New research shows conservative beliefs are linked to happiness and life meaning, while liberal beliefs align more with psychological richness, suggesting that political views shape different paths to personal well-being.
You know how people in groups tend to do pretty bad stuff without reflection and proper teaching, like bullying and excluding others?
That’s because it feels good to do these things, as long as you shield yourself from the negative consequences. It doesn’t feel good once you develop real empathy, but until that point doing these things will make you happy.
You can’t develop empathy until you break out of the filter bubble. To understand a person you first need to know what their life is like, what motivates them, what values they hold.
Everything I’ve seen tells me that the opacity runs in both directions. Empathizing with someone who holds radically different, diametrically opposed values to your own is very difficult.
No, I disagree. I have empathy for all humans, no matter who. When I hear that some natural catastrophe occurs, I don’t need to know details about those affected to feel for them. There was a time when I was a child when that wasn’t true, but since some point in my childhood it is.
That coincided with the point in time when I started leaning very left.
That’s not what empathy means. Empathy is the capacity to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they are feeling, not to feel bad for them when they’re not doing well.
Yes, and I don’t need to know the details of someone’s life to do so. Do you? You can’t feel empathy for e.g. Floridians who recently went through that hurricane?
not to feel bad for them when they’re not doing well
That’s also a form of empathy. You get that, right?
That’s also a form of empathy. You get that, right?
No, because doing badly doesn’t imply feeling badly. People going through bad times respond in a variety of ways. They don’t all respond exactly the same way.
Of course you can respond by donating to help people who have been affected by a disaster. Everyone does that. That’s what sympathy does for us.
Empathy is different! To truly have empathy for someone means to understand them well enough to know how they’re going to respond to something even before they do. It’s very difficult to achieve. Many married couples never reach it.
So you’re claiming that most people never have empathy for other people… Sure, that sounds very realistic and not-at-all “holier than thou”.
I mean, I’ve seen plenty of examples where other people have empathized with me, but I guess I just happen to be surrounded by living incarnations of Buddha himself.
Most people have some degree of empathy: for their friends, family, and their in-group. There are plenty of people who don’t, though.
Empathy is the skill of the therapist, the con artist, the salesperson, the poker player. Not everyone is good at understanding other people’s emotions and motivations.
That’s also the behavior of profoundly unhappy people. I think the real issue is that these are the Republicans answering 10/10 on happiness in the polls:
Maybe it’s got the effect to externalise any of the sources of whatever is wrong in your life. Fox gives you easy answers for all your problems, and it’s always some ‘other’. You don’t have to change or work on yourself to improve things, you just have to vote for the guys that will deport/jail the ones holding you back.
Id pay special attention to Study 4 which seems to really hit my key points of criticism as a layman. Study 4 controlled for census region but I’d really like to see this controlled for rural vs urban populations at a finer scale. Without that adjustment I question the validity of other studies included.
That said study 4, if I’m reading it right, still found a correlation with happiness in conservatives but that correlation did not survive when religion was accounted for. Which tells you everything you need to know.
The conservatism isn’t the primary ideology, this is just a roundabout way of asking if religious people report being happier and having more meaning and of course they do. The religious aspect almost overrules the political angle entirely.
Conservatives are happier? Since when?
Like, I can disprove that by turning on Fox News for two minutes. It’s nothing but 24/7 anger porn and rage bait.
You know how people in groups tend to do pretty bad stuff without reflection and proper teaching, like bullying and excluding others?
That’s because it feels good to do these things, as long as you shield yourself from the negative consequences. It doesn’t feel good once you develop real empathy, but until that point doing these things will make you happy.
You can’t develop empathy until you break out of the filter bubble. To understand a person you first need to know what their life is like, what motivates them, what values they hold.
Everything I’ve seen tells me that the opacity runs in both directions. Empathizing with someone who holds radically different, diametrically opposed values to your own is very difficult.
No, I disagree. I have empathy for all humans, no matter who. When I hear that some natural catastrophe occurs, I don’t need to know details about those affected to feel for them. There was a time when I was a child when that wasn’t true, but since some point in my childhood it is.
That coincided with the point in time when I started leaning very left.
That’s not what empathy means. Empathy is the capacity to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand how they are feeling, not to feel bad for them when they’re not doing well.
What you’re describing is more like sympathy.
Yes, and I don’t need to know the details of someone’s life to do so. Do you? You can’t feel empathy for e.g. Floridians who recently went through that hurricane?
That’s also a form of empathy. You get that, right?
No, because doing badly doesn’t imply feeling badly. People going through bad times respond in a variety of ways. They don’t all respond exactly the same way.
Of course you can respond by donating to help people who have been affected by a disaster. Everyone does that. That’s what sympathy does for us.
Empathy is different! To truly have empathy for someone means to understand them well enough to know how they’re going to respond to something even before they do. It’s very difficult to achieve. Many married couples never reach it.
So you’re claiming that most people never have empathy for other people… Sure, that sounds very realistic and not-at-all “holier than thou”.
I mean, I’ve seen plenty of examples where other people have empathized with me, but I guess I just happen to be surrounded by living incarnations of Buddha himself.
Most people have some degree of empathy: for their friends, family, and their in-group. There are plenty of people who don’t, though.
Empathy is the skill of the therapist, the con artist, the salesperson, the poker player. Not everyone is good at understanding other people’s emotions and motivations.
I wonder how it feels to be talked to like this.
How should I know? I don’t know chonglibloodsport enough to know how they’re going to respond to something even before they do.
But making other people miserable is one of their favorite ways of making themselves happy
That’s also the behavior of profoundly unhappy people. I think the real issue is that these are the Republicans answering 10/10 on happiness in the polls:
Maybe that’s what makes them happy?
Maybe it’s got the effect to externalise any of the sources of whatever is wrong in your life. Fox gives you easy answers for all your problems, and it’s always some ‘other’. You don’t have to change or work on yourself to improve things, you just have to vote for the guys that will deport/jail the ones holding you back.
Id pay special attention to Study 4 which seems to really hit my key points of criticism as a layman. Study 4 controlled for census region but I’d really like to see this controlled for rural vs urban populations at a finer scale. Without that adjustment I question the validity of other studies included.
That said study 4, if I’m reading it right, still found a correlation with happiness in conservatives but that correlation did not survive when religion was accounted for. Which tells you everything you need to know.
The conservatism isn’t the primary ideology, this is just a roundabout way of asking if religious people report being happier and having more meaning and of course they do. The religious aspect almost overrules the political angle entirely.
Have you seen a Lemmy feed recently? Pot meet kettle stuff.