Learners discover how apply to research methods to their study of Positive Psychology. In this course, we study with Dr. Angela Duckworth and Dr. Claire Robertson-Kraft. Through an exploration their work "True Grit" and interviews with researchers and practitioners, you develop a research hypothesis and learn how to understand the difference between internal and external validity. You also begin to understand and apply the strengths and weaknesses associated with different types of measurements and evaluation designs. You then interpret the results in an empirical study. Suggested prerequisites: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science and Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions.
Angela Duckworth: 2.2 Self-Control Measures
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Do curso por University of Pennsylvania
Positive Psychology: Character, Grit and Research Methods
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University of Pennsylvania
349 ratings
Curso 3 de 5 em Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology
Na lição
Collecting Data
Conheça os instrutores
Claire Robertson-Kraft, Ph.D.Director, ImpactED
Positive Psychology Center and Fels Insititute of Government
Angela Duckworth, Ph.D.Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Positive Psychology Center
[MUSIC]
Would a self-control scale actually be good at measuring self-control?
because I'm trying to figure out standards.
I think I have low-self control, but then I have friends
compared to them, I have really high self control.
>> [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] >> We should
all go out with those friends.
>> My god.
>> [LAUGH] >> The point is,
I feel like it's really based on your context.
I think within this group, I probably score really low.
So I don't know.
>> If you were to compare yourself to other mapsters on just being a positive,
energetic person, you'd be like, I'm nothing.
Right, I'm depressing but that's if you're preparing yourself for other Master's.
Yeah, excellent point.
And even if you just read these, wouldn't resisting temptation,
I've trouble concentrating, compared to whom?
>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, because I can say this,
Allison's got in here, so obviously it is.
>> [LAUGH] Yes, that is true.
So you guys have just identified two limitations of this measure.
One, it doesn't account for domain specificity.
It doesn't say in eating, in controlling your temper, in procrastinating,
it's just domain general, so it's a very blunt instrument.
And the second thing is that you have this frame of reference
that you bring to it and that's got to differ across people.
Now, you might think, well, mapsters are different from other people,
which you are.
But also, imagine kids who go to a school and
they live a life that's just four city blocks.
And all the people they see are just like the people who live on these four
city blocks.
And then, there's this other kid who lives in a different part of the world.
Or sometimes, even just a different part of the ZIP code.
And they have another four blocks, and that's their whole world.
We find when you take measures like this, in fact, this exact questionnaire, and
we give it to kids in different schools, even within the city of Philadelphia,
what you find is exactly the problem in this reference problem.
So we need this questionnaire to give to the highest performing school.
In the state of Pennsylvania, and our teachers.
And then, we gave it to kids at a typical, underperforming Philadelphia school.
And the results were exactly what you would know,
if you understood frame of reference problems.
Which is, in particular, the teachers rated the kids at the highest performing
school as lower in these things, than kids in a much more lower performing school.
So implicit in this is that we all have the same standards,
the same frame of reference and we don't.
So that's another limitation.
So I hope I'm making you into informed enthusiastic researchers or
consumers of research but I'm kind of making you cranky.
Because you're going to be like, yeah, I read this paper.
It was great, but I read the questionnaire they gave.
And Immediately you're going to think about frame of reference,
you're going to think about domain specificity, social desirability bias,
faking, some of the other things that we study.
So this is how it's often studied.
This is probably the most widely used measure of self-control that there is.
And I'll say one more thing that's relevant to capstone.
Most of the things that you want to study have been measured by someone and
it takes about five years, just rule of thumb, to make a measure.
You got to collect the data, you got to do all your very, very boring statistics,
called psychometrics, and you have to show all kinds of validity evidence.
Validity is what?
>> True. >> Come on.
>> [LAUGH] >> So
you've got to show that it's truly measured.
Convergent validity, discriminate validity, predictive validity,
incremental validity.
That is its own capstone plus.
So when you set up to do your capstone,
before you say first I'm going to make a measure of this concept.
And then, it's like wow, stop right there.
Because when you said first I'm going to make a measure of, that's five years.
So from almost everything that you guys, even if you're like,
I don't like that scale.
It's not domain specific enough.
It's probably something that you could maybe adjust a little bit for
your own purposes, rather than starting from scratch.
>> Yes? >> I was just going to ask back to
the kind of frame of reference with the self report and
now the informative report.
>> With the teachers, would they have, were they varied?
>> When you look at kids in a school, and you know, teachers ratings of their self
control, they are actually pretty highly correlated.
[LAUGH] Although not perfectly, so if a kid says, yeah, I'm fine!
Their teachers very often will say, well usually more like four,
but still on the higher end.
So within a school there's definitely a correlation,
although it's not as high as you would think.
And interestingly, we've been digging into when it's not true.
So when a kid says, five, and the teacher says, two, right?
Who are these kids, right?
And it turns out the kids who are wildly off and always in the direction,
it turns out, of overestimating their own character.
>> [LAUGH] >> Not underestimating.
It's true that there are a handful of kids who were tough on themselves.
They say two and their teacher says five.
That might be you, actually.
>> [LAUGH] >> But most kids,
they're subject to the kind of the optimistic bias that we all have.
The kids who have a real yawning gap between their own rating and
what the average of all of their teachers' is.
I can say two things about these kids.
One is that they're happier.
So in all the measures of stress and well being they're like,
I'm satisfied with my life, I have lots of positive emotions.
I don't have a lot of negative emotion.
Second thing I can tell you, follow them over time and
their objective measures of achievement like GPA.
So I do think there is a lot of nuance in this.
Like what's good?
Is it good to have an accurate self-impression of what you're doing or
is it not good?
Well, it's complicated.
because there seem to be Some benefits as it were of a delusional,
if you will, view of you own character.
Yeah?
>> Does their subjective well being kind of maintain the?
Or at some point do they click into reality?
>> So we haven't, that's an excellent question.
We don't know, because we don't have enough data.
We haven't followed the kids long enough.
My guess is that, and this is by the way, why Freud.
I'm a fan of Freud, even though he got a lot wrong
>> Freud is the best thing ever.
>> Freud is the best thing ever, right?
>> You should get Freud to come to >> [LAUGH]
>> Come on, James, work a little harder
>> Just because of scientists readings,
he's just so smart.
But he gets wrong and he's just so even if he's right, he's just so.
[CROSSTALK] A great writer >> [LAUGH]
>> [INAUDIBLE]
>> And he had a lot of issues.
[LAUGH] Yes, that's true, a lot of issues.
So I think that what Freud might say about
this kind of denial, like I'm fine,
is that it's an immature defense.
So it does have these short-term benefits, but in the long-term.
It's not going to, which is why he said there are immature defenses and
mature defenses and in the long run, mature defenses are better.
For example, generosity or altruism, he thought, was a mature defense,
whereas denial was an immature defense.
Yeah?
>> You mentioned different schools, but have you noticed any,
says you accounting for cultural differences?
That's a really excellent question.
We haven't had a sample that's the right kind of sample to really meaningfully
look at socioeconomic differences and self-control.
So oftentimes, you go to a high school I mean, this is a problem with American
education but there's restriction on range in the socioeconomic sense.
In other words, there are kids who are wealthier than others but
it's a school where there's a lot of consistency and then you go to this other
school and it's like, wow it's a totally different universe.
So what you really need is a sample that has lots of different
schools in it that are all across the map.
In fact, what you really need is something that we learned very briefly about.
It's on one slide so it's okay if you don't remember but
we need a representative sample, a random sample.
Remember I was like, look if you want to be the US government
go collect a random sample for your capstone.
But until you are the US Census Bureau, right,
who's going to say we're going to match the number of Latinos, and black and
white and gender and age and sexual orientation and zip code and urban rural.
That's a representative sample.
It's a tiny little sample that is truly representative of the country which
of course is still not representative of the world.
That's the kind of sample or close to it you'd want to get.
And I haven't had that luxury yet.
My guess is, though, that because there have been a few studies on this
topic with, well, if you don't have a random sample,
you have what's called a convenience sample, because it was convenient.
[LAUGH] So in a couple of convenience samples, there has been shown a gradient.
And it's usually where low SCS students have less of the capacities that we
are talking about.
I think for sensible reasons, which we'll get into.
Other questions?
Yeah?
>> So the Japanese part of me would ask if the self perception of the students in
the class, if their lower self perception of their
>> Control over self-reporting and
the teachers hire self-reporting, if that would, how different that would be in
Japan versus the American side of me that would say there's much more, yay,
I'm a five when they're reporting.
>> So there are well-documented differences across culture.
Here's one finding which I always find,
it just almost surprises me even though it comes out every year.
So when you look at these international tests of mathematics, it turns out,
shocker, that the United States doesn't do that well compared to matched
countries on their gross national product, and their level of development.
Asian countries do very well..
Germany, Finland, they also do very well.
But in those International tests,
there's also a battery of self-report questionnaires that come at the end.
And included is usually a question like, hey, how good are you at math?
And the countries where those scores are the highest,
have kids who actually give middling levels and they're like, I'm okay.
Because I can only do calculus at age 14, right.
The United States is like I'm pretty awesome.
>> [LAUGH] >> I knew how much money to give for
my ice cream today.
>> [LAUGH] >> And so,
the standards are very different.
I think that gets us back to reference bias, right?
And so it might be a part of what makes that country good at something to actually
have the high standard that gets in the way of the measurement.
So that's been shown actually.
>> because the happiness is so low.
I mean we've talked a little bit about how positive psychology doesn't relate so
much to well, Japan for example, from my own experience.
Like it's such a community oriented, not individualistic.
>> Not individual like me, yeah.
>> I do not matter, right, in that context.
>> Yeah.
>> And you're serving your family first or your culture first, right?
>> Yeah. >> I'm wondering what the relationship
is in that, right?
So it's fascinating to hear about this.
>> I think even when you think about the translating,
this skill's been translated into different languages.
But when you translate it literally, does it actually translate?
I mean, all words are really actually symbols.
So I think that's actually a really good point.
Excellent point.
I don't think, actually, Said this in any particular line, but
I do have a friend who is an Aristotle scholar who said pretty
much the gist of ethics, or at least part of it.
So he's often quoted as saying, and I think he did mean that
the roots of education are bitter but the fruit is sweet.
And that is to me to say that education to some extent, learning how to write
a good topic sentence, going through statistics with Claire.
As great as we can be, and we try, but there is a kind of delay in gratification.
Please struggle through this, please read this article yet again.
Please look at our edits to your APA formatting and try again.
It's not immediately rewarding.
I mean it's not as fun as eating a chocolate bar for example.
So the food is sweet but the roots can be bitter.
And I would say that like well that could be a hypothesis that would be tested.
Any quote that you like, any poem that you like.
Rudyard Kipling's If or whatever like,
that's just a hypothesis waiting to be tested.
So in the, that looks like 80s actually, maybe early 90s,
on semi-high who, of course, gave us the concept of flow,
he also gave us the concept of experience sampling method.
Have you guys studied ESM or experience sampling method, in other classes at all?
What was it? That was like mixed.
You were like, yeah.
And then some of you were like, no.
>> [LAUGH] It's in the readings.
Keep your mouth shut if you said no.
>> [LAUGH] >> In the readings, right, the readings.
So what was after, who was studying
flow is the in the moment experience.
He had done all these interviews with ballerinas and musicians.
And they were telling them what it used, you know what it
felt like when they experienced flow a month ago, or a year ago.
Because flow is often rarely experienced.
It's not typically an every day experience for people.
And he thought that's not how I can study it, I need a better measure.
So he invented this method, which is so cool.
He invented this.
He's like, I'm going to beep people and I'm going to sample their experience.
That's why it's called Experience Sampling Method, ESM.
And he beeps them with beepers, actually, right?
So kids in this study, about 1,200 of them, walked around with beepers,
and sheets of paper that were all photocopies of this questionnaire.
Which I know you can't read, but
I just want you to see what it actually looked like from the original study.
It has a date, and a time, so you gotta write that in.
And then as you were beeped, right, so in the sampling your experience.
As you were beeped, where were you?
What was on your mind?
What was the main thing you were doing?
What else were you doing?
And then, he asked, was the main thing you were doing more like work or
more like play, both, neither?
And then, about two dozen questions on how it felt.
How well were you concentrating?
Were you living up to the expectations of others?
How happy were you?
How lonely were you?
How challenged were you?
Was this activity important to you?
So this was one of the first experience sampling methods studies that was done.
And because it was done on 1,200 kids,
and it was not a nationally representative sample, but it was very diverse.
So there were kids from urban, suburban and rural, from wealthy neighborhoods,
low income, neighbors.
They're white students, they're non-white students.
They're girls, they're boys.
What can we learn about this hypothesis?
Is it true that when you beep a kid, in the moment that they're doing
academic work, that they have the experience that, yeah, it's important.
But I don't really feel like doing it.
Because that would be like the exact conflict that Freud was talking about.
Well, first we would want to know how much academic work
really takes up the life of an adolescent.
And here with the kids who were in the study, in orange
I coded all of the beeps that were academic work of some kind,
either in school or also doing class work and homework.
And actually, each of the blue wedges, which just merged
together there like that's everything else that's not academic.
There's no wedge that's as big as the orange wedge.
So much if not most really of a waking life of a teenager,
is doing something that relates to school and that's why Lynn Corno,
who is a professor of education says that studenting is the job of a child.
[INAUDIBLE] Like that's your job.
You're not a plumber.
You're not an electrician.
You're a student.
That's what you do.
In fact, that's what the data suggests.
Now, you can say, let's look at those What do kids say,
how important is what you're doing here future goals?
Across every socioeconomic or ethnic group in a sample,
girls boys, no matter how old you are,
kids universally say that their academic work is their job.
It is the most important thing that they do compared to you having a paid job for
those who had jobs, played sports, reading, writing, talking to family,
talking to friends.
Eating meals, sleeping, waiting to do something, housework, chores,
playing games, and last, television.
This by the way was before social media because I think we'd have more bars for
other things.
So this to me says that we at least have the set up for a conflict.
Here is are you happy right now when you're doing what you're doing, and
below average, right for most things.
This, by the way, is doing individual work in the classroom.
This is listening to lectures.
Or as many students hand wrote in their forms, listening to my teacher talk at me.
>> [LAUGH] >> And then, a homework study and
they really don't like taking tests and quizzes in school.
The least favorite activity, like when you meet someone you're like well what were
you doing just then, it's like taking a quiz.
It's like how was it?
Are you happy?
Like, no.
So this to me is, what was that?
>> It's really low variance.
>> What was that?
>> Really low variance.
>> Yeah, there's not a lot of variance, right, so good observation.
Here, it's six and here it's 4.7 or something.
So there's not a huge amount of variance.
They're not using the whole scale, right,
because it went from at least one to seven.
And so, that's important to note.
And by the way, the effect sizes here, what's the difference between an academic
and non-academic, as you might guess their small to medium their not like enormous.
And by the way to anticipate other people's questions there's a lot of
variation.
I mean, some kids are like, it's not so bad.
And then kids that end up going to Swarthmore are like, classes,
I love reading.
>> [LAUGH] >> They're not really common examples.
So I just want to say that this is empirical evidence supporting
Aristotle's hypothesis.
It's a correlational study.
So we didn't randomly assign kids to condition,
that we have our own limitations.
Is it really causal?
What's really going on here?
But I think it's supportive of the idea that the roots of education are not
that fun sometimes but the fruit is sweet, but it's not immediate rewarding.
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