Archive for April, 2007
Unending Happiness
If you’re tired of reading about happiness, maybe you’d like to hear me talk about it. Here’s my appearance on Counterpoint for ABC National Radio (that’s Australia) with presenter Michael Duffy, and my latest Cato podcast with Anastasia Uglova.
If you’re not tired of reading about happiness, here are my contributions to the current Cato Unbound discussion.
The Quest for a Scientific Politics of Happiness
Happiness as an Input to Political Deliberation
Why We Think We’re Unhappy and What Not to Do About It
Good News about Depression and Suicide
The Artificiality of Happiness
These are a bit more polished than my average blog posts. You should, of course, read the whole discussion, which I’ve personally found very stimulating.
What I’ve Been Up To
Sorry to have gone missing since the release of my paper. I’ve been working on a number of shorter pieces, and on the new issue of Cato Unbound, on happiness. The discussion so far has been terrific. If you haven’t been following, here’s what we’ve had so far:
Lead Essay
Reaction Essays
The Conversation
Check it out. The conversation will last through tomorrow.
How Reliable Are Happiness Self-Reports
That’s “reliable” in the technical measurement sense of “repeatability” or “consistency.” Alan Krueger and David Schkade are on the case with a new NBER paper, “The Reliability of Subjective Well-Being Measures.”
ABSTRACT
This paper studies the test-retest reliability of a standard self-reported life satisfaction measure and of affect measures collected from a diary method. The sample consists of 229 women who were interviewed on Thursdays, two weeks apart, in Spring 2005. The correlation of net affect (i.e., duration-weighted positive feelings less negative feelings) measured two weeks apart is 0.64, which is slightly higher than the correlation of life satisfaction (r=0.59). Correlations between income, net affect and life satisfaction are presented, and adjusted for attenuation bias due to measurement error. Life satisfaction is found to correlate much more strongly with income than does net affect. Components of affect that are more person-specific are found to have a higher test-retest reliability than components of affect that are more specific to the particular situation. While reliability figures for subjective well-being measures are lower than those typically found for education, income and many other microeconomic variables, they are probably sufficiently high to support much of the research that is currently being undertaken on subjective well-being, particularly in studies where group means are compared (e.g., across activities or demographic groups).
The passage in bold is not exactly a ringing endorsement, and definitely a call for caution, the implication being that the reliability of SWB measures are insufficient for some current research. I look forward to digging in deeper.
[Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the tip.]
In Pursuit of Happiness Research: Is It Reliable? What Does It Imply for Policy?
That’s the name of my long-awaited (by me, at least) Cato Policy Analysis, published today. Here’s the abstract:
“Happiness research” studies the correlates of subjective well-being, generally through survey methods. A number of psychologists and social scientists have drawn upon this work recently to argue that the American model of relatively limited government and a dynamic market economy corrodes happiness, whereas Western European and Scandinavian-style social democracies promote it. This paper argues that happiness research in fact poses no threat to the relatively libertarian ideals embodied in the U.S. socioeconomic system. Happiness research is seriously hampered by confusion and disagreement about the definition of its subject as well as the limitations inherent in current measurement techniques. In its present state happiness research cannot be relied on as an authoritative source for empirical information about happiness, which, in any case, is not a simple empirical phenomenon but a cultural and historical moving target. Yet, even if we accept the data of happiness research at face value, few of the alleged redistributive policy implications actually follow from the evidence. The data show that neither higher rates of government redistribution nor lower levels of income inequality make us happier, whereas high levels of economic freedom and high average incomes are among the strongest correlates of subjective well-being. Even if we table the damning charges of questionable science and bad moral philosophy, the American model still comes off a glowing success in terms of happiness.
It is not a short paper, nor is it written at a USA Today level of difficulty. So reserve a cool hour for some serious intellectual contemplation. It’s worth it, I hope.
An Epidemic of Misdiagnosis
In the post below I say I’m skeptical of numbers showing an explosion in rates of depression. Here, in part, is why… From yesterday’s New York Times.
About one in four people who appear to be depressed are in fact struggling with the normal mental fallout from a recent emotional blow, like a ruptured marriage, the loss of a job or the collapse of an investment, a new study suggests. To avoid unnecessary diagnoses and stigma, the standard definition of depression should be redrawn to specifically exclude such cases, the authors argue.
The study, appearing today in The Archives of General Psychiatry, is based on survey data from more than 8,000 Americans; it did not analyze the number of people who had been misdiagnosed.
Psychiatrists and other doctors who take careful medical histories do so precisely to rule out such life blows, as well as the effects of physical illnesses, before making a diagnosis of depression.
But the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual does not specifically exclude people experiencing deep but normal feelings of sadness, unless they are bereaved by the death of a loved one. And an increasing number of school districts and health clinics use simple depression checklists, which do not take context into account, the authors said.
“Larger and larger numbers of people are reporting symptoms on these checklists, and there’s no way to know whether we’re finding normal sadness responses or real depression,” said Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor of social work at New York University and the study’s lead author.
This is big. As I’ve pointed out before, the depression stats and the happiness stats seem to be in conflict. There has been a stable or shrinking percentage of the population in the bottom happiness category despite alleged huge increases in the incidence of depression. This creates a problem for researchers who lean hard on both sets of data, like Diener and Seligman do in their paper “Beyond Money.” Here’s the dialectic as I see it…
If the depression data is right, the happiness data must be broken for failing to detect any increase in the proportion of the population feeling unwell. You would then have to give up on using the happiness data as evidence that many people are not getting happier, since you’ve already established the unreliability of self-reportinng to track important changes in psychological well-being. Now, you could argue that depression and unhappiness are different and statistically unrelated things. But then you need to convince us which one is more important for well-being. If the depression numbers are right, and depression is a huge deal, but has no relationship to unhappiness, then perhaps self-reported happiness and unhappiness are not very relevant to well-being. But then you don’t get to skip back and forth from one set of data to the other, whenever it is convenient to your argument.
You could argue that the happiness data are right, in which case, you’ll have a problem with the depression data. Again, you could distinguish between unhappiness and depression, and argue that they could vary independently. But, again, you’ll have to take a stand on what matters for well-being. Or argue that they are both important, but incommensurable. Alternatively, you could argue that both sets of data have their problems. This is my view. In this case, for the reasons Wakefield and Horwitz lay out, I am more skeptical of the depression data than the happiness data, which I think is likely to be most accurate at picking up changes at the bottom, since bad feelings are more psychologically salient and available than good ones, and therefore more likely to be accurately reported.
My hunch: much depression is misdiagnosed for failing to distinguish between functional sadness and disordered malaise, as above. And much is more or less intentionally misdiagnosed in order to give non-depressed people legal, insurance-covered access to SSRI’s, as Wakefield and Horwitz describe elsewhere. Importantly, SSRI’s really do make people feel better. Since there are far fewer truly depressed people than we think there are, but prescriptions for SSRIs based on bad depression diagnoses continue to rise, increasing rates of diagnosed depression may actually correlate with an improvement in the average tone of experience. O Brave New World!
More On Antidepressant Dirt
From The Economist [thanks FK!]:
Cytokines actually act on sensory nerves that run to the brain from organs such as the heart and the lungs. That action stimulates a brain structure called the dorsal raphe nucleus. It was this nucleus that Dr Lowry focused on. He found a group of cells within it that connect directly to the limbic system, the brain’s emotion-generating area. These cells release serotonin into the limbic system in response to sensory-nerve stimulation.
[…]
This result is intriguing for two reasons. First, it offers the possibility of treating clinical depression with what is, in effect, a vaccination. Indeed, M. vaccae is considered a bit of a wonder-bug in this context. Besides cancer, and now depression, it is being looked at as a way of treating Crohn’s disease (an inflammation of the gut) and rheumatoid arthritis.
Second, it opens a new line of inquiry into why depression is becoming more common. Two other conditions that have increased in frequency recently are asthma and allergies, both of which are caused by the immune system attacking cells of the body it is supposed to protect. One explanation for the rise of these two conditions is the hygiene hypothesis. This suggests a lack of childhood exposure to harmless bugs is leading to improperly primed immune systems, which then go on to look for trouble where none exists.
In the case of depression, a similar explanation may pertain. If an ultra-hygienic environment is not stimulating the interaction between immune system and brain, some people may react badly to the consequent lack of serotonin. No one suggests this is the whole explanation for depression, but it may turn out to be part of it.
I’m skeptical of numbers that show massively increasing depression, but it would be amazing if a good part of what increase there has been is due to our being unnaturally clean, rather than, say, the breakdown of social cohesion in commercial society.
The Soil Is In My Blood
This is weird:
Exposure to a type of bacteria found in soil boosts happiness levels and could help restore healthy immune functions in people who are depressed and prone to infection, says a study.
British scientists led by Chris Lowry at Bristol University treated lung cancer patients with the bacteria, named ‘bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae’, and found improvement in their quality of life, reported the online edition of BBC News.
However, they said more work is needed to determine if the bacteria has anti-depressant properties through activation of serotonin neurons - a chemical in the brain that helps maintain a ‘happy feeling’, and seems to help keep our moods under control by helping with sleep, calming anxiety and relieving depression.
Seems low-effort enough. Let’s get dirty!
Csikszentmihalyi’s Happiness Advice
From a new Time article on Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s new grad program at CGU:
Drawing on his research on happiness, Csikszentmihalyi has three general pieces of advice:
* Be attuned to what gives you genuine satisfaction. Although many people assume that popular activities like watching TV are enjoyable, their own reports generally indicate that they feel more engaged, energetic, satisfied and happy when doing other things.
* Study yourself. To better understand their own happiness, Csikszentmihalyi says, people should systematically record their activities and feelings every few hours for a week or two. In recording your observations, try to focus on how you actually feel, rather than what you think you ought to be feeling or what you expect to feel. Afterwards, note the high points, particularly, and the low ones. Then try to adjust how you spend time according to your findings.
* Take control. Repairing unhappy conditions requires active effort. People often assume external conditions will change for the better or let chance determine their response. That’s a mistake. “Get control,” Csikszentmihalyi says. When things aren’t right, “you have to put in the same effort you would if your business were in trouble. Just as markets move, life changes too.”
Again: “unhappy conditions require active effort.” What if you happen to be writing a novel and just don’t have the time? Unhappiness isn’t that bad, really, if you’ve got something better to be working on.
In the Toronto Star
Lynda Hurst had a thoughtful piece on happiness in Sunday’s Toronto Star. My favorite bit:
Since 1972, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying to replace the GDP with the GNH, Gross National Happiness. Material well-being is only one component of well-being, it explained. “That doesn’t ensure that you’re at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other.”
Sounds good. But as public policy, has it created peace and harmony?
In 1990, Bhutan expelled 100,000 people because they weren’t ethnically indigenous, a move that would have cut deeply into the traditional GDP. But Bhutan insists the happiness levels of its people haven’t been affected. The remaining people, that is.
Should other governments be emulating Bhutan (minus the mass expulsions)?
Sweet.
Read the whole thing, all the way to the end, or you’ll miss the part where I’m quoted.
[Update: Now with link to article!]
