Whitney Patterson | 12:07 pm, Novem| Link Hsee conducts research on the interplay between psychology and economics, happiness, marketing, and cross-cultural psychology. From the University of Chicago website:Ĭhristopher K. Hsee, is professor of behavioral science and marketing. The head researcher, Professor Christopher K. Researchers found that in the bracelet experiment, those who chose the busy option were more likely to report having had a more positive experience during the experiment than those who remained idle. Those who had the option of reassembling the bracelet into a different design, were more likely to chose the busy option, mirroring the findings in the original experiment wherein there was an increased desire to chose the busy option when there was some sort of justification (preference for the kind of chocolate at the faraway location). Those who were told that they could reassemble the bracelet into the original design were more likely to remain idle. Each of the designs were conveyed to the participants as having equal value to the experiment. ![]() Other participants were told that if they chose to reassemble the bracelet, they could reassemble the bracelet into a different design. Some participants were told that if they chose to reassemble the bracelet, they had to reassemble the bracelet to the match the original design. During the 15 minutes, participants could chose to reassemble the bracelet (busy) or do nothing (idle). Participants were given a bracelet and told that they had to wait 15 minutes. For this experiment, participants were kept busy without exercise. The researches replicated their findings in a different context. “We’re not saying excessive business is good,” says Hsee, “but we do find that a certain amount of busyness is better than idleness.” Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior? ![]() This doesn’t mean that a life of stress and excessive busyness is good for you-quite the opposite, in fact, according to previous research. In fact, Hsee and his co-authors write that people set goals in their lives for no purpose other than to justify keeping busy: “Our study suggests that people search for meaning in order to work”-not the other way around. “We don’t want to say we want to waste our energy for the sake of wasting energy,” says Christopher Hsee, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of Chicago’s business school, “even though we would probably feel better if we did.” So an excess of energy builds, yet we still don’t want to expend energy without any purpose. That desire to conserve energy has persisted, even though people no longer need to devote their energy to basic survival needs. Our ancestors had to conserve energy in order to compete for scarce resources. The researchers speculate that the answer may lie in our evolutionary history. So if busyness makes us feel good, why did participants initially choose to be idle? In a variation on this experiment, when the researchers randomly assigned participants to drop off their survey at one of the two locations, people who walked the longer distance reported feeling happier afterward, even though in this case they were forced to be busy. But when the choice of candy differed between the two locations, they were able to use the candy as a justification for the longer walk, which might otherwise defy common sense. So when the choice of candy was the same at both drop-off locations, participants found it harder to justify choosing the farther location. These results suggest to the researchers that people generally prefer to keep busy, even if they think they’re supposed to prefer taking it easy. Once again, the students who kept busier reported having a more positive experience. What’s more, when the researchers offered a different candy bar at the two locations-milk chocolate at one, dark chocolate at the other-they found that more people chose the farther destination, even though surveys they ran before the experiment determined that the two candy bars are equally attractive to people. However, students who kept busy by walking to the farther location reported feeling happier afterward than did the students who remained idle. Perhaps not surprisingly, more students chose the closer location. ![]() From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.
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