The ego depletion saga demonstrates the importance of effect sizes
Sure fire way to make it to the top of psychology &#x2F; sociology academia:<p>1) Go to Ivy school, get your phd, make all the key connections<p>2) Find something that makes intuitive sense to a highly educated person, and create a test that you claim measures it. Even better if it’s really fuzzy, like “ego depletion”. For example, call it “mood enhancement”. This is if your mood is elevated. The test would ask 20 questions about your current mood, like “Do I feel happy” and “I feel above-normal positive emotions”. These 20 questions will use 1 to 5 scale and provide a 100 point outcome.<p>3) Use your connections to get people in the academic industry to start promoting it and using it. Publish a paper showing what baseline is.<p>4) Now is your time to strike. Start making experiments that you anticipate would modify someone’s mood, like giving them a glass of wine before the test, or having them call their mother. Do control and experimental and see the boost to “mood enhancement”.<p>5) Publish paper after paper on your amazing discoveries of how to boost “mood enhancement”. Get others to cite your publications and make a cottage industry of “mood enhancement” research experts. More people, more papers, more funding - and you started it all with the key genesis “mood enhancement” paper!<p>6) Write books, go on NPR as a guest speaker, give speeches. You have quantified mood and determined how to boost it. “My research shows that a 7.2 percent increase in mood occurs when you call your mother before a big company presentation. It’s science!” You are now a public figure and can get tenure and big corporate speech bucks. The world has been forever changed by your mood enhancing research!