On Wed, 20 May 2009 14:43:25 -0700, William Scott wrote: >A good article on Walter Mischel and his studies of self control is in this >week's New Yorker magazine, titled Don't! > >http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer
A couple of points: (1) Note that most of Mischel's work is correlational -- the extent to which you want to believe his story about why children/adults can or can't delay gratification will depend upon one's willingness to access an account that assume one can infer "causation from correlation". (2) It seems to me that even if one is willing to accept the belief stated in (1) above, it still is not clear what the relevance is of the neuroimaging studies that are suggested in the article. What if there are differences in "delayers" and "non-delayers", say, in their prefrontal cortex activity? Does this imply that the prefrontal cortex activity causes one to be a "delayer" or a "non-delayer"? Or does being a "delayer" or "non-delayer" alters brain activity? Or that there is some unknown third variable that is causing both? The New Yorker article is a good, enjoyable read. The question, I think, is whether one should treat it as fiction or non-fiction. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] P.S. I admit to having initially confused Mischel with Daryl Bem at first and was originally thinking "I guess his parapsychology research didn't pan out". :-) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
