--Original published at Kevin Psych Blog

A recent study found there is a link between being angry and espousing economically conservative views.

Research involved several studies done with varying groups of people, each study introduced different methods of testing in an attempt to find if and how emotions played a role in political ideology, specifically if anger could be linked to right wing economic opinions. These studies found that anger can be connected to competitiveness, which in turn increases the likelihood for someone to take on right wing opinions.

The first study conducted involved participants, selected from an undergraduate subject pool, being asked to fill out a scale survey (rating statements from 1 to 5) on three topics; anger proneness,  competitiveness, and finally economic ideology. Surveys similar to this were also used in the other three studies. This study, as predicted, showed a correlation between anger proneness and economic conservatism as anger proneness predicted competitiveness which in turn predicted economic conservatism.

The second study consisted of 203 recruits from Amazon Mechanical Turk. It hoped to separate sociocultural and economic conservatism, and see if anger increased both. The idea was that if sociocultural and economic ideals came from the same goals, anger should promote conservative views in both. This study hoped to evoke anger in participants by having the “anger” group respond to a writing prompt in which they were to describe something that frustrates them, while the control group wrote about a typical day for them. Afterwards the participants filled out two scales which borrowed from the original in the first study as well as two scales measuring independence and sociocultural beliefs. At the end of this study the participants were asked which side of the political spectrum they felt they fell on. The study again found a link between anger and economic conservatism but not between anger and sociocultural conservatism.

Study three sought to show how fear, specifically a perceived threat to ones environment, might affect someones political views. It also wanted to compare competitiveness with a possible alternative, “other-blaming”. Participants  (undergraduate students again) were asked to complete an identical writing task as seen in the second study. After the writing they were asked to complete an emotional testing scale, separated by type of emotion (anger, anxiety, and fear). They were asked to rank how accurate a word pertaining to that emotion was to how they were feeling on a scale from one to five. Then participants again completed the competitiveness scale from study one. After all of this they were given two hypothetical candidates, one who espoused right wing economic views and one with left wing economic views and asked who they would support, then asked where they believed they leaned politically. The results of the study showed that people who felt angry were more likely to “other blame” than people in the control group or in the fear group, but that only competitiveness had an impact on rates of conservatism.

For the final study the researchers turned to Amazon Technical Turk for recruits again. In this study participants believed they were completing two completely separate tasks, one was the emotion manipulation activity used in the second study, and the other involved unscrambling words that evoked resource scarcity, resource abundance, or were neutral as the control group. After these tasks were done they responded to the same scales from the first two studies. Unsurprisingly the study showed that people placed in the resource scarcity group were much more likely to express economically conservative views. The researched believed this was a result of the environment having an effect on peoples emotions, causing them to become more competitive.

Overall these studies have shown that people who are more prone to anger are also often more likely to hold conservative economic views. However it is important to understand that only economic ideology was impacted, sociocultural views were not affected and thus demonstrated to be played on by other emotions. It is necessary for people to understand things like this, so as to help them better form opinions and keep in mind that their emotions could be being played with to manipulate them during election seasons. Hopefully by arming people with this information they can keep themselves more informed and more rational.

Reflection

I found it pretty easy to summarize the original research article in the allocated amount of words. It’s really a simple task when I just made sure to get straight to the point. I chose to summarize each study individually, how they were done and what the results were. I tried not to waste anytime with fluff like news articles tend to due to keep the audience interesting. I just wanted to explain exactly what was found as well as I could personally understand it, and the amount of words I was given was more than enough to do that. I don’t think I was forced to leave out any information, if information was left out it was because I either didn’t completely grasp what I was reading or I felt it unnecessary (such as repeating results from previous studies). When I talked about “fluff” I was referring to things I noticed in the original news article like quotes that didn’t really need to be there, such as one meant to give an example of someones response to the “what makes you angry” question. I didn’t think it was really needed to give someones response, you save time if you just get to the point and tell us what the results of the study were. I don’t think you need to give an example of “what makes someone angry”, most people probably get that concept. Without things like that I believe I was probably able to explain the studies a little more in depth than the news article did, and I used even less words. I don’t like the generalize so I won’t speak for all journalists, but the writer of the article I picked seemed more concerned with writing an interesting article than an informational one, which I don’t fault them for, I just think if it was more dense it could have had more information packed into the amount of words used.

Keri L. Kettle, Anthony Salerno (June 6, 2017) Anger Promotes Economic Conservatism Retrieved from Sage.

https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/09/02/study-finds-link-between-anger-economic-conservatism/125474.html 

--Original published at Sarah's Insight

Can Money Really Buy Happiness?

Summary

Across the world, people have been suffering from time scarcity, which can be linked to reduced happiness, increased anxiety, insomnia, and a lower well-being. An Experiment that consisted of large samples from the United States, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands would test if people who spend their money on services that save them time are happier than those who spend money on materialistic items. In the samples from different countries in the world, it was found that the higher the income, the greater the time scarcity, which leads to time stress. This study tested if buying free time (paying for a cleaning service, a cook, etc.) would reduce the negative effects that result from time stress.

The researchers hypothesized that buying time may provide an alternate way to cope with daily demands, such as time stress and reduced life satisfaction. The samples were asked the same two questions about if and how much they spend toward services that save time each month. The participants were also asked to rate their satisfaction with life and their annual household income, weekly work hours, age, marital status, and how many children they have. The research found that 28% of the participants spent money of time saving services and had greater life satisfaction ratings than those who did not indulge in time saving services.

Based on these results, the researchers conducted another two week within-subjects experiment on working adults in Vancouver, Canada to see which increased happiness and decreased stress; spending money on time saving services or material items. The participants were given eighty dollars each, and were given two weekends to spend it. The first weekend, the participants were to use forty dollars to buy a service such as meal delivery and cleaning services. The second weekend, the participants could spend the remaining forty dollars on an item like a polo shirt and “fancy” wine. The researchers found that the participants were more positive after the first weekend than the second.

The results of both experiments show that buying time had a greater life satisfaction rate and the participants felt less pressure and improved mood at the end of their day. The researchers encourage more research on this subject to see how much buying time effects the lives of people of different social and financial backgrounds.

Reflection

I did not find it difficult to summarize the articles because they were both fairly short and got down to the point. The news article focused mainly on the experiment where the participants were given money to spend on the service while the scholarly article provided information from both experiments. The scholarly article was only 5 pages, so it wasn’t that difficult to condense it into the main points and write a summary. I tried to base my writing off of how the news article was written without including a lot of unnecessary filler sentences. I did not have to leave out any important information in my summary, however I find it interesting that the news article is slightly longer than my summary but does not include a lot of information about the first experiment.

I think that the journalists did a decent job on the news article. Looking at the scholarly article, it is easy to see what they could improve on and what they did well with. I think that they did a great job at convincing the readers that there was a significant difference between those who spent money on services and those who spent money on items. They did not do a good job at explaining the first experiment and how the researchers interpreted those results and they did not do a good job at specifying what sample was from which countries. When I first read the news article, I had no idea who was participating in the experiment, but when I read the scholarly article, the demographics were very clear. Overall, I believe that the news article gave a good summary of the scholarly article and both were very easy to understand and summarize.

Scholarly Article

News Article

--Original published at Caitlin's corner

Summary:

In a study done by researchers and published in the journal, Mindfulness, they found that doing just 25 minutes of Hatha yoga can increase your executive functioning skills and energy levels/mood. The 31 participants did 25 minutes of Hatha yoga, mindfulness based meditation, and quiet reading as the controlled variable. After each session, the participants were asked to complete tasks related to executive functioning and thinking and self-reported their moods, energy levels, and feelings.

The participants found that all of the executive functioning factors increased or got better after the yoga and meditation sessions at the post ten minute mark, but not at the post five minute mark. This means that the cognitive functioning results weren’t readily accessible right after, but it took a few minutes for the results to show themselves. Their energy levels and mood were noticeable immediately afterwards, but not after the reading. Although, it should be noted that energy levels were slightly higher than after the meditation, and both meditation and yoga increased energy levels when compared to quiet reading.

These results can be linked to what we already know about exercise’s effects on the brain. Exercise releases endorphins and “feel good” chemicals into the body that can reduce your stress levels, increase blood flow to the brain, and reduce focus on ruminative thoughts. Keeping up with a healthy lifestyle can also increase the benefits to just working out 25 minutes a day.

Links to articles:

For Caitlin (1)

Reflection:

This project was way harder than I originally thought overall. When reading the research study, it was really hard to stay focused and find the information I really needed to know. There was so much information I didn’t understand and number’s that I didn’t understand how they got so that was frustrating for me. It was a little hard to write the summary and decide where to start. You don’t just want to throw information at them but at the same time, you still have to be accurate and not plagiarize. It was a little hard for me to put things into my own words sometimes because it was either very simple and hard to reword or very complex and I didn’t know how to still be accurate, but not just copy and paste what they said. I decided to not include the details about how they got their information (i.e. what tests they used) because it probably wouldn’t have changed anyones mind or ideas about the topic. I did add some information when compared to my first article because my first one was rather short without a lot of information referencing the research. I added some more information about the study itself rather than the results of the study. The author of the first link really focused on the health benefits rather than how they got the results and what they really meant. It didn’t seem like they really read the article and took all of the info in. I also decided to leave out how they got their participants and the fact that it was all women. It could change the data if we added men, but it most likely wouldn’t. I didn’t add the implications of the study at all, probably for the same purpose as the author. Overall, I like my article more, the other doctor’s article was very fluffy and not to the point for being how short it is.