Political Ideology, "happiness", and lies

[ronburgundy]

A number of studies have claimed that political conservatives are happier and have more life-satisfaction than liberals, but they are all based upon self-reported happiness, which is a problem not just because some people lie about it, but some lie more than others which can make the measured "happiness" largely uncorrelated to actual happiness. Since the claimed difference in happiness is already so small, small differences in honest self-reporting could easily account for it.
A new study published in Science provides additional measures to that in fact conservative unrealistically inflate reports about themselves in the positive direction moreso than liberals. In addition, conservatives use fewer positive emotion words and more negative emotion words in their tweets. Among Congressional politicians, conservatives used less emotionally positive language, and photographic analysis of their facial muscles revealed less intense smiles, less displays of happiness in their muscles around the eyes, and a trend toward greater facial indicators of fake smiles. Each measure has limitations and issues, but as a set of converging data they at minimum nullify claims of actual greater happiness among conservatives, and provide some support that the opposite is true and that conservatives just lie more about their emotions and life satisfaction.

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2015/03/new-study-questions-trope-conservatives-are-happier-liberals

 

[PyramidHead]

Why is this an issue in the first place? If conservatives were happier, would that mean that the conservative viewpoint is the correct one? I don't think it would have any bearing either way, would it?

 

[ronburgundy]

Why is this an issue in the first place? If conservatives were happier, would that mean that the conservative viewpoint is the correct one? I don't think it would have any bearing either way, would it?

Although people would and have tried to misuse the claim to support such "therefore better" notions, you are correct that it has no valid bearing on that. But it does have bearing upon valid psychological and sociological models of both the causes and effects of political ideologies and their related policies.
Competing explanatory theories would differ in whether the presume/predict greater actual happiness and life satisfaction among liberals or conservatives at an aggregate level. Also, if conservatives are more prone to misrepresent their emotions, that itself is an important fact that would have being on such theories of ideology formation.

 

[fromderinside]

Why is this an issue in the first place? If conservatives were happier, would that mean that the conservative viewpoint is the correct one? I don't think it would have any bearing either way, would it?

Although people would and have tried to misuse the claim to support such "therefore better" notions, you are correct that it has no valid bearing on that. But it does have bearing upon valid psychological and sociological models of both the causes and effects of political ideologies and their related policies.
Competing explanatory theories would differ in whether the presume/predict greater actual happiness and life satisfaction among liberals or conservatives at an aggregate level. Also, if conservatives are more prone to misrepresent their emotions, that itself is an important fact that would have being on such theories of ideology formation.

What is happiness? Universal or physics related metrics please.

 

[dismal]

Although people would and have tried to misuse the claim to support such "therefore better" notions, you are correct that it has no valid bearing on that. But it does have bearing upon valid psychological and sociological models of both the causes and effects of political ideologies and their related policies.
Competing explanatory theories would differ in whether the presume/predict greater actual happiness and life satisfaction among liberals or conservatives at an aggregate level. Also, if conservatives are more prone to misrepresent their emotions, that itself is an important fact that would have being on such theories of ideology formation.

What is happiness? Universal or physics related metrics please.

We don't measure "happiness", we measure "reported happiness". I think reasonably informed people understand the difference, but it doesn't stop the media from saying things like "The People of Denmark are the happiest people on Earth.".

This is a limitation of the media, IMO.

 

[Sarpedon]

Does it say what order the questions were asked in?

When I was religious, I doubt I would have answered that I was unhappy right after being asked what my religion was, even though I was unhappy.

 

[arkirk]

Why is this an issue in the first place? If conservatives were happier, would that mean that the conservative viewpoint is the correct one? I don't think it would have any bearing either way, would it?

Some of the happiest people I have known were ignorant idiots. That just goes to show you that happiness is in no way a function of your political beliefs. In general, rich people have more free time to be happy than poor people. They get better food and better treatment. Rich people generally are conservative and even liberal rich people tend to withdraw when some socially responsible policy might make them less rich.

 

[ronburgundy]

Although people would and have tried to misuse the claim to support such "therefore better" notions, you are correct that it has no valid bearing on that. But it does have bearing upon valid psychological and sociological models of both the causes and effects of political ideologies and their related policies.
Competing explanatory theories would differ in whether the presume/predict greater actual happiness and life satisfaction among liberals or conservatives at an aggregate level. Also, if conservatives are more prone to misrepresent their emotions, that itself is an important fact that would have being on such theories of ideology formation.

What is happiness? Universal or physics related metrics please.

Yes, your century outdated notions of what science is have been noted.

 

[ronburgundy]

What is happiness? Universal or physics related metrics please.

We don't measure "happiness", we measure "reported happiness". I think reasonably informed people understand the difference, but it doesn't stop the media from saying things like "The People of Denmark are the happiest people on Earth.".

This is a limitation of the media, IMO.

Actually, the point of the article is that the claimed relation with ideology changes depending on how you measure happiness and whether you control for dishonest self reporting. They not only use a measure of dishonest self-enhancement but have behavioral and biological indicators of happiness, such as use of positive and negative emotional language, and contraction of specific facial muscles that neuroscience data shows are related to activation of brain areas that underpin emotional experience. Conservatives lie more about their happiness, so self-reports make them seem happier, but their language and their facial expressions indicate that they are less happy.

However, the "relationship" with self reported happiness was already so tiny as to be meaningless anyway. So, the fact that it is "fake" is not damning evidence that self reports are useless. The fact is that they are highly correlated with the other measures, including brain imaging and bio measures. There is simply more error in self report measures that make replication and converging methods more important in drawing inferences.
Thus, fromderinside's constant mantra that physics is the only real science is invalid and not agreed with by the majority of the scientific community or philosophers of science.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What is happiness? Universal or physics related metrics please.

Yes, your century outdated notions of what science is have been noted.

What he most likely means is how do you properly gauge it.

 

[ronburgundy]

Does it say what order the questions were asked in?

When I was religious, I doubt I would have answered that I was unhappy right after being asked what my religion was, even though I was unhappy.

I think they asked about religion at the end, after "happiness" and "life-satisfaction". Typically, that along with age, ethnicity, income, etc.. are "demographic" variables asked on an end of study questionnaire.


Interestingly, similar results occur for religiosity. More religious people tend to claim to be happier, but they also inflate their self evaluations in the positive direction, and their reports are not supported by other indicators of happiness. This is not surprising given the religiosity is highly correlated with political conservatism.

 

[ronburgundy]

Yes, your century outdated notions of what science is have been noted.

What he most likely means is how do you properly gauge it.

I have gone round with him before, and he's rather dogmatic that the only thing "real" that science can ever measure are physical attributes of matter. He rejects almost all social science on entirely non-scientific on such grounds, and I'm not willing to derail this thread into that realm.

oh, and both my op and the article talk about how they measure it. They do so in multiple ways and that is what allows them to argue that conservatives falsely report being happier but are not not.

 

[arkirk]

Yes, your century outdated notions of what science is have been noted.

What he most likely means is how do you properly gauge it.

Let's take a real example here...the much abused people of Venezuela.

Chavez made a deal with Castro and got thousands of public health clinics in parts of Venezuela that had never seen a doctor. How did we respond...Were we happy for those who at last received medical care (even if it were not state of the art)? No, we had barking dogs yapping at all of Chavez's many political warts. It really is a matter of laying on of hands on something of value in Venezuela...strategic control of oil resources. We cannot accept any help for the people of the country and cannot allow this idea primacy in our thinking as long as we greedily want to control that country's oil.

What if our leadership had said to Chavez....alright Chavez, we'll help you help your people? And then actually helped? I think this was a notion that Kennedy was flirting with when he got assassinated. What was the Peace Corps? Why have it and still build nuclear bombs? If our government covertly intervevened in Venezuela in a failed coups attempt and continues to do so, how can we expect anything but more intrigue from Washington? The Republican letter is just another example of what I am pointing to. We need to clean up our act before we will see our world image improve to the point where we can broker peace.

 

[dismal]

We don't measure "happiness", we measure "reported happiness". I think reasonably informed people understand the difference, but it doesn't stop the media from saying things like "The People of Denmark are the happiest people on Earth.".

This is a limitation of the media, IMO.

Actually, the point of the article is that the claimed relation with ideology changes depending on how you measure happiness and whether you control for dishonest self reporting. They not only use a measure of dishonest self-enhancement but have behavioral and biological indicators of happiness, such as use of positive and negative emotional language, and contraction of specific facial muscles that neuroscience data shows are related to activation of brain areas that underpin emotional experience. Conservatives lie more about their happiness, so self-reports make them seem happier, but their language and their facial expressions indicate that they are less happy.

However, the "relationship" with self reported happiness was already so tiny as to be meaningless anyway. So, the fact that it is "fake" is not damning evidence that self reports are useless. The fact is that they are highly correlated with the other measures, including brain imaging and bio measures. There is simply more error in self report measures that make replication and converging methods more important in drawing inferences.
Thus, fromderinside's constant mantra that physics is the only real science is invalid and not agreed with by the majority of the scientific community or philosophers of science.

How do you know what the brain images and bio measures are measuring? I mean, what is the independent measure of happiness you are using to declare they are correlated with happiness?

And at that given moment you record a brain or bio measure, how do you know what is making this person happy/unhappy?

 

[Rhea]

Why is this an issue in the first place? If conservatives were happier, would that mean that the conservative viewpoint is the correct one? I don't think it would have any bearing either way, would it?

One could substitute "republican" or "conservative" for "believer" when reading Shaw's quote:

"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

 

[TV and credit cards]

The happy people should be living longer.

A bit dated but, http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/10/happiness-associated-longer-life