To pee or not to pee

Google has a policy that any food station in their building should not be more than a hundred feet away from its employees. I found that out in an article published in PsychologyToday.com last 2009 entitled “The Brain at Google” by David Rock who visited the Google headquarters and mentally ogled at how Google uses what is known about human nature in running its organization. Of course, there are many things that Google does for its workers that would make you drool — gyms, massage, a hair stylist, among other things. Their founder has a simple philosophy that happy employees will make the best decisions for the company. So far, evidence bears that out.

But this no-more-than-a-hundred-feet-away-food-station idea was something that especially struck me. Based on observation as well as intuition, I would think that is something that will make traditional employers frown. They will probably say that food access so close will distract from the work that employees should do. But in a study that has often been cited since its publication in January 2010 in the journal Psychological Science, scientists found out that giving people sugary food (glucose and not just those that taste sweet from artificial sweeteners) before they make a decision makes them delay gratification for a later but possibly larger reward. That is usually the wiser decision. A possible explanation for this in terms of evolutionary biology (how our bodies change over time to improve our chances for survival) is that when your body receives a lot of energy, which in this case is instant energy in the form of glucose, the mind looks forward in terms of spending it. It seems that if you want people to think far beyond the moment when they make decisions, giving them sugary foods would more likely do the job.

Experiments like the one I cited connect seemingly disparate behavior — sugary foods and thinking about the future — intrigue me. It brings home the fact that the way we think and decide are more than just a product of clear, logical thinking, prompted by jazzed up PowerPoint thinking. So you can imagine me saying “whoa” when I recently came across a study also published in Psychological Science early this year. In a study led by Mirjam Tuk, they found out that people who had full bladders made decisions that also held out more for larger rewards. In other words, they were not as impulsive as the ones whose bladders were not full. Now, talk about holding out!

If you were a boss who would want to base the way decisions are made at work on experiments like this, you would probably immediately measure the distance of food and beverage stations from your employees to makes sure they are close enough. You would probably also keep bathrooms farther away so as to keep bladders full. Let me know how it turns out if you try to inject some of this science in everyday work life. If it helps, you may want to remember that Google seems to be doing okay.

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