Politics, Happiness and Your Mental Health

[Lennys Tap]

https://dnyuz.com/2024/05/08/the-happiness-gap-between-left-and-right-isnt-closing/

Interesting article, first appeared in The NY Times.

[Skatastrophy]

https://dnyuz.com/2024/05/08/the-happiness-gap-between-left-and-right-isnt-closing/

Interesting article, first appeared in The NY Times.

It was an Opinion piece in the NYT, so not exactly an article. Original (gift) link below

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/opinion/conservatives-liberals-depression-anxiety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.O4nJ.0ZJZj6FlLGpL&smid=url-share

The top comment on the article:

The paper on this subject which linked to here (Schlenker et al 2012) is based solely on about 400 undergraduates at the University of Florida, 69% of whom were female. The does not even report what most of the questions on the questionnaire were. It does not show the raw data at all. It says that the results were controlled for age, gender and income but does not say how.

Another study cited in Edsall's early essay on the subject, Newman et al., 2018, does present the raw data, demonstrating that the effect is quite weak compared to the extremely high degree of variability in all political persuasions. The analysis is embarrassingly poor - look at the "quadratic" fit in Figure 2, you could never, ever get a way with such a visibly poor line fit in a paper in the hard sciences. The low sample number and very high variability at each point is far to great to fit any line with any confidence, it is a poor excuse for a quantitative analysis.

And where is the control data on lying and self-reporting? Maybe conservatives lie more frequently. Even when self-reporting anonymously people routinely exaggerate to put themselves in a category that they deem socially desirable (Brenner and DeLamater, 2016; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639921/).

Why does anyone put any weight on this nonsense?

[Plaque Lives Matter!]

It was an Opinion piece in the NYT, so not exactly an article. Original (gift) link below

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/opinion/conservatives-liberals-depression-anxiety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q00.O4nJ.0ZJZj6FlLGpL&smid=url-share

The top comment on the article:

The paper on this subject which linked to here (Schlenker et al 2012) is based solely on about 400 undergraduates at the University of Florida, 69% of whom were female. The does not even report what most of the questions on the questionnaire were. It does not show the raw data at all. It says that the results were controlled for age, gender and income but does not say how.

Another study cited in Edsall's early essay on the subject, Newman et al., 2018, does present the raw data, demonstrating that the effect is quite weak compared to the extremely high degree of variability in all political persuasions. The analysis is embarrassingly poor - look at the "quadratic" fit in Figure 2, you could never, ever get a way with such a visibly poor line fit in a paper in the hard sciences. The low sample number and very high variability at each point is far to great to fit any line with any confidence, it is a poor excuse for a quantitative analysis.

And where is the control data on lying and self-reporting? Maybe conservatives lie more frequently. Even when self-reporting anonymously people routinely exaggerate to put themselves in a category that they deem socially desirable (Brenner and DeLamater, 2016; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639921/).

Why does anyone put any weight on this nonsense?

I’m happiest when others are doing worse than me despite whatever my situation is

[jficke13]

I’m very interested in how dnyuz has continued to function despite being a blatant copyright violation operating in broad daylight for at least a year.

[WhiteTrash]

Why does anyone put any weight on this nonsense?

There a plenty of people who take anything from the NY Times as gospel.

[Pakuni]

As long as we're posting studies...

A provocative new study has found a link between left-wing beliefs and both higher intelligence quotient (IQ) scores and genetic markers believed to be associated with higher intelligence.

As psychology researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities report in their new paper, published in the journal Intelligence, numerous intelligence tests found that being more clever "is correlated with a range of left-wing and liberal political beliefs."

https://futurism.com/neoscope/left-wing-beliefs-intelligence

[MUBurrow]

FWIW, I do think this makes a small degree of logical sense.  By nature, liberals are focused on changing/improving what they perceive to be problems or inequities whereas conservatives are focused on preserving what they perceive to be correct or foundational.  It makes some level of broad, logical sense that if a side that likes things as they are is happier than the one that wants to change things.

[MU82]

Good AP article about two House candidates facing primaries this week: A 1/6/21 Capitol Police officer is running for the Dem nomination in Maryland, and a 1/6/21 convicted felon rioter is running for the GOP nomination in West Virginia.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-jan-6-candidates-congress-7659d9493956919c83adf474259ab303?

The two candidacies “symbolize a shift on the part of the two big parties regarding their commitment to law and order,” said Timothy Naftali, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

It’s remarkable, Naftali said, that on the same day, a former police officer could become a Democratic nominee while Republicans could “select an unrepentant felon” in Evans, who “proudly displays the fact that he violated the law on Jan. 6.”

“That is a split screen that one might not have been able to imagine 15 years ago,” he said.

[Hards Alumni]

FWIW, I do think this makes a small degree of logical sense.  By nature, liberals are focused on changing/improving what they perceive to be problems or inequities whereas conservatives are focused on preserving what they perceive to be correct or foundational.  It makes some level of broad, logical sense that if a side that likes things as they are is happier than the one that wants to change things.

Hope vs fear, optimism vs pessimism, progressive vs nostalgic

The way I've always thought about it is that everything can be improved upon unless there is a broad consensus that something is perfect.

[Skatastrophy]

There a plenty of people who take anything from the NY Times as gospel.

This is pretty funny since you're responding to a comment from an NYT reader on an Opinion article from the NYT.

Gospel it isn't, but their journalism is top notch and their assertions have sources to back them up.

[Hards Alumni]

This is pretty funny since you're responding to a comment from an NYT reader on an Opinion article from the NYT.

Gospel it isn't, but their journalism is top notch and their assertions have sources to back them up.

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh usually.

[Skatastrophy]

ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh usually.

Good point. Exercise your critical thinking skills that we all learned at MU (except for the dental school) whenever you're reading news

[MU82]

Hope vs fear, optimism vs pessimism, progressive vs nostalgic

The way I've always thought about it is that everything can be improved upon unless there is a broad consensus that something is perfect.

Yep. And it's a reason why so many Dems and left-of-center independents voted for Reagan, especially in 1984 but also in 1980. They might not have loved a lot of his policies, but they liked his optimism, his general vision of "it's morning in America" because the U.S. is "the shining city on a hill." Dubya, with his "compassionate conservatism" and the like, was mostly upbeat too.

Nowadays, it's about America is a wretched hellscape of crime (no matter what the statistics say) ... "others" are arriving in caravans to kill you ... elections are stolen (but only when our side loses) ... judges and juries can't be trusted ... I don't give a damn what the numbers say; the economy's doomed, etc.