You first have to get people to notice what’s wrong with a current system if you want people to change the system. That’s the idea behind a new study to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds that people pay attention to negative information about the system when they believe the status quo can change.

“Take America’s educational system. You could find some flaws in that system,” said India Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University (OSU) who did the new study with Professor Kentaro Fujita. “But we have to live with it every day, so people tend to focus on the positive and reinforce the system. Sometimes, though, people are motivated to change things—that’s what brought about the U.S. civil rights movement and the changes in Tunisia and Egypt this year, for example. In order to actually change the system, you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it. 

Johnson wondered, “How can we get people to stop looking at the positive information and kind of shift gears and focus on the negative information?” 

Psychological scientists have found that people who want to change—to do better at work, for example—are willing to take the short-term pain of hearing negative information about themselves, if they actually believe that bearing this pain will actually help them improve in the long run. Johnson wondered if the same was true for thinking about the whole social system.

In one experiment, students started by reading one of two scenarios about a student who was unhappy with the freshman orientation at OSU. Some participants read that he had successfully improved the system; others read that he’d failed, although he still believed in change. Then each participant was told that the U.S. Department of Education had published an external review of the university, and they were given a choice between reading a section of the report that focused on the university’s strengths or a section on its weaknesses.

Participants who had read a paragraph about change were more likely to want the negative information about the university, while others preferred the report on positive information. Other experiments found that people were more willing to read negative information if it came from a diagnostic and therefore, trustworthy source, and if it was about their own university, rather than another one nearby.

“In order for people to feel like they can actually affect the world and actually do something, they have to view the world as changeable,” Johnson said. “If you want people to be able to make that leap, you have to first get them to that point. Then they’ll be willing to seek out the negative information.” 

Of course, there are more steps to changing the system than just finding out what’s wrong with it. 

“Even after you get the negative information, you might say, this is too much. I can’t do anything about it,” Johnson said. 

Johnson plans to do more research on the next steps to bringing about social change.

(Story materials provided by the Association for Psychological Science.)

Reading books is the only out-of-school activity for 16-year-olds that is linked to getting a managerial or professional job in later life, an Oxford University study says.

Researcher Mark Taylor, from the Department of Sociology, analysed 17,200 questionnaire responses from people born in 1970, which gave details of extra-curricular activities at the age of 16 and their careers at the age of 33. The findings show that girls who had read books at 16 had a 39 percent probability of a professional or managerial post at 33, but only a 25 percent chance if they had not. For boys who read regularly, the figure went up from 48 percent to 58 percent.

None of the other activities, such as taking part in sports or activities, socializing, going to museums or galleries or to the cinema or concerts, or practical activities such as cooking or sewing, were found to have a significant effect on their careers. Taylor also found that playing computer games frequently did not make it less likely that 16-year-olds would be in a professional or managerial career at 33, but this was linked to a lower chance of going to university.

"According to our results, there is something special about reading for pleasure," Taylor said. "The positive associations of reading for pleasure aren't replicated in any other extracurricular activity, regardless of our expectations."

He suggests that reading might be a factor because it helps to sharpen the mind or employers feel more comfortable appointing someone with a similarly educated background. It might be simply that students who were already destined for better careers tend to read more anyway.

Reading books was found to be linked with a higher chance of students going to university. For 16-year-old children whose parents worked in admin or sales, their chance of going to university went up from 24 percent to 35 percent for boys and from 20 percent to 30 percent for girls. If they read books and also did one other cultural activity, such as playing an instrument or going to museums, the chance rose from 24 percent to 54 percent for boys and from 20 percent to 48 percent for girls. Playing computer games regularly and doing no other activities reduced their chances from 24 percent to 19 percent for boys and from 20 percent to 14 percent for girls.

The research, based on responses from the British Cohort Study, finds that although reading is linked to a more prestigious career, this does not necessarily mean a higher salary. It shows that none of the extracurricular activities at 16 were associated with a greater or lesser income at 33.

(Story materials provided by Oxford University.)