The Neural Network/Letters from Turkey
Ineuroscience
It is very expensive to hire and train people, and then lose them
Sabina Socias, UK Branch Manager at Central Test
expensive to hire and train people, and then lose them,” says Socias.
Therefore, retaining committed and engaged employees is of the essence, which is why company culture and employee wellbeing are so important. Workplace success is no longer only about chunky salaries; it is also about good working conditions in a balanced environment.
Still, keen and committed employees are not a panacea for businesses, Ethics matter too. Ethics–assessment tools, which are used in onboarding to measure integrity at work or whether employees are likely to engage in unethical behaviour, are fiercely on the rise. Central Test has created a tool that evaluates attitudes towards counterproductive workplace behaviours, because attitudes are a strong predictor of behaviour. A candidate who tolerates or finds it normal to engage in unethical work behaviour is more likely to engage in unethical behaviour themselves. “We
also look at people’s attitudes towards other people’s behaviours and towards their own behaviour, so we can see whether they are likely to tolerate unethical behaviour in other people or to tolerate it in their own behaviour.” Socias says.
“This tool could not be more modern,” she continues. “It speaks to the problems of bullying, corruption and discrimination we are widely seeing today.”
FUTURE TRENDS: Will neuroscience corner the market?
What’s the last frontier for humans to explore? Artificial intelligence? Immortality? Space? The ocean? Or is it the 14kg mass of grey and white matter that fills the upper part of your bony head? If you went with the last option, you are certainly a fan of neuroscience. Neuroscience studies how the nervous system develops, how it is built and what it does. It focuses on the question of how neural layers underlie certain human
Keen and committed employees are not a panacea for businesses. Ethics matter too. Ethics- assessment tools are fiercely on the rise
Above: Testing at Neuro–Insight
Right: Heather Andrew, CEO of Neuro–insight
“So much decision-making is based on processes that happen subconsciously”
Above: Joseph Devlin, Head of Experimental Psychology at University College London
(and animal) behaviours. Neuroscience has made impressive leaps over the past years; businesses are increasingly looking into the brain’s foldings to investigate what makes customers tick. “This is because we know now that so much decision–making is based on processes that happen subconsciously,” says Heather Andrew, CEO at Neuro- Insight, a world leader in neuroscience- based market research, based at Workspace’s Metal Box Factory.
“Let’s say you ask people how many times they went to the cinema last month or what the name of their dog is. People should be able to tell you those sorts of things, but when you start talking to them about the motivations behind their behaviour, then things change. Often people just don’t know. And, even if they know, they might not be willing to tell you. And that is where neuroscience comes in.”
Neuro–Insight uses Steady State Topography (SST), a technology that records and measures electrical signals in the brain in order to build a second–by- second picture of brain activity. “We can then link that to behaviour. We can identify the cognitive processes that correlate with decision–making in purchase behaviour. And we know that the brain’s responsive behaviour can be more accurate than spoken responses,” says Andrew.
Joseph Devlin, Head of Experimental Psychology at University College London, is in firm agreement. “Neuroscience can help tackle problems that arise when businesses. target only the conscious spheres of human activity, which are full of irrationality.” Devlin says.
SST is used to assess how well advertising works. A classical study on smoking highlights its advantages. In 2011, researchers Emily Falk and Elliot Berkman designed three different advertising campaigns to get people to stop smoking. They brought a normal focus group together and asked members to say which campaign was the most effective. They then put them in magnetic resonance imaging – a medical imaging technique that produces three- dimensional, detailed, anatomical images –
and watched their brain activity during the time they watched the three ads.
Devlin explains, “If you asked them which ad was more interesting, they answered that A was better than B, which was better than C, but if you looked at their brain activity in terms of the most rewarding experience, the best option was B followed by C followed by A. They repeated the procedure with different groups and when the time came to test these ads in the real world with hundreds of thousands of people, they found that the results based on the brain responses were more accurate than those based on spoken responses.”
So neuroscience finds our brain responses to be a far superior truth index than what comes out of our mouths, but which are the specific parts of the brain that drive these responses, say in the arena. of the economy? The whole brain is involved in purchase behaviour, but some areas are particularly important for predicting it. The limbic system in the middle of the brain is the most ancient set of brain structures that mediates our emotions and memories. Devlin elaborates, “This is involved in emotional processing and also to some extent in reward processing. If somebody walks up to you on the street and gives you £10 just because they are nice, you have a shot of dopamine in that alley, a brain chemical that will indicate an unexpected reward.”
Then there is the very front section of the brain the medial prefrontal cortex- which is masterful at controlling cognitive functions such as planning, attention, problem–solving, error–monitoring, decision–making, social cognition and working memory. “This seems to be a particularly important part of the brain for encoding how much you value a choice,” says Devlin. “If you love chocolate and somebody gives you chocolate, your medial cortex will appreciate that with a lot of activation.”
Devlin is quick to point out that these parts of the brain feed into both emotion and logic. This is because the limbic system includes some of the key emotional centres.
Testing times
How powerful are psychometric tests? Farah Khalique checks her personality with Central Test. “How much do I really know about myself and what I’m like at work? I know that I’m driven, I hate working in an office and I daydream a lot. I’m at my happiest point in my career now, as a freelance journalist. Self-employment suits me”
So I’m curious to see what these tests can tell me about myself that I haven’t already sussed out, and what my weak spots are. They aim to provide insights into things like job preferences, personal development, working styles and how to work best with colleagues. Central Test employs advanced devices such as “forced choice” questions to assess personality types, and the tests can even spot if you are lying in your answers. I go in with an open mind, and leave with a wealth of information that has inspired me to make some life–changing decisions.
The three tests take no more than about 45 minutes to complete on my home computer, and involve a series of questions and a spatial–awareness test. Central Test’s psychometrician, Dr Luke Montuori, who features in My Workspace on page 66, walks me through the results. I have a strong sense of self–worth and self–acceptance, and am very independent. I’m a free thinker, highly intuitive and work best when not bound by strict rules and regulations. Journalism is a very good fit for me. Some of the other observations are a little harder to swallow, I “may appear unconcerned about the problems of others” and “may disguise the truth to achieve a particular objective“!
The most useful insights are around my interactions with colleagues and stress reactions. The report suggests I could be more open to teamwork, and recommends I take a step back when facing conflict, instead of jumping in with my gut reaction.
The results of my spatial–awareness test are a game changer. I have always known that
I am geographically challenged and, at times, a careless driver, but my below–average score
is the trigger I need to make a change. Montuori recommends the Peak Brain Training mobile app, developed by neuroscientists and game experts to challenge cognitive skills.
He says, “Use it or lose it. The brain is in some ways a muscle. If you use it a lot, you will build up those skills. Stick at it, and you will improve.”
This is the year I will work on my spatial awareness and conquer my driving demons.
“Use it or lose it. The brain is in some
ways a muscle. If you use it a lot, you will build up those skills
The test threw up some unwelcome surprises – and useful pointers
of the brain such as the amygdala. This almond–shaped structure is responsible for triggering the primordial fight–or–flight response. The limbic system is also attached. to one of the most evolved regions of the brain, which is crucial for decision–making and digesting information, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
To understand brand attachment from a neuroscience standpoint, this is the area of the brain we need to examine. Devlin says, “When you choose to buy a product there are a couple of things going on in your brain. You have some kind of emotional attachment to the product you want to buy. You also have some sort of trust in it, trust that you are buying something you will like. Or perhaps it is a matter of habit. All these are essentially subconscious processes. Your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex takes the relevant information and guides the decision you are going to make as a consumer.”
The brain works by association. If we get a tidbit of information, we link it to other tidbits we perceive to be of the same type, explains Andrew. She says, “Think about what brands are. Imagine a place in our brains for brand. This is brand equity. It is a sum of all the experiences, all the ads we have seen, and what our friends have told us. If we were to produce the perfect ad, we should make sure first to stir emotion among people, and then to store it into memory.”
For all its glorious promise, the intersection between neuroscience and business does not come without its sceptics surprisingly, from within neuroscience itself. Padoa–Schioppa is still uncertain about whether our knowledge of neuroscience is deep enough to influence marketing. “Our understanding is limited to how the brain influences economic decisions, as opposed to why. Assume we understand the brain processes behind temporal discounting. This will not tell us much about why people prefer to pay later than sooner,” he says.
Much of his reservation boils down to the fact that neuroscience is still in its infancy. It remains to be seen just how much the realm of neuroscience, fast on its way to becoming the dominant paradigm in psychology, will shake up the way we approach business today and in the future.
Find out how you can train your brain to achieve peak performance, by turning to page 58 to have a look at our new wellbeing column
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LETTERS FROM TURKEY: Beritan Canözer
At age 16, I had an epiphany. I realised that I am Kurdish. Up until then, I’d only known two sentences in my mother tongue: “How are you doing?” and “Are you okay?”, which I’d learnt from my Kurdish grandpar- ents. So I began attending Kurdish lessons. And I began fighting for my language, customs, and culture.
I grew up in Baglar, Diyarbakir, a Kurdish district. My father was a con- tractor and mother was a house-
my wife. My parents, four siblings, and grandparents lived under one roof. I loved my childhood. As a child, I couldn’t comprehend what was going on around me. Everything seemed like a movie. But at one point, I un- derstood people were dying. In senior high school, everyone had a story to tell: one Kurdish student had lost his big brother; another student had lost her big sister. After age 14, I began to question what was happening and I
realised that I lived in a war zone.
Turkey is divided into seven re- gions, and people who live in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia are most- ly Kurds and Alawites. But Kurds and Alawites in Turkey are maltreated and nobody gives a damn. They deny us our religion, our language, and our fundamental human rights. We are
considered enemies in our own coun-
try. So when I came of age, I had the opportunity to fight for my beliefs.
I was attending photography le sons in Diyarbakir when all hell broke loose in Lice, a northeastern district. The police and army were clashing with civilians and two young people lost their lives. When a channel affil- iated with the government reported the event, they portrayed the youth
as terrorists.
By sheer coincidence, I knew their families. They were just civil- ians, two ordinary young people with dreams who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A few days later, a friend of mine told me about the first all–female news agency in Turkey, which would fight for minorities‘ and women’s rights. I applied for a position at JINHA, and landed a reporter’s job almost a week later. I had just turned 18.
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
Beritan Canözer is a Kurdish journalist.
recently imprisoned in a Turkish jail.
In December 2015, I was covering a protest against a curfew in central Diyarbakir. I was alongside representatives from the Democratic Society Party, some Kurdish political parties, and a group of civilians. It was broadcast live on TV for the JINHA website, and out of no- where, police officers arrested me on grounds that I was “overly enthusiastic, acting suspi- ciously and moving with the unlawful demonstration“. Next thing I knew, I was carried to the Diyarbakir Anti–Terrorism Branch, where I was detained for four days even though no official detention order was issued. Then, I was taken to court and given a sentence of three–and–a- half months in jail for “membership of and making propaganda for a terrorist organisation“.
While in custody, I went kind of numb. Essentially, I couldn’t believe that anyone could o jail for being “overly enthusiastic“. Only when I went to prison did I suffer a shock. The earth moved under my feet when they announced my sentence.
go to
On 13 March 2016, after almost three months in pre–trial detention in Diyarbakir, I was loaded onto a police van and transferred to Bakirköy women’s prison in Istanbul. My journey to the new prison – handcuffed and captive in the police van – lasted 24 hours, the most violent and racking hours of my life. We made only two stops during the journey to go to the toilet. They pushed and shoved us around like animals. In Bakirköy, I was held in isolation for a day without a single drop of water, and then shoved into a cell with twenty others, who were al- most crawling over each other from lack of space. A handful of women slept on the floor. Most books were banned, and the food was foul. There was a young mother with a sick one–year–old child, and we were frightened that the child would have his final breath in jail. We begged the guards to take the mother and child to hospital, but they refused.
On 29 March 2016, at the start of my trial, I was released. On 10 May, the court acquitted me of “membership“, but convicted me of “propaganda for a terrorist organisation“. Eventu- ally, I was sentenced to 15 months‘ imprisonment, suspended for five years. Notwithstanding, I went back to JINHA to fight for human and women’s rights fiercer than ever. But on 29 October 2016, JINHA was closed down by an executive decree.
stay
It may sound odd, but now I’m more determined than ever. Whatever happens to me, I’ll the course. I’ve been beaten up, rushed to hospital, threatened by gun, injured by gas car- tridges thrown by police, put behind bars, and for 15 days I was unable to leave my house due to severe injuries. In fact, all these things just make me even more committed
Illustration: Fabio Paolucci
womankind
LETTERS FROM TURKEY:
Ümmiye Koçak
I did weird things when I was a kid. I was always misbehaving. In fact, many of my extended family have cut ties with me because of it. My poor mother. She was always run- ning behind me, steering me clear of trouble. Every time she flew off the handle, I’d hide inside our tiny straw warehouse and wait for her anger to subside. In a matter of minutes, she’d forgotten about it. My mother was too beautiful to bear grudges.
I was born in 1957 in Çelemli vil- lage, near the city of Adana. We were a big, farming family of ten children, two parents, and two grandparents. Compared to the poverty around us, we were not dirt poor. Neither my mother nor my father went to el- ementary school. My mother could not read or write, but my father learnt these skills during army service. For
all her illiteracy, however, my mother had distinct qualities and a mode of thinking probably far more progres- sive than even Turkish mothers have today. In my village, every house had its own fruit trees – apple, orange, and apricots. We’d climb these trees, pick the fruit, and scurry away as fast as we could. Sometimes the owners caught us red–handed, and complained to our mothers. My mother was the only one in the village who’d not spank. “Children are supposed to eat fruit, it doesn’t matter who the owner of the fruit tree is,” she’d protest.
Out of all my sibling the one who attended ele school. My most beautiful m in school was when Maxi6 novel The Mother fell into Gorky wrote that “drea free“, words that resonated It occurred to me for the in my life that there’s noth with dreaming big and no matter how humble ground. I started writing poems. My heroes were lagers; I observed them, their problems, and wro about them.
I got married at 19. I gave birth to my first SOTL. riage was not forced. My me marry my lover. After ding, I moved to my hus lage, Arslanköy, near Me In Arslanköy, they forbade
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
Ummiye Koçak is a Turkish theatre director
who starred in a television commercial.
from going outside the home, but I was not brought up like that. I mean in Çelemli we stayed at home a lot, spent the day doing chores, but the family decision–maker was always my mother. But my husband’s village was different. It suffered the typical problems of Anatolian villages. The youth fled, leaving just the elderly and the uneducated, living in the dark ages. When the village teacher’s family had a baby, they needed a baby sitter. No woman went, because leaving your home and going to work was taboo. I went, and people said bad things behind my back. Later on, they changed their minds. My husband was happy with the rangement; I brought in extra income, and our kids were enjoying the fact that I returned home inspired with new tales to tell. Soon, other villagers followed in my footsteps. I think I blazed a trail.
ar-
In 2000, a theatre group visited Çelemli. It was the first time I’d been to the theatre. At age 45, it occurred to me that I could compile the stories I’d written or heard about and squeeze them into a theatre play too. In my first play, there were seven actors. They used a lot of slang, which stirred up controversy. Some villagers wanted the play axed. But this just empowered me even further. I pushed on. I said to myself: “In the beginning, villagers will get upset, but then they will enjoy it. At some point, they’ll crawl on their knees begging you to give them roles.” And this is exactly what happened. Villagers started coming to me say- ing: “Ummiye, we want to be in your next play. Or, can you give my wife a role in your next play?” Can you believe it? Since then, I’ve staged 15 plays and toured many Turkish villages. Kemal Ataturk, our country’s founder, made Turkey secular and granted many rights to Turkish people, far ahead of other European countries. We have great written rights, but in our everyday life we don’t apply them. Just look at modern Turkish people today. In- stead of fighting, they spend their time watching empty garbage TV shows. It’s no wonder they feel powerless.
One day I received a call from an advertiser who’d prepared a commercial script based on my life story. When I arrived at the shooting studio, the producers asked me to direct the advertisement just like I direct my own plays. The footballer Cristiano Ronaldo starred in the advertisement too; he spoke only English and I only spoke Turkish, but we communi- cated with our eyes.
Ever since the Ronaldo advertisement, I've received calls from people who want to
turn their life around. I advise them to stop complaining and take action instead;
to thank God that they're healthy. I tell them: "If you want to be happy, you should
stop worrying about today, and start making room for tomorrow. Thank God you are
alive. Be grateful." Now I am 60. But I don't feel my age. I'm at the starting point
of a long journey.
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LETTERS FROM TURKEY: Elifnaz Ongören
When I was nine my mother gave birth prematurely to my lit- tle sister, who perished within mo- ments of being born. I was just a little girl and my mother fell into a deep depression. My father was then burdened with trying to keep things together, pretending that the situ- ation was all under control and no one was grieving. But we all were. I saw my father falling apart. We were all enveloped in a dark, suffocating cloud. Five years after my sister’s death, my mother lost her job. She remained unemployed for one and at half years, staying at home, me be- ing the only reason to keep on. I am the apple of my parents‘ eyes, this being both a source of empower- ment and stress.
I was born in Adana in 1998, and raised there. I am an only child. My
father works for an insurance compa- ny, and my mother for a car company. You could say we are middle class.
I have a boyfriend here in Istan- bul. He is 23. We have been together for nine months. I have not fallen crazy in love and I’m not sure I want to. He lives alone, is an autodidact user interface developer, and is study- ing regional communication design – paying his tuition out of his own pocket. We are studying at the same private university.
If you ask me about marriage at 19, my answer is, “Never!” How-
ever, two years from no yes. But, at present, I di get married. I don’t that if you are married independence; you making your own deci My mother got and had me three years in key, people badmouth women. “They can’t they can’t settle down” occurred to them th mightn’t be interested married, or that she just the right person?
The majority of pe Turkish countryside tive and that worries the ones who voted f Erdogan. But these pep educated. If they had cation, they’d change voted. Yet, Erdogan k
Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos
womankind
Elifnaz Ongören is a nineteen-year-old living in Istanbul
the support of the educated, the young, and the good people in Turkey. He knows he lost the popular vote in the big cities. This is one of the reasons why I moved from Adana to Istanbul a year ago. I wanted to mix with the sophisticated crowds.
At first, Istanbul felt overwhelming. Hordes of people pushing each other in the city streets made me feel sick. I was even contemplating returning to Adana. Then it dawned on me that opportunity is here, and I am blessed to be living alone at such a young age. So once the first few challenging months passed, I started to feel the magic of the place. Istanbul is an old city laden with monuments, mosques, and historical places dating back to the Ottomans and earlier. It’s a city much older than my time, and living here often feels like being in a movie or something.
The last referendum expanded Erdogan’s powers. He got really powerful, and this will affect our lives in the long run, I’m afraid. My parents are always calling me on the phone, begging me to be careful with my social media accounts, to refrain from posting abrasive comments on online forums. “They will end you, they will end your life, they will end our lives. Even if they don’t kill you, they will beat you up terribly,” they warn me. They know I’m against the government and they always say things like that. Personally, I have not re- ceived any threats, but people are getting arrested or killed for criticising the government, and my parents are aware of this. They are scared.
1 My dream is to become a journalist or a writer. I’m studying journalism at a private university in Istanbul. I’m good at writing; my mother told me so. I would also love to write children’s stories. When I was in fourth grade, my parents sent me to an English course. This helped my English, and I can now speak it confidently. You know, in Turkey, the syllabi of all universities are written in English. Go figure, they oppress our rights to express ourselves freely and at the same time educate us in English! I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to figure out what is going on in this country.
If I don’t succeed as a journalist or writer, there’s always the fashion world. I’ve already kind of gotten my foot in the door. I landed a job as an assistant stylist. I like fashion because my mother always wore fancy clothes and I mimicked her style. I also love to experiment: I cut jeans to give them the look of ripped shorts and match them with pretty tank tops or colourful belts.
I think I have the will and passion to do both media and fashion. But I need to migrate; Istanbul is not enough for me to fulfil my whole potential. Probably the US or the UK would be fine though I don’t have a specific country in mind – I just want to have a career in media or fashion. Like every other teenager, my biggest dream in life is to travel the world even though I have this fear that I may lose the people most valuable in my life: my parents, grandparents, best friend… Staying here would assuage these fears, but things in Turkey are so volatile. I’m afraid at some point in my life I may be left with no other choice than to flee.
Illustration: Fabio Paolucci
Letters from Turkey
womankind
