

Symbolic Self-Completion, Attempted Influence, and Self-Deprecation (1981) [pdf] - anacleto
http://interruptions.net/literature/Wicklund-BASP81.pdf

======
brobinson
Derek Sivers also wrote about this phenomenon, complete with sources:
[https://sivers.org/zipit](https://sivers.org/zipit)

~~~
anacleto
>Four different tests of 63 people found that those who kept their intentions
private were more likely to achieve them than those who made them public and
were acknowledged by others.

Uh, sample size seems to be too small to be significant, though. From a
statistics point of view working with such minimal samples is fairly useless.

~~~
rando289
> From a statistics point of view working with such minimal samples is fairly
> useless.

Not true at all.

~~~
anacleto
Really constructive comment- and it was very easy to guess the 9 points you
wanted to mention why it's not true at all.

~~~
rando289
Sorry. The sample size is not actually "minimal", and it's this is a common
criticism where the critic, surprise surprise, never says what a non-minimal
sample size is. "NCHS also typically requires at least 30 observations":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error).

Here are some key concepts to keep in mind.

The central limit theorem states: regardless of the shape of the parent
population, the sampling distribution of the mean approaches a normal
distribution as N increases. This means we can generalize what the size of n
means to many many things, generally including all sorts of traits in people,
and including flipping a coin. So for an intuition, flip a coin 30 times, and
95% of the time, you will be within 5.5 of the mean (15) and it follows the
standard bell curve, 99% I will be within 8.22 of the mean, etc. So, if say
"there is a greater than 20% chance a coin flips will end up with heads" and
you say, "from a statistics point of view, your sample size is too small", I
can say, "not true at all", with consideration to my sample size, I'm
99.9999...% likely to be right. And just glimpsing, I'm confident the study
did their math right.

There are other very important things to be critical of, and it is certainly
reasonable to be skeptical of the study. Much more likely to cause a false
result: getting unbiased, representative sample, publishing bias, causation vs
correlation, etc, etc.

And when you think about sample size, the accuracy with respect to the
population follows 1/sqrt(n). So n=200 is twice as accurate as n=50.

~~~
anacleto
Now that makes sense. Thanks.

------
brudgers
The title is incorrect and editorializes.

~~~
drethemadrapper
I object your comment. It is point no. 14 here -
[http://higherperspectives.com/psychology-
facts/?c=ss](http://higherperspectives.com/psychology-facts/?c=ss)

It's a fact!

~~~
yequalsx
Well, number 11 is stated incorrectly so that puts doubts on the rest of the
claims in your link. But I suspect your comment is sarcasm. Hmmm...what to
think...

------
blincoln
"That's the problem with goals. They become the thing you talk about instead
of the thing you do."
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077258/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077258/))

------
hosay123
ePub conversion of the main article:
[https://mega.nz/#!hgpB1ShB!VInAzElZFa5VwWz5ydnNLDzwDwOgSlSnc...](https://mega.nz/#!hgpB1ShB!VInAzElZFa5VwWz5ydnNLDzwDwOgSlSnc2PZhXUdT78)

