This paper and its experiments are of higher quality than I’m used to in psychological research.
What’s demonstrated: if you prime an excuse for doing poorly, you will do poorly. I think there’s already some similar research (different types of excuses, though). They also show that self-reported exhaustion (not just “ego depleting” tasks) leads to a difference in performance that goes in exactly the direction that the subjects are primed to believe (either being reminded of an existing belief, or being tricked into holding it with biased questions).
It surprises me that, of the people who don’t claim to expect to flag when fatigued, those who report being exhausted by the depletion task actually make less errors than those who don’t. Unless this is just due to warming up their inhibition/vigilance (both the initial and final tests require it) while, it suggests that positive expectations can boost performance, not just that available excuses can harm it.
I like that they demonstrated that errors on IQ problems tracks errors on mundane rule-following, vigilance type tasks, but it’s amusing to me that people who believe they’ll do worse when fatigued, actually test as smarter (less IQ test errors) when fresh, whereas those primed to believe they won’t effectively fatigue improve slightly, but are still worse than the “limited resource” believers’ initial performance. This effect is still there, but probably not significant, for the simple but tiresome “willpower” testing (Stroop) task. I assume the “limited”-believers are more engaged by an IQ-proving question, either for signaling or entertainment, compared to the boring Stroop task. Disclaimer: these differences, from figures in pg 5 of the paper. aren’t strongly significant (N ~= 50), so maybe I shouldn’t conclude anything (the authors don’t pin anything on them).
if you prime an excuse for doing poorly, you will do poorly.
This is the most useful sentence I’ve read today.
I care strongly about winning. When I look back on a day and ask myself what I could have done better, I want answering to be a struggle, and not for lack of imagination. I’m not content to coast through life, so I optimize relentlessly. This sentiment might be familiar to LW readers. I don’t know. Maybe.
When a day goes particularly well or poorly, I want to know why, and over the last few years I’ve picked a few patterns out of my diary. I know some of my success and failure modes, so I can optimize my working environment in my favor.
In the past, I’ve often been successful even while sleep-deprived. I may be a bit slower, a bit more forgetful, and significantly less creative, but I can still plow through tasks of moderate difficulty. Two months ago, I activated a difficult project, so I resolved to start getting plenty of sleep all the time, then promptly forgot my original reason and associated “well-rested” with “productive on anything”. In the last two months, my rate of even moderate success while sleep-deprived has dropped to almost zero. “I was intending to read that book, or watch that show, or play that game eventually, and I’m not going to be efficient today, so it might as well be now”, I’ll say.
With this dangerous knowledge that I was irrational enough to misuse, I can predict my days into failure.
This paper and its experiments are of higher quality than I’m used to in psychological research.
What’s demonstrated: if you prime an excuse for doing poorly, you will do poorly. I think there’s already some similar research (different types of excuses, though). They also show that self-reported exhaustion (not just “ego depleting” tasks) leads to a difference in performance that goes in exactly the direction that the subjects are primed to believe (either being reminded of an existing belief, or being tricked into holding it with biased questions).
It surprises me that, of the people who don’t claim to expect to flag when fatigued, those who report being exhausted by the depletion task actually make less errors than those who don’t. Unless this is just due to warming up their inhibition/vigilance (both the initial and final tests require it) while, it suggests that positive expectations can boost performance, not just that available excuses can harm it.
I like that they demonstrated that errors on IQ problems tracks errors on mundane rule-following, vigilance type tasks, but it’s amusing to me that people who believe they’ll do worse when fatigued, actually test as smarter (less IQ test errors) when fresh, whereas those primed to believe they won’t effectively fatigue improve slightly, but are still worse than the “limited resource” believers’ initial performance. This effect is still there, but probably not significant, for the simple but tiresome “willpower” testing (Stroop) task. I assume the “limited”-believers are more engaged by an IQ-proving question, either for signaling or entertainment, compared to the boring Stroop task. Disclaimer: these differences, from figures in pg 5 of the paper. aren’t strongly significant (N ~= 50), so maybe I shouldn’t conclude anything (the authors don’t pin anything on them).
This is the most useful sentence I’ve read today.
I care strongly about winning. When I look back on a day and ask myself what I could have done better, I want answering to be a struggle, and not for lack of imagination. I’m not content to coast through life, so I optimize relentlessly. This sentiment might be familiar to LW readers. I don’t know. Maybe.
When a day goes particularly well or poorly, I want to know why, and over the last few years I’ve picked a few patterns out of my diary. I know some of my success and failure modes, so I can optimize my working environment in my favor.
In the past, I’ve often been successful even while sleep-deprived. I may be a bit slower, a bit more forgetful, and significantly less creative, but I can still plow through tasks of moderate difficulty. Two months ago, I activated a difficult project, so I resolved to start getting plenty of sleep all the time, then promptly forgot my original reason and associated “well-rested” with “productive on anything”. In the last two months, my rate of even moderate success while sleep-deprived has dropped to almost zero. “I was intending to read that book, or watch that show, or play that game eventually, and I’m not going to be efficient today, so it might as well be now”, I’ll say.
With this dangerous knowledge that I was irrational enough to misuse, I can predict my days into failure.