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The article sort of pits this study and theory of ego depletion as mutually incompatible, but I think that's probably an exaggeration, either by the author of t

by GHFigs 16y ago

The article sort of pits this study and theory of ego depletion as mutually incompatible, but I think that's probably an exaggeration, either by the author of the article or the authors of the paper. That beliefs can influence ego depletion is not a new finding, nor is it inconsistent with there being a physiological basis. It doesn't even really sound like they are addressing the theory itself but some particular implication. For instance, the belief that you need to take frequent breaks while studying does not follow directly from the belief that self-regulation is a limited resource. Personally, as a "believer" of the latter I find the former contradictory: it is exactly what I would not do. In my view, since self-regulation is limited, taking frequent breaks is foolish because means more occasions at which you're forced to self-regulate. I don't think I'm alone in finding that it requires significantly less willpower to continue a task already in progress than it does to re-initiate an interrupted task. Starting (and re-starting) is always the hard part. I only break when it is patently obvious that the task has already been interrupted. Purposefully taking additional breaks seems like an absurdly premature optimization extremely likely to backfire. And yet, from the sound of it, that's what they advised one group to do. Does this mean I secretly believe in unlimited willpower?

webwright 16y ago
"It doesn't even really sound like they are addressing the theory itself but some particular implication." Agreed. This is just another priming study-- NOT a willpower study. Here's another: "But the priming effect does not just affect our behavior. It can also, incredibly, have significant effects on our actual performance. In another study cited by Gladwell, two groups of students were asked to answer forty-two questions from the game Trivial Pursuit. But first, one group was first asked to sit and think about professors, the other to think about soccer hooligans. And the difference was dramatic: an average of 55.6% of the questions were answered correctly by the first group, while only 42.6% were answered correctly by the second. How can these results be explained? Can priming somehow temporarily infuse the brain with an expanded store of facts? Obviously not. Instead, what seems to be happening is that encouraging people to "think smart" briefly increases mental qualities like their ability to focus, their sense of recall, and their ability to quickly and correctly integrate diverse pieces of information. In other words, priming does not make us more intelligent, but it does briefly make us better at using the intelligence we already have." [1] The scarier one is about race: "The psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson created an even more extreme version of this test, using black college students and twenty questions taken from the Graduate Record Examination, the standardized test used for entry into graduate school. When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement - and the number of items they got right was cut in half..." 1: grabbed from http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/01/priming-the-mind.html http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/01/priming-the-mind.html

by GHFigs 16y ago

webwright 16y ago

"It doesn't even really sound like they are addressing the theory itself but some particular implication." Agreed. This is just another priming study-- NOT a willpower study. Here's another: "But the priming effect does not just affect our behavior. It can also, incredibly, have significant effects on our actual performance. In another study cited by Gladwell, two groups of students were asked to answer forty-two questions from the game Trivial Pursuit. But first, one group was first asked to sit and think about professors, the other to think about soccer hooligans. And the difference was dramatic: an average of 55.6% of the questions were answered correctly by the first group, while only 42.6% were answered correctly by the second. How can these results be explained? Can priming somehow temporarily infuse the brain with an expanded store of facts? Obviously not. Instead, what seems to be happening is that encouraging people to "think smart" briefly increases mental qualities like their ability to focus, their sense of recall, and their ability to quickly and correctly integrate diverse pieces of information. In other words, priming does not make us more intelligent, but it does briefly make us better at using the intelligence we already have." [1] The scarier one is about race: "The psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson created an even more extreme version of this test, using black college students and twenty questions taken from the Graduate Record Examination, the standardized test used for entry into graduate school. When the students were asked to identify their race on a pretest questionnaire, that simple act was sufficient to prime them with all the negative stereotypes associated with African Americans and academic achievement - and the number of items they got right was cut in half..." 1: grabbed from http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/01/priming-the-mind.html http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/01/priming-the-mind.html