Athletes say they hate to lose more than they love to win. New research finds the same sentiment is shared in organizations.

A Virginia Tech researcher and his colleagues discovered that when managers frame work problems as a potential loss, employees are more likely to take action than when those problems are framed as potential gains. The research also revealed that when the potential loss impacts a larger group, employees are more likely to take action in the form of speaking up to a supervisor in hopes of finding a solution. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

For managers, this research suggests that framing work problems as potential losses can influence employees to speak up more.

“Employee voice occurs when suggestions are made to improve organizational functioning,” said Phil Thompson, associate professor in the Pamplin College of Business Department of Management. “From an organizational perspective, the positive outcomes of employee voice include improved performance, effectiveness, and workplace safety. From an employee level, speaking up is positively related to creativity, innovation, engagement, and ethical behavior.”

At its core, this research shows that how managers choose to frame problems directly influences employees’ motivation to speak up at work. For managers, this is an insightful approach for building more open and collaborative teams.

“When managers say, ‘If we don’t get this done, not only will you lose the $5,000 bonus, but everybody in this work group is going to lose a $5,000 bonus,’ it magnifies an employee’s motivation to act in a proactive way,” said Thompson. “This suggests that framing work problems as what will be collectively lost – compared to what can be individually lost – makes employees want to speak up more.”

Thompson was part of a research team led by Jeffery Thomas and Jonathan Booth from The London School of Economics and Mark Bolino from Oklahoma University. Together they analyzed responses from nearly 2,000 full-time employees, MBA students, and employee-supervisor pairs for their experience in situations where work problems were framed as either a gain or a loss. Across three different studies, framing something as a loss yielded employees to voice a work suggestion more.

For example, a manager dealing with a reputational crisis of their team, such as a product quality issue, can frame the problem in a way to spark helpful employee suggestions on how to resolve the issue. For example, instead of saying “if this product has great quality, our company will look really good” a manager saying “if this product is not up to quality standards, our reputation will be damaged” carries more weight for the team. When this reputational risk is shared by everyone, employees are more willing to step forward to help the problem.

In the first study, participants were asked to think about a problem at work that was significant for them. From there, they were randomly assigned to write about the potential losses or gains from that problem. They were also asked to indicate how likely they were to talk about these problems to their supervisor. Participants who reflected on their potential losses showed a 16 percent higher willingness to speak up compared to those who focused on the potential gains.

When it came to the MBA students, they read a fictional performance review scenario where a workplace problem was described. They then rated how willing they would be to speak up about that scenario if they were in the situation. One example suggested that the entire team might fall short of its goals if an issue was not addressed. This specific scenario yielded the most likelihood of speaking up 35 percent more than the scenario’s suggesting that only they would miss their goal, supporting the research’s findings that an employee is more likely to speak up when the loss impacts more people.

The third study looked at employee-supervisor pairings to understand how these relationships play out in the real world. Using pairings from across three industries, employees reported a workplace problem they encountered and their supervisor rated how often that employee spoke up on the job. While the first two studies involved hypothetical scenarios, this real-world evidence showed that employees were 8-10 times more likely to speak up when issues were framed as a potential collective loss compared with a potential collective gain. 

“This research is really geared toward managers so they can facilitate and understand how and why their employees will speak up,” said Thompson. “You can talk about the issue, but it always ends in terms of how we frame things.” 

Higher levels of key steroid hormones—combined with elevated stress and body mass index (BMI)—are associated with earlier onset of puberty in girls, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

The findings are published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

 Elevated prepuberty urinary levels of glucocorticoids, androgens, and progesterone were strongly linked to accelerated breast development (thelarche). Girls with high glucocorticoid levels alongside high BMI and stress entered puberty an average of seven months earlier than peers with lower levels.

“While stress and BMI have long been recognized as independent predictors of puberty, few studies have examined how they interact with a girl’s hormones,” said Lauren Houghton, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and first author. “Our findings challenge conventional research that has largely focused on estrogen and body size, highlighting instead the role of stress and androgens – typically thought of as male hormones– in shaping pubescent development.”

The strongest associations were observed for progesterone, androgens, and glucocorticoids, indicating that multiple hormonal pathways—not just estrogen—play a critical role in the timing of puberty.

For example:

• Higher glucocorticoid, androgen, and progesterone metabolites were associated with earlier onset of puberty
• Elevated androgens and progesterone were also linked to a longer duration of puberty
• Estrogen metabolites were associated with delayed onset, not acceleration
• The effects of hormones on puberty timing were significantly modified by BMI and stress levels.

 Notably, the associations were consistent regardless of family history of breast cancer.

“Our objective was to identify the full set of hormonal patterns linked to accelerated puberty and test whether BMI and stress modify this relationship,” said Houghton, who is also assistant professor at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia. “We predicted that girls with elevated BMI and stress would experience the earliest onset—and that the stress response shifts during this key time for girls.”

The researchers drew on data from the LEGACY Girls Study, a cohort of 1,040 girls ages 6 to 13 recruited across the U.S. States and Canada. Participants were followed every six months with clinical assessments, questionnaires, and biospecimen collection.

The analysis included 327 girls who were at the pre-puberty stage at baseline and provided urine samples at least one year before the onset of puberty. Houghton and colleagues measured a comprehensive panel of steroid metabolites using first-morning urine samples and tracked puberty development using validated clinical scales.

Mothers of the girls completed an Internalizing Composite Scale, which includes subscales for anxiety, depression, and other at-risk status. They also provided information on girls’ family history of all cancers as well as on pregnancy and infancy, including birth weight and their child’s race and ethnicity. Trained research staff measured height and weight twice every 6 months. 

“Unlike prior research, this study simultaneously examined hormonal patterns, BMI, and psychosocial stress—captured through standardized behavioral assessments—within the same cohort,” said senior author Mary Beth Terry, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and the Herbert Irving Cancer Center, and Silent Spring Institute.  “Interestingly, we also learned that the associations were consistent regardless of family history of breast cancer.”

The findings may help explain the ongoing trend toward earlier puberty and point to actionable prevention strategies, observed the authors.

 “Stress-reducing interventions and healthy lifestyle changes may help delay early puberty and improve long-term health outcomes,” said Houghton. ‘Because early puberty is linked to increased breast cancer risk later in life, the results have important implications for both pediatric care and public health.”

Adults who have never been married face a significantly higher risk of developing cancer than those who have been married, according to a study of more than 4 million cases.

The increased risk spans nearly every major cancer type and is especially pronounced for preventable cancers—those linked to infections, smoking and reproductive factors. Led by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, the study appears in the April 8 issue of Cancer Research Communications.

A link to the article is here.

“These findings suggest that social factors such as marital status may serve as important markers of cancer risk at the population level,” said Paulo Pinheiro, Ph.D., study co-author and a Sylvester physician-scientist whose lab conducts population-based cancer epidemiology.

The novel observation does not mean that getting married prevents cancer or that people need to get married.

“It means that if you’re not married, you should be paying extra attention to cancer risk factors, getting any screenings you may need, and staying up to date on health care,” said Frank Penedo, Ph.D., associate director for population sciences and director of the Sylvester Survivorship and Supportive Care Institute (SSCI).

“For prevention efforts, our findings point to the importance of targeting cancer risk awareness and prevention strategies with attention to marital status,” he added.

Marriage is already associated with earlier cancer diagnosis and better survival. Married individuals often, but not always, have stronger support systems, greater economic stability and are more likely to adhere to cancer treatment regimens.

But previous work on the links between marriage and cancer focused almost entirely on what happens at and after diagnosis. Only a few small, older studies explored whether marriage affects the odds of getting cancer in the first place.

“We wanted to know who is more likely to get cancer: married people or unmarried people?” Pinheiro said.

To find out, the researchers analyzed a large dataset covering 12 states that included demographic and cancer data from more than 4 million cancer cases in a population of more than 100 million people, collected between 2015 and 2022. They examined cases of malignant cancers diagnosed at age 30 or older and compared rates of various cancers by marital status, further broken down by sex and race and adjusted for age.

The researchers categorized marital status into two groups: those who were or had been married, including married, divorced and widowed individuals, and those who had never been married. The study began in 2015 because that year, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, allowing same-sex couples to be included in the married category. One in five adults in the study had never married.

Pinheiro expected to see some associations, given established relationships between marriage and lifestyle factors such as smoking, routine medical care and having children. But the strength of some findings surprised him.

Adults who were never married had substantially higher rates of developing cancer compared with those who were or had been married. For some cancers, the association was even stronger: adult men who were never married had approximately five times the rate of anal cancer compared with married men. Adult women who were never married had nearly three times the rate of cervical cancer compared with women who were or had been married.

Both anal and cervical cancers are strongly related to HPV infection, so these differences likely reflect variation in exposure, and for cervical cancer, also differences in screening and prevention. In contrast, for cancers such as endometrial and ovarian, differences by marital status may partly reflect the protective effect of parity, which is more common among married individuals.

“It’s a clear and powerful signal that some individuals are at a greater risk,” Penedo said.

Men and women showed slightly different patterns. Men who were never married were about 70% more likely to develop cancer than married men, while women who never married were about 85% more likely to develop cancer than women who were or had been married.

This represents a small but noteworthy reversal of a broader trend: Men often benefit more from marriage than women in terms of health and social factors. In this case, women appeared to benefit slightly more from marriage than men.

The strongest associations between marriage and cancer were seen for cancers related to infection, smoking or alcohol use, and, for women, cancers related to reproduction, such as ovarian and endometrial cancer.

The researchers found weaker associations for cancers with robust screening programs, including breast, thyroid and prostate cancers.

They also observed patterns across race and marital status. Black men who were never married had the highest overall cancer rates. However, married Black men had lower cancer rates than married White men, indicating a strong protective association with marriage in that group.

The study has limitations. People who smoke less, drink less, take better care of themselves and are more socially integrated may also be more likely to get married.

Still, the researchers found that associations between marriage and cancer were stronger in adults older than 50, suggesting that as people age and accumulate cancer risk exposures, the benefits associated with marriage may become more pronounced.

The study also excluded individuals who are unmarried but in committed partnerships. That group is likely small relative to the size of the dataset, Pinheiro said, but worth exploring in future research.

Future studies could further subdivide the married category into married, divorced and widowed individuals and follow people over decades to better understand how marital transitions affect cancer risk.

Overall, getting married does not magically prevent cancer, both authors stressed.

“But the association between marriage status and cancer risk is an interesting, new observation that deserves more research,” Pinheiro said.