Christian and conservative? You're probably happy.

[VF5SS]

This article from the Boston Globe doesn't make me happy.

The secret to happiness? Who knows?
By Alex Beam
Globe Columnist / May 20, 2008


Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks's new book, "Gross National Happiness," advances the provocative hypothesis that conservatives are happier than liberals: "Political conservatives take the happiness prize hands down." Why? For one thing, they are more likely to be married, which generally correlates with happiness. (Although having children does not.) Also, they are more likely to be religious, which, Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens/Sam Harris notwithstanding, has its own rewards.
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More to the point, conservatives like things the way they are. The status quo is perfectly all right with them, although the status quo ante would be even better. Haven't you noticed that right-wing lunatics like Rush Limbaugh affect a jolly, contented tone, while left-wing lunatics like Al Franken always sound angry? Look at our current president: distanced, out of it, but smugly satisfied with his disengagement. It may be that his last day in office will be the happiest day of his life. Ours, too.

What is it with happiness, anyway? It's like being thin; everybody wants it, no one can have it. Happiness, of course, is the animal that disappears in the pursuit. "Those only are happy," John Stuart Mill wrote, "who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness."

I keep an eye on the nebulous science of happiness, or "hedonometrics," which is not so unlike the nebulous science of political polling, or of bunting with men on second and third and one out. Happiness studies prove to be a full-employment program for economists, psychologists, and psychiatrists offering pabulum for people almost as miserable as they.

So who's happy? Not people in midlife, according to data extrapolated from 500,000 responses to the General Social Survey in America, and from the Eurobarometer across the Atlantic. In a paper posted on the National Bureau of Economic Research website, economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Andrew Oswald of Warwick University report that "well-being reaches a minimum, on both sides of the Atlantic, in people's mid to late 40s." After that, the U-shaped index rises again.

Their paper also shows that, generation after generation, Americans (like Japanese) are becoming more unhappy. De Tocqueville knew as much more than 150 years ago: "So many lucky men, restless in the midst of abundance." With Europeans, it is the opposite; the younger ones enjoy more "well-being" than their parents.

What about the undeserving rich? Research shows that it's better to be middle class than poor. Things get complicated as you move further out on the "swinishly wealthy" axis, because $100 million doesn't buy a hundred times the pleasure of $1 million. Best-selling happiness monger ("Stumbling on Happiness") Daniel Gilbert compares accumulating wealth to eating pancakes. "The first one is delicious, the second one is good, the third OK," he told Harvard magazine. "By the fifth pancake you're at a point when an infinite number more pancakes will not satisfy you to any degree. But no one stops earning money or striving for more money."

The hedonometricians even came up with the notion of a "hedonic set point," or baseline. This is like the body weight set point, meaning that if you weigh 175 pounds now, you will probably weigh about that much for the rest of your life. Hedonically speaking: This is about as happy as you will ever be.

Harvard psychologist Nancy Etcoff has asserted that this happiness baseline notion is wrong: "Personality is much less stable than body weight, and happiness levels are even less stable than personality." So, there is an upside: A certain number of people can become more happy. But wait! "For every person who shows a substantial lasting increase in happiness, two people show a decrease," Etcoff wrote on a website called edge.org.

Suddenly, this is an ethical dilemma. For me to be happier, both you and your friend have to bum out. Of course, your being unhappy might raise my spirits. Speaking of which, I think I'll have that second Negra Modelo.

I'm OK, but you two are not. I am happy with that.

On this subject

I know, I am becoming like a broken record on the subject of Justin Cartwright. But his 2004 novel, "The Promise of Happiness," is very good. Stewart O'Nan can pull this off, too, writing about intimacy and family dynamics in a non-syrupy fashion. Hie thee to the library, or to the internets. I think you'll be happy that you did.

Posted without comment.

[General Zod]

Yay for horribly subjective worthless studies?

[Ender]

Ignorance is bliss, news at 11

[J]

My fiancé just make a wise-crack: Conservatives are happier because they're fucking people over and laughing or they're too damn stupid to know that they're being fucked over. He might be onto something...

[Spyder]

Enough electroconvulsive therapy would make someone happy about anything.

[Coyote]

I was thinking that the happy conservatives also tend to be the types that insulate themselves; surround themselves by like-minded individuals and they all drink the Kool-Aid together and don't question it.

If that makes one 'happy', I will continue to accept less-comforting truth and be prepared for reality.

[Darth Wong]

And how does he measure happiness? For that matter, how does he even know that liberals are less likely to be married than conservatives, when fundamentalist Christians have the highest divorce rate of all belief groups? Is this guy planning to publish a study detailing the methodology employed to arrive at these conclusions, or is this just another crackpot with more ideology than brains?

[Lonestar]

And how does he measure happiness?

Snorting Zoloft?

[Ghost Rider]

What the flying fuck?

Using current conservatives as happy? No shit people are angry. When you're not sitting as some ignorant retard looking a pink sky and purple trees, you tend to realize how fucked things are. So thank you, ignorance is bliss...can I have my check now?

How the hell is there a baseline measurement of someone being happy? Literally this pseudoscientific bullshit is astounding that it gets attention, but hey it's always done so time and again because how fucking retarded people get around some subjects. That entire article was a waste of bandwidth, money and time.

[Darth Wong]

I like the way he uses Rush Limbaugh as an example of a "happy" conservative, completely forgetting that the guy sank into the depths of drug addiction when he was off the air.

I will say this, however: conservatives are better at putting on a happy facade; years of fake smiling in church can give you that skill. Rebecca tells me that no matter how miserable she was as a teenager, she always smiled and put on a happy facade in church. I doubt she's the only one.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And how does he measure happiness? For that matter, how does he even know that liberals are less likely to be married than conservatives, when fundamentalist Christians have the highest divorce rate of all belief groups? Is this guy planning to publish a study detailing the methodology employed to arrive at these conclusions, or is this just another crackpot with more ideology than brains?

WHen professors write books in their areas of expertise, they tend to do so with a metric shit-ton of references. They are basically writing a literature review in book form.

The General Social Survey for example has a website, it can be found here


The mostly likely way they measure happiness is to use a subjective 1-10 or 1-7 scale. This is the standard for psych research of this typ. Ie, and while somewhat subjective, does allow one to figure out if there are statistically significant trends within demographic groups if given a large enough sample size.

Nore are they saying what about being a conservative christian makes one happy. It could be something ancillary to the idealogy itself. Such as a close-knit family unit, which they also tend to have etc. It is just a correlation, not a cause.

[Darth Wong]

WHen professors write books in their areas of expertise, they tend to do so with a metric shit-ton of references. They are basically writing a literature review in book form.

So much bullshit has been published in the field of psychology that you'll have to forgive me if I take this vote of confidence with a metric fuck-ton of salt.

The mostly likely way they measure happiness is to use a subjective 1-10 or 1-7 scale. This is the standard for psych research of this typ. Ie, and while somewhat subjective, does allow one to figure out if there are statistically significant trends within demographic groups if given a large enough sample size.

In short, they ask people if they're happy. So if we assume a study was actually done, at most, it indicates that conservatives are more likely to tell you they're happy. Small wonder, when they're constantly pressured to say that their lives are great, and be thankful to God for everything.

[Alyrium Denryle]

So much bullshit has been published in the field of psychology that you'll have to forgive me if I take this vote of confidence with a metric fuck-ton of salt.

Do you have specific instances so I know where you are coming from here? Because cognitive research and psychopathology etc is a far cry from therapy, which I will grant you has a fuckton of kinks to work out.

In short, they ask people if they're happy. So if we assume a study was actually done, at most, it indicates that conservatives are more likely to tell you they're happy. Small wonder, when they're constantly pressured to say that their lives are great, and be thankful to God for everything.

That is a problem yes, which is why they often disguise the questions, use deception, and ask the same questions in different ways to weed out inconsistencies.

[Darth Wong]

So much bullshit has been published in the field of psychology that you'll have to forgive me if I take this vote of confidence with a metric fuck-ton of salt.

Do you have specific instances so I know where you are coming from here? Because cognitive research and psychopathology etc is a far cry from therapy, which I will grant you has a fuckton of kinks to work out.

You mean like all the anti-depressants which arrived with great fanfare, only to be met with studies a few years later showing that their therapeutic effect on clinical depression is no better than placebo for most sufferers? And they were heralded as one of the great breakthroughs in the field.

That is a problem yes, which is why they often disguise the questions, use deception, and ask the same questions in different ways to weed out inconsistencies.

I don't see how any of that would compensate for the fact that conservatives are conditioned to overstate their own levels of happiness.

[Alyrium Denryle]

You mean like all the anti-depressants which arrived with great fanfare, only to be met with studies a few years later showing that their therapeutic effect on clinical depression is no better than placebo for most sufferers? And they were heralded as one of the great breakthroughs in the field.

Yes that. One of the kinks being the free market system where companies have a profit motive that causes... skewed results...

I have actually written blog entries on this and why science and the free market are not good bedfellows.

But, that is neither here nor there. Pharmaceutical companies operate through two outlets. In house, barely reviewed journals, and press releases. A actual psychologist doing cognitive research is under a lot more scrutiny and his profession holds him(or her) much more accountable.

I don't see how any of that would compensate for the fact that conservatives are conditioned to overstate their own levels of happiness.

Well, empirically confirming that they do this is a necessary step toward correcting it. Of course, it has been demonstrated that the more times you reinforce a state of mind or lie, the more people believe it. So if a person says "I am happy" they will eventually start to believe it, and will actually be happy....Which is depressing in and of itself.

[Patrick Degan]

Of course conservatives are "happy". They're too stupid to understand just how fucked up things are —both the rich ones becoming more and more like the out-of-touch Bourbons before the revolution, and the poor ones who have attained perfect sheep-ness through church and talk radio and believe whatever they're told to believe.

[The Yosemite Bear]

what flavor of Koolaide? Greatful Dead lectric blue? or Jonestown Juice?

[Fire Fly]

Its easy to be happy when you're the side pushing all of the crazy nut job policies and forcing the other side to put up with it. Its also easier to be happy when you don't give a shit about other people, when you only care about yourself and your clan. So yeah, if you don't care about other people and care only about yourself and have the power to push nut job policies, its easy to be happy. People dying in Africa? Who cares. Gays want to get married? Too bad.

[Rye]

I bet the majority of those think they're happy because they've long since forgotten what true happiness was like. They take what they can get from the TV, beer and God that's fed to them; the numbness and disconnection from reality they offer probably seem like happiness to them because they're escaping the stress of the kids/spouse/society for a couple of hours and they know they can last until the next fix. A conservative with a broken TV is probably the least happy person in the world. "No beer and no TV make Homer something something." "Go crazy?" "Don't mind if I do!"

That's not even counting all the people who are a total mental mess in private and then lie about it in censuses.

[Darth Wong]

It reminds me of the situation with marriage: to a man, if you ask Christian conservatives about marriage, they will wax poetic about what a fantastic institution it is, and how they're better than anybody else at it. But the numbers don't back them up: they get divorced more than anyone else. They're obviously not as happy in their marriages as they claim to be.