeup you can see that the debate was always going to be about near-death experiences  and their scientific foundation as opposed to other conceptions of the afterlife. At one point in the debate, Raymond Moody (author of the book on NDEs) said that the debate should really be about philosophy and not science but he received pushback from all sides on that line. The moderator also rejected a few questions (you can hear them in the unedited audio/video) because they would not progress the science based question.

I am fairly skeptical of near death experiences and have been for a long time so I was aligned with the opposing side from the beginning. This led to a bit of a conundrum when I decided to send a link to the debate to my father. I believe in an afterlife though I was against the side for this motion because I think NDE's are not a valid source of information. So when I was writing the email to my father (a deeply religious person who believes in NDEs) I wasn't sure how to frame the recommendation.

I ended up listening to the podcast version, which has edited down and the full unedited version which was nearly twice the length of the edited version, within a few days of each other. Even now I am not sure if I listened to the unedited one because I was overly interested in the episode or if it was just more obvious that some content had been removed. Regardless, my feelings about the debate have improved from being totally dismissive of the topic to thinking that it was a really interesting debate though with an inaccurate title. I insulated myself from too much personal attachment to the topics recalling Gould's ideas of NOMA but also my personal beliefs weren't particularly attacked in this debate.

It is kind of ironic that, especially for podcasts, I look for the science perspective on most topics but I have little personal, spiritual doubt still.