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Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

Quick take: this is second rate research (b-school professors have all the irrelevance of real academics with none of the substance). The research from UPenn seems blissfully unaware of any previous research on attachment objects from psychology. They start with a click bait title and then try to bolt on some poorly construed studies. You would never throw away an attachment object after 2 years. A smartphone is a meta object that acts as a portal to a great variety of potentialities. Trying to describe it in terms of a physical object ignores the last 50 years of media theory.

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There is the CS's famed eletism and gate keeping. Just because its not Harvard or Stanford its not relevant? I am a CS grad myself but there is so much toxicity in the community when looking at places like HN. And I am not saying anything about your point. Maybe you are right, I just hate that you start off with 'b-school bad' argument.

I think what they actually said was "Just because it's business school it's not relevant"

My initial vitriol against academics was perhaps unnecessary. The research is clearly uninterested in the large body of serious research around this subject. It is perhaps unfair to say that low quality research is inherent to business school academics in general.

Well, somebody can just falsify that claim by posting some well known excellent scientific research written by business school academics.

Which is why we don't judge research based on single studies but rather of a population of them.

What does the population average of business school research look like?

Which is why we don't judge a race based on individuals but rather of a population of them.

What does the population average of <insert race here> look like ?

Race is not a empirically valid construct

UPenn is a well regarded school. Its business school is generally regarded to be the best of the lot. Wharton professors are generally not on the receiving side of elitism. This research is simply very low quality. It maybe gratifies a certain sensibility. We all know that using our phones too much can be a problem and this research makes for a pithy form of name calling. But beyond a quick insult against a perceived threat the core thesis just makes no sense in light of the past 50 years of research on psychology and media.

Then make a point that the research sucks. Don't entrench a system of "elite" universities, especially when it's the inverse here.

I think you mistook "b-school" to mean "second tier". The GP meant "business school".

> You would never throw away an attachment object after 2 years.

When upgrading to a new device, even though all the data is copied over and the Home Screen looks identical, I still briefly feel a bit of empathy(?) for the old device as I’m packing it up getting ready to sell it. It’s been in my pocket or at my side pretty much 24x7 for the past 2-3 years, and if nothing else I feel a bit mindful and thankful for its service.

There’s definitely a level of attachment there, even if it doesn’t meet some clinical definition of “attachment object”.

It’s common for kids to run through multiple identical attachment objects, especially when they break easily and have therefore been replaced before.

Here’s one study where 5 of 18 kids decide to keep a “new” duplicate in favor of the original item. http://minddevlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Childre...

I read that study the opposite way around. That children will accept duplicates if an object is "desirable" but they have no particular attachment to it. However if there is a strong existing attachment to a specific object (e.g. security blanket) the copy is less valued.

You literally throw away actual pacifiers and replace them.

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