Self Help Books - Do They Help?

I recall seeing a study somewhere that suggested self help books don't really help. I believe it looked at financial self help books. If I remember correctly, three or ten years after reading various "get rich quick" and other money-related books, the readers were generally making more money, but so was everyone else (on average) that didn't read the books. The conclusion was that the books didn't help. Now that is jumping to conclusions! Consider the assumption implicit in it. Researchers assumed those who didn't read books did nothing special. This seems unlikely, to say the least. From what we see of people, we might wonder if most really want to work on general self development, but we also can see that almost everyone regularly tries to better their financial situation. In other words, people in the control group were doing things other than reading self help books, and those efforts got them further ahead also. Think about this for a moment. How does this show that the books didn't help? It's like "proving" that a car can't get you across the city because walking and biking and taking a bus can also get you there. They are just different ways to the same goal! In other words, the books may have helped (on average), just like the other things people tried. Perhaps people choose the things that work best for them. Based on this hypothesis, a better test might be to have one group choose their self help methods while another is forced to use methods chosen by the researchers. If the first group shows more improvement, it suggests that many methods work, and that each person intuitively knows which will be more helpful. It might show the opposite too. It is difficult to design such research. It is also difficult to have a proper "control," and to start with the best hypothesis. One lesson from this is to be skeptical of research where things are hard to define and measure.nnSelf Help Books Clearly Can Help There are those of us who don't need research to prove that a good book can help. We clearly recall a book that changed the course of our lives, or that obviously helped us in our relationships, or even boosted our income. Yes, of course self help books can help us. Now, there is the question of why they don't always help. You may have a friend who has told you all about a great new self help book or theory, yet doesn't seem to be much affected by it in the end. You may have read some books yourself that got you excited, but didn't seem to "stick" in our mind or change your subsequent behavior or life. One reason for this apparent ineffectiveness may be that you need to read each book more than once, and that self help books in general help most if they are read regularly. (It is also possible that the effects of such books can be powerful, yet too subtle to notice right away.) This reminds me of some research on eating I read about once. Researchers had people eat a meal. They then concluded that eating didn't increase the odds of survival, since everyone died of starvation two months later. Okay, I made that up, but do you see the point? Just like you have to eat regularly to get the maximum survival benefit, perhaps you need to get those self help books out again and feed your mind from time to time to get the most out of them.