The “duh!” study of the day: Attractive people are happier than less attractive people

 

Courtesy of Alsphotography

Researchers at the University of Texas-Austin found that on average,

“Beautiful people are generally happier than their unattractive counterparts. Economists say it’s largely because they get better jobs and marry successful people.

No shit, Sherlock.

But apparently, their study comes in time to counter a movement among politicians to measure happiness alongside economic productivity in order to determine a population’s well-being. “Not a great idea”, say the researchers. But why?

“While there are many good reasons to avoid combining gross domestic product measures with measures of subjective well being,” they write, “our discussion showing the importance of this one, essentially immutable determinant of happiness (beauty) suggests that focusing on creating a happier society may not be fruitful.”

Let’s improve society by including plastic surgery and gym memberships in the citizens’ entitlement package!

Janis Ian learned the truth at 17 baby. Love was meant for beauty queens. And apparently, happiness as well.

If you’d like to think that humanity is moving towards a post-physicality society where one’s hard work and merits are those things by which the value and success of an individual are judged, then have you checked the TV lately? All the rich and famous are (doesn’t matter how they’re rich and famous–through business, entertainment, politics, you name it) are on the whole, lookers. The genius writers of 30 Rock captured it perfectly in S03E15 “The Bubble“. Oh Dr. Drew, how we’d all like to live in your world.

Update: 6:15pm Jeebus so many typos. I was sleepy. Fixed now. My grammar demon can go back to licking his tail.

Research idea: Measuring social networking behavior usage to test whether we actualize our network potential

“Just because we can, doesn’t mean we do.”

I find myself saying that a lot when people get overly enthusiastic about the power of technology. Per my previous reflections on Ethan Zuckerman’s TED talk and as a tangential homage to Malcolm Gladwell’s ass-kicking of the technotopians in the New Yorker this week, I came up with a research question that might make a dent on the whole conflation-of-Internet-architecture-with-human-activity.

Sure I have 900 friends on Facebook. But that is because I was too polite to blatantly reject someone’s friend request in the early days of Facebook’s opening up to the non-collegiate user base and now I’m too lazy to do the infamous, if absolutely necessary “purge”. It might also have something to do  with the superficial high I get seeing that I know that many people, even though our ‘friendship’ is predicated on the click of a button. But as I mentioned in a guest post for Gorditamedia, I’ve stopped caring so now I don’t hesitate to click “ignore”. And I realized that I primarily interact with people in my immediate surroundings (i.e. grad school peers) and the folks that really matter to me (my best friends from high school and college). Now doesn’t that sound more like how we ‘manage our friendships’ in the real world?

Looking at my own experience, I very much don’t conform to the ideal of mass hyperconnection that makes phenomena like the (terminologically-contested) ‘Twitter Revolution’ possible. Mostly, I use these miracle technologies to, surprise!, reinforce the relationships I already have. I have to say, organizing an event through Facebook has actually made me into somewhat of a party planner. This coming from someone who balked, nay, went into hiding in the distant peaks of the Himalayan mountain range at the thought of throwing a party. Ah, but therein lies the problem- Facebook is perhaps too personal a tool for most users to complicate with their politics. But seeing the kind of links being posted left and right, it’s safe to say users aren’t too shy about wearing their ideological hearts on their sleeves.

But before I fall into the trap of narcissistic theoretical induction, there are definitely people out there who shamelessly promote themselves or their causes. I’ve “liked” a few of these myself. But I don’t really count that as meaningful political action (and I haven’t gone to any Facebook event rallies either). Gladwell was completely on point when he said “It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.” This study is meant to see how prevalent online networking induced social/political action actually is, versus the current proof cited by the technotopian adulators: because it is built into the architecture.

Methodology has always been my weak suit but I imagine something like getting volunteers to allow their Facebook behavior to be observed for a X amount of time and show track the frequency of Facebook contact with all those populating the user’s friend list and cross-reference it with geography, real world interactions. Who would sign up for such a thing? Broke college students who watch ‘MTV’s Real World’ and ‘Jersey Shore’ (their shot at 15 minutes!). I’m just saying. But obviously this still needs a lot of thought.

This could work for Twitter too, probably to deliver an upper-cut to the kumbayahs about the Iranian “Twitter Revolution”. Jack Shafer details some of this in his Slate article, citing Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov and Ethan Zuckerman via The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle. As for how to measure this, maybe the algorithms developed over at Indiana University’s Truthy Project can help. It’s a project that studies how memes propagate through the Twittersphere.

I’m tired of anecdotes proving one way or another. Gimme some (hard)* social science.

PS. If you’ve heard of or have seen a study like this, please send it my way! I’m neck deep in tying corporate influence on foreign policy with human rights and the political muscle flexing of ICT companies to think of the proper search term for it on JSTOR.

* – I put “hard” in parentheses because while I live and breathe the world of the social sciences, I share the physical science’s bias towards chemistry, physics, geology etc as ‘real’ science. Statistics is so useful yet so… mutable. Yet it’s what makes PageRank and Google Translate possible. I swear  lit a candle for all the cognitive dissonance I tolerate within my own brain, I could, er, waste a lot of wax.

The case for a union between research and policy

I’ve heard enough academics whine about how politicians don’t really listen to the academics when it comes to formulating good policy on local and international affairs. An academic would cry “look at culture! The solution isn’t in force!”. But when the government does take into account the work and value of researchers, the academics themselves call foul. My undergraduate anthropology TA thought this was all very sinister business, using ethnographic research to give the US an advantage in their dealings with the tribes of these embattled regions. This is a hotly contested debate (one that would take hours to fairly represent since both sides have considerable merit) but I am with Jon Krakauer and the “scholars-and-government-unite” camp to be honest. Especially in foreign affairs, you have to know how to deal with who you’re dealing with. And the upcoming civilian surge is doing just that–training men and women who have volunteered to “not-nation build” (because according to the article, the Obama administration is being very careful about use of the word) in Afghanistan. The military has recruited Afghan expats to role-play with these civilians and tell them they’re being sensitive occupiers or self-righteous partners.

But that is just one side of this argument (should I say mess?). The findings of a recent study by the Center for Health Policy at Duke University’s Global Health Institute provide hearty evidence for the DC denizens to listen harder to the pith-helmeted professors. After looking at almost 3,000 children across Asia and Africa, they found that those children in orphanages and institutions (this will blow your Western-centric conventional wisdom) fared better that those children who “lived in the community”. I have no clue what “living in the community” means so I am going to take it as being assigned a foster family or forcibly being taken care of by extra-nuclear family members.

This is the clincher:

“What people don’t understand is that, in many cases, the institutions are the community’s response to caring for orphaned and abandoned children,” said Whetten. “These communities love kids and as parents die, children are left behind. So, the individuals who love children most and want to care for them build a building and that becomes an institution. These institutions do not look or feel like the images that many in this country have of eastern bloc orphanages, they are mostly places where kids are being loved and cared for and have stable environments.”

And how does this contribute to the title?

The research findings run contrary to global policies held by childrens rights organizations such as UNICEF and UNAIDS, which recommend institutions for orphaned and abandoned children only as a last resort,  and urge that such children be moved as quickly as possible to a residential family setting.

That quote, I believe it speaks for itself. Just like Ansar Rahel and Jon Krakauer’s case for using a loya jirga in the Afghan elections, the strategy for development should take into account existing cultural traditions on which to anchor the international community’s good intentions. Stone castles were good for Europe as thatched houses were (actually, still are good )for Papua New Guinea. In the case of Asian/African child-raising, apparently there is a strong compulsion in the community to care for orphaned/ abandoned children as a group and not as adopted kids. More studies should be done to confirm these findings of course, but if the Duke study is right, then let’s get Machiavellian on this business. We want kids to grow up healthy and strong and if it takes being in institutions to do it, as disgusting that is to one’s instincts of keeping children in family units, I say march on.

Knowledge is power only when you use it.