If the anxiety finding is true, might explain Jews' particular tendency towards the left, as they seem to be particularly high in anxiety compared to other issues.
I think that's no longer true if you're a white male, maybe you're better off if you lose your job but it's not worth it if you can't even get a job in the first place because of Democratic policies.
Here's the problem I'm having with this: I don't know a single person on the left who feels that they have a mental illness or maladaptive levels of anxiety. And they might be right. The reason is simple: When you reach conclusions based on solipsism, magical thinking and unreasonable epistemology, you are more likely to trust your beliefs regardless of how objectively divorced they are from reality. Cognitive distortion and mental illness are two very different things.
Consider the modern progressive worldview: "Natural kinds such as race and sex aren't real. In fact, they were invented just to oppress people, and any average differences between people belonging to these made up categories is entirely because society is unfair." That would make me crazy too.
You think the positive correlation between anxiety and wokeness comes about because being woke tends to make one anxious? I'm no scientist but I'm guessing it's the other way around: i.e., that wokeness is generally more appealing to highly anxious people than to normies.
I am eager to know how reproducible these data are in non-Western countries.
In many Muslim countries, left-wing (economically) ideologies are much more popular among the religious population, so it’s possible that we might not replicate these relationships, as religiosity is associated with better mental health.
In Western countries, there is usually a positive relationship between conservatism and physical attractiveness. However, in Muslim countries, there is a significant difference in physical attractiveness in favor of liberals. It’s unclear whether this is due to the lower emphasis Muslims place on appearance or simply the greater exit of genetically desirable individuals from Islam.
I think most people in the west would reject the claim that Muslims have better mental health than the locals given the violent crime rates.
This trend can be easily understood by abandoning the left/right paradigm and switching to the more accurate left/conservative/non-left paradigm, where non-left includes both libertarians and secular apathetics. In this view religion is itself left wing and the reason it gets conflated with conservatism (in the USA) is simply because the conservatives are conserving an earlier form of leftism. Jesus was by modern standards an anti-capitalist lefty hippie - remember he went into the temples and threw a giant strop, violently chucking around the desks of the currency exchange workers for no better reason than really hating capitalists. "Love thy neighbour" is just an older version of "Be kind", and so on.
Understood this way both Islam and Christianity are basically left wing ideologies, and so we would expect them both to correlate poorly with mental health. Why doesn't American Christianity have that effect? My guess is that it once did (the Puritans were pretty crazy) but that the relatively sanguine modern form is good for mental health because churches come with support networks, and Christianity teaches a somewhat internal locus of control (t's in your gift to ask God for forgiveness, God gave you free will etc). Also Christianity is dying so the devout are mostly older people - the really unstable ones didn't make it that far, whereas Leftism is primarily young and so the mentally unstable can pile up there more easily.
Unlike modern leftists Jesus said nothing in favor of compulsory redistribution of wealth but took a dim view of the rich -- whose prospects of going to Heaven, he said, were less than that of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Another of his most noteworthy ethical pronouncements was that one should offer no resistance to assault. Hence, rather than classifying him as a proto-leftist I submit that it would be more accurate to call him a pro-poverty pacifist. ;)
For all we know he did say such things :) It's not like the Bible is a comprehensive record.
Compulsory wealth redistribution is only something that makes sense to advocate for in a democracy, where the poor can outvote the rich and take their stuff. In the Roman Empire what exactly would Jesus have said? "God says that the Emperor should force the rich including himself to redistribute all their wealth against their will?" The argument would have seemed nonsensical and fantastical. Jesus probably never made such arguments but if he had, his followers would have just overlooked it and not put that part into the Bible at all.
I'm no Biblical scholar -- nor am I a Christian, for that matter -- but to infer from Christ's adage about the wealthy having poor prospects of spiritual salvation that he would condone a political ruler's use or threat of force to take money and/or other property from the rich and redistribute it to the poor would be a non sequitur.
OT: Do you have a book list post for people interested in following along with the math? (Assume a typical math undergrad, plenty of calculus and little to no stats.)
If you have worse mental health than average, it's pretty sane to vote for the party that promises a bigger social safety net.
If the anxiety finding is true, might explain Jews' particular tendency towards the left, as they seem to be particularly high in anxiety compared to other issues.
That's the most anodyne hypothesis that is possible.
If you want to be a demagogue, it's pretty sane to use as a platform a political party whose rank and file have worse mental health on average.
A naive and credulous rank and file would be more propitious.
I think that's no longer true if you're a white male, maybe you're better off if you lose your job but it's not worth it if you can't even get a job in the first place because of Democratic policies.
True, anxious people are more easily manipulated.
Here's the problem I'm having with this: I don't know a single person on the left who feels that they have a mental illness or maladaptive levels of anxiety. And they might be right. The reason is simple: When you reach conclusions based on solipsism, magical thinking and unreasonable epistemology, you are more likely to trust your beliefs regardless of how objectively divorced they are from reality. Cognitive distortion and mental illness are two very different things.
Maybe not, if you're earning an upper-bracket income despite your foibles or have good reason to expect that you soon will be.
If you have more anxiety than average, it's pretty sane to not vote for the party which promises that defund the police
Consider the modern progressive worldview: "Natural kinds such as race and sex aren't real. In fact, they were invented just to oppress people, and any average differences between people belonging to these made up categories is entirely because society is unfair." That would make me crazy too.
You think the positive correlation between anxiety and wokeness comes about because being woke tends to make one anxious? I'm no scientist but I'm guessing it's the other way around: i.e., that wokeness is generally more appealing to highly anxious people than to normies.
I am eager to know how reproducible these data are in non-Western countries.
In many Muslim countries, left-wing (economically) ideologies are much more popular among the religious population, so it’s possible that we might not replicate these relationships, as religiosity is associated with better mental health.
In Western countries, there is usually a positive relationship between conservatism and physical attractiveness. However, in Muslim countries, there is a significant difference in physical attractiveness in favor of liberals. It’s unclear whether this is due to the lower emphasis Muslims place on appearance or simply the greater exit of genetically desirable individuals from Islam.
I think most people in the west would reject the claim that Muslims have better mental health than the locals given the violent crime rates.
This trend can be easily understood by abandoning the left/right paradigm and switching to the more accurate left/conservative/non-left paradigm, where non-left includes both libertarians and secular apathetics. In this view religion is itself left wing and the reason it gets conflated with conservatism (in the USA) is simply because the conservatives are conserving an earlier form of leftism. Jesus was by modern standards an anti-capitalist lefty hippie - remember he went into the temples and threw a giant strop, violently chucking around the desks of the currency exchange workers for no better reason than really hating capitalists. "Love thy neighbour" is just an older version of "Be kind", and so on.
Understood this way both Islam and Christianity are basically left wing ideologies, and so we would expect them both to correlate poorly with mental health. Why doesn't American Christianity have that effect? My guess is that it once did (the Puritans were pretty crazy) but that the relatively sanguine modern form is good for mental health because churches come with support networks, and Christianity teaches a somewhat internal locus of control (t's in your gift to ask God for forgiveness, God gave you free will etc). Also Christianity is dying so the devout are mostly older people - the really unstable ones didn't make it that far, whereas Leftism is primarily young and so the mentally unstable can pile up there more easily.
Unlike modern leftists Jesus said nothing in favor of compulsory redistribution of wealth but took a dim view of the rich -- whose prospects of going to Heaven, he said, were less than that of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Another of his most noteworthy ethical pronouncements was that one should offer no resistance to assault. Hence, rather than classifying him as a proto-leftist I submit that it would be more accurate to call him a pro-poverty pacifist. ;)
For all we know he did say such things :) It's not like the Bible is a comprehensive record.
Compulsory wealth redistribution is only something that makes sense to advocate for in a democracy, where the poor can outvote the rich and take their stuff. In the Roman Empire what exactly would Jesus have said? "God says that the Emperor should force the rich including himself to redistribute all their wealth against their will?" The argument would have seemed nonsensical and fantastical. Jesus probably never made such arguments but if he had, his followers would have just overlooked it and not put that part into the Bible at all.
I'm no Biblical scholar -- nor am I a Christian, for that matter -- but to infer from Christ's adage about the wealthy having poor prospects of spiritual salvation that he would condone a political ruler's use or threat of force to take money and/or other property from the rich and redistribute it to the poor would be a non sequitur.
OT: Do you have a book list post for people interested in following along with the math? (Assume a typical math undergrad, plenty of calculus and little to no stats.)
I read 35 books tagged with statistics. Maybe have a look around for inspiration. https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8884040-emil-o-w-kirkegaard?shelf=stats
This is exactly what I was hoping for, thank you!
First paragraph after first table:
"In addition, he included items to assess depression and anxiety symptoms, **both of which are belong** to the internalizing cluster"