In regards to openness to experience the published report contains a contradiction between the results of the descriptive statistics shown and their interpretation of them. This may be due to an obvious expression error on p. 680. The sentence starts off saying “a significant difference was found for the openness trait” but then goes on to say, “that is, the average agreeableness trait among Wikipedia members was significantly lower…” The phrase containing “agreeableness” is unmistakeably a repetition of a phrase from the previous sentence. Furthermore, inspection of the descriptive statistics given in Table 1 clearly shows that the Wikipedia members actually had higher means on openness to experience compared to non-members. In spite of this, the Discussion section states that members were lower in openness to experience, contrary to the results shown. The authors speculate that Wikipedian's "lower openness" might reflect ‘egocentric motives’ related to their lower agreeableness even though there is no research evidence linking openness to experience to egocentric motives one way or another. Although correct that members were lower in agreeableness this in itself does not conclusively imply that members had particularly egocentric motives for contributing. It is possible though speculative that members might be more argumentative than non-members and hence more willing to engage in debate. Since the results actually showed that members were higher, not lower, in openness to experience compared to non-members, it seems possible that they are also motivated by greater intellectual curiosity and love of knowledge than non-members, motives actually known to be consistent with high openness to experience.
Thanks for the rave Scott. Glad you picked up that erroron p680. So... wikipedians are not very grumpy, its just that they're a bit more guarded than most others when it comes to researchers with happiness surveys.
In regards to openness to experience the published report contains a contradiction between the results of the descriptive statistics shown and their interpretation of them. This may be due to an obvious expression error on p. 680. The sentence starts off saying “a significant difference was found for the openness trait” but then goes on to say, “that is, the average agreeableness trait among Wikipedia members was significantly lower…” The phrase containing “agreeableness” is unmistakeably a repetition of a phrase from the previous sentence. Furthermore, inspection of the descriptive statistics given in Table 1 clearly shows that the Wikipedia members actually had higher means on openness to experience compared to non-members. In spite of this, the Discussion section states that members were lower in openness to experience, contrary to the results shown. The authors speculate that Wikipedian's "lower openness" might reflect ‘egocentric motives’ related to their lower agreeableness even though there is no research evidence linking openness to experience to egocentric motives one way or another. Although correct that members were lower in agreeableness this in itself does not conclusively imply that members had particularly egocentric motives for contributing. It is possible though speculative that members might be more argumentative than non-members and hence more willing to engage in debate. Since the results actually showed that members were higher, not lower, in openness to experience compared to non-members, it seems possible that they are also motivated by greater intellectual curiosity and love of knowledge than non-members, motives actually known to be consistent with high openness to experience.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the rave Scott. Glad you picked up that erroron p680. So... wikipedians are not very grumpy, its just that they're a bit more guarded than most others when it comes to researchers with happiness surveys.
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