I despair of the discipline of modern psychology

[firecat]

I am trying to take a course on edx.org called The Science of Happiness. But I just did 1/5 of the first week's work and I'm not sure how far I'm going to make it. Here is what I tossed into the discussion forum after reading two articles with an increasing sense of outrage. I'm darned if I'm going to make myself unhappy over a course about happiness.

These are the articles I'm commenting one.

Four Ways Happiness Can Hurt You by June Gruber
Is a Happy Life Different from a Meaningful One?" by Jason Marsh & Jill Suttie

~~~

The June Gruber article and the Jill Suttie/Jason Marsh article are taking correlations and assuming causal relationships without showing their work. June Gruber's article first.

These statements are contradictory, but no mention is made of this fact.

"too much positive emotion—and too little negative emotion—makes people inflexible in the face of new challenges."

"When feeling happy, we also tend to feel less inhibited and more likely to explore new possibilities and take risks."

"positive emotions like happiness signal to us that our goals are being fulfilled, which enables us to slow down"

This statement does not provide any evidence that pride "leads to" mania instead of being associated with mania or mania causing excessive feelings of pride. Isn't mania understood to have a biological component? If so then it would seem more likely that mania could lead to excess pride than that excess pride could lead to mania.

"when we experience too much pride or pride without genuine merit, it can lead to negative social outcomes, such as aggressiveness towards others, antisocial behavior, and even an increased risk of mood disorders such as mania."

In the context of human behavior, "hardwired" means "biologically or genetically determined" rather than "culturally determined." Americans don't have different genes than people who live in other countries, so it's pretty silly to assert "We seem hardwired to pursue happiness, and this is especially true for Americans."

Why would people who are depressed or who have bipolar disorder be more likely to 'pursue' happiness? Perhaps because their conditions make it more difficult for them to feel happy? Suggesting that their striving is causing their disorders seems like blaming the victim (especially since these conditions usually have a biological component).

"the pursuit of happiness is also associated with serious mental health problems, such as depression and bipolar disorder. It may be that striving for happiness is actually driving some of us crazy."

The final paragraph is written with highly questionable assumptions that constantly creep into self-help and pop psychology articles: that a person has finely detailed control over how and when they experience certain emotions and can therefore create an emotional experience as easily as making an omelette, and that it is necessary to constantly apply this sort of control in order to be "healthy."

"First, it is important to experience happiness in the right amount. Too little happiness is just as problematic as too much. Second, happiness has a time and a place, and one must be mindful about the context or situation in which one experiences happiness. Third, it is important to strike an emotional balance. One cannot experience happiness at the cost or expense of negative emotions, such as sadness or anger or guilt. These are all part of a complex recipe for emotional health and help us attain a more grounded perspective."

Jill Suttie and Jason Marsh's article is not as problematic as Gruber's, but it isn't free of the problem of confusing correlation and causation either.

A recent study by Steven Cole of the UCLA School of Medicine, and Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that people who reported more eudaimonic happiness had stronger immune system function than those who reported more hedonic happiness, suggesting that a life of meaning may be better for our health than a life seeking pleasure.

It must be that pursuing meaning causes better health, because it couldn'tpossibly be the case that people who are healthier find it easier to pursue meaningful activities than people who are having immune system problems all the time.

Comments

[shehasathree]

ugh

[spiralsheep]

::twitch::

Psychology: the "science" of trying to cram ppl back into the socially constructed boxes that made them sick in the first place. /cynicism

I do think that understanding there are differing types and degrees of happiness (hedonic happiness =/= eudaimonic happiness) is useful for most of the people most of the time but, of course, I would also claim that philosophy has put more effort into describing these useful ideas than psychology.

Education is only good if it's good education. ::wryface::

I'm darned if I'm going to make myself unhappy over a course about happiness.

Good call.

[worlds_of_smoke]

Psychology: the "science" of trying to cram ppl back into the socially constructed boxes that made them sick in the first place. /cynicism

Best description of psychology ever.

[firecat]

But it DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. People benefit from being able to make sense of their personal lives in the context of the socially constructed boxes. Sociology tells you about the boxes but not very much about your own mental/emotional responses to life, both cultural and biological.

[The despairing rant of an old person who majored in psychology a while back and thought it had potential, dammit.]

[worlds_of_smoke]

I still think it has potential. But I'm not sure I expect it to ever live up to its potential. ;_;

[firecat]

Yeah, I guess that about sums it up.

[firecat]

As I said over on LJ, the course I'm taking is so far making things more complicated by refusing to use words such as "contentment" and "self-respect" and "goal-directed behavior" and "peak moments" instead of lumping everything under "happiness" and then going "Look, it's so hard to define happiness!" The fact that it's hard to define is an error of the culture and not entirely of the course, but do they really have to repeat it in exactly that way?

[kaberett]

w o w

[snippy]

The *only* justification I can come up with for the "especially for Americans" business is the unsupported supposition that *white* Americans left Europe because they couldn't advance their goals there (presumably due to less flexibility/class mobility) and therefore they might be people who are genetically expressing a greater emphasis on pursuit of happiness.

But it's all made up like crazy.

[firecat]

Good theory. But the article went on to cite the Declaration of Independence as evidence that Americans are hardwired to pursue happiness.

[selki]

I don't think the article writer understands "hardwired", then.

Yeesh.

[megpie71]

Reading the Gruber article, what I'm strongly tempted to do is actually look up the academic article it was based on, and chase down each of the references she's making, and find out whether they actually said what she's saying they did. I'm not going to, because I have better (and more personally important) things to do with my day, such as looking for work. But really, I glanced through her article, and my first thought was "did they really say that?" and my second was "why aren't there links to the studies she's referencing?".

My take-away from the site is it's a place for science journalism rather than actual science writing. As such, it's more about what the writers take away from the studies (or rather, the press releases about the studies), arranged in the most reader-friendly way for people who have NO education in the relevant subject, than about accuracy.

[firecat]

I went as far as opening up the academic article in a tab, but I closed the tab without reading the article.

I agree it's science journalism. But science journalism doesn't have to be full of bullshit to be understandable to a lay audience. (As a tech editor who majored in psychology, I guess I'm the world's most critical reader for this sort of thing.)

[flarenut]

Hey! as someone who has spent a long time as a science journalist, no. This reads like the kind of stuff someone would do in a course on science journalism, or in any course where they didn't fully understand the source material and were just mashing a bunch of unrelated stuff together to fill a word count.

One of the ways you make things understandable to people is to fit things into some kind of narrative, and if that narrative keeps contradicting itself without you apparently noticing it URDIW.

Also, like you, I am annoyed by this because one of the really important things science journalists can do (as opposed to press officers for research institutions) is get readers to think about correlation and causation and the quality of research results.

[firecat]

one of the really important things science journalists can do (as opposed to press officers for research institutions) is get readers to think about correlation and causation and the quality of research results.

YES.

So, how does one go about being that sort of science journalist these days? I have done a lot of tech writing but I don't have a tech, science, or journalism degree.

[flarenut]

I have no clue how one does it these days. I know there are plenty of academic programs out there nowadays, but when I did it, it was pretty much "send in a resume, do sample work, convince some editor". Now it probably involves pitching and blogging for free, covering other beats and suchlike. Which is one reason it's not done that well.

[firecat]

Same as it was/is in tech writing/editing. {sigh}

[futuransky]

Book rec you might enjoy more than the course, if you haven't run across it: Sarah Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness

[firecat]

OOOH THANKS That looks very good!

Rebuttal from author

[jssuttie]

As one of the authors mentioned, I must correct this misrepresentation of the piece I wrote with Jason Marsh. We did not include all of the data from the Cole/Fredrickson study in this article; but it was available if you wanted to click on the link embedded in the piece.

If you'd looked at the original Fredrickson/Cole article, you would have seen that all of the subjects in the study were "healthy." The differences the researchers found in immune function were at the gene-expression level--not about whether or not the people had health problems, which might have interfered with their ability to help others:

"Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from people with high levels of hedonic well-being showed up-regulated expression of a stress-related conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) involving increased expression of proinflammatory genes and decreased expression of genes involved in antibody synthesis and type I IFN response. In contrast, high levels of eudaimonic well-being were associated with CTRA down-regulation."

We had another article in our publication that went into more detail about this study; but the reference to the original source should have been enough for anyone curious about the study. I'd like to suggest that if you are going to critique the science behind a piece, it's best to do your homework first.

Re: Rebuttal from author

[firecat]

Thanks for providing this additional information. I hope that knowing about a clarity problem in your article will help you the next time you write up a study.

Re: Rebuttal from author

[(Anonymous)]

We weren't writing up a study; we were writing an article about the differences between eudaimonic versus hedonic happiness and covering the controversies in the scientific literature/among researchers. That was clear from the context. Taking the information out of context and critiquing my writing obfuscates the main point: You got it wrong. Being healthy didn't explain why some people helped more than others, and it doesn't explain the differences in immune functioning that researchers found when comparing blood samples from the two groups of subjects either.

For those who want to read our article about this topic in its entirety, I suggest you go to the GGSC's website: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/happy_life_different_from_meaningful_life

The original study by Cole and Fredrickson is also quite interesting: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/33/13684.abstract

[gmdreia.livejournal.com]

Our culture (that is, American culture, as it's the only culture I can really speak of) has weirdly confused "peak moments" with "contentment" and even downright demonized being content. It's common to hear people who live with some degree of equanimity and equilibrium, disparaged as being lazy or without motivation. The pursuit of happiness has become basically another thing to strive for and we're often quite materialistic and competitive about it - "so-and-so takes more cruises than we do".

It's possible to feel good without every day being a trip to Disneyland, and that's something that we've forgotten.

I've coached a couple of friends with depression issues plus Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) plus Facebook addiction, that their definition of happiness (to define a day as "happy", something HUGE had to have happened that day; it wasn't possible to just be content with a day that just went smoothly - they labeled those days as fuckups) was actually contributing to their unhappiness. If there wasn't some major event or new thing to crow about or something to brag about on Facebook, they actually felt miserable about it.

A lot of the happiness-striving strikes me as an addictive behavior. They're not actually seeking equilibrium, they're jonesing for that next hit of dopamine.

[firecat]

**Yes**.

The course I'm taking is so far making things more complicated by refusing to use words such as "contentment" and "self-respect" and "goal-directed behavior" and "peak moments" instead of lumping everything under "happiness" and then going "Look, it's so hard to define happiness!" It's an error of the culture and not entirely of the course, but do they really have to repeat it in exactly that way?

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

*nodnodnod* When I read that line about "pursuit of happines" my thoughts went right to that cultural thing of buying stuff to be happy. Which I don't really define as happy, but more like self-medicating and there it is at that last line of yours -- They're not actually seeking equilibrium, they're jonesing for that next hit of dopamine.

[firecat]

I'm glad my dopamine is a cheap date. I only have to feed it crossword puzzles, rather than taking it to expensive stores a lot.

[selki.livejournal.com]

That is a much better way to think of my little kakuro problem. Thank you!

[firecat]

:D

[selki.livejournal.com]

It's common to hear people who live with some degree of equanimity and equilibrium, disparaged as being lazy or without motivation.

ARGH this SO MUCH especially in IT, where I see so many job ads that are all PASSION, assuming those without PASSION about their work (which often means unpaid OT) are "mediocre", and even managers/speakers I otherwise respect have swallowed the Kool-Aid. Argh.

[firecat]

Yes, for some reason "I am passionate about doing an excellent job between 8am and 5pm, because I am also passionate about work/life balance" never cuts it.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

I love the way you see stuff and am somewhat envious of your critical reading skills. I think I'd be frustrated taking this class online, but because I'd much prefer taking these articles apart within a face to-face group.

I wonder if the prof/teacher is aware of the problems with the articles or if zie is using them as a kind of straw man or stalking horse to get the class thinking.

[firecat]

Thank you!

Yeah, it would be an interesting panel topic. (Ponders how to write up something for Wiscon.)

I put the comment on the EdX forums but they are hard to use (one reason I prefer the Coursera platform) and no one has responded.