This is almost a parody of pointless social science.
Assuming we can find a reason this topic deserved study, does it generalize to other countries? Will it be true in 10 years? Was it true 50 years ago?
And if it does generalize, what is interesting about the revelation that women sometimes intentionally give sabotaging advice? It's either common or obvious enough that it appears unquestioned in mainstream entertainment regularly. Do we need to empirically confirm every detail of human experience?
>does it generalize to other countries? Will it be true in 10 years? Was it true 50 years ago?
Does it matter? Contemporary and local phenomena are also worth studying.
Besides, the conclusions from such a research, assuming it's done well, are not about the specifics (hair length advice, US) but about competitive character in psychology and social dynamics in general.
Like the already generic takeaway "intrasexually competitive people sabotage others through means of advice" (that can just as well apply to ancient Rome or space colonies in 2500).
> Does it matter? Contemporary and local phenomena are also worth studying.
Yes. How contemporary? How local? There's a reason we don't study a single person doing something on a random day. It's too contemporary and too local. There's a limit at which the money spent on the research is being set on fire.
> but about competitive character in psychology and social dynamics in general
This is literally my point. This research isn't about anything in general, which is why it's not interesting. It is a tiny study of a very specific population at a single point in time. It doesn't tell us about anything in general at all.
> Like the already generic takeaway "intrasexually competitive people sabotage others through means of advice" (that can just as well apply to ancient Rome or space colonies in 2500).
The takeaway is so generic it isn't worth proving with research. I believe in learning things just to learn them, but why do we need to spend public funds to quantify things that are so obvious they are in plays from a thousand years ago?
Should we also study whether sexually competitive males play basketball more aggressively against each other?
With infinite time and money, this would absolutely be worthwhile, but there isn't value in aimlessly quantifying things just to get a headline and get published.
>Yes. How contemporary? How local? There's a reason we don't study a single person doing something on a random day. It's too contemporary and too local
Says who and with what credentials? And, even more so, based on what deeper arguments than "it's too local/contemporary" that don't mean anything? And based on what locality constraint ("it' can't just be American women"?), and in what exactly mechanisms that can't be generalized from the locality studied?
> This is literally my point. This research isn't about anything in general, which is why it's not interesting. It is a tiny study of a very specific population at a single point in time. It doesn't tell us about anything in general at all.
Doesn't have to be a big study to have statistical significance, and even less so to bring useful insights. In fact, as studies go, this has a quite sizable sample size.
The choice of undegraduates is very common in social science studies, and these two studies also include members of the general population.
This is not a poll on the voting preferences of the population at large, or something like that, and for the subject matter there's no reason to believe that the results don't apply regardless of locality.
> Assuming we can find a reason this topic deserved study, does it generalize to other countries? Will it be true in 10 years? Was it true 50 years ago?
Those are good questions! Congratulations, you found a reason this topic deserved study. I wonder how many more there are?
> Congratulations, you found a reason this topic deserved study.
What reason is that? Because it's so specific, weak, and unimportant that I have to ask many more questions to find a way it could lead to any sort of conclusion?
That makes no sense. By those criteria, everything is worth studying, regardless of cost.
For example, if someone studied what women like to eat at lunchtime in Perth, Australia, I'd have a similar set of questions. The data from that study is not wholly uninteresting, but it needs to have some underlying theory of why the public should fund it before it gets public funding.
And then there's the question of opportunity cost. What else could these researchers have been studying instead?
> Assuming we can find a reason this topic deserved study, does it generalize to other countries? Will it be true in 10 years? Was it true 50 years ago?
Assuming we can find a reason this topic deserved study, does it generalize to other countries? Will it be true in 10 years? Was it true 50 years ago?
And if it does generalize, what is interesting about the revelation that women sometimes intentionally give sabotaging advice? It's either common or obvious enough that it appears unquestioned in mainstream entertainment regularly. Do we need to empirically confirm every detail of human experience?