Thinking outside the Hamper Kathleen Vohs is a professor at the University of Minnesota She and her team of researchers assigned some students to orderly rooms with neat piles of paper Others they sent to cluttered rooms where the table and the floor were strewn with office supplies They gave all the students a simple task brainstorm 10 new ways to use Ping-Pong balls The students in the clean rooms made suggestions that were close to the ways Ping-Pong balls are already used Adapt the balls for slightly different games they said Students in the messy rooms had more innovative ideas cut the tops from the balls and use them as ice-cube trays or stick them to the bottoms of chairs so the chair legs don’t scratch the floor Kathleen and her team concluded that messy spaces help people think in new ways The world has lots of problems that need creative solutions We want to become inventive out-of-the-box thinkers A bit of mess is obviously best
CHORES It’s a Clean Sweep In a 2019 study researchers at the University of Virginia asked almost 10 000 kindergartners about their chores The scientists visited the same kids a few years later when they were in third grade and asked them questions about their lives They discovered that kids who did chores made friends more easily were happier and earned better math grades In another study Canadian and Australian researchers asked parents and teachers to record when kids did kind helpful things Imagine you were part of that study and your mom was secretly tracking you She might make a check mark if you took the dog for a walk without being asked Your teacher might make a check mark if you helped your friend with his math Here’s what the scientists found kids who did their chores without being asked were more likely to show care and concern for other people So why make your bed Because making your bed means you’re a better person Rebut What Next up in this raging debate the rebuttals Rebuttals are counterarguments Let’s imagine your kitchen smells bad The dog farted Mom says But Dad took the dog for a walk you say You’ve presented a rebuttal by using evidence to argue against your mom’s statement Turn the page to find out what rebuttals Silas and Maria will come up with The writer of this book is in no way implying that your mom farts
C B A DONATE Rebuttal Silas Tidy Desk Tidy Mind Who cares if messy desks spark creativity Clean spaces help us make more logical decisions Everyone knows bed-makers grow into successful people In a 2019 study Kathleen Vohs showed that people in messy rooms have better Ping-Pong-ball ideas But her team did two other experiments with clean rooms and messy rooms In one Dutch students were asked if they would like to donate to a charity that gives books and toys to children The students sitting in clean rooms gave twice as much money Next Kathleen asked 188 adults to review a snack-bar menu The people in the messy spaces chose unfamiliar ingredients to add to their smoothies As Maria argued messiness might make us more open to new ideas But the people in clean spaces were much more likely to choose healthier ingredients Clean organized rooms make us nicer more generous healthier people Does it really matter if we’re a little less creative
Causation Causation Rebuttal Maria Mess Is Best Some studies have shown that bed-making kids become more successful But there are lots of reasons super-tidy kids might grow into influential adults Maybe bed-making kids have more involved parents Maybe they live in more privileged families Is their future success really caused by smoothing their sheets each morning I think that’s an example of correlation not causation Besides there are plenty of highly successful people whose desks look like pigpens Albert Einstein physics mastermind Barack Obama former President of the United States Arianna Huffington founder of the Huffington Post Would you rather be a chores genius or a creative genius Maybe it’s time to embrace the chaos and free your mind Same but Different If you want to argue effectively there are two big words you should know Causation means that one thing causes another Lightning causes thunder and earthquakes cause tsunamis Correlation means that two things are connected but one doesn’t necessarily produce the other Imagine you own a corner store You notice that on some days you sell more cold drinks and more ice cream cones There’s a correlation But is there causation Of course not Cold drink sales don’t cause ice cream sales They’re both probably caused by something else something like hot sunny weather outside Correlation
