Your Favourite Whitney Memories: 'Singing At The Back Of The Bus'
Jamie Lee Curtis: Blame It On The Fame Game?
Want to crush someone's hopes and dreams? Use your imagination. A new study suggests that people are likely to give up their ambitions only after they're given scenarios of all the ways they could horribly, horribly fail.By toying with the minds of ambitious young college kids, the psych department at the University of Ohio at Lima was able to figure out exactly what to say to make people abandon their dreams. Analysts (or us, anyway) hope this information can be used to nip potential failures in the bud, since toiling away at something you're bad at not only wastes time, but leads to frustration, career plateaus and Paris Hilton movies.
Researchers culled a group of students studying to be psychologists, divided them up, and basically taunted their career aspirations in three different ways. The study deduced that just telling people they'll fail isn't enough -- it helps to paint "a very vivid picture" of said failure.
So the next time your nephew says he wants to be Spider-Man when he grows up, don't just tell him that superheroes aren't real. Tell him that he's going to end up as a mascot at Six Flags, taking pictures with tourists for dollars, occasionally taking off his mask to smoke Kools underneath the tilt-a-whirl.
Comments:
Add a comment
Tuesday 08 September
By Dennis
Well, great achievements involve great risk. To be able to live with that risk requires encouragement from other people. So it work both ways.
Reply
Sunday 20 December
By Joe67
And this article outs a positive spin on science destroying our dreams. No wonder so few aspire to greatness anymore.
While pursuing a career one might find that they aren't suited for one type of job but do find a way to take what made them interested in a field and apply it else where learning something about themselves in the process.
Maybe they really liked observing different peoples unique traits and studying psychology only to end up becoming a fiction writer with a style of writing physiological thrillers with memorable characters that is well received.
How ever now days we don't believe in true education any more and it costs so much that the end goal is measured in but predictable money and success. Learning to paint or studying chemistry is worthless to anyone not destined to be come a successful professional artist or chemist. The idea they could go on to invent some new manner of high quality paint for artists or do sculpture influenced by organic chemistry is too creative and intuitive and modern culture has no faith in the individuals unique value and no patience for such wasteful uncertainty. Learn, Earn, buy, consume. You are a cog and should fit your predetermined groove this is success all else ifs likely failure.
Why is it that Science and Social Science in particular love to suck the magic right out of life ? Love is a chemical imbalance, people a bunch of soulless beasts under the illusion of free will. Love is dead, romance dead, altruism dead and worst of all science tells us they never in fact existed. Of course once we all in fact believe this , and behave accordingly then they very well may not.
Brings to mind that famous experiment form the last century where a doctor and scientist attempted to prove a soul existed by weighing people before and after death. The verdict ? Sorry no soul. No one ever attempted to weigh other mental constructs of applied phenomenon. No one was weighing math books then painting the pages white and crying ah ha it weighs the same math is an invalid concept.
Why science is ever trying to pull the curtain back on the our wizard of Oz to show us the pathetic withered old dwarf.
Science contributes a great many things to our lives and from time to time finds the amazing, wondrous and beautiful in the universe. Yet when it comes to analyzing human beings it often comes off like a friend you take to a magic show who keeps yelling ah ha see it's up his sleeve or look, look, there is a false bottom under there !
When dealing with people science is kind of like the person who blurts out the ending to a movie you actually wanted to see. Because they decided it was a waste of their time, they expect you to thank them for keeping you from wasting 10 dollars.
Thank you science for finding a way to destroy our hopes and dreams. Now if you would be so kind as to please add it the list of other things with which to disillusion us in your infinitely condescending , materialistic, reductionist wisdom. Then instead of inventing any new designer anti-depressants to cheer us up , just sit on it.
Reply