By: Motivated to procrastinate? | Higher Process

Motivated to procrastinate? | Higher Process — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:19:05 +0000

[...] Pychyl praises Van Hooft’s sample. A large pool of subjects—a total of 900 participants completed the study—gives the sample some statistical bite. Pychyl notes that the final data set is skewed towards more educated and employed participants, but it still has an advantage over many procrastination and time management studies, in that it is drawn from the general population. Many of the studies covered here involve college students in western countries, who arguably bear limited resemblance to humanity in general. [...]

By: Tamara Piety

Tamara Piety — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 19:57:45 +0000

I haven’t read the article yet, although I look forward to doing so. However, it sounds to me that while these observations might raise valid concerns about generalizing about “human nature” in its most essential form (assuming we can reduce it to single thing called “nature”; they may not have any bearing on what the earlier research suggests about what sort of regulatory interventions are appropriate in a WEIRD society if the observations are valid for such societies. Moreover, WEIRD societies are those which have been most thoroughly exposed to ubiquitous commercial propaganda which I have argued is essentially an unregulated experiment on human subjects. Could there be a connection? Seems worth exploring.

Comments on: The Situation of Experimental Subjects

By: Motivated to procrastinate? | Higher Process

By: Tamara Piety