Mundane Events Research Articles

Infrequently occurring activities and contexts in time use data.

In this paper we describe an approach to the study of time use data that focuses on relatively infrequent activities as well as the contexts in which the activities take place. To illustrate the method, we present several examples from a secondary analysis of the Multinational Comparative Time-Budget data, based on over 25,000, 24-hour, time use diaries collected in 12 countries during 1965 through 1966. Activities that represent a small fraction of the overall time budget of a population may nevertheless yield valuable insights into a culture or group. Analyses of such mundane events as doing the laundry, transporting children, and taking a walk indicate marked differences among the countries surveyed in terms of frequencies, durations, by whom, and with whom these activities were typically performed. In the future, time use studies can be expected to contribute to the understanding of mental disorders in natural contexts. In contrasting specific diagnostic groups with normal subjects, analyses of specific activities (e.g., personal care, social interaction) or contexts (e.g., alone vs. with others, at home vs. away) may be particularly relevant. Strategies that combine continuous recording (diary) with repeated, instantaneous experience-sampling methods are likely to be the most useful in such studies of mental disorders.

An Economic View of the Acquisition of Reasoning Skills: Agenda for Research in the Information Age

Readers might well wonder why economists should be asked to discuss acquisition of reasoning skills. Such a subject seems more properly domain of psychology. To be sure, educators could have some practical insights on matter; even philosophers might help by telling us what reasoning is. But economists? There is, after all, little or no formal economics literature directly on topic. Yet in an important sense, much of analytical economics is precisely germane. This becomes clearer when one realizes that a good working definition of economics is the study of reasoning applied to ordinary choices faced by individuals and by groups. According to this definition, economics is an analytical, normative, and positivist discipline. It uses reason to study application of reason; it makes prescriptions about how to make reasonable choices; and it conducts tests of correspondence between mundane events and theories of rational individual and collective choice in order to revise those theories and improve its prescriptions. (For a related discussion of how economists argue, see McCloskey, 1983.) Indeed, very root of word for our discipline suggests application of higher order reasoning to orderly running of everyday household affairs. So despite fact that few economists have written formally on subject, understanding acquisition of reasoning skills is as central to intellectual lives of economists as water is to lives of fish. (Readers interested in an account of development of economic analysis could still do little better than Schumpeter, 1954.) Our essay considers four questions about acquisition of reasoning skills. Each represents an area where economists might provide some useful guidance to educational researchers. Together, they span natural set of questions that economists would ask about this topic. The questions are as follows:

Starting up in Computing: Ten Fables for Faculty

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... I once had a copy of Aesop's fables which had, printed at the conclusion of a fable, an elaborate arrow pointing to the right, directly to elaborately printed words saying, Point, whereupon the text presented the moral of the tale.' The impression left by this little book was deep and consigned me to that unfortunate realm of moralizers, who see, even in this uncertain universe, guiding principles emerging from the most mundane events. You are, therefore, about to be treated to a sermon comprising ten fables and their morals, all of which illustrate an encompassing point: Given the traps, hazards, and pitfalls of starting up in computing, it's a miracle that anything ever happens. Our story begins at a university in the southeastern United States, a university of tolerable national visibility, one acutely self-conscious of the disparity between its aspirations and its realities. This circumstance, this will, need, compulsion to improve stands out as one of the most fruitful basic conditions for getting anything done. The condition alone will not accomplish anything but it can be employed to greater good. ) THE POINT and Moral # 1: Work on the conscience of your institution, if it has any, and play hard on any latent feelings of guilt for neglect.

The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization.

Despite the clear importance of social and environmental' influences on creative performance, a social psychology of creativity is yet to be developed. Theory and research have focused almost exclusively on a personality approach to creativity and, to a lesser extent, a cognitive-abilities approach. Following a consideration of the definition and assessment of creativity, a componential framework for conceptualizing creativity is presented here. Including domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation as a set of necessary and sufficient components of creativity, the framework describes the way in which cognitive abilities, personality characteristics, and social factors might contribute to different stages of the creative process. The discussion emphasizes the previously neglected social factors and highlights the contributions that a social psychology of creativity can make to a comprehensive view of creative performance. A striking feature of many phenomenological accounts of creativity is the degree to which outstandingly creative individuals feel influenced by social and environmental factors. In many cases, these factors are quite ordinary, mundane events; it appears that even seemingly insignificant features of the environment can be detrimental or conducive to creativity in some individuals. For example, in a letter to a friend, Tchaikovsky (1906) described the devastating effect that

Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?

Adaptation level theory suggests that both contrast and habituation will operate to prevent the winning of a fortune from elevating happiness as much as might be expected. Contrast with the peak experience of winning should lessen the impact of ordinary pleasures, while habituation should eventually reduce the value of new pleasures made possible by winning. Study 1 compared a sample of 22 major lottery winners with 22 controls and also with a group of 29 paralyzed accident victims who had been interviewed previously. As predicted, lottery winners were not happier than controls and took significantly less pleasure from a series of mundane events. Study 2 indicated that these effects were not due to preexisting differences between people who buy or do not buy lottery tickets or between interviews that made or did not make the lottery salient. Paraplegics also demonstrated a contrast effect, not by enhancing minor pleasures but by idealizing their past, which did not help their present happiness.