The Hispanic Bonus and Lincoln’s Melancholy
Here’s a nice article reviewing some of the highlights of happiness research from Katie Santich at the Orlando Sentinel. She dwells a bit on the “hispanic bonus” (latin americans, especially, are unaccountably happy) given the Orlando demographic, but it’s a nice overview. The best thing about it is an introduction to an interesting new (to me) thinker, Julie Norem, a psychologist at Wellesley who studies the upside of negativity.
And although years of study in cognitive therapy have shown there are ways people can increase resiliency, optimism and an emphasis on their strengths, not everyone needs it, Norem said, to accomplish greatness.
She cites the recently published “Lincoln’s Melancholy,” in which author Joshua Wolf Shenk convincingly argues that Abraham Lincoln struggled with major depression. It was perhaps, Shenk theorizes, Lincoln’s grim but accurate view of reality that moved him to want to change things for the better.
“One of the problems of putting happiness at the forefront,” Norem said, “is that, if you’re really focused on that, you can gloss over a lot of things that may not make you happy but are awfully important to understand or just learn about.”
Precisely.
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Wow. The money quote from the source article is: “religious faith … interestingly, seems to boost happiness only in Latin America and the United States.”
I’ve had a nagging question for years, and this quote only underscores that doubt. The question is this: how do those researching happiness and contentment factor out the I-Research-Therefore-I-Spoil-the-Sample tendency? I mean, if you’re wearing a white coat and carry a clipboard, and you ask a man of ethnicity X if he is happy, cultural and ethnic tendencies will point him to answer such a survey in one general way or the other. The very idea that religious faith boosts happiness only in Latin America and the United States seems prima facie ridiculous.
Actually reminds me of what I say about the time I spent on antidepressant meds in high school for an anxiety disorder. I didn’t have any anxiety. I wasn’t anxious about my grades, I wasn’t anxious about getting my homework done, I wasn’t anxious about not offending my teachers…
Not a good way to be, long-term.