The politically right are more satisfied with their life than the left!

[genericname85]

so i'm a social scientist and i just made that discovery, so i thought i'd share it:

in a nutshell, upon mulitvariate analysis of determinants of "life satisfaction" it turns out that being politically left ceteris paribus has a negative impact on life satisfaction, while being politically right ceteris paribus has a positive impact on life satisfaction. the effect slightly falls off at the extreme political spectrum (far left and far right) and loses a little bit of significance for people that don't care for politics.

Takes make me add an Image so there you go.

the correlation is highly significant and very solid against control variables.

what do you think of that?

does that mean that for example the left are left because they are generally unsatisfied or do you think it's their political orientation that is responsible for the lower life satisfaction?

disclaimer: i do consider myself slightly left leaning so this result is in no way what i wanted to come out of the analysis xD

[jennifer_bloom]

That is mainly because conservatives are conservatives because they are rich and don't want to spend taxes helping the poor. If these same conservatives became poor after a death or illness or a job less- a lot of them would become liberal. Liberals are not all broke though - some are liberals for financial reasons and others are liberal for moral reason. It's like saying - why do rich people vote for those who lower their taxes?

[genericname85]

income is one of the control variables applied, meaning the effect still exists and is still signigifcant if you control for the effect that income has on life satisfaction.

[genericname85]

besides that, the adjusted r² value automatically eliminates skewing effects of intervariable effects so this is really an effect completely independend of income.

[N192K001]

I'd consider the Political Compass more representative.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/

However, I do find your findings interesting. (I'm right-leaning libertarian.)

So, 「ceteris paribus」and「correlation」… also studied Economics, I presume?

[genericname85]

no those are words used in most quantitative statistical methods ^^ i only studied a bit of national economics but that's it.

[John_Doesnt]

GOTCHA troll. You got that modified picture from an actual social scientist and your version comes from a Reddit post. Sorry, but you're not gonna fool this guy.
Here's your fake pic from Reddit:

And here's the real one from a political scientist site:

[John_Doesnt]

Also, somebody pointed out that conservatives are rich:
Bill Gates: Liberal
Jeff Bezos: Liberal
Oprah: Liberal
I'm not disagreeing, I'm just pointing out that some of the richest people are liberals. It actually has to do with being a self-made billionaire/millionaire vs. being born into wealth like our asshole president.

[Someguynamedbob]

All of those spectrums are innacurate, first of all it’s a chart with quadrants, a line going right to left is not accurate, there is libertarian left libertarian right authoritarian left and authoritarian right, right to left only has to do with economics, labeling the sides as slavery and the middle as freedom is laughable because it’s literally just talking about economics, you would be thinking authoritarian vs libertarian which is up and down on the spectrum

[genericname85]

why the heck does everybody focus on the image so much? read the fucking take xD i must put an image to publish a take. i don't care for the image. it's the first shit that came up on google.

[genericname85]

the accuracy of the political spectrum doesn't matter for what i said in the take, as in the survey this is a question that the people answer themselfes without getting a definition of what is left of right is.

[John_Doesnt]

@Someguynamedbob it's not meant to be an actual chart, it's an illustration.

[genericname85]

it's just a random stupid image that has not much to do with what i said at all xD

[genericname85]

also just for your other critique: income is accounted for in the multivariate analysis and the effect of political spectrum persists even if you use income (among many others) as control variable.

[Phanta]

Pardon me, but you made a big mistake by putting a swastika on the far left. And although some fascism can be on the left, it can also be on the far right. I'm an advocate of the American Nazi Party. We are on the far Right. www.americannaziparty.com

[genericname85]

nazi = nationalsozialist -> national socialist -> socialist=left; mind=blown.

well anyway i don't give a crap about the picture anyway. i'm just forced to put a picture and i couldn't be bothered to put any thought into it as i clearly stated in the image description. i'm not the author of the image nor do i want to say anything by the use of that image. it's just there so i could publish the take.

[Phanta]

You know ZERO about National-Socialism. You, like so many others, see the word socialism and label it Leftist on that basis. You are dead wrong. And I take care with my pictures so as not to mislead my audience.

[genericname85]

i made a fucking joke because i understand that the picture is shit but if you had even bothered to read the take instead of just looking at the picture for one second and then writing a pedantic comment, you'd know that...

besides i'm a god damn German. you think i don't know what national socialism is? at least read the take and don't get caught up with trivial nonsense.

[Phanta]

Don't care if you're German. Germany has turned into a land of liberal cucks. Doesn't matter if you consider it a joke. You are purposely misleading others.

[genericname85]

so you're going on about the image that i told you three times now doesn't hold any information that i care for.

ever thought about that it was america that forced germany to be liberal cucks by throwing a sucker punch while we dominated the entirety of Europe and were in the process of forcing russia to it's knees which you never even came close to even though you're like a million times our size?

we may be liberal cucks now but it's still better than being nazis or being lead by a redneck joke for a president.

just stay in your farm house, shoot at crap in your backyard with your neck like a lobster and you mouth full of dip while worshiping your cults idol. i won't be bothered to read any more of this retardation.

[goaded]

If you have to put in an image, at least find one that corresponds to reality. Come on, you're German and you put the Nazis on the left?

A link to the research would also be interesting.

My hypothesis is that the right wing like the status quo, and the left see the unfairness.

[genericname85]

the American definition of "right wing politics" as in conservative isn't the same as the german "right wing" definition wich is national "socialism" so it's not entirely wrong, i guess. however it's just the first shitty image that popped up and i didn't care at all, so whatever.

the research isn't gonna be published. we were researching the determinants of life satisfaction in a masters course about measures of prosperity and we kind of just discovered this when we played around with control variables and applied political spectrum affinity as an additional control variable.

yeah your guess for the explanation was also one of our guesses :D one of the students is gonna write a paper on this and i'm looking foreward to his results.

[jacquesvol]

Cgenericname85 agreed

[Deathraider]

I'd argue fascism is more right than left, though communist and fascist parties are actually pretty radical and don't fit neatly on a political spectrum. Fascism being radical is what made it seem appeal to countries after WW1 and especially during the economic depression in Germany, and later the rest of Europe.

[genericname85]

the definition of what actually is left or right isn't significant, as the findings base on self identification of the sample. it's the correlation between the reported life satisfaction and the reported political spectrum affinity of the subjects so definitions don't really matter, as each subject applied their own definition anyway xD

[Anonymous]

Nice take! Thanks for sharing.

And I love the way you schooled @HungLikeAHorsefly, who by the way is a woman with a blue GAG account in case you hadn't noticed.

[genericname85]

i did not know that but it doesn't matter much anyway :) thanks.

[Opinion Owner]

Nah, it doesn't matter much but it does help a explain a lot of what she writes here at GAG. If you pay attention, you'll see what I mean.

[genericname85]

well she/he has a point though. everyone can come and brag about being an actual social scientist and the many spelling mistakes i make kindi of don't work in my favor... shouldn't have made such a braggy claim to begin with cause i had it coming that someone is questioning my competence like that xD so much work...

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

I feel like a social scientist would offer some evidence of this, and be more forthcoming about his methodology other than "mutivariate analysis on stuff"

[genericname85]

the formalization of the regression was as follows:

Ls (ict)=A+β1income (ict) + β2country (c) + β3year (t) + β4age and age²(ict) + β5work (ict) + β6education (ict) + β7Health (ict) + β8relationship (ict) + β9children (ict) + β10Religion (ict) + β11Voted (ict) + β12Sozial (ict) β13Politicalspectrum (ict) + e (ict)

source data was the European Social Survey with N=330.000
adjusted R²=0,225
the coefficient on life satisfaction foes from 1 (very left) to 12 (very right):
-0.337 on the very left and 0,547 on the very right and it is actually distributed like a perfect belle vourve on that stratification.

there's the evidence. now what?

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Okay, now explain how it is you think those variables are determinants of life satisfaction. And then you can explain how you coded them. And when all that's done, maybe you can top it off with an explanation for why you think survey data from the European Union is relevant to the political spectrum in the United States, since you imply it from the iconography you used in your graphic up above.

To be more precise: I don't think any of those metrics are determinants of life satisfaction. Even if they were, I want to be sure you didn't introduce coding errors. Also, demographic data from people in Europe doesn't really say much about the United States. Maybe you weren't referring to the United States, but your graphic refers to the American political spectrum, which is substantially different from those in Europe.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

I'm willing to entertain the idea that prior work has determined some of these metrics are determinants of life satisfaction, but I'm doubtful there's a strong causal relationship there for any of them other than maybe health and country.

[genericname85]

the variables were chosen after the lecture of different peer reviewed works on the topic. doesn't matter if you think they aren't or not.

the graphic has no relevance at all. as i explained, it's just the first shit that popped up on google

man you must be really smart to realize that i referred to Europe xD since i said that straight up basically in my last reply.
if you were able to read the evidence i just provided, you would have known how significant the determinants are but you couldn't and cause i knew that in advance, i didn't bother to post it anyway ;)

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Will you give us a list of what these peer reviewed works are that you're referring to? If you're a social scientist, then you're familiar with how this works. No support = you made it up.

In the very least, since this isn't a scientific forum after all, you could explain why you think these variables have anything to do with life satisfaction. "I heard it in a lecture" doesn't cut it. You see, I don't think they do and if you can't support your claim that it does... well then you're just another dipshit on GAG spouting off bullshit.

Lastly, you didn't mention that the image has nothing to do with your assertion. You probably should have.

Seriously though, thanks for providing info on your methodology. That's a measure of courtesy I don't usually find on GAG.

[genericname85]

"i heard in the lecture doesn't count"... lol you don't get to the results that i formerly posted by "visiting a lecture". dude you expect me to give you a private lecture on the topic? you're not paying for that so why would i? because no offense that would be a lot of work on my part, since you can't even interpret the data i posted.

it's up to you if you trust me on this or not but i can tell you in a nutshell why i "think" those measures have an influence is also already mostly in the information that i listed:

Adjusted R² of 0,225 means that ~23% on the variance in the "life satisfaction variable" can be explained by our model which is quite high. also what i didn't meantion (cause that kind of goes without saying cause otherways i couldn't speak of a correlation with significance) is that the p- value of the regression was >0.000. in pretty much every statistics we say a p value of 0,1 is highly suggestive of a correlation, 0,05 is significant correlation and 0,001 is highly significant. we're below 0,000 which means translated that the chances of the correlation being a statistical coincidence or in other words "wrong" is below 0,1%

this is the most condensed form of "how we know things in quantitative social science" i can give you xD that's all i'm willing to do for you. so there you go.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Sigh. Yeah, I don't need or want a lecture. I want you to tell me why the metrics you posted have anything significant to do with a measure of life satisfaction. I ask because I seriously doubt they do. Your inability to explain why validates that opinion. Please show me I'm wrong.

And do it without math. My wife is a social scientist and I'm an engineer. I know how statistics work and I know full well that there are scores of so-called social scientists out there who try to make assertions with lots of complicated math while neglecting the fitness of their model to accurately reflect reality. Now, we're all very impressed with your mathematical prowess but I'm not so naive as to take it on faith that a bunch of equations actually means anything without proof. Please, please prove me wrong.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Look, I'm a Liberal and I don't have any troubles believing your conclusion. And it may very well be the case that some or all of your variables to have relevance to life satisfaction. But you're doing a terrible job of supporting your case when you talk about it. Especially given the fact that this isn't a scientific forum. Not even a little bit.

The reason I'm questioning you on this is that when I see stuff like this on GAG, I immediately question its validity. I see it primarily as some dude calling himself a scientist and throwing fancy looking math around in an Argument from Authority.

[genericname85]

Valid question. obviously life satisfaction is subjective so there's no objective measure of life satisfaction. Quantitative social science works with large scale surveys where many subjects are answering a catalogue of the same questions. One of those questions is "how satisfied are you with your life overall?" On a scale from 1-10, 1 being not satisfied at all, 10 being very satisfied indeed. The same subjects answer many other questions about their economic status, education, healthy family and so on and since all subjects answer the same questions we can compare and see the for example people that answered to be left on the political spectrum also answered the life satisfaction question with a lower score.

[genericname85]

also i totally understand your skepticism, cause i know there's abunch of trolls here and i'd question everyone too who claims "to be a scientist"so i had this coming by stating to be one :/ i really hoped that i could disperse your concern by giving you a real scientific rundown of how the actual social science works and now that you're claiming to be an engineer with a social scientist wife makes me REALLY wonder why you couldn't interpret the formalization that i posted, cause that stuff is easy statistics that i shouldn't have to explain to someone with the education you claim to have... anyway.

we always get to those quantitative methods by first doing qualitative surveys. that's where we have mostly semi-strictured interview methods from which we can extrapolate which "might be" the determinants of life satisfaction and the large scale quantitative surveys allow us to see how much of it we can already explain.

this isn't a claim to explain all of life satisfaction. this is a claim to know how the political spectrum affinity influences life satisfaction. in this case specifically in the EU, cause that's the data is from and that's the claim we can make from the given data.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

I guess I owe you an apology. I understand your math/methodology; I just didn't think your metrics were correlated with life satisfaction as you said they are. I wasn't aware that there was a survey question asking respondents to explicitly rate their life satisfaction. I thought you were trying to infer it without that metric based on some unspoken prior art that legitimizes using one or more of these variables in and of themselves as a proxy for LS. I basiclaly missed the Ls variable, and that's how a regression works anyway so... I was being a dumbass. My apologies.

[genericname85]

there are a lot of such variables. for example the health variable is also merely a question of "how healthy do you feel overall", cause we just can not scientifically measure those subjective feelings. there can be a person with deadly cancer that feels very healthy overall still and there can be a person that has no classified sickness according to the ICD-10 index that still feels more sickly than that person with deadly cancer. that's why i love social science. what we do has actual meaning and isn't just numbers and calculations even though the end result looks like it.

there's lots of variables causing variance in the LS variable. a lot of fix effects that all have to be taken into account by dummy variables, and since we took a lot of those variables into account, it was all the more surprising that the left right effect still persisted which i didn't like, cause i consider myself slightly left leaning as i said :)

[genericname85]

kudos to you. an appology must be one of the rarest things you ever hear on here xD thanks.

[HungLikeAHorsefly]

Hey, when you're wrong you're wrong. Fess up and move on, right?

Anyway, thanks for the explanation. I asked about coding initially because I didn't know if, for example, when you said you used Religion as a metric, if you were asking what the respondent's religion is and then coding it, or if you were just trying to get a qualitative measure of how happy they are with their religion. Or maybe if they just consider themselves religious at all. Sounds like the latter two.

Does your data hint at any reason for why Conservatism is correlated with LS?

[genericname85]

The religion variable in this case is simply a recode of "visited public religious event outside of special occasions"- question and we coded it 0 if they never do that and 1 if they rarely, sometimes, or often do that, cause when someone does that even rarely, you can be sure they are at least somewhat religious. if they claim to be religious but never practice their religion we don't care about their confession in this case. we could have taken it as separate dummies but it turns out for the end result that doesn't change much. it's just there as a controll variable cause we already know that taking part in religious practices has a positive effect on life satisfaction. things that are known to have a big effect that are NOT inside the model can skew the results and lead to over or underestimation of the effect you wanted to research.

no we can't say why at this point. that's why it's interesting to me xD

[weasley8]

I would say it's probably correlation, but not causation. This also could have to do with the fact that the current president is on the right.

[genericname85]

well to be fair, this is based on the data of the european social survey ^^ but it would be interesting to see if the effect also exists in American society. however i don't have access to an appropriate dataset to test that.

[Liam_Hayden]

People who believe in individual liberty are happier in general because we realize that we do not have a legitimate claim upon the fruits of the labor of others.

[genericname85]

You could also say that you're more happy if you can blame your misfortune on illegal aliens or minorities, which is what the right tend to do xD

[Anonymous]

I didn’t read the take at all but I saw your political map picture and saw a massive amount of inaccuracies with it, also of course the right is more satisfied they actually work

[genericname85]

gag makes me put an image. i just googled political spectrum and picked the first. as you can see in the image description i didn't care for the picture at all.

by the way occupation is one of the controll variables, so it's effect is accounted for but the effect of left and right on life satisfaction persists.

[jacquesvol]

I'm satisfied with my life (but it could be better)

[genericname85]

Life satisfaction is asked on a scale of 1-10. 1 being very bad 10 bring very good. Being left costs people -.4 and being right +.3 on this scale

[Anonymous]

Really because i thought the incel community was mostly right winged white men

[genericname85]

i have no such data.

[Secretgardenblood]

Good take

[genericname85]

thanks :)