Research Summaries: Development and Validation of the Short Grit Scale (Grit –S)
This research summary will be especially attractive to those who have interest in psychometric and would like to see how the concept and measure of grit has evolved. In this paper, Angela Duckworth refines her measurement of grit and establishes the test-retest stability of the concept apart form predictive and consensual validity.
Animation of a vernier caliper measuring a bolt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The authors wanted to come up with a briefer version of the grit scale, which would have better internal consistency and still retain the predictive power and the two factor structure of Consistency of Interests ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 22, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries Angela Duckworth grit Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Positive predictors of teacher effectiveness
This study looked at grit, life satisfaction and optimism of teachers as predictors of their effectiveness which will distinguish high performing teachers from the mediocre.
They conducted a prospective longitudinal study wherein, grit, life satisfaction and optimistic explanatory style of novice Teach for America teachers was measured before they started school year. The gains in academic performance of the students they taught was used as an indicator of their effectiveness at the school year end.
Grit, the ability to work hard under challenging circumstances, may be relevant to teacher effectiveness as they do face cons...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 22, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Research Summaries Angela Duckworth grit Martin Seligman Optimism teaching Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Empirical identification of the major facets of Conscientiousness
This research summary looks at a paper co-authored by Angela Duckworth, that tries to carve conscientiousness at it joints.
English: perfectionist measuring and cutting grass (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Conscientiousness is a personality trait that is present in most personality theories and measured by most personality inventories, the most famous of these being the Big Five or OCEAN model and as measured by Big Five Inventory (BFI)/ NEO-PI-R.
Personality traits structure is supposed to be hierarchical with traits like Conscientiousness comprising of many finer aspects or facets. The NEO-PI-R is structured around 6 facets ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 19, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: personality Research Summaries Angela Duckworth Conscientiousness Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: The Economics and Psychology of Personality Traits
Today’s research summary is about a paper co-authored by Angela Duckworth, that is at the intersection of psychology and economics. Though I have been following behavioral economics a bit, I still found the paper a bit challenging to read and comprehend and don’t claim to understand all the attached jargon, functions and mathematical formulations. The fact that the paper is 88 pages long wasn’t of help either (the saving grace being that 20 or more pages were filled with references alone), so read the rest of the summary at your own peril!
An illustration of Spearman’s two-factor intelligence theory...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 18, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: economics personality Research Summaries Angela Duckworth Big Five personality traits Intelligence quotient Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals
Today’s research summary is based on this paper which Angela Duckworth co-authored with Chris Peterson and colleagues, and where she first introduced her concept of grit and operationalized it by introducing the Grit Scale.
Monkey Grit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One common thread running thorough Angela’s research is a (harmonious) obsession with finding out what leads to great achievement. A lot of earlier research in psychology has focused on the role of talent/ intelligence in high achievement, and that role is well established.
Terman, for example, studied a group of highly gifted children in a famed longit...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 17, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: motivation Research Summaries Angela Duckworth grit Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Self-Discipline Gives Girls the Edge: Gender in Self-Discipline, Grades, and Achievement Test Scores
Today’s post summarizes a paper by Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman, that parses the same set of data, as obtained in their earlier paper (see research summary of that paper here), to come up with new insights about gender differences in self-control and scholastic achievement.
Dangal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Girls, typically outperform boys when it comes to getting good grades overall and within each subject. this is true of US; however from what I have seen of Indian board results, the same is true of almost every board exam in India, be it CBSE, ICSE or State Boards.
The girls however do not outperfor...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 16, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries Angela Duckworth IQ Martin Seligman self-control Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Childhood IQ and risk of bipolar disorder in adulthood: prospective birth cohort study
This study focused on association of childhood IQ (which is an imperfect measure of true intelligence) with propensity for bipolar disorder in young adulthood. This study did not look at creativity and did not look at actual occurrence of bipolar disorder, thus all the results should not be extrapolated wildly.
Childhood IQ at age 8 was measured using WISC-III and separate verbal and performance IQ as well as Full IQ scores were used in analysis. Propensity towards bipolar was measured using HCL-32 (hypo-mania checklist) which consist of 32 yes/no answers to statements like ‘I am more easily distracted’ when in...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 14, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: bipolar intelligence Research Summaries Bipolar disorder IQ Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents
Today’s research summary focuses on a very early article by Angela Duckworth, that first catapulted her to fame. Co-authored with Martin Seligmen, the article focuses on how non-cognitive factors like self-control are a better predictor of scholastic achievement than say cognitive factors like IQ.
Two college students wrestling (collegiate, scholastic, or folkstyle) in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Authors use the awkward term self-discipline in the paper, but all they really meant was self-control, defining which, and around which, a rich literature already existed. Angela clarifies as much in her ne...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 13, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: intelligence Research Summaries academic achievment character strengths IQ self-control Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Positive Psychology in Clinical Practice
Review articles are themselves supposed to be a summary of a field of inquiry, so it appeared queer summarizing a review article; but here I go. This post summarizes a 2005 review article appearing in Annual Review of Clinical Psychology. As it is more than a decade since the publication of this article by Martin Seligman, Angela Duckworth and Tracy Steen, I think it is appropriate to see how far the field has come since then and what still remains to be done.
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Positive psychology (PP), in this article, is seen through the triple lens of focusing on subjective well-being or pleasure; flow, eng...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 10, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness positive psychology Research Summaries Angela Duckworth Martin Seligman Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries:Do unto others or treat yourself? The effects of prosocial and self-focused behavior on psychological flourishing
Trick or Treat? Which would you choose? Perhaps, most of you, who celebrate Halloween, would prefer giving treats to the children. And we feel happy about that too! Intuitively we know that treating/ helping others, makes us even more happier than it makes the helped person.
Today’s research summary is from the journal emotion, and based on this paper by Lyubomirsky et al.
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar may be awarded to those that show a pattern of going the extra mile to be nice, without being asked. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is a rich literature out there that shows that helping others makes us feel h...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 10, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: altruism Research Summaries happiness kindness Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels
Towels on a rack in a hotel room (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Don’ Panic. I know the title of this research article seems heavy, so keep your towel nearby as I try to walk you through this article from Cialdini et al in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Cialdini is famous for his book Influence and his work focuses around how to influence other people. One way to get people to do what you want, is to refer to social norms and thus use the power of peer pressure. For example, a toothpaste manufacturer may advertise that most people do use toothpaste and that too of their brand. Thus, a social norm is highligh...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 6, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries influence persuasion Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Productivity Orientation and the Consumption of Collectable Experiences
Today’s research summary is once again from the Journal of Consumer Research. You can read the original article here.
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In the last research summary we looked at the notion of extraordinary experiences, or experiences that are rare and infrequent, and found that young people prefer them to build their experiential CV. The authors of this article refine this concept to come up with a concept of collectible experiences: experiences that are rare and infrequent, as well as novel and extreme. An example may help clarify; while staying in an Ice hotel may always remain an extraordinary exp...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Research Summaries Source Type: podcasts
Evolution of the 4 Emotion Dimensions
PAD is a popular dimensional theory of emotions, whereby all emotions can be classified on three dimensions: Pleasure (Pleasant- Unpleasant), Arousal (Ready-Relaxed), and Dominance (Control- Lack of control). To this model has been added a fourth dimension called Predictability (Ambiguous- Certain) (please see my earlier post for why this fourth dimension is relevant).
Manga emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As an example, anger and fear are both unpleasant emotions, but angry person is in control (has high dominance) while a fearful person is not in control of the situation.
Similarly, both contentment and excitement are...
Source: The Mouse Trap - July 3, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion happiness ABCD emotions evolution Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Happiness from Ordinary and Extraordinary Experiences
Today’s research summary comes from another article in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Oxygen toxicity occurs when the lungs take in a higher than normal O 2 partial pressure, which can occur in deep scuba diving. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The big ideas:
It is well established that experiential purchases (like going on a vacation) lead to greater happiness than material purchases (like buying a car). However, not much is known about which types of experiences lead to greater happiness and for whom.
A dimension on which experiences reliably differ are whether they are ordinary, meaning common and frequent, or extra...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Research Summaries Source Type: podcasts
Research Summaries: Costs and Benefits of Consuming
I am toying around with a new idea of providing research summaries for a few select articles that I read and find interesting. Do let me know if you find them useful. The idea is that one could read the research summary to get a good idea about the paper and then decide to dig deeper into the original source if one’s interest has been piqued sufficiently. The research summaries would be short and neither a substitute for the original article nor a copy n paste of the abstract.
So here is the first of the research summaries. The paper is Costs and Benefits of Consuming by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and you can read it he...
Source: The Mouse Trap - June 29, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Research Summaries consumerism happiness Maslow's hierarchy of needs Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Source Type: podcasts
