MIT Sloan posted an article on its blog this week about a recent paper published by operations research professor Juan Pablo Vielma, operations management professor Tauhid Zaman, and graduate student Carter Mundell on predicting that rare breed of employee who seems to relish performing under pressure.
Zaman pointed out that while “most of the study of stress has focused on understanding it as opposed to predicting it, we stumbled on whether they would be stressed in 10 minutes.” Zaman’s group used Galvanic skin response (GSR – think lie detector tests), which measure “changes in skin resistance due to sweat.”
The study asked grad students to solve multiplication problems in three rounds. Vielma, Zaman, and Mundell fastened finger sensors to the non-dominant hands of participants. In the initial calibration round—where students received 25 cents for each correct answer—there was no time limit. According to the article, “In the first round, participants received $1 for a correct answer during “bonus” time, which was 85% of the overall time limit. In the second round, the bonus time was shortened to 50%.”
The results of the study demonstrated a clear correlation between GSR levels and earnings during the calibration round. Vielma muses, “Maybe being nervous is a good thing.”
Zaman notes that the “increasing availability of devices like the Microsoft Band 2 and the Basis Peak watch, which both include sensors that measure GSR, will enable companies who want to make more informed decisions about who to hire, bring to a difficult negotiation, or put in charge of the most difficult tasks.”