In today’s installment of What’s Ruining Us As Humans, we present the unhealthy risks of Gchatting. You know, that thing we all do “off the record” lest our boss is watching while we shred our co-workers. Apparently all of this angry typing is bad for us.
Over at New York, Melissa Dahl parses a 2007 paper which asserts that venting in the middle of a heated moment is bad news. Published by Jeffrey M. Lohr in The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, the paper dug up a 1969 study that subjected students to a professor teaching a class how to make origami sailboats. But instead of measured instructions, the professor talked too quickly, mussed up the demonstration and cut short the class’s folding time. Some of the students were allowed to review the speedy professor mid-presentation while the rest reviewed the professor at the end. Ultimately, the midpoint reviewers were angrier than the endpoint reviewers. This somehow proves that Gchatting your friend that, say, you hate transcribing and you don’t want to do it, is making you angrier.
I don’t buy it.