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shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

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

shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

2) Nothing in the paper mentions doomscrolling. Liberals in the study just mentioned using the internet and social media more.

shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

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.

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shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

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

shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

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.

shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

6) The data is from 2016/2017, well before COVID and barely into Trump's first term. Which is obviously okay for a study, but extrapolating it out to explain general behavior *today* feels... ambitious.

shri
@shrikhalpada.dev

Anyway, I think the paper was pretty interesting! And did a good job citing limitations, next steps, etc: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... It even says: "However, our research is limited in its external validity due to its reliance on a student sample from a single university."