Clarity comments on Open thread, Nov. 09 - Nov. 15, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Do you agree with this statement: 'my work/school is the most important part of my life' (it's a item used to measure conformity with masculinity, haha) and why?
I suspect it's a shitty, very ambiguous question but that's the way psychological questioners often are.
I'm trying to ascertain ways that double barreled questions might be interpreted. I don't really care about your specific answer, just how you come to either a ''agree'' or ''don't agree'' if your answers are going to be coded as one or the other.
I bet most people answering this question do so not by any sort of reasoned consideration of how important work, family, sleep, video games, music-making, sport, etc., etc., etc., are to them, but by a quick System-1-ish consideration of how the question makes them feel. And I bet anyone using this question to measure "conformity with masculinity" or any other psychological characteristic are relying on that. This sort of thing is omnipresent in psychological questionnaires, which I guess is what you're getting at in your second paragraph.
So, anyway, the sort of things I would think about if I were trying to answer this question while taking it more seriously than I think its authors did:
If I were fired, this would be bad, but not too terrible. If a family member died this would be worse. I could come up with further examples, but there is no need to; I now have enough information to answer this question: don't agree.
Thanks! Just the kind of insight I'm looking for. I hope others will contribute.