Primal World Beliefs

🧠 Psych - 192/200

Hey Reader,

Last month, one of the kind member of our community reached out to us about Primal World Beliefs.

Here’s a study which states that “Parents think-incorrectly-that teaching their children that the world is a bad place is likely best for them”.

What is it?

Primal world beliefs (‘primals’) are beliefs about the world’s basic character, such as the world is dangerous. This article investigates probabilistic assumptions about the value of negative primals (e.g., seeing the world as dangerous keeps me safe).

Such assumptions are common. For example, among 185 parents, 53% preferred dangerous world beliefs for their children.

They searched for evidence consistent with these intuitions in 3 national samples and 3 local samples of undergraduates, immigrants (African and Korean), and professionals (car salespeople, lawyers, and cops;), examining correlations between primals and eight life outcomes within 48 occupations (total N=4,535) .

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What do I need to know?

As predicted, regardless of occupation, more negative primals were almost never associated with better outcomes.

Instead, they predicted less success, less job and life satisfaction, worse health, dramatically less flourishing, more negative emotion, more depression, and increased suicide attempts.

We discuss why assumptions about the value of negative primals are nevertheless widespread and implications for future research. [1]

References & Studies: -

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357355573_Parents_think-incorrectly-that_teaching_their_children_that_the_world_is_a_bad_place_is_likely_best_for_them

2. https://ppc.sas.upenn.edu/

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