Convictions change over time

• April 25, 2024

The convictions of a person, regardless of their age, although they believe they are final, are not, but will be modified over time; This is the result of a psychological experiment carried out by the Universities of Harvard and Virginia , as well as by National Scientific Research Fund of Brussels .

The results of this experiment, called "The mirage of the end of history", was based around 19 thousand people from 18 to 68 years of age, who were asked about their convictions, for example, how much they would be willing to pay to see within 10 years your current favorite group.

They were also asked how much they would pay now to see their favorite group 10 years ago. And the first figure was much higher than the second, consistently across all age groups.

Another example of the results of the experiment, published in the journal Science, is that 30-year-old people believe that it will change much in the next 10 years, less than 40-year-old people admit that it has changed in the last 10 years. .

The researchers analyze the behavior, convictions, ideals, principles and inclinations of the subjects. They are indirect study strategies -the same person is not compared 10 years before or after-, but their results are solid thanks to the powerful statistics that the large sample of people allows.

For Daniel Gilbert, from Harvard University , as well as for the rest of his colleagues, this experiment has many practical consequences in the lives of people: "people pay a price too high to treasure for the future the kind of things that satisfy you in the present, but surely They will not satisfy you in the future. "

Psychologists cite the example of the indelible tattoo for which a teenager sacrifices his savings, and that 10 years later he would pay for anything to erase from his skin.

"At any stage of life," write Gilbert and his colleagues, "people make decisions that powerfully influence the lives of the people they will become and when they finally become them, they no longer seem so interesting."
 

Video Medicine: Convictions and Cultural Change: A Google Hangout with John MacArthur (April 2024).