“Read through the comments, gather the LessWrong usernames of everyone who made a suggestion we tried or adopted, and email the list to Luke”
It’s pretty easy to just let Luke do everything isn’t it? (No snark meant; I noticed this tendency in myself when we were housemates and started actively trying to fight it.)
Exercise
It seems possible that when people take personality tests, they just write down their perceptions of themselves. A much better way would be to think of specific examples (of times when they were on time or late for an appointment, for instance). Maybe if you got people to tally up specific examples, they would get a result the genuinely surprised them. Instructing people to search for examples in a way that didn’t favor their preconceptions could improve results even more.
Reasons this idea could be good: personality tests are inherently interesting, and they are a fairly emotionally neutral discussion topic that doesn’t risk excluding anyone. (If you started asking folks to brainstorm reasons why they were or were not a diligent employee, you might run into some problems.) You could even brand it as being an unusually accurate way to administrate a personality test.
Phil Goetz on personality tests:
[The main advantage of Myers-Briggs] is that it manages to classify people without insulting them. (This is accomplished by confounding dimensions: Instead of measuring one property of personality along one dimension, which leads to some scores being considered better than others, you subtract a measurement along one desirable property of personality from a measurement along another desirable property of personality, and call the result one dimension.)
This gets people thinking of specifics, but would it contrast being specific with failing to be specific, and make the students want to be specific in the future? I think that the students need that contrast just to appreciate what the issue is, and they need to see what they’re doing as something that could apply to a broad set of situations in order to find occasions to behave this way in the future.
I suppose you could contrast your test with a personality test that doesn’t use specifics, and that could supply the contrast. How would you supply the applicability?
I might be overestimating people’s tendency to compartmentalize, but I doubt it. Once, when my parents were visiting my apartment before I got a microwave, my mother wanted to reheat some food in the ordinary oven. She asked what temperature I thought she should use; I didn’t reheat food in the oven very often, but I suggested 300 degrees.
It took me several seconds more before it occurred to me: “Mom, you reheat food in the toaster oven at home all of the time. What temperature do you use then?”
Then she knew what temperature she should use. But she didn’t automatically bridge the gap from “toaster oven” to “real oven,” and I almost didn’t, either. We’re looking at a bigger gap, here, and a very strong tendency to be not-specific.
Beating compartmentalization is almost an impossible mandate. My exercise already calls for people to think of specific things they did recently in their lives. I doubt many exercises can do better than that.
In terms of application, I think people are already massively curious about who they are and how they fit in (and this might apply especially strongly to people who aren’t the sort to read LW). Just improving folks’ self-evaluations could be seen as a pretty big benefit.
Giving participants two different Big Five tests, and only telling them to think of specific examples on the second one, could work well. But it also opens the door to an underwhelming conclusion if people’s abstract self-evaluations actually do tend to be fairly accurate.
Actually, I want to take some of my criticism back. It seems to me that there are several instrumental goals that would help with the terminal goal of getting people to routinely be specific at useful times in the future. No one exercise has to encompass all of the instrumental goals. The list I see right now is:
1) Make people better at being specific.
2) Get people to appreciate the value of being specific.
3) Get people to recognize situations where they or other people aren’t being specific.
4) Get people to react negatively to a lack of specifics.
5) Make it occur to people to be specific.
6) Show/get people to think of contexts to apply their new skill of being specific.
7) Get people to be specific as a habit, without thinking about it.
Your exercise could help with #1, and also #2 if the contrast between personality test results strikes the students as significant.
Mine is intended to help with #4, and with good scenarios, could help with #3 and #6. If the scenario involves something practical, it could also help with #2.
My exercise already calls for people to think of specific things they did recently in their lives. I doubt many exercises can do better than that.
In getting them to be specific in the present, it’s hard to ask for better. In getting them to be specific in the future, I’m not sure, and the point is their future behavior, right?
Of course, my own exercise might be considered a cop-out in this regard; it doesn’t get them to be specific in the present, even, and its main goal is to get them to simply be frustrated with a lack of specifics in the present and future.
In terms of application, I think people are already massively curious about who they are and how they fit in (and this might apply especially strongly to people who aren’t the sort to read LW). Just improving folks’ self-evaluations could be seen as a pretty big benefit.
Yeah, I can see that. But that’s helpful in improving their self-evaluations, not in being specific as an ongoing habit. Still useful, but I’m not sure it helps with this goal.
Beating compartmentalization is almost an impossible mandate.
True, but we could probably bruise it a bit. It could help even to do something as simple as telling the students three other situations they could apply the same approach to. They’d have to be fairly similar to the exercise, or else it wouldn’t establish a strong enough connection in the students’ heads, but I do think that talking about closely-related applications could help. With the mission statement exercise, for instance, you could point out that the same approach could help them recognize the need for specifics and the range of possible specifics in 1) descriptions of courses in college catalogs, 2) the kinds of goals that institutions set for projects, and 3) political speeches.
(Any help making these three examples more specific would be gratefully appreciated.)
Maybe what we need is a series of related exercises that lend themselves to being applied in related but different situations, to push at the boundaries of compartmentalization.
A much better way would be to think of specific examples (of times when they were on time or late for an appointment, for instance).
This risks running into salience issues. Events which lead to failure or loss of status tend to be a lot more salient than those which lead to success, and while that by itself could still give you a reasonable if upsetting metric, I don’t see any obvious way to control for differences in how this tendency manifests, or for differences in salience between domains (which could paradoxically lead to overweighting failures in a domain the testee considers personally important). Differences in general recall ability would also weight the results, but you could probably control for that with some extra effort.
You could probably fix these problems by specifically asking for recent examples, in the last few weeks. Also, note I might’ve picked an unusually upsetting personality question. If upsetting participants is a significant issue, choosing questions and personality metrics carefully could ameliorate things.
Also note that accurate personality assessment is not the primary goal here. In theory, it could be a good exercise even if it doesn’t provide accurate personality assessment.
In fact, you could even discard scientific pretense altogether, and just have participants complete one of those “Which Harry Potter character are you?” type quizzes, but thinking of specific examples.
It’s pretty easy to just let Luke do everything isn’t it? (No snark meant; I noticed this tendency in myself when we were housemates and started actively trying to fight it.)
Exercise
It seems possible that when people take personality tests, they just write down their perceptions of themselves. A much better way would be to think of specific examples (of times when they were on time or late for an appointment, for instance). Maybe if you got people to tally up specific examples, they would get a result the genuinely surprised them. Instructing people to search for examples in a way that didn’t favor their preconceptions could improve results even more.
Reasons this idea could be good: personality tests are inherently interesting, and they are a fairly emotionally neutral discussion topic that doesn’t risk excluding anyone. (If you started asking folks to brainstorm reasons why they were or were not a diligent employee, you might run into some problems.) You could even brand it as being an unusually accurate way to administrate a personality test.
Phil Goetz on personality tests:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/14x/the_machine_learning_personality_test/
This is a point against my idea if all the scientifically validated classification systems, like the Big Five, run the risk of insulting people.
This gets people thinking of specifics, but would it contrast being specific with failing to be specific, and make the students want to be specific in the future? I think that the students need that contrast just to appreciate what the issue is, and they need to see what they’re doing as something that could apply to a broad set of situations in order to find occasions to behave this way in the future.
I suppose you could contrast your test with a personality test that doesn’t use specifics, and that could supply the contrast. How would you supply the applicability?
I might be overestimating people’s tendency to compartmentalize, but I doubt it. Once, when my parents were visiting my apartment before I got a microwave, my mother wanted to reheat some food in the ordinary oven. She asked what temperature I thought she should use; I didn’t reheat food in the oven very often, but I suggested 300 degrees.
It took me several seconds more before it occurred to me: “Mom, you reheat food in the toaster oven at home all of the time. What temperature do you use then?”
Then she knew what temperature she should use. But she didn’t automatically bridge the gap from “toaster oven” to “real oven,” and I almost didn’t, either. We’re looking at a bigger gap, here, and a very strong tendency to be not-specific.
Beating compartmentalization is almost an impossible mandate. My exercise already calls for people to think of specific things they did recently in their lives. I doubt many exercises can do better than that.
In terms of application, I think people are already massively curious about who they are and how they fit in (and this might apply especially strongly to people who aren’t the sort to read LW). Just improving folks’ self-evaluations could be seen as a pretty big benefit.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/8gv/the_curse_of_identity/
Giving participants two different Big Five tests, and only telling them to think of specific examples on the second one, could work well. But it also opens the door to an underwhelming conclusion if people’s abstract self-evaluations actually do tend to be fairly accurate.
Actually, I want to take some of my criticism back. It seems to me that there are several instrumental goals that would help with the terminal goal of getting people to routinely be specific at useful times in the future. No one exercise has to encompass all of the instrumental goals. The list I see right now is:
1) Make people better at being specific.
2) Get people to appreciate the value of being specific.
3) Get people to recognize situations where they or other people aren’t being specific.
4) Get people to react negatively to a lack of specifics.
5) Make it occur to people to be specific.
6) Show/get people to think of contexts to apply their new skill of being specific.
7) Get people to be specific as a habit, without thinking about it.
Your exercise could help with #1, and also #2 if the contrast between personality test results strikes the students as significant.
Mine is intended to help with #4, and with good scenarios, could help with #3 and #6. If the scenario involves something practical, it could also help with #2.
Feel free to add to my list.
8) Get people to recognize when other people want them to be more (or less) specific.
9) Get people to recognize when they are being specific about the wrong subject.
In getting them to be specific in the present, it’s hard to ask for better. In getting them to be specific in the future, I’m not sure, and the point is their future behavior, right?
Of course, my own exercise might be considered a cop-out in this regard; it doesn’t get them to be specific in the present, even, and its main goal is to get them to simply be frustrated with a lack of specifics in the present and future.
Yeah, I can see that. But that’s helpful in improving their self-evaluations, not in being specific as an ongoing habit. Still useful, but I’m not sure it helps with this goal.
True, but we could probably bruise it a bit. It could help even to do something as simple as telling the students three other situations they could apply the same approach to. They’d have to be fairly similar to the exercise, or else it wouldn’t establish a strong enough connection in the students’ heads, but I do think that talking about closely-related applications could help. With the mission statement exercise, for instance, you could point out that the same approach could help them recognize the need for specifics and the range of possible specifics in 1) descriptions of courses in college catalogs, 2) the kinds of goals that institutions set for projects, and 3) political speeches.
(Any help making these three examples more specific would be gratefully appreciated.)
Maybe what we need is a series of related exercises that lend themselves to being applied in related but different situations, to push at the boundaries of compartmentalization.
This risks running into salience issues. Events which lead to failure or loss of status tend to be a lot more salient than those which lead to success, and while that by itself could still give you a reasonable if upsetting metric, I don’t see any obvious way to control for differences in how this tendency manifests, or for differences in salience between domains (which could paradoxically lead to overweighting failures in a domain the testee considers personally important). Differences in general recall ability would also weight the results, but you could probably control for that with some extra effort.
You could probably fix these problems by specifically asking for recent examples, in the last few weeks. Also, note I might’ve picked an unusually upsetting personality question. If upsetting participants is a significant issue, choosing questions and personality metrics carefully could ameliorate things.
Also note that accurate personality assessment is not the primary goal here. In theory, it could be a good exercise even if it doesn’t provide accurate personality assessment.
In fact, you could even discard scientific pretense altogether, and just have participants complete one of those “Which Harry Potter character are you?” type quizzes, but thinking of specific examples.