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The most interesting fragment I read last night
...we find that those on the right (left) of the political spectrum adapt to status (income) but not to income (status).
Here is more.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 8, 2007 at 07:53 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Interesting indeed if the theory holds. I suspect there is more to it than the simple causation the blog writer presupposes.
Posted by: martin at Jun 8, 2007 11:19:25 AM
I find (do not find) it easy to read articles applying standard
(non-standard) syntax. He might (might not) want to conform a bit more,
if he can (cannot) mildly compromise his self-stated deep commitment to
personal freedom
Posted by: Gerard MacDonell at Jun 8, 2007 12:34:06 PM
I find (do not find) it easy to read articles applying standard
(non-standard) syntax. He might (might not) want to conform a bit more,
if he can (cannot) mildly compromise his self-stated deep commitment to
personal freedom
Posted by: Gerard MacDonell at Jun 8, 2007 12:34:08 PM
If I understand what he is saying, there might be an explanation there as to why academics tend to be liberals.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Jun 8, 2007 1:13:33 PM
The paper by Di Tella and co-authors referred by Wilkinson in his post looks at the relationship between happiness and two determinants--income and status--using data from Germany and defining "status" by reference to the prestigious attached to jobs, not to relative income levels. The question is why to ignore power as a determinant of happiness. Indeed it is difficult to define power properly and identify its effect on happiness vis a vis income and status as defined in the paper, but as long as power is omitted from the statistical analysis, the results are at best very preliminary and provide no evidence of differences between right and left.
Posted by: Edgardo at Jun 8, 2007 1:40:53 PM
I'm still not sure I understand what he's saying -- is he saying that left-wingers continue to reap psychic rewards from increased status, but eventually get used to wealth; and that right-wingers continue to reap psychic rewards from increased wealth, but get used to status?
Posted by: Taeyoung at Jun 8, 2007 1:42:47 PM
Right-wingers get off on money. Left-wingers get off on power. That's why I like right-wingers better.
Posted by: Keith at Jun 8, 2007 3:31:05 PM
Taeyoung, yes.
Keith,
no, that's not at all what it says. try Taeyoung's version.
Posted by: Douglas Knight at Jun 8, 2007 3:56:21 PM
Keith is correct. Taeyoung and Douglas--glass bead players. Keith--real world guy--and a very smart one at that.
Posted by: Robert C at Jun 9, 2007 5:08:24 AM
i don't understand the interpretation, In a commercial culture
money=status. So, are they just comparing two flawed measures of status?
More genearlly, the underlying paper seems to be measuring happiness on
a broad (10-point?) scale, but all the action in response to conventional
changes in income or happinees seem to be in a small range of that scale.
Taken naively, does that not suggest that neither the usual changes in
status or money affect measured happiness much? If that's true, then it
probably means that these measures of happiness are useless.
Posted by: kjx at Jun 9, 2007 5:55:33 AM
Keith substituted status for power and that's not exactly analagous.
Liberals tend to be more enamored of status (e.g. - Nobel Prize winner, Chief Neurosurgeon, Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, etc.)
Do these people have power? In their fields, yes. Measured against a Larry Ellison, a Richard Branson, an Eric Schimdt? Not even remotely.
I think another way of saying this is that liberals are interested in occupational prestige/reputation where conservatives are interested in the cachet that comes with having tons of cash, no matter how it is acquired (plundering teachers' pension funds, embezzlement, ponzi schemes, etc.)
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 9, 2007 9:49:31 AM
This discussion seems to reinforce an assumption that people's identity can be defined by reference a single dimension (left vs right). It's an assumption that seems (a) troubling; and (b) questionable. Might it be true that differences among right-wingers (or left-wingers) are greater than differences between right-wingers and left-wingers?
Posted by: KY Choong at Jun 12, 2007 6:50:03 PM
If you read the paper, you find that what they call adaptation is merely correlation between an income or status event and happiness over the next four years. The change is discounted in the sense of evaporating, but the differences are fascinating. Women, for example, wind up less happy than before they get more money. Right wingers don't behave like anyone else. They actually bounce up and down, as if their manic depressive cycle had been kindled by the event. I'm not actually sure this is adaptation in the naive use of the term. The authors are talking about correlation, there is no proposed mechanism and causality is speculative.
For a more complete, and most likely seriously flawed analysis, check out my overview of this paper at DailyKos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/10/141113/495). It even has miserable Excel charts.
Posted by: Kaleberg at Jun 12, 2007 9:25:20 PM
