The above game is an example of what I call an "Act of God" study design, in which researchers (playing God) randomly dole out good and bad fortune to study participants, typically in the form of monetary payments.
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Scientific Encounters
Prone to anxiety? The machinery will tilt towards the threat potential in its representations, systematically reviewing the possibilities. Confident and optimistic? The machinery will tilt towards images of success and triumph, but not dwell on them because no preparation is required for what may come. We already know we can handle whatever is thrown our way, and it will be good.
On second thought, all research is desire-driven. Because behavior is necessarily goal-driven and you don't have goals without wanting something to happen and wanting is desire and doing science is a behavior. But some desires are more conducive to scientific progress than others. Like the desire for reality not to make fools of us.
That just about all personality traits show significant and substantial genetic influence is the stuff of college textbooks, e,g, Behavioral Genetics, now in its 7th edition.
...they describe cleaning chemicals as "unnecessary" and propose that microfiber cloths and water are "enough for most purposes". The lead author, Oistein Svanes, summed up the take-home message of the study: "in the long run cleaning chemicals very likely cause rather substantial damage to your lungs".
Of course, we must remain vigilant! But measured optimism is not the enemy.
It's not all that hard or time-consuming to check the actual study behind a headline. If the article doesn't provide a link to the academic paper being cited, judge the publication (shame on them!) and then Google Scholar the paper...
Tell subjects they scored in the bottom 20% on some performance measure and they'll feel rotten. Expose women to a 15-minute video of gorgeous models and their self-esteem will take a beating. So, sure, you can make experimental subjects feel bad by exposing them to certain conditions in a lab, but do those conditions prevail in everyday life?
Beliefs serve decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. Without uncertainty, we just act. I don't "believe" the ground will stop my foot when I walk....That's just the neural prediction and reward-seeking machinery running smoothly. It's when the machinery gets stuck that the brain shifts into belief mode to help break the logjam.
Jumping the groove from dopamine to self-efficacy: here we go!
But science is a way of thinking, not a body of knowledge. Science is a way to acquire knowledge. Science is about being ruthless with oneself and the evidence; proposing and testing hypotheses, over and over; being careful, tentative, incremental and alert to alternative explanations.
Want to convince someone the situation is urgent and immediate action is imperative? Well, you're not going to get very far by laying it on with a sledgehammer. This approach usually backfires by triggering resistance and motivating counterarguments.
Slowly but surely the US is catching on to the advantages of using nurse practitioners as independent primary care gatekeepers. A big factor in the gradual acceptance of this expanded role for nurse practitioners is the shortage of GPs, which has left millions of Americans without access to primary care providers.
In the US, the incentives are aligned to test more, treat more, and charge more. It's no surprise that, on average, the US spends almost twice as much on its healthcare system than other developed countries. And it's no surprise that our doctors are among the highest paid in the world.
How do we find a balance between satisfaction with what is and wanting more? Easy for an old person to say: it is enough. Not so when you’re young and chomping at the bit.
Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.” - Google CEO Sundar Pichai
"Technical manuals for 47 interest inventories were used, yielding 503,188 respondents. Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d _ 0.93) on the Things–People dimension."
- Su, Rounds and Armstrong (2009) Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests.
Are male engineers simply more sexist and less welcoming of female students and coworkers than, say, male doctors and lawyers? Why would that be? If we were only talking about the perniciousness of men, we would expect similar gender patterns in a broad range of traditionally male-dominated occupations. But we don't. There's something special about engineering.
That biology influences personality isn't saying personality is fixed or that biology has a bigger effect than other types of influence. Predispositions can be minimized, neutralized or reversed. Personal experience, socialization, and workplace culture are incredibly important. No one is denying that.
...the Diversity Memo's author says that, on average, women are more open, people-oriented, gregarious, anxious, and agreeable than men and men are more thing-oriented, systemizing, assertive, and status-driven. He further notes that biology accounts only partly for these gender differences, many of which are small, and there is considerable overlap between men and women.