Post

Saw this on my LI feed. IMO a good example of taking potentially interesting data but drawing shaky conclusions from it...

3) "Helps explain why conservatives are happier" is a really big claim not found anywhere in the cited paper. Happiness data, as I understand it, is very tricky since it involves self-reporting across different demographics and cultures.

4) The correlations seems relatively small to me (averaging at around 0.09 if I'm reading it right).

5) The study is around one university in Texas (which the paper does a good job citing as a limitation!) It doesn't really surprise me that conservative students there spend more time at frats and religious places while liberals might spend more time at home.