Turns out being empathetic can make people sad or anxious sometimes and indifference to the wellbeing of others is relaxing.
[deleted]
Caring about actual issues, rather than how many minorities are in Star Wars, causes anxiety. More news at 11.
I’m going to put aside stereotypes and value judgments for a second.
my personal take on this is that conservatives tend to be more traditional, and tradition can provide structure, social cohesion, and meaning in one’s life. I’d argue that human societies all developed traditions for precisely that reason. less traditional people have to create their own structure and find their own purpose in life, and that process can be extremely stressful and isolating especially if they don’t succeed at it right away.
Conservatives SAY they’re happy, but act like dicks to friends, family, and strangers.
Once again, Nate Silver doesn’t do enough work on his data. Mental health is a LOT MORE than what you ADMIT you feel.
These are self-reported surveys, which can be skewed, especially since conservatives often stigmatize therapy and emotional vulnerability. I’d argue their recent policy priorities suggest resentment more than happiness.
This is a whole essay about “self-reported happiness” that makes no effort to discuss or address the bias that can come from self reporting.
And there’s nothing beautiful about the data either.
The level of condescension and superiority in this thread is mind blowing
Almost like constantly making up new problems to worry about causes increased anxiety and hopelessness.
And almost like believing you are responsible for your own well-being creates a sense of control in your life, which leads to improved sense of accomplishment and worth.
Interesting data. It would be nice to have survey data from when Biden was in office to compare this to. With how polarized america is right now, I’m really curious how much of this gap is simply due to who is sitting in the oval office.
The comment section here is wild. The neurosis is palpable.
today from The Atlantic:
> But research corroborates my wave-pool hunch: Democrats are becoming the party of political junkies; Republicans, the party of people who would rather think about anything else. And there are more of the latter than there are of the former.
there’s an enormous amount of copium in this thread.
This isn’t new, many of my liberal friends have some type of dsm-iv disorder.
Hate to break it to folks but this ALSO spills over to mental health in the CHILDRENT of their parents. The data supports higher depression and anxiety in children of liberal parents then conservative parents.
The most odd note from their “across all demographics” chart is that people on both sides that are more interested in politics and news have higher happiness scores. Really would have thought “ignorance is bliss” would have applied there.
I am crestfallen but maybe not surprise the amount of motivated reasoning in these comments. Essentially the response is: “they should be miserable! everything sucks!!!”
I think it is a non-insignificant factor that the political group that simultaneously believes: you’ll never achieve the financial comfort of prior generations, the planet is dying because of your existence, you were born innately privileged, and the country has been taken over by the worst villains of all of history… also happens to have a lot more people who are not happy.
You can be left-leaning without being a doomer, but the argument across all the comments is justifying being insufferably miserable.
“Left side smart and good, make them sad. Right side mean and dumb, make happy”
Never change Reddit, never change
I had someone on reddit explain to me the other day that to be happy or content with life is to be a bootlicker and complacent in structural injustice. Case in point.
I see this brought up as a gotcha often enough, but isn’t this a given?
You have one group of people who are , by definition, in favor of the status quo and another who, by definition, want change. Why would the latter group ever be happier than the former?
The cope in these comments is wild.
As expected the discussion based on these comments can be summed up as:
Conservative = bad
Liberal = good
So profound and nuanced.
really…conservatives seem awfully angry these days
People with more money are often conservative. Having no financial issues is amazing for mental health.
If I lived in a world where people who are different than me don’t exist, where my own religion tells me I’m right and everyone else is wrong, where a few people being rich makes me wealthy, I could probably also manufacture “happiness”.
Meanwhile if I lived in a world where I see people suffer, the weather worsening before my eyes, financial, things that were affordable for my grandparents that are out of reach for me, it would probably be hard to to lie to myself.
Self reported anything is all about perspective.
Is this not self-reported mental health status, vs observation or testing?
Seems pretty straightforward – conservatives are far more likely to consider mh issues to be undesirable signs of weakness which they then suppress/avoid reporting, and/or to lack the introspection and emotional interoception capacity to recognize and articulate their own internal state accurately.
It’s a worldview pretty much centered on the repression of any deviation from the norm of the in-group.
It’s not a surprise that “it’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine” would be the outcome.
Could call this the happiness gap between “people reacting to the fall of their society” vs “people ignoring the fall of their society” right now.
I have flashbacks to visiting my relatives in rural Georgia as a child. If I wasn’t smiling, they had a problem with that. And they weren’t wondering why I wasn’t over the moon sitting around and watching them chain-smoke. They just implicitly demanded that people act happy. There’s a social penalty for admitting you’re unhappy in many conservative areas, so people put on a smile even if they’re miserable inside.
I’m an ex-conservative liberal—just getting that out there.
Anecdotally, in my life, this does seem to be true. Many conservative people I know appear to be more content.
Someone else mentioned that the social structures common among conservatives (church) might play a big role—I miss the community of church even though I’m no longer a believer.
Some liberal people also seem to have a sense that “I’m not ok unless outside conditions change.” I’m glad liberals want to change things — it’s why I am one — but when your interior contentment depends on stuff you can’t control, you’re going to suffer more.
I really think depression amongst lower income conservative men is wildly under reported and I think its because a lot them straight up view mental health issues as either bullshit or a sign of weakness. I know so many conservatives that’s check a lot of the boxes and talk about ‘male loneliness’ but when I ask them if they feel lonely they get super defensive and weird. I have liberal friends that also feel lonely and live similar lifestyles but they’ll at least admit to it.
30 comments
Turns out being empathetic can make people sad or anxious sometimes and indifference to the wellbeing of others is relaxing.
[deleted]
Caring about actual issues, rather than how many minorities are in Star Wars, causes anxiety. More news at 11.
I’m going to put aside stereotypes and value judgments for a second.
my personal take on this is that conservatives tend to be more traditional, and tradition can provide structure, social cohesion, and meaning in one’s life. I’d argue that human societies all developed traditions for precisely that reason. less traditional people have to create their own structure and find their own purpose in life, and that process can be extremely stressful and isolating especially if they don’t succeed at it right away.
Conservatives SAY they’re happy, but act like dicks to friends, family, and strangers.
Once again, Nate Silver doesn’t do enough work on his data. Mental health is a LOT MORE than what you ADMIT you feel.
These are self-reported surveys, which can be skewed, especially since conservatives often stigmatize therapy and emotional vulnerability. I’d argue their recent policy priorities suggest resentment more than happiness.
This is a whole essay about “self-reported happiness” that makes no effort to discuss or address the bias that can come from self reporting.
And there’s nothing beautiful about the data either.
The level of condescension and superiority in this thread is mind blowing
Almost like constantly making up new problems to worry about causes increased anxiety and hopelessness.
And almost like believing you are responsible for your own well-being creates a sense of control in your life, which leads to improved sense of accomplishment and worth.
Interesting data. It would be nice to have survey data from when Biden was in office to compare this to. With how polarized america is right now, I’m really curious how much of this gap is simply due to who is sitting in the oval office.
The comment section here is wild. The neurosis is palpable.
today from The Atlantic:
> But research corroborates my wave-pool hunch: Democrats are becoming the party of political junkies; Republicans, the party of people who would rather think about anything else. And there are more of the latter than there are of the former.
there’s an enormous amount of copium in this thread.
This isn’t new, many of my liberal friends have some type of dsm-iv disorder.
Hate to break it to folks but this ALSO spills over to mental health in the CHILDRENT of their parents. The data supports higher depression and anxiety in children of liberal parents then conservative parents.
The most odd note from their “across all demographics” chart is that people on both sides that are more interested in politics and news have higher happiness scores. Really would have thought “ignorance is bliss” would have applied there.
I am crestfallen but maybe not surprise the amount of motivated reasoning in these comments. Essentially the response is: “they should be miserable! everything sucks!!!”
I think it is a non-insignificant factor that the political group that simultaneously believes: you’ll never achieve the financial comfort of prior generations, the planet is dying because of your existence, you were born innately privileged, and the country has been taken over by the worst villains of all of history… also happens to have a lot more people who are not happy.
You can be left-leaning without being a doomer, but the argument across all the comments is justifying being insufferably miserable.
“Left side smart and good, make them sad. Right side mean and dumb, make happy”
Never change Reddit, never change
I had someone on reddit explain to me the other day that to be happy or content with life is to be a bootlicker and complacent in structural injustice. Case in point.
I see this brought up as a gotcha often enough, but isn’t this a given?
You have one group of people who are , by definition, in favor of the status quo and another who, by definition, want change. Why would the latter group ever be happier than the former?
The cope in these comments is wild.
As expected the discussion based on these comments can be summed up as:
Conservative = bad
Liberal = good
So profound and nuanced.
really…conservatives seem awfully angry these days
People with more money are often conservative. Having no financial issues is amazing for mental health.
If I lived in a world where people who are different than me don’t exist, where my own religion tells me I’m right and everyone else is wrong, where a few people being rich makes me wealthy, I could probably also manufacture “happiness”.
Meanwhile if I lived in a world where I see people suffer, the weather worsening before my eyes, financial, things that were affordable for my grandparents that are out of reach for me, it would probably be hard to to lie to myself.
Self reported anything is all about perspective.
Is this not self-reported mental health status, vs observation or testing?
Seems pretty straightforward – conservatives are far more likely to consider mh issues to be undesirable signs of weakness which they then suppress/avoid reporting, and/or to lack the introspection and emotional interoception capacity to recognize and articulate their own internal state accurately.
It’s a worldview pretty much centered on the repression of any deviation from the norm of the in-group.
It’s not a surprise that “it’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine” would be the outcome.
Could call this the happiness gap between “people reacting to the fall of their society” vs “people ignoring the fall of their society” right now.
I have flashbacks to visiting my relatives in rural Georgia as a child. If I wasn’t smiling, they had a problem with that. And they weren’t wondering why I wasn’t over the moon sitting around and watching them chain-smoke. They just implicitly demanded that people act happy. There’s a social penalty for admitting you’re unhappy in many conservative areas, so people put on a smile even if they’re miserable inside.
I’m an ex-conservative liberal—just getting that out there.
Anecdotally, in my life, this does seem to be true. Many conservative people I know appear to be more content.
Someone else mentioned that the social structures common among conservatives (church) might play a big role—I miss the community of church even though I’m no longer a believer.
Some liberal people also seem to have a sense that “I’m not ok unless outside conditions change.” I’m glad liberals want to change things — it’s why I am one — but when your interior contentment depends on stuff you can’t control, you’re going to suffer more.
I really think depression amongst lower income conservative men is wildly under reported and I think its because a lot them straight up view mental health issues as either bullshit or a sign of weakness. I know so many conservatives that’s check a lot of the boxes and talk about ‘male loneliness’ but when I ask them if they feel lonely they get super defensive and weird. I have liberal friends that also feel lonely and live similar lifestyles but they’ll at least admit to it.
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