The article I will be summarizing and stating my opinions on is called “Choosing to Suffer as a Consequence of Expecting to Suffer: Why Do People Do It?” written by Ronald Comer and James D. Laird of Clark University. This article is under the tab “Would you Eat a Worm” in the research paper options. The article discusses the behavior of “choos[ing] to suffer as a consequence of having expected to suffer” (Comer and Laird 92).
The article begins by discussing a few different studies that were conducted that all seemed to result in the same discovery. The discovery showed that if people were expecting to have to complete an unpleasant task then offered to do a more neutral or pleasant task, they would end up still choosing the unpleasant task. In the studies there were also people who were given neutral tasks to begin with and then offered an unpleasant task to choose instead, to no surprise the people chose the neutral task. So the question the article asks is why do the people who are expecting to perform an unpleasant task and then given the option of a neutral task still choosing the unpleasant task. In an attempt to understand this behavior there are many studies explained, but the most present study explains these negative expectancies “in terms of the kinds of cognitive changes which might be expected to occur in subjects in these situations” (Comer and Laird 93).
The theory accepted with this understanding is “the self-attribution view” (Comer and Laird 93) which is assuming that the people placed in these experiments “were simply trying to make sense of their impending suffering and, somehow, the sense they made of it led them to go on and choose to suffer when the opportunity to escape suddenly became available” (Comer and Laird 93). Overall the general hypothesis of this study was that the effects of a person expecting to suffer on a later choice were due to the person changing their conception of themselves and actions.
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In my opinion this research was completed and analyzed very well. In the article it talks about multiple different studies conducted of more or less the same experiment. In each experiment conducted the same paradoxical behavior was observed. This behavior being choosing to suffer based off of conceptual and cognitive changes in thinking during the experiment as stated in the previous summary. The theory of “negative acceptancy” is discussed throughout this research article which I think is analyzed very well considering the facts observed in each study. While reading about the studies conducted I was trying to make sense of why someone would actually choose to suffer when an alternative escape is presented to them at a later time. The article does a very good job at going on and informing the reader about why this action cognitively takes place. The article discusses three ways to essentially “make sense” of the behavior observed.
The first being that the person in the experiment has come to the conclusion that they deserve the sufferable task they are assigned to complete. The second being that the person will reward themselves good qualities, such as being brave, in order to complete the task. Lastly the third is that the person convinces themselves and changes their perception of the task that they have to complete, now perceiving it as more of a neutral task rather than unpleasant. Noting that the article analyzed the data and gives three possible outcomes for the behavior observed shows that the research was analyzed in depth and carefully. After completing my reading of the article I learned a lot. The research was very informative and taught me about how a person can cognitively change their perception of something using something as simple as asking a person to eat a worm. Overall I enjoyed learning about the studies conducted and the outcome of the information the research gathered when it was performed.
