The Foundation Supporting Every Product and Service from EvolvingSUCCESS

The following four papers have either been published in The Quarterly Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, or have been accepted for publication by the Spring of 2008. Feel free to download them and pass them on to associates who would enjoy the in-depth treatment on human thought and behavior, especially group behavior, that these papers provide.

Using Evolutionary Psychology and Information Systems Engineering to Understand Workplace Patterns of Thought and Behavior: An Empirical Model of Human Information Processing

Evolutionary psychology and information systems analysis are combined to form an empirical model of human thought and behavior. The process of natural selection appears to define specific system requirements for all animals, which of course includes human beings. Through a comparison of these naturally defined system requirements to the behaviors of animals and humans, a four component information processing system in human beings is identified. The human model exhibits critical advancements over animals specifically in the rise of customizable Drive Satisfaction Strategies, a consequence of human symbol manipulation and problem solving capabilities. The key interpretive power of this model lies in the concept of system collisions between the four components composing the human information processing system. System collisions in this model can be used to explain many good, bad, and puzzling features of human experience.

Environmental Impacts on Human Moods and Emotions: Implications for Workplace and Workflow Design

The human body is designed to monitor a variety of multi-band channels delivering extremely large amounts of information from the environment. It is also designed to monitor vast amounts of information regarding its own internal states and conditions. This information flow is filtered and assessed by a large number of control loops that prepare the body for life-sustaining activity. These preparations also generate a large number of subliminal emotions that start to intrude themselves into a person’s inner dialog if the control loops generating them remain unclosed or unsatisfied for a long enough period of time. The lack of congruence between natural environments and the typical workplaces inhabited by knowledge workers means that the information flow received by these control loops lacks evidence that the workplace can sustain life, and the loops remain unclosed and unsatisfied. The implication of these information deficient work environments on knowledge worker mental health and productivity is discussed, and general recommendations made for re-engineering workspaces and workflow.

A Theory of Personal Drive Satisfaction Strategies and the Cultures They Generate

Utilizing concepts derived from the field of evolutionary psychology (ev psych), two forms of collective behavior in human populations are explored. Collective behavior (or group behavior, or team behavior, or communal behavior) is examined as an outgrowth of individual Drive Satisfaction Strategies. The presumption is that the most important element(s) in an individual human being's natural environment is now the artificial social context within which one lives, and the people of whom these social contexts are composed. This implies that for a human organism to play the game of natural selection effectively, that organism will need new clusters of behaviors that allow it to obtain needed resources and avoid different types of dangers in this natural environment of new and rapidly evolving social contexts. A Drive Satisfaction Strategy (DSS) provides these clusters of behaviors. For human organisms there are two types of DSSs. There are Competitive DSSs, and there are Collaborative DSSs. There are two Competitive DSSs: Alpha Climbing (the offensive strategy) and Status Quo Preserving (the defensive strategy). There are two Collaborative DSSs: Leading (the strategic, community-forming strategy) and Contributing (the tactical, solution-forming strategy). The nature of the collective behavior is determined by the types of DSSs most commonly at play in any given population. If this collective behavior starts to exhibit habits practiced widely among the population, we call those habits the culture of the group.

The Application of The Theory of Drive Satisfaction Strategies to Corporate Culture Engineering

The Theory of Drive Satisfaction Strategies is applied to the improvement of organizational performance. The Theory is briefly described, and its implications for corporate culture formation outlined. Recent successes in collaborate corporate behavior are presented to motivate the discussion of corporate culture engineering that follows. Techniques for the management of individuals operating under any of four human Drive Satisfaction Strategies are discussed. The culture building method of "repeatable methods and procedures" is also described and applied to each of the four Drive Satisfaction Strategies.