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Stefie_K comments on SotW: Be Specific - Less Wrong
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Beating compartmentalization is almost an impossible mandate. My exercise already calls for people to think of specific things they did recently in their lives. I doubt many exercises can do better than that.
In terms of application, I think people are already massively curious about who they are and how they fit in (and this might apply especially strongly to people who aren't the sort to read LW). Just improving folks' self-evaluations could be seen as a pretty big benefit.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/8gv/the_curse_of_identity/
Giving participants two different Big Five tests, and only telling them to think of specific examples on the second one, could work well. But it also opens the door to an underwhelming conclusion if people's abstract self-evaluations actually do tend to be fairly accurate.
Actually, I want to take some of my criticism back. It seems to me that there are several instrumental goals that would help with the terminal goal of getting people to routinely be specific at useful times in the future. No one exercise has to encompass all of the instrumental goals. The list I see right now is:
1) Make people better at being specific.
2) Get people to appreciate the value of being specific.
3) Get people to recognize situations where they or other people aren't being specific.
4) Get people to react negatively to a lack of specifics.
5) Make it occur to people to be specific.
6) Show/get people to think of contexts to apply their new skill of being specific.
7) Get people to be specific as a habit, without thinking about it.
Your exercise could help with #1, and also #2 if the contrast between personality test results strikes the students as significant.
Mine is intended to help with #4, and with good scenarios, could help with #3 and #6. If the scenario involves something practical, it could also help with #2.
Feel free to add to my list.
8) Get people to recognize when other people want them to be more (or less) specific.
9) Get people to recognize when they are being specific about the wrong subject.