Post 4 Successful team

As a psychology student, I’ve been working in a psychology lab as an RA since last semester. All the researchers work for our project are considered as a team, and I think we’ve been a successful team.

There are four people work in our teams, one of us is a psychology graduate student, who is our supervisor, and the rest are undergraduate RAs. The graduate student is supervised by her professor. I think the structure of our team is similar to the Simple Hierarchy structure, where the professor on the top plays the role of the executive, and the graduate student is the manager under the executive, while us, the undergraduate RAs, are workers under her.  

In order to organize our lab tasks, we built a task log on Google DOC, where we can see each other’s tasks, and update our individual task status. I think the task log does not only help us to keep the tasks organized, but also makes us feel monitored as we updating individuals’ work status publically.  This could potentially improve our efficiency, and also saves a great amount of transaction cost on monitoring. 

Our major tasks in the lab include participant recruitment, experiment conducting, and data analysis. Our graduate student supervisor usually assigns tasks for us based on her knowledge of us. For example, individuals who are good at software, such as Excel, will have more tasks of data analysis, but she would also ask us to train each other in the lab, so that we are not only working on what we are good at, but also learning new skills. My job in the team was to do recruitment and data analysis.

I think our team is successful because we always get the tasks done with great qualities, we have opportunities to learn from each other, and we’ve built great relationships between team members.

There are many factors contribute to success of our team. First we maintain good communication between each other, secondly we are all monitoring each other , and thirdly, we all help each other to achieve progress.

Post three: Opportunism

Although there are many advantages to be an opportunist, there are many reasons for people to not to act opportunistically. Ethics is one of the reasons why people choose not to act opportunistically, even if they have the chance. There is an example from my friend, he is a Chinese international student who currently studies in the U.S. He told me that when he took the SAT test in HongKong a couple of years ago, there was a person connected him, and offered him the answer of the SAT exam. The person said that he would be able to obtain the exam question the night before the exam, and send my friend exam answers in the morning of the exam day. The cost of the answer was around $1000, and the person promised my friend he was not a fraud, and said that my friend could pay him after the exam.
Actually, my friends had heard some rumors about people buying answers for SAT exam in HongKong, and got really high scores. The offer was tempting to him, because better SAT score usually linked with better opportunity of studying in the U.S.  His exam would be taken place in a large room, where will be over a hundred test takers, so they would not be well-monitored during the exam, and it was possibly doable for him to sneak the answers in.
He struggled a while, and eventually spurn the idea of cheating on the exam because he considered it as very unethical. He believed that he could earn a decent test score by hard work, but not by using some unethical, even illegal means, though that others may never found out. Besides, it would also be quiet risky if my friend chose to buy the exam answers, he could get caught despite he tries to not be. So refused the answer eliminated the risk for him. He eventually had a decent score for the SAT, and was accepted by a decent university in the U.S.

  My friend’s story demonstrate that many people choose not to act opportunistically though they have a chance. I think the reasons for that can be considered as two parts, one is for the well-being of the community/ society, because taking advantage cause unfairness in the community/ society, and could also lead to unethical/illegal behaviors, which may harm the community/society; another part is for the well-being of oneself. There is a may be risks to be an opportunist, such as having bad reputation, losing trust, even facing lawsuits, so people avoid these risks by not acting opportunistically, and believe that they can earn what they deserve ethically and fairly.

Post 2

Last summer I worked in a summer camp, and taught elementary students Math and foreign languages. The summer camp is a seasonal educational organization, and the structure of camp is rather lucid. The entire camp is governed by the camp director and assistant director, and under the directors, there are heads of each department, which are educational departments, which are math, art, and foreign language departments. There is also a supporting department that is in charge of dining and security. Generally, educational department heads themselves are teachers, and they also have other teachers under them. Each teacher will be assigned teaching materials by their department heads, and the department heads monitor and instruct other teachers.

There are transaction cost exist during work. For instance, before I go to work, I have to do job searching, and apply for jobs that interest me. This process will generate transaction cost such as time and money. Besides, there are also transaction costs for students who go to the camp, too. They would have to spend time search among many camps, compare them, and find the ones that suit them. The time they spend for information searching and comparison are both considered as transaction costs.

 The transaction cost matters to me because they can possible change my decision. For example, during the job searching process, I might be able to find a perfect fit job for me if I would spend days digging information, but then it would increase the transaction cost, so I stopped the information searching process when I had found okay options for me.

Daniel Kahneman

Pthoto retrieved from http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html

According to the website of WWS, Sir Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton University, Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School, and a fellow of the Center for Rationality at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Besides, Professor Kahneman has held the position of professor of psychology in many universities worldwide. As a psychologist, he integrated psychological insights into economics, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneering work in this field the year of 2002. During recent years, Professor Kahneman has been focus on researching on various aspects of experienced utility.

I did not hear about Professor Kahneman until I take this class, but I do agree that it is necessary to apply psychological insights to economics sometimes. For example, in a lecture of this week, Professor Arvan talked the theory of motivation, and linked it to economic concepts. I think this is a great example that reflects how psychology can be related to economics, and demonstrates that Professor Kahneman's work is significant.

Reference

1.http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman/
2.http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html

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