Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

In some professions saying that you "love you work" is a signal of a good employee. So I would expect some dishonesty in self-reporting.

How could we ask the question to reduce this signalling? I imagine only silly questions like this:

Imagine that for some external reasons your workplace must be closed for two weeks. During those two weeks you will receive your normal salary, and those two weeks will not be taken from your holidays. How does this message make you feel?
a) awesome!
b) mildly happy
c) neutral
d) mildly sad
e) depressed

On the second thought, is this question really silly, or does it show our true preferences? And the silliness is merely a reflection of dissonance between our professed values and real values.

I think it genuinely shows our preferences. Of course, I also would be fairly neutral about this (and would probably seek other work for those two weeks).

10TraderJoe14y

This doesn't quite answer the question. I would be very happy if my place of work were closed and I could do fun things for two weeks. My objection to working isn't that work is unpleasant; it's that there's a high opportunity cost [all the fun people I could hang out with, the great books I could read, etc]. A better question is "imagine you are asked for your employer to take part in an experiment where you instead have your brain turned off. Your body ages by eight hours, but your brain experiences it as "you step into the office, then step out". It retains the silliness but solves the opportunity cost problem.