The assistant professor of psychology and public affairs tweeted a link to a document he described as his "CV of Failures."
IN APRIL, Johannes Haushofer caused an internet stir. The Princeton assistant professor of psychology and public affairs tweeted a link to a document he described as his "CV of Failures." Though Haushofer was not the first to highlight that he is only human by compiling a list of rejections and dreams deferred, his CV of Failures took flight thanks largely to social media, was circulated widely and emerged as a point of discussion. To Haushofer's surprise, he became a de facto poster boy for failure.
New "publication": My CV of Failures! https://t.co/d8ot5vvynY
-- Johannes Haushofer (@jhaushofer) April 23, 2016
1 | The idea to compile the CV of Failures came from fellow academic Melanie Stefan. What about that writing led you to compile the CV and why make this document public?
I wrote it in 2011 after I read her (Stefan's) article. At the time, a friend of mine had not gotten a position that (she) had applied for and I wanted to show solidarity, and this seemed like a good way of doing it. I typed the CV and sent it to her. That seemed to help, and so I've done it a few times after that as well. And then, in April, I decided to update it and uploaded it on Twitter. I noticed it was useful to people whenever I showed it to them and thought it might be useful to others who happen to not be my friends. I was hoping it would be something that students and young researchers could look at and maybe get a sense of perspective from.
2 | Was publishing this document some kind of experiment and were the results what you expected?
I suppose it was an experiment in the sense that I made it public, although it was less of an experiment in the sense that other people had done it before me. I was very surprised by the response, that it reached so many people and was circulated so widely. I had expected my colleagues and friends to look at it, chuckle a little bit and that's that. I got a lot of emails from other academics -- students and young researchers, people who had left academia -- thanking me for putting it out there and being open about it. It seemed to be helpful to lots of people. Apparently, there was something ... maybe refreshing to people. But I won't follow up on it much -- it is not something that is core to my academic work. I'm going to try to get back to my day job and my research. People approached me and said I should write books and things like that, but I'm not going to do that. I have a research agenda I enjoy a lot, so I'll try to get back to that as soon as I can.
3 | In the field of education, does failure need more weight, more praise, more time, more discussion than it gets right now?
Given the response I have received, I could very well imagine that it would be useful for academics to talk more about failure, especially to their students, because the fact (that) the CV was helpful for so many people suggests there is a lack of information or perception that others don't fail as much as they do. I've heard colleagues say similar things -- and that one of the first things they say to their students is that it is normal to fail and that they need to get used to it.
4 | You tweeted that you're not aware whether undertaking this project will lead to anything good for you. This interview notwithstanding, has it led to anything good for you?
That tweet was actually not sarcastic. It was purely honest. People had gone and wrote CVs of Failure, referencing the fact that I had done it. I never meant to prescribe to anyone that that is something they should do with their lives. I don't know if it is a welfare-enhancing strategy for everyone to sit down and write their CVs of Failure. In psychological research, that kind of thing is often used to induce negative feelings, experimentally. So it might not be a good thing for people's psychological well-being. That's where that tweet came from. It was being honest about what we know about what this does for you -- we don't know much and, perhaps, if we know anything, it makes you a little sad, at least transiently.
5| Your field of study, by the way, is not failure. You study the psychological effects of poverty. How do you go about identifying the psychological effects of poverty?
We start by looking at correlations and asking whether poverty correlates with particular psychological outcomes. It turns out people who are poor are more likely to be unhappy, more likely to be depressed. They are more stressed than others; they have higher levels of cortisol, which is the body's major stress hormone. So at the level of correlation, the picture is pretty clear. Poverty is generally associated with "bad" psychological states of mind. In terms of causation, the way I've been going about studying the question is by making people less poor in some form or another, and then asking whether that leads to improvements in one of these psychological variables. When poverty is alleviated, people are much happier; it improves life satisfaction, it reduces stress levels. If governments were more interested in redistributing (wealth) than they are, from the point of view of psychological well-being, that would almost certainly be a good thing.
Next month: Buzz Aldrin, former astronaut