Episode 55 · 2021-01-01 · 16:11 · Original in Finnish
Psychology and channel feedback | Kaisa Mäkelä | Negotiator 55
Originally published as “Psykologia ja Neuvottelija-palautta | Kaisa Mäkelä | Neuvottelija 55”
Kaisa Mäkelä, founder of the startup Awareness Recreated, discusses consciousness, cognitive distortions and how non-verbal feedback exposes your own biases. This informal feedback episode also covers the non-verbal synchronisation broken by remote work, the channel dependency of online communities, and trolls as a psychological phenomenon, before Miettinen challenges the standing of Freud and Jung.
Core theses
- Non-verbal feedback is continuous and free: facial expressions, gestures and word choices are telling you about your own distortions all the time, which is why remote work's loss of those cues matters.
- The pandemic's unexpected gift to remote meetings was non-technical participants, who brought psychological texture and insisted on cameras being on.
- Online communities are channel-dependent, so a discussion built on one platform cannot be extended across society — Facebook excludes the young, and Discord excludes others.
- Trolling is evidence that emotions were successfully aroused, but its causes lie in the troll rather than the target.
- Freud and Jung are details within a very broad science rather than its mainstream, yet they survive because they described human behaviour accurately enough that it still holds — people have changed little.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Awareness Recreated and the Helena Åhman book prize
- 02:42 — Cognitive distortions and non-verbal feedback
- 05:18 — What remote work broke, and what it unexpectedly gave
- 07:52 — The Negotiator community as an experiment
- 10:22 — Channel dependency: Facebook, Discord and the young
- 12:54 — Trolls as a psychological phenomenon
- 15:26 — Is Freud still worth reading?
Summary
Kaisa Mäkelä, founder of the startup Awareness Recreated, discusses consciousness, cognitive distortions and how non-verbal feedback exposes your own biases. This informal feedback episode also covers the non-verbal synchronisation broken by remote work, the channel dependency of online communities, and trolls as a psychological phenomenon, before Miettinen challenges the standing of Freud and Jung.
What is discussed
- Awareness Recreated. Mäkelä’s company exists to bring findings from psychology and ethics into everyday use — applied and pre-chewed so people can actually act on them.
- Feedback you are already receiving. Expressions, gestures and word choices supply constant non-verbal feedback, which is the cheapest route to spotting your own distorted thinking.
- Remote work cuts both ways. A twenty-year IT professional and long-time remote advocate now misses the office — but non-technical colleagues joining Teams brought humanity and pushed for cameras on.
- Coffee-table conversations. The Negotiator community spans a Facebook group, YouTube and audio platforms; Mäkelä found the exit and venture capital episodes most useful as a founder raising money.
- A background in finance. Before her IT career Mäkelä worked briefly at the Bank of Finland and turned down a permanent post for more creative waters.
- Channel dependency. Facebook does not reach the young, Discord does not reach everyone else, and no single platform carries a discussion across society.
- Trolls, read psychologically. Trolling proves emotions were aroused; the reasons belong to the troll. Miettinen would prefer real-name commenting.
- Freud in everyday language. Defence mechanisms — sublimation, avoidance — have entered ordinary vocabulary, but the application of psychology to daily life has not broken through.
- Miettinen’s challenge. A behaviourist rationalist’s objection: the famous thinkers tested nothing, and the Stanford prison experiment collapsed as apparently manipulated.
- Mäkelä’s answer. Yes and no — individual theories in a vast science, but ones that captured human behaviour well enough to survive, because people have not changed much.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Psykologia ja Neuvottelija-palautta | Kaisa Mäkelä | Neuvottelija 55. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
People and topics
Guests: Kaisa Mäkelä
Topics: Leadership & Governance Negotiation