FW: [Buddha-l] Re: Republicans are Happier?

jkirk jkirk at spro.net
Sat Feb 23 21:22:06 MST 2008


 
Richard Hayes wrote:
   
  “It is utterly impossible to be mistaken about how one feels.”
   
  I disagree.  It is completely possible, and it happens more than we care
to admit, that we are mistaken about how we feel.  I don’t know about the
East, but we in the West are for the most part so out of touch with our
bodies and our feelings, that we often think we feel A when we’re really
feeling B.  For example, guys tend to think they’re mad when they’re really
sad; gals tend to think they’re sad when they’re really mad.  From Plato to
Augustine to Descartes, the mind-body split still reigns supreme in the West
despite all the Descartes-bashing that has become fashionable in the last
one or two decades.  Self-reports concerning feelings and emotions are
useful in studies in which insight does not play an important role;
researchers in these cases are only interested in subjects’ perceptions of
themselves, not in whether those perceptions are accurate or not.  Most
research in social psych is like this.  It is usually up to clinicians and
their clients in therapy, not  researchers, to ascertain the accuracy of,
and gain insight into, self-perceived emotions and feelings.
   
  Katherine Masís
====================
My view as well, based on what I've read about issues in gathering
information via questionnaires, in constructing questionnaires, and so on.
This is why I couldn't consider any so-called "happiness" survey, including
the Pew survey under discussion, reliable. One of the major problems with
surveys is that respondents tend to supply the answer they think is
acceptable to the interviewer.  Conventional expectations also can skew
results. There are many people, if not most, who would reply positively to
questions Pew asked about happiness, because most people would not like to
admit to being unhappy about things that popular conventions assure are
sources of happiness--like having kids, being rich, or in some US areas,
being Republican. If they replied negatively to such questions, they would
think they'd appear to be complainers or grouches, maybe even
communists--traits that aren't popular and most wouldn't like to admit to a
stranger.
Joanna
   

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.20.9/1294 - Release Date: 2/22/2008
6:39 PM
 




More information about the buddha-l mailing list