Self worth and relationships

One way to earn a bit of money when you’re a student is to sign up to take part in psychology studies. I was driving along today thinking about one that I was part of. It had two parts. To begin with you were taken into a room with 3 other participants where were asked to talk about some random (can’t remember what it was) topic. You were then given a sheet of paper where you had to , based on your first impressions, indicate how trustworthy you felt the other people might be in different situations like lending money, advice on relationships, etc.

We were then ushered into separate rooms where we were going to do some more tests. These tests involved looking at various pictures of women and rating them along with whether or not we would be interested in having a “relationship” with them. Anyway, before I started doing this one of the graduate students conducting the experiment came in with the results of the first part of the experiment. It turns out I come across as a very shifty person because the other three guys rated me very low in the trustworthy stakes in all situations. Needless to say I was mortified and I was trying to figure out how they all could have formulated such a low opinion of me????

After we had finished the second part they came clean and said that they had fabricated the results of the first part to try and manipulate our self esteem! So while I was the unlucky one to pull the “everyone hates you” straw, one of the other guys got the “everyone thinks you’re a star!” straw. The whole idea was to investigate how feelings of self worth effect choice of partners. The hypothesis was that someone with lower self esteem would see relationships with “the beautiful people” as being unattainable and set their sights lower. I don’t know whether the results I produced backed that theory up or not but thinking about it today as I drove along with Cutie in her car seat in the back made me think about and PRAY about her future husband.

Obviously I want the very best for her, but there are things I can be doing right now that help ensure that she doesn’t end up falling for some “dead beat”.

Man’s self-centredness now a scientific fact

I think it’s a bit a stretch to accuse 6 month old children of lying and some of the comments take the fuzziness of the science to task but here’s an interesting link that gets you thinking just what might be going on in that little tikes brain.

Read the rest of this entry »