I like debate for different reasons to you - it helps me explore ideas. I’m sure if I think debate is such a greta thing. Some of the best debaters are lawyers who ironically have the worst health outcomes. Personally I think debating is often about establishing power which ultimately isn’t good for the world.

And is it really useful to know yourself? I remember reading a piece of research (Sonja L i think) that talked about people who know themselves as being “wiser but sadder” - perhaps being blissfully unaware.

What is unbelievable is that debate is not a major component of public education. How bizarre! My high school, did not to my knowledge have a debate team. Maybe someday I will participate in teaching kids the art of debate.

I’m really liking your discussion about self-reports. I’m of two minds about them also. I’ve written a few thoughts about self-reports before.

There’s one part of self-reports that I really like: trusting the person to know him/herself well - even that implicit trust in a self-report is empowering as opposed to saying, “we’ll take a look at what we think you’re really all about.”

I really could argue both ways - that both methods - self- and not-self - can be effective, depending on the researcher’s goal. (By offering to argue both sides, I feel like I’m in high school - I was involved with the debate team, and it really kind of bothered me a little that the competitions were about randomly getting assigned one or the other side of an argument whether you believe it the side you got assigned or not!)

S.

I wouldn’t totally rule out self-reports, but I do see their shortcomings. Even if psychologists could objectively determine whether someone was happy, if the individual said “I’m happy” I don’t know which measure I’d trust: the self-report or the objective one.

It is quite a deep subject really.

The problem with most research is that it relies on questionnaires that inherantly subject to self report bias. Asking somehow “how happy are you?” is silly - for example research shows that Americans tend to over report their levels of happiness when compared to day to day experience.

Psychologists are now using alternative measures in research because of the flaws in self report questionnaires. eg implicit self esteem, physiological measures such as HRV, Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Do you remember when Behaviorism was the big thing in education? Operant conditioning was considered the holy grail that would solve all kinds of problems through reinforcement and punishment? Right off teachers equated punishment with mean looks, time-outs, removal of privileges. Even behaviorists make the mistake of confusing the technical term punishment with the everyday usage. Giving a child a sticker could be technically punishing if it suppresses a preceding behavior.

The same thing happened with reinforcement. Teachers thought that M&Ms were reinforcing. What if you hate M&Ms? Actually the point is moot, because if you gave the M&Ms to a child and the preceding behavior was strengthen, it was a reinforcer. Period. Still, culturally, reinforcer means goodies such as extra free time, candy, french fries, smiles, a hug, etc. Nevermind that isn’t what reinforcement is technically about. A kick in the pants could positively reinforce behavior. So could torture!

So here is my way of dealing with research. I see it as a complementary lens for viewing the world. It is another form of evidence that is worthwhile, but if it contradicts my views, I just wait awhile. There’ll be a more forgiving study in the future.