The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

In the lean office, found Knight and Haslam, participants invested a low level of effort in their assigned work; they were listless and lackadaisical. In the disempowered office, subjects’ productivity was similarly mediocre; in addition, they were very, very unhappy. “I wanted to hit you,” one participant confessed to the experimenter in a follow-up interview, describing how he felt as “his” office was rearranged to the researcher’s liking. In the enriched office, participants worked harder and were more productive; in the empowered office, people performed best of all. They got 30 percent more done there than in the lean office, and about 15 percent more than in the enriched office. The size of such effects is large enough to make any employer sit up and take notice: three people working in empowered offices accomplished almost as much as four people in lean offices.

Implications for WFH and Covid-19 pandemic?