Public Profile

The Institute for Occupational Cognitive Health is a research organization based in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to studying the psychological effects of sustained cognitive labor across high-focus professions. Founded in 2018 as a joint initiative between Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the institute conducts longitudinal studies on attention fatigue, symbolic reasoning under sleep deprivation, and what its founding charter describes as “the cognitive consequences of extended immersion in abstract representational systems.”

The institute’s research portfolio spans air traffic controllers, surgeons, financial traders, and software engineers, though its work on the latter group has attracted the most public attention. A 2024 study on developers who had worked more than thirty consecutive hours found that 14 percent reported some form of anthropomorphic ideation about their code — attributing emotions, desires, or moral status to software constructs. The study was widely cited in technology media, though its methodology was subsequently questioned after it was revealed that several respondents had been actively coding during the survey, raising concerns about whether the cognitive distortions being measured had influenced the self-reporting.

The institute is led by Dr. Franklin Krause, an occupational psychologist who has described the organization’s mission as “understanding what happens to the human mind when it spends too long thinking about things that aren’t real.” He has acknowledged that this description applies to several other academic disciplines but maintains that “we’re the only ones who consider it a problem.”

The institute publishes the Journal of Occupational Cognitive Science, a peer-reviewed quarterly that has been described by critics as “niche” and by its editorial board as “precisely as niche as it needs to be.”

Private Profile

Function in stories: The Institute for Occupational Cognitive Health is a useful source for any story about workers — particularly in technology — whose extended focus on abstract systems has produced unusual cognitive effects. Its studies provide statistical backing for individual cases of developer distortion, and its researchers offer authoritative commentary delivered in clinical language. The institute’s studies tend to have suggestive but slightly problematic methodologies, which adds a layer of comedy without undermining the deadpan frame.

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