Trip

A few hours on a train later and I’m in Frankfurt, Germany, at my parents house. It’s been a bit less than eight months since I’ve last been here and it was about bloody time that I came by for a visit.

Away from my tiny little room cluttered with furniture, clothes and scientific articles. Away from the life I’ve been (trying) to build for myself. It’s a shot break from the to and fro of what constitutes my existence.

Not, of course, that my university work has stopped. There are still assignments to hand in, articles to read and things to learn, but it is somehow different. Your environment seems to influence how you think (I have no evidence for that, just a theory).

This is a good thing, because I have a great deal of thinking to do in the next few days. Tonight – before twelve o’clock – I have to hand in one assignment which really only should take a few more hours and then I start in on a research proposal, which I mentioned earlier.

My research proposal is going to investigate the idea that when we feel included in a group we become less conscious of ourselves – while when we’re excluded we become more self-aware. Many of you will probably now be doing the regular social psychology reply by non-social psychologists, which I call the ‘but of course’ response.

But is it so of course? Research by Roy Baumeister and associates (1998) has demonstrated that when we are excluded from a group our higher reasoning functions actually decrease. He believes this is because of ego depletion, something that more commonly is referred to as ‘willpower’. Baumeister et al. suggested that we have a limited resource, a kind of mental fuel that is used up when ever we apply our conscious will. Since ostracism is actually emotionally and even physically painful we have to use part of our will to suppress this pain, leaving us less for other things.

This might well be true (it sounds plausible) but is self-awareness part of this construct? That is what my research will be examining in a roundabout way (a very roundabout way, I might add).

So let’s see if physical space leads to mental brilliance. I’ll keep you all posted.