We’ve seen it in TV shows, movies, and throughout life. Someone is giving advice to someone else, and partway through they have the moment of realization where what they are saying can be applied directly to their own personal problems as well. We always say we should take our own advice, but just how helpful would that be?
According to a study conducted at Stanford, it would be very helpful. Undergraduate students were asked to write letters to “at-risk” middle school students in an attempt to help them through hard times and get them to stay in school. The undergrads were instructed to share personal stories about how they too experienced difficult struggles throughout school but persevered and eventually found academic success. They were also told to emphasize the idea that natural ability is overrated – that intelligence “is not a finite endowment but rather an expandable capacity” (Barker para. 2).
You’re probably wondering if these letters actually helped the middle school students. That’s a good question…but they were never sent. This study was conducted to see if the college students who wrote the letters had more positive experiences academically after writing them. It turns out they did.
Months after composing the letters, the writers were still reporting greater enjoyment of school than were other Stanford undergrads. Even their grade point averages were higher by a third of a point on a four-point scale.
This experimental study reminds me of hearing that if you’re really angry with someone, you should write them a heated letter explaining how you feel and then throw it away without sending it. Apparently then you’ll feel better and you won’t be as upset with that person anymore because you got all of your feelings out on paper. It’s amazing how writing letters for different purposes can make people feel better. Perhaps the next time I’m feeling down, I’ll write a letter to no one in particular and see how I feel after.
Works Cited
This is certainly an optimistic study on the human psychology and I definitely hope it’s true because it would be a very cathartic exercise for people. I do wonder however what the basis for “greater enjoyment” is. This seems like a very relative, personal statement that was probably made by the participants in the study. I think the most important thing to be wary about here is the possibility of third variables. The “greater enjoyment” in school could have possibly been from on outside event such as the school football team finishing the season in first place. (bitter? me? never…) Even the bump in GPA could be attributed to something like a lull in coursework or a start of a new semester. Also, your study does not give information as to the sample size of the experiment which could make a difference in regard to chance if it involved 10 people or 10,000 people.
Although the study is not conclusive enough to be true for me, the chance that writing a letter to myself may have a positive effect is enough for me to consider writing myself a message telling me to chill out over final exams.
I found the study that took place very interesting. It makes me wonder how scientsits can come up with the idea of such a procedure. I am curious to see the exact statistics of all the student’s grades before and after the letter writing because do you think this could possibly be due to chance? Is the one-third point out of four improvement enough to say that taking our own advice benefits us more? Also, if following this study do you think motivational speakers, therapists, and guidance counselors should be fired now? Here is a link I found interesting and related to your topic on how writing letters that dont even get sent can help us!
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/10/why-you-should-write-yourself-a-letter-tonight.html