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When a Black Judge Retires, How Often Is the New Appointee Black?Science Says You Should Take That Vacation Now
- By
- August 23, 2017
- CBR - Behavioral Science
Western culture has long honored the notion that work should come before pleasure—a vacation should, in theory, be the reward of many long nights at the office. But research suggests it’s time to stop always putting work ahead of fun. Chicago Booth’s Ed O’Brien and research assistant Ellen Roney find that people enjoy leisure just as much even when they know work will follow.
Most people expect difficult or boring tasks ahead will spoil pleasurable experiences. In a series of surveys, respondents consistently said they would get less out of leisure if work loomed.
But O’Brien and Roney conducted a series of experiments to actually test this intuition. In one experiment at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, they find that study participants had as much fun playing computer games before completing a looming series of math and word problems as they did when the tasks preceded the activity. (The math and word problems weren’t the fun kind such as sudoku and crossword puzzles, but a strenuous battery of cognitive tests.)
Imagine yourself having fun
It can be hard to pry yourself away from work to take some downtime. One thing that could help is thinking about the fun you’ll have when you do.
In an experiment, Chicago Booth’s Ed O’Brien and research assistant Ellen Roney told a group of people they’d need to do an arduous mental task, but that first they would spend a few minutes snacking while watching funny videos. They had a second group of participants simply think deeply about the in-the-moment experience of eating snacks and watching funny videos, and a third group didn’t imagine the fun.
All groups were asked to rate the snacking-and-watching experience. The first group, of course, had the benefit of having experienced the fun. The second and third groups did not, but in those, people who imagined the fun did a better job of accurately predicting how enjoyable the snacking experience had been. The takeaway: if you think about how much fun you’ll have, you’ll better appreciate what you’ve been putting off, or giving up.
Similarly, when the researchers offered University of Chicago students a spa experience either before or after the students had completed the bulk of their midterm exams, the results again demonstrated that the students found the massages and footbaths just as relaxing before exams as after. In both experiments, participants underestimated how much pleasure they would get from leisure ahead of experiences that were less pleasurable and more like work.
The results suggest that when planning their breaks, people should remember that impending work won’t mar their free time as much as they fear. People might want to take vacations rather than delay days off and risk burnout.
Ed O’Brien and Ellen Roney, “Worth the Wait? Leisure Can Be Just as Enjoyable with Work Left Undone,” Psychological Science, June 2017.
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