Life Satisfaction and State Intervention Go Hand in Hand
ScienceDaily (May 6, 2011) — People living in countries with governments that have a greater number of social services report being more satisfied with life, according to a study by a Baylor University researcher.
Dr. Patrick Flavin, assistant professor of political science at Baylor, said the effect of state intervention into the economy equaled or exceeded marriage when it came to satisfaction. The study is published in the spring issue of the journal Politics & Policy.
Free market capitalism has been championed by leaders such as the late President Ronald Reagan and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, while left-leaning political parties and labor movements argue for more government intervention into the market. But scholars have paid little empirical attention to the debate in terms of which leads to more satisfaction among citizens, Flavin said.
Flavin and two other researchers used data from the World Values Survey's 2005 study. Their research included 10,405 people from 15 advanced industrialized countries who were asked, "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?" On a scale of 1 to 10 -- with 10 the highest level of satisfaction -- the average rating for all respondents was 7.39, with respondents from the United States reporting an average of 7.26.
The study measured government intervention into the economy in four ways: government tax revenue as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP), government consumption of GDP, generosity of unemployment benefits and a country's welfare expenditures as a percentage of GDP.
"In many cases, less government intervention can allow for a more efficient economy, but greater economic efficiency doesn't necessarily translate into greater contentment with one's life," Flavin said. "If you get sick and can't work or lose your job and there are few social protections in place, you're more likely to be anxious and less satisfied."
The findings were consistent regardless of whether respondents were rich or poor and regardless of their political views, Flavin said. The findings rule out alternative explanations including individual characteristics -- such as personal health, level of education and marital status -- and such national factors as gross domestic product and unemployment rate.
The findings of the study contrast with the views of economists who are critical of government intervention and the welfare state in particular, arguing it can lead to inefficiency and wastefulness that will hurt employment, wages and economic growth.
Flavin said the research is focused only on the link between government intervention and life satisfaction and not whether intervention achieves economic growth or such goals as reducing poverty or violent crime. But "to the extent that it is a primary task of democratic governments to secure the well-being of their citizens, studying what government activities make citizens happier helps inform the 'politics vs. markets' debate,'" he said.
The United States had one of the lowest levels of state intervention among the countries in the study, but "we still certainly have a more expansive safety net than most developing countries," Flavin said.
The 15 countries included in the study are Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.
The study was co-authored with Dr. Alexander C. Pacek, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University, and Dr. Benjamin Radcliff, professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.
Who Knows You Best? Not You, Say Psychologists
ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — Know thyself. That was Socrates' advice, and it squares with conventional wisdom. "It's a natural tendency to think we know ourselves better than others do," says Washington University in St. Louis assistant professor Simine Vazire.
But a new article by Vazire and her colleague Erika N. Carlson reviews the research and suggests an addendum to the philosopher's edict: Ask a friend. "There are aspects of personality that others know about us that we don't know ourselves, and vice-versa," says Vazire. "To get a complete picture of a personality, you need both perspectives." The paper is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
It's not that we know nothing about ourselves. But our understanding is obstructed by blind spots, created by our wishes, fears, and unconscious motives -- the greatest of which is the need to maintain a high (or if we're neurotic, low) self-image, research shows. Even watching ourselves on videotape does not substantially alter our perceptions -- whereas others observing the same tape easily point out traits we're unaware of.
Not surprisingly, our intimates and those who spend the most time with us know us best. But even strangers have myriad cues to who we are: clothes, musical preferences, or Facebook postings. At the same time, our nearest and dearest have reasons to distort their views. After all, a boorish spouse or bullying child says something to the other spouse or parent. "We used to collect ratings from parents -- and we've mostly stopped, because they're useless," notes Vazire. What such data would show: Everyone's own child is brilliant, beautiful, and charming.
Interestingly, people don't see the same things about themselves as others see. Anxiety-related traits, such as stage fright, are obvious to us, but not always to others. On the other hand, creativity, intelligence, or rudeness is often best perceived by others. That's not just because they manifest themselves publicly, but also because they carry a value judgment -- something that tends to affect self-judgment. But the world is not always the harsher critic. Others tend to give us higher marks for our strengths than we credit ourselves with.
Why doesn't all this information add up to better personal and mutual understanding? People are complex, social cues are many, perceptions of others are clouded by our own needs and biases, studies show. Plus, the information isn't easy to access. "It's amazing how hard it is to get direct feedback," Vazire notes, adding that she isn't advocating brutal frankness at any cost. There are good reasons for reticence.
The challenge, then, is to use such knowledge for the good. "How can we give people feedback, and how can that be used to improve self-knowledge?" Vazire asks. "And how do we use self-knowledge to help people be happier and have better relationships?"
The first answer to these questions may be the most obvious, but not the easiest to practice: Listen to others. They may know more than you do -- even about yourself.
More Than 20 Percent of Atheist Scientists Are 'Spiritual', Study Finds
ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea -- one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery -- for "spiritual atheist" scientists.
The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion.
Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.
"Our results show that scientists hold religion and spirituality as being qualitatively different kinds of constructs," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice and lead author of the study. "These spiritual atheist scientists are seeking a core sense of truth through spirituality -- one that is generated by and consistent with the work they do as scientists."
For example, these scientists see both science and spirituality as "meaning-making without faith" and as an individual quest for meaning that can never be final. According to the research, they find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because of that quest; where spirituality is open to a scientific journey, religion requires buying into an absolute "absence of empirical evidence."
"There's spirituality among even the most secular scientists," Ecklund said. "Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought. It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning."
Ecklund co-authored the study with Elizabeth Long, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Rice. In their analysis of the 275 interviews, they discovered that the terms scientists most used to describe religion included "organized, communal, unified and collective." The set of terms used to describe spirituality include "individual, personal and personally constructed." All of the respondents who used collective or individual terms attributed the collective terms to religion and the individual terms to spirituality.
"While the data indicate that spirituality is mainly an individual pursuit for academic scientists, it is not individualistic in the classic sense of making them more focused on themselves," said Ecklund, director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice. "In their sense of things, being spiritual motivates them to provide help for others, and it redirects the ways in which they think about and do their work as scientists."
Ecklund and Long noted that the spiritual scientists saw boundaries between themselves and their nonspiritual colleagues because their spirituality facilitated engagement with the world around them. Such engagement, according to the spiritual scientists, generated a different approach to research and teaching: While nonspiritual colleagues might focus on their own research at the expense of student interaction, spiritual scientists' sense of spirituality provides nonnegotiable reasons for making sure that they help struggling students succeed.
