“It’s a problem when people are forced to seem or be positive in situations where it’s not natural or when there’s a problem that legitimately needs to be addressed that can’t be addressed if you don’t deal with the fact that there is distress or need,” University of Michigan Ann Arbor psychologist Dr. Stephanie Preston explains in a recent interview with Inc. “Toxic Positivity Will Make You Miserable: What Is It, and Are You Guilty of Spreading It?”

Full episode here.

On this episode, Roy and Dr. Preston unpack the business lessons professionals might gain from her extensive work in cognition and cognitive neuroscience – how leaders can create healthy, high performing cultures that enhance retention through fulfillment and authentic engagement.

Dr. Preston is a professor of Psychology in the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Area at the University of Michigan and is currently a co-ombuds for the faculty at Michigan. She has a master’s degree and a PhD in behavioral neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied how animals make decisions about storing their food. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, where she studied human empathy and altruism, financial decision making, and hoarding behavior. Dr. Preston’s research is highly interdisciplinary and uses a variety of methods to investigate how the brain and body evolved in social and caregiving species to make complex decisions through simpler mechanisms that humans share with other species. She specializes in studying how emotions impact decisions in the face of distress and need, in decisions about material goods, and in related applied issues in consumerism, critical thinking, altruistic donation, and sustainability.