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Economy
In reply to the discussion: Weekend Economists Deck the Halls Christmas Day 2013 [View all]Demeter
(85,373 posts)5. Christmas 2013: Research / Being right or being happy: pilot study
http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7398
Introduction
Three of the authors are general practitioners who see many patients and couples who lead unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy. Mathieu encourages her psychotherapy clients to try to live in the gray. There are a million shades of gray (although a recent erotic novel suggests there are only 50) on the spectrum of white to black, and each provides a much richer telling of a story that is hardly ever as clear as this or that. So, when we looked a bit more closely, we saw that right versus happy was not so much about getting crowned the winner or loser, a genius or fool; it was more about flawed thinking and a desire to want to feel being in control.1 This might be the first study to systematically assess whether it is better to be right than happy; a Medline search in May 2013 found no similar articles. Our null hypothesis was that it is better to be right than happy.
Participants, setting, and design
To be eligible participants had to be part of a couple and willing to take part in the study. We carried out a parallel trial with one man and one woman in their own home. It was decided without consultation that the female participant would prefer to be right and the male, being somewhat passive, would prefer to be happy.
The male was informed of the intervention while the female participant was not (this form of pre-randomisation is known as the Zelen method2). The female participant was blind to the hypothesis being tested, other than being asked to record her quality of life.
Intervention
The intervention was for the male to agree with his wifes every opinion and request without complaint. Even if he believed the female participant was wrong, the male was to bow and scrape...
YOU'LL HAVE TO READ THE REST TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED!
Introduction
Three of the authors are general practitioners who see many patients and couples who lead unnecessarily stressful lives by wanting to be right rather than happy. Mathieu encourages her psychotherapy clients to try to live in the gray. There are a million shades of gray (although a recent erotic novel suggests there are only 50) on the spectrum of white to black, and each provides a much richer telling of a story that is hardly ever as clear as this or that. So, when we looked a bit more closely, we saw that right versus happy was not so much about getting crowned the winner or loser, a genius or fool; it was more about flawed thinking and a desire to want to feel being in control.1 This might be the first study to systematically assess whether it is better to be right than happy; a Medline search in May 2013 found no similar articles. Our null hypothesis was that it is better to be right than happy.
Participants, setting, and design
To be eligible participants had to be part of a couple and willing to take part in the study. We carried out a parallel trial with one man and one woman in their own home. It was decided without consultation that the female participant would prefer to be right and the male, being somewhat passive, would prefer to be happy.
The male was informed of the intervention while the female participant was not (this form of pre-randomisation is known as the Zelen method2). The female participant was blind to the hypothesis being tested, other than being asked to record her quality of life.
Intervention
The intervention was for the male to agree with his wifes every opinion and request without complaint. Even if he believed the female participant was wrong, the male was to bow and scrape...
YOU'LL HAVE TO READ THE REST TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED!
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