> For working hours up to around 25 hours a week, an increase in working hours
> has a positive impact on cognitive functioning. However, when working hours
> exceed 25 hours per week, an increase in working hours has a negative impact
> on cognition.
No significant difference between women and men.
Important detail: They only looked at people 40 or older, so no conclusions should be attempted based on this paper alone about differences between older and younger groups (above/below 40). Looking at their tables at the end of the paper I also didn't see any stratification by age within the sampled group, they only listed the sample size for three (15 years wide) age groups (Table II).
> no conclusions should be drawn from a single study period
I didn't see the point in pointing out the obvious - I thought that's as annoying as on reddit's /r/science the inevitable single-sentence comment "correlation is not causation" for no reason whatsoever (i.e. when nobody made that claim). I pointed out the age threshold because there was a comment (of only 6 or 7 total at that point) that attempted to draw the conclusion that older people are doing worse.
From what do you come to the conclusion that older people are doing worse? Worse in respect to what?
The paper more or less confirms from the cognitive domain, that we are working to much. Upto 25 hours are the best. This interestingly coincides with claims from others, eg. UBI folks, to work less for increased productivity. Seems we are getting more and more factual prove that eg. redistribution of wealth should be done not by increasing taxes but by getting more people into the workforce in exchange of others working less (and earning less).
Not entirely - the work hours were self reported but there were actual, validated measures used to assess cognition. At least that's what the abstract said.
That's just saying that both experience negative effects after a threshold, but the threshold in the paper is different between genders so I wouldn't say there is no significant difference (like OP did), 3 extra hours over 27 total is >10%
Yes, 10% is "significant" in the sense that it would be enough for people to care about.
The paper is saying that the sample size is too small to have any confidence that you'd still have a difference (or that the difference wouldn't go in the other direction) if you took a different sample of the population.
OP said there is no significant difference, paper says statistically significant.
But you are right it makes more sense that they are saying gender difference results were not statistically significant - I don't understand why even report them then ?
This is one of the most unconvincing instruments I've ever seen in an economics paper. They don't even try to justify why variables like 'parents alive' (!), 'other public benefits' (!!), 'owning your own house' (!!!), or 'number of children' or 'work experience' (!!!!) are all causally independent of intelligence. There's no way these form a valid instrument allowing causal inference.
Hey, why not throw in education or grades while you're at it, after all, "The validity of the variables used to generate exclusion restrictions needs to be investigated in future research", since that would be as valid an instrumental variable as any of the others...
(I also object to the media framing this as an argument for 3-day work weeks. If cognitive performance peaked at 3-days, employee performance could still be way worse due to the few hours split up, in addition to the economic overhead for businesses of having many part-timers.)
This game industry study is a really really nice study. They take the time to analyse the effects of crunch/overtime at different levels and if voluntary or not. The first time I see such nice study for programming/creative work. We had many aggregate studies or on production lines, but not so much for creative work.
I didn't read it in detail, so forgive me if this was accounted for, but I feel like this would be hard to control as people who are not working at all or working extremely long hours may not be as capable as those working a normal or slightly lower than normal numbers of hours to begin with.
For example, if I can get a job and make enough money in a shorter number of hours, I'm probably smarter than the person who can't get or a job or the person who has to work 65+ hours a week, even if accounting for degree or similar.
>if I can get a job and make enough money in a shorter number of hours, I'm probably smarter than the person who can't get or a job or the person who has to work 65+ hours a week
This may or my not be true. I'm certainly not convinced; the smartest people I know work the longest hours.
I'm not convinced by this line of reasoning. Some of the highest paid jobs - Doctor, lawyer - have the longest hours. On the other hand, part time jobs are often minimum wage and low paying jobs (Walmart etc).
It's mentioned in the abstract: 'We deal with the potential endogeneity of the decision of how many hours to work by using the instrumental variable estimation technique.'
Essentially they use 'instruments' which are just other variables to control for this issue. Page 7 has the variables that they're using.
Sure, 'smarter' was a poor choice of words, but the point is I suspect there may be a correlation between general cognitive performance and job attainment.
An economics paper would usually try to exploit a natural experiment changing work hours for people in a way independent of their intelligence and jobs. For example, new labor legislation banning 40-hour work weeks, causing a drop in worked hours: you should be able to see cognitive scores of the same individual increase after the legislation takes effect.
Measure productivity of the same people working different numbers of hours per week? (And the study needs to run longer than one week at each number of hours. Working overtime boosts your productivity - the first week.)
How do you measure the productivity of cognitive work over an entire week? It's kind of subjective, and having the subjects self-report their level of satisfaction would probably be unreliable.
EDIT: I guess the trick might be to not use a survey, but to give the participants all the same project to work on (very expensive), then adjust the results based on their previous performance. I think an ideal group for this would be students because they're all already working on the same projects. Tell one (random) group that they can have some money if they promise to work on their class project for no more than one hour a day. Could this work?
I'd wager that this is mostly due to mental exhaustion making people unable to devote a lot of effort to these tests and that it will go away after a few weeks of vacation.
I scanned this, but didn't catch where it defines what work is. I'm probably taking this paper out of context of what it's meant for. These sorts of things never seem to define work though. This is important for situations where you never have to leave the home to do your work. Is reading considered work? How about brushing my teeth? Does anyone actually do more work over 40 hours in the office than someone who would do the same tasks from home?
There seems to be a clear correlation between employment and ability, but then they bend the data into a model that seems to exaggerate the differences between >35 and <35 cohorts.
I have worked to much to have energy to read the details, but if the "unemployed" group does not include retired people, then the causality might be in the other direction...
Preprints are very common in economics. Their papers can float around for years before being 'published'. The figures & tables are at the end of the PDF.
To me seems logical:
As we get older more and more energy would be used on preservation (read it as fix damage and less efficient process as result of age), therefore shrinking/eliminating everything not being used it's necessary.
Edit: TL;DR: From the PDF conslussions:
it is found that working hours up to 25–30
hours per week have a positive impact on cognition for males depending on the measure
and up to 22–27 hours for females. After that, working hours have a negative impact on
cognitive functioning.
Since the paper only looked at people above 40, I don't see how you can make any such conclusion. There is nothing about younger people. They may do better - they may also be the same or worse. They were not even included.
Nice catch, there are two parts in trying to support my theory, first included in my post:
As we get older more and more energy would be used on preservation (read it as fix damage and less efficient process as result of age), therefore shrinking/eliminating everything not being used it's necessary.
The second is an entry on how our bodies are machines oriented to try to avoid wasting energy... or better said preserving it... for that part my canonical reference would be the Algernon argument:
That is just your opinion - and it isn't even clear that it means anything. I don't see any supporting evidence. I'm not saying you are wrong (wrong with what, anyway? It's so vague and empty), I'm saying it's just some "statement", nothing more. Even so your list suffers from some severe selection bias: You chose exactly what supports your idea. What about greater "wisdom" of older people? Less desire to succeed at all cost, i.e. possibly more relaxed and willing to look at the big picture? Those two are just "statements", "ideas", so just like you :)
> The second is an entry on how our bodies are machines oriented to try to avoid wasting energy
Without even going into details about that sentence, that is a statement without a point. What exactly do you want to use it for? To show what? How?
The 1st part "our bodies are machines" is as trite a statement as it gets, pardon me for pointing this out.
The 2nd part "oriented to try to avoid wasting energy" is just as bad if not worse - if the main focus of our bodies was just that suicide and eternal sleep would be the best option to achieve that goal.
> As we get older more and more energy would be used on preservation...
> ...therefore shrinking/eliminating everything not being used it's necessary.
What is that even supposed to mean. Either part. Nor does it seem right (having taken medical courses such as physiology) - citation needed (after defining what you actually mean) for part 1, part 2 is completely unclear I'm sorry to say. What shrinks? What is eliminated?
> And he provided argumentation why this might be the case.
You are either a troll - and a bad one - or a troll. Posting a random link to something isn't "evidence". Not to mention that he didn't say anything, he just wrote "words". Impressive you are impressed.
> No, it's not his "opinion", it is his argument. And he provided argumentation
> why this might be the case.
So if I argue it's no longer subjective? I think you have the wrong idea about subjective/objective.
>Posting a random link to something isn't "evidence". Not to mention that he didn't say anything, he just wrote "words". Impressive you are impressed.
I didn't say that parent gave evidence. I say he gave an argument -- you know, premises and logical steps that can be followed (or refuted) to determine if something is true or not.
>So if I argue it's no longer subjective?
No, if someone puts forward an argument, it's by definition not subjective. An argument is something that can be evaluated.
Maybe you conflate arguments with opinions?
Of course an argument might be based on a subjective selection of premises, but that's beside the point. One can always refute the argument by pointing to issues in either its logic or its premises.
Important detail: They only looked at people 40 or older, so no conclusions should be attempted based on this paper alone about differences between older and younger groups (above/below 40). Looking at their tables at the end of the paper I also didn't see any stratification by age within the sampled group, they only listed the sample size for three (15 years wide) age groups (Table II).