Then you read an article in The National Teaching and Learning Forum saying that this is a bad idea. It's very difficult to take our loss and judge what makes sense from this point forward. For example, those of us who learned HTML coding are the True Web Masters. People who use FrontPage without knowing HTML just haven't paid their dues. It's the ugly side of being a pioneer.
Ethologists call it xenophobia.
We tend to feel closer to those who are like us, and distrust, even feel hostile towards, those who are different. As Jeffrey Rubin points out, people who are ambitious, believe that their hard work will eventually pay off, and who don't want to feel foolish are most likely to fall into psychological traps. But as Rubin also points out, sometimes, despite our best efforts, we need to just admit that things didn't work out, take our loss, and figure out a better way of getting our work done. Sometimes the old ways work fine. Tom Creed is Professor of Psychology at Saint John's University, Collegeville, MN 56321.