The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Essay Example

An interesting behavior that I have observed in work is gossip between employees that is often about another employee. This behavior often conducted when the involved parties have little familiarity with the person they are discussing and therefore pertains to their perception of the individual rather than their knowledge of this person. It would therefore be interesting to perform a correlative study that determines the relationship between an employees’ tendency to gossip about an individual compared to their familiarity with the person. I hypothesize that the more that employees need to work with and therefore communicate with a person, the less likely they will be to gossip about this individual.

To develop a correlational study to learn more about this phenomenon, it would be necessary to conduct a study in a specific office setting. It would be necessary for the researcher to hear all office conversations that are not directly related to work. To make this possible, the workers and supervisory staff would need to consent to this study taking place due to the recordings and tracking of conversations that would be necessary for data collection to be feasible. Prior to the beginning of the study, staff members will receive surveys that will question them about their familiarity and interactions with different members of the office which will be validated using observation. At the end of the study, these individuals will be provided with the same questions to determine if employee relationships have changed. The level of gossip will be categorized on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no gossip about an individual. Scores under 5 will indicate that employees are talking about the individual, but it isn’t mean, and scores 5 and over will indicate negative gossip. Employee relationships will be scored in a similar way with 1 indicating no relationship and 10 indicating the strongest relationship. At this point, statistical analysis will be performed to determine the qualitative frequency of gossip concerning a particular person with the relationship the employees have with this individual.

References

Beebee, Helen; Hitchcock, Christopher; Menzies, Peter. (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Causation. Oxford University Press.

Tufte, Edward R. (2006). The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within (2nd ed.). Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press.