MovieChat Forums > The Five-Year Engagement (2012) Discussion > The Donut theory Bullsh::t

The Donut theory Bullsh::t

posted 12 years ago by kokain711
7 replies | jump to latest

What kinda moron would get grant for such a stupid theory. I mean I understand social psychology dept might not produce life changing experiments in every university, but that experiment was too basic and nothing this dept hasn't already done. Even for movie, watching the group of 'intellects' talking about this experiment so seriously was stupid.
Violet's character showed enough IQ and EQ in all scenes, so watching her judge Tom, based on some silly experiment was plain stupid.

If this experiment was done in real life, people would take one from the old box and take some when the new box arrives and take some off whatever food is being offered to them. People dont rake their brains over every single donut.

Hope good grant money is not wasted in real life at simple ideas each of these fools get. Peace

Don’t judge me based on your ignorance

[–] liscarkat-2 12 years ago

Unfortunately, good grant money is wasted in real life on countless foolish ideas such as the ones depicted among the graduate students in this movie. That's academia. What does it mean if someone takes a day old doughnut instead of waiting a half hour for a fresh one? It means he's not particular about how fresh his doughnuts are. That's it. Give me grant money, please.

[–] hka-3 11 years ago

watching her judge Tom, based on some silly experiment was plain stupid.

Sadly, people do that in real life with less "data" to prove they're right. I can't tell you how many times it's happened to me. I got a sense of satisfaction seeing something like this play out on screen and then to see Violet eat a not-so-fresh donut herself.

[–] reaseltbim 11 years ago

that theory is completely idiotic and stupid.
It doesn't count the people that do NOT want to Waste good donuts that will probably go in the trash.
I hated that. Some people just are like that, they will eat things to save money or just to not be wasteful.
It's like, why wait for the new donuts when these ones are okay and they will be thrown away.

It makes me wonder what kind of stupid studies are being done now.

[–] cpoet 10 years ago

It's not bullsh!t to set up an experiment correlating various personality traits with entitlement, e.g. Is it a measure of self esteem if someone accepts a second-rate product when the gratification of a better option is deferred x amount of time?

The experiment they showed was more Psych 101 than postdoc level design, though--no doubt for the sake of the movie.

Plus, I personally prefer a day-old doughnut where the outside is a little bit crunchier than fresh.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] benpholmes 10 years ago

First of all, it is very intriguing that psychologists would come up with an adult version of the "marshmallow" experiment, but this one definitely wouldn't cut it. First of all, for adults, donuts aren't the least bit difficult to acquire all the time if desired, unlike marshmallows are for children. There are so many other random small factors, like others have said, maybe some people just wouldn't care about the freshness, plus so many other tons of factors over trivial donuts that the experiment is useless. The only way it could really work is if there were the holding out for some kind of reward that would actually be hard to get such as extra money, some prize or vacation, etc. Even then they'd have to strive to iron out and eliminate all other kinds of variables to make the experiment valid for everybody.

[–] bobbydallas (8556) 3 years ago

it's funny because the professor said he only bought it cause Blunt proposed it..

but who the f*** authorized the actual study? heehe