The Issue Of Workaholism
To:
Matt Richtel
From:
Brianna Canty
CC:
Social Science Writing Guild
Date:
September 26, 2014
Re:
You Can’t Take It With You, But You Still Want More
Memo
Introduction
The suffix –aholic indicates that the person this term is being used to describe is one who feels compulsively the need to do something or is addicted to something, and workaholics are on the rise. Workaholism is associated with overearning, the tendency to forgo leisure and work beyond one’s needs, and recently research has been studying the question, do people overearn? This research was published in the journal of Psychological Science and has been evaluated for New York Times readers by reporter Matt Richtel in his article “You Can’t Take It With You, But You Still Want More”. Richtel writes an article that helps readers understand the researcher’s methods, results, and the overall purpose of their experiment, but does not completely tell readers the strengths and weaknesses of the research. While Richtel’s article accurately portrays the experiment and its results, it lacks in its criticism of the strengths and weaknesses of the research due to more emphasis on journalism and less emphasis on science.
Original Research In the original research, the researchers studied the question do people overearn? In other words, the researchers wanted to know if people forgo leisure to work and earn beyond their needs. They stated that the question is understudied because it is difficult to determine the right amount of earning and to define overearning. Therefore, the researchers introduced a highly simplified experimental paradigm to study overearning in a controlled laboratory setting. Before conducting their experiment, the researchers hypothesized that participants would overearn and were more likely to do so when earning rates, the number of times a participant would have to do something before they earned their reward, were high rather than low. The researchers also hypothesized that while
Matt Richtel
From:
Brianna Canty
CC:
Social Science Writing Guild
Date:
September 26, 2014
Re:
You Can’t Take It With You, But You Still Want More
Memo
Introduction
The suffix –aholic indicates that the person this term is being used to describe is one who feels compulsively the need to do something or is addicted to something, and workaholics are on the rise. Workaholism is associated with overearning, the tendency to forgo leisure and work beyond one’s needs, and recently research has been studying the question, do people overearn? This research was published in the journal of Psychological Science and has been evaluated for New York Times readers by reporter Matt Richtel in his article “You Can’t Take It With You, But You Still Want More”. Richtel writes an article that helps readers understand the researcher’s methods, results, and the overall purpose of their experiment, but does not completely tell readers the strengths and weaknesses of the research. While Richtel’s article accurately portrays the experiment and its results, it lacks in its criticism of the strengths and weaknesses of the research due to more emphasis on journalism and less emphasis on science.
Original Research In the original research, the researchers studied the question do people overearn? In other words, the researchers wanted to know if people forgo leisure to work and earn beyond their needs. They stated that the question is understudied because it is difficult to determine the right amount of earning and to define overearning. Therefore, the researchers introduced a highly simplified experimental paradigm to study overearning in a controlled laboratory setting. Before conducting their experiment, the researchers hypothesized that participants would overearn and were more likely to do so when earning rates, the number of times a participant would have to do something before they earned their reward, were high rather than low. The researchers also hypothesized that while