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You need to find some kind of proxy for life satisfaction otherwise you could just be measuring a change in society’s expectations regarding the answer to that
by sarchertech 3y ago
You need to find some kind of proxy for life satisfaction otherwise you could just be measuring a change in society’s expectations regarding the answer to that question.
That is, if there’s less expectation to lie and say everything is fine, you could get declining life satisfaction numbers with no actual decline in satisfaction.
Anecdotally people I know from my grandparent’s generation are much less likely to admit to being unhappy.
- krona 3y agop.7 > ...answers to subjective well-being questions have been shown to be correlated with physical evidence of affect such as smiling, laughing, heart rate measures, sociability, and electrical activity in the brain (Diener, 1984)
- sarchertech 3y agoUnless you check that correlation at the beginning and end of the time period in question, it’s meaningless.
- javajosh 3y agoOne of the most useful things you can do in debate is reveal yourself to be immune to evidence of anything you don't like. It is useful because it allows rational participants to stop wasting time with you.
- sarchertech 3y agoThe data says people are saying they are less happy over some time period. There are 2 competing hypotheses to explain the cause. 1) Society has changed in a way that has made people less happy. 2) Society has changed in a way that has made people less likely to lie about being happy. If you stop to think it through for a second, you’ll quickly understand how the statement “we have some data from somewhere in the middle of the time period in question that self reported satisfaction and a actual satisfaction are correlated” isn’t evidence to support either side. That statement can easily fit either hypothesis.
- krona 3y agoThis is quite easy to test in a longitudinal cross-cultural study of people over time. You'd probably find half a book shelf of research already which does exactly that, if only one bothered to look for it.
- sarchertech 3y agoHappy to take a look through anything you might want to point me to.
- obscurette 3y agoMy grandparents too, but what I've found out that they really are much happier, because they have seen so much worse. Try to imagine how you'd feel yourself at the moment if you'd have seen WWII, deportations, 50 years of communist occupation etc?