Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Experimentation in my field....

Many people have jobs where they are required to do research. Some do more than others. In my line of work I do experimentations when I feel they are needed. Maybe this is because of my degree in psychology and my keen interest in that and of sociology. Who knows why, really.

Most recently I tested the overall and individual reactions to elivated household stress. The main focus was on lack of clean habiliment.

There were 6 test subjects. I will refer to them as:
1. Man
2. Woman
3. Child #1
4. Child #2
5. Child #3
6. Child #4

The trial period was over a period of 2 weeks, during which time the laundry facilities were left untouched.

After two weeks, these were my observations:
1. Man: Not too phased, seemed to not even notice improved space in dresser drawers .
2. Woman: Quite relaxed. Compared to the other test subjects, she had remarkably low stress levels.
3. Child #1: Highly stressed, quite irritable. Was prone to much screaming and yelling. Borderline dysfunctional.
4. Child #2: Adaptable. Never spoke on the matter, seemed quietly contained and satisfied to wear shorts and t-shirts, despite going outside in 40-degree weather.
5. Child #3: Also adapted well. Resorted to wearing and re-wearing dirty clothes.
6. Child #4: Maybe a little too young to have been tested. But, subject was found to be spending abnormal amount of time in pajamas.

Conclusion:
While stress levels of individual test subjects varied greatly, the overall stress level was not too much higher than normal. Would like to have continued experiment for longer duration but found my own clean undergarment supply to be lessening. Would also like to try similar experiment with gauging stress levels in response to subject #2, Woman, not answering to the whiny call of "Mom." Will need to purchase heavy, gauge ear plugs, first.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

haha, maybe i should call my lackadaisical laundry skills an "experiment". unfortunately i already know the results. "man: begins to show signs of frustration around one week, mom: enjoys spending her time doing other meaningless activities, child #1 and #2, will say, "mom, you need to do 'waundry' this pile is getting too high", and though they are wearing capri pants in cold weather, they will only complain when their choice of jammies is low.

Marie' said...

Sounds like you have a pre-teen. Can you believe she is going to be in middle school next year?

Lisa Starr said...

You are hilarious Kiersten!

Susan said...

Very funny. My child #1 would react the same as your child #1. One difference would be of Man. My man would be highly irritated and would probably start doing his own laundry but no one elses. :)

ldsjaneite said...

Ha ha ha. I especially love that stress level was not too much higher than normal. Ha ha ha.

Megan said...

Sounds like child #1 should be learning to do her own laundry. =D

Shea said...

Oh I don't think my kids would even notice until they actually ran out of clothes to wear. I, like you, would run out of underwear quickly and have to give in. The nice thing is, since I work and Ryan has fridays off, he has been doing the laundry. Good except he dried a pair of my pants and now they don't fit!

Becca and fam said...

So funny and creative! I've always wondered what would happen if I just let a major household duty slip. I just haven't had the guts to try it out. Way to go!

Michele said...

This was great! I think quite brilliant. I once went on laundry strike and my subject #1 Man gave in to my request and the strike was ended.

Melissa said...

That's pretty funny. Sadly, the experiment wouldn't work here. Jeff does all the laundry then brings up the baskets for me to sort and put away. If I get lazy, they just go through the baskets of clean stuff. You can't complain about a cleanly husband too much.