AgileBrain℠
Applied Neuroscience for Solving Human Capital Issues
Neuroscience has conclusively demonstrated that the decisions we make are determined first and foremost by our feelings, not by our rational thoughts.
Understanding employee emotions, therefore, is critical to effective human capital management. But traditional employee measurement operates at the rational level, only scratching the surface of human decision-making.
Leading Indicator Systems’ AgileBrain℠ technology reaches the emotional depths, mapping emotions across the complete landscape of human needs — self, work, social and spiritual domains — and up the hierarchy of needs from foundational to aspirational.
As a result, employing AgileBrain℠ technology and our proprietary research can significantly improve your understanding of human capital issues and the decisions you make.
About AgileBrain℠ Technology
Fast is the Key to Measuring Emotion
Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his insight that there are two distinct systems in the brain. One for thinking fast, relying on emotional appraisal, and another for thinking slow, the familiar apparatus of our conscious, rational minds. As it turns out, many, if not most, of the important decisions we make every day are primarily fueled by the fast, emotional system. AgileBrain℠ is fast, typically only taking 2 minutes of precious survey time. And it’s fully scalable and works on any device.
Images are More Powerful than Words
Henrik Ibsen said “A picture is worth a thousand words.” When it comes to measuring emotions, it turns out that pictures are priceless. Images are the best tools for recognizing and expressing emotions - and they avoid all the problems of written language (i.e., translation, response style, etc.). AgileBrain℠ uses images rather than words, and those images have been rigorously validated to map specifically within the emotional needs model.
Quantifiable, Replicable, Actionable
AgileBrain℠ has been rigorously tested and validated, allowing it to profile emotions via quantitative, replicable data that can withstand any statistical scrutiny. It stands strong on its own, without the need for any special interpreter or consultant. And because it can be linked to any other data source, it consistently produces actionable insights. Why did a corporate action fail? How will employees react to a proposed policy change? Will a planned initiative drive higher engagement?
Why is AgileBrain℠ Better?
LIS AgileBrain℠ turbo-charges traditional surveys, enabling better human capital decisions and HR interventions.
AgileBrain℠ is able to more than DOUBLE the accuracy of traditional surveys! We agree that traditional surveys are good, but when 90% of the human emotions are unable to be measured with traditional methods, adding AgileBrain℠ to a traditional survey, makes your results much more accurate and truly predictive.
The Science & Psychology
Capturing Emotional Response with Images
AgileBrain℠ uses an image set that is carefully curated, extensively tested, and statistically validated to represent the comprehensive set of 12 motivational emotions. AgileBrain℠ adopts and applies an objective, positivist, Gibsonian perspective on visual perception, which is empirically supported by testing for uniformity of image comprehension using large samples. In the system of C.S. Peirce, we strive toward using indexes (images that have a direct, natural contiguity with their referents) and icons (images having a clear resemblance to their referent) rather than symbolic images (those having an arbitrary, conventional relation to their referent; Pinney, 2006). In this sense, AgileBrain℠ is designed to reliably measure the relative presence or absence of fixed motivational-emotional meanings, as opposed to using images for idiosyncratic meaning creation or elicitation (cf. Thematic Apperception Test, Rorscach Test, or Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Test).
AgileBrain’s℠ images are designed to function in a manner akin to biological “releasers,” the ethological concept of visual patterns that reliably produce motivational-emotional responses in viewers. These are “developed in evolution as signs, on whose clear-cut identity the instinctual responses of animals could be built” (Arnhiem, 1971). The impact of these images on the mind of viewers (Ewen, 1984) is to bring about instinctual responses, which in this case are motivational emotions. Where necessary, the images employ visual metaphors to trigger motivational emotions through the frozen narrative genre of images, according to the image typology of Phillips & McQuarrie (2004).
Sources:
Arnheim, R. (1971). Visual Thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Ewen, S. (1984). All Consuming Images. New York: Basic Books.
Janiszewski, C. (2008). Rethinking Visual Communication Research. Visual Marketing. New York: Psychology Press.
Phillips, B. J. & E. F. McQuarrie (2004). Beyond Visual Metaphor: A new typology of visual rhetoric in advertising, Marketing Theory, 4(1/2), 113-136.
Pinney, C. (2006). Four Types of Visual Culture, Handbook of Material Culture, C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuchler, M. Rowlands, & P. Spyer, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Mapping Response to the Emotional Needs Model
Psychologist Kurt Lewin said, “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.” We agree. AgileBrain℠ is built on a peer-reviewed, comprehensive model of human emotion. This model accounts for every previous theory of motivation including Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Erickson’s Theory of Personality Development, Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, McClelland’s Needs for Achievement, Affiliation, and Power, Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, and Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development, among others.
The model proposes four domains of human activity and concern: the Self, Work, Social, and Spiritual. Three levels of striving are proposed by the model: the basic or foundational level, the level of action that builds upon the foundational level, and the highest level of attainment. There is no category of human motivation left out, providing the assurance that all salient needs are addressed.
Leading Indicator Systems’ AgileBrain℠ Model of Emotional Needs
The Time Course of Emotional Perception
AgileBrain℠ is built on a series of neuroscientific findings related to the way the brain processes emotional images (Damasio, 2010; Rudrauf et al, 2008, 2009; Cunningham & Zelazo, 2007; Cunningham, Zelazo, Packer, & Van Bavel, 2007). By using magnetoencephalography - a technique particularly suited to measuring sequences of neural events - these neuroscientists have been able to map out the time course of emotional and cognitive reactions to emotionally evocative visual stimuli. Replications show that from the moment images hit the retina to the point that they elicit activity in the emotion centers of the brain, just under a second has elapsed.
“These researchers’ efforts indicate that this earliest stage of emotional reaction to a stimulus take place in a sub-one-second time frame – about five hundred milliseconds… In ‘conscious mind time,’ [this] …sits between the couple of hundred milliseconds we require to be conscious of a pattern in perception and the seven or eight hundred milliseconds we need to process a concept.” (p. 122)
On the basis of these findings, we found that by restricting viewing time to under 2000 milliseconds per image, we were able to access authentic emotional responses before cognitive filtering can intervene (Cunningham & Zelazo, 2007). As a result, AgileBrain℠ data is largely free of cognitive biases (e.g., self-presentation) that can arise from rational reflection.
Sources:
Cunningham, W. A., and P. D. Zelazo. "Attitudes and Evaluations: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11.3 (2007): 97-104.
Cunningham, W. A., P. D. Zelazo, D. J. Packer, and J. J. Van Bavel. "The Iterative Reprocessing Model: A Multilevel Framework for Attitudes and Evaluation." Social Cognition, 25.5 (2007): 736-760.
Damasio, A. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, New York: Pantheon, 2010.
Rudrauf, D., et al. "Enter Feelings: Somatosensory Responses Following Early Stages Of Visual Induction of Emotion." International Journal of Psychophysiology 72.1 (2009): 13-23.
Rudrauf, D., et al.. "Rapid Interactions between the Ventral Visual Stream and Emotion-Related Structures Rely on a Two-Pathway Architecture." The Journal of Neuroscience 28.11 (2008): 2793-2803.
See AgileBrain℠ in Action!
Leading Indicator Systems uses the AgileBrain℠ technology to get to the bottom of what your workforce is actually feeling.
The Emotional Wellbeing Monitor measures your employees’ emotional response to current events, recent corporate actions and planned initiatives. As part of the deliverable set, you will see YOUR Iceberg, visually showing how your employees feel and a dashboard on what you can do to make a positive impact. Don’t make another workforce decision without it!
