"Is Liberalism Good for Your Health?" Mother Jones (stunning)

[applegrove]

Is Liberalism Good for Your Health?

By Chris Mooney at Mother Jones

http://www.motherjones.com/print/247291

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[frazzled]

1. Maybe conservatives are just whiny hypochondriacs,

while liberals are rosy stalwarts when it comes to how they report their health.

[roguevalley]

20. utah and the mormons who promote healthy habits are outliers

[G_j]

2. from the link,

[5] on health care programs and general social safety net programs. And those policies work, or at least mostly work; hence, their populations are indeed healthier. "We're definitely talking about the election of Democrats leading to better health outcomes because they adopt policies designed to lead to the better well being of individuals," says Herian. (Conservatives: Before you cite the Oregon Medicaid study [6] to claim that these types of program don't actually work to make people healthier, see here.

[mike_c]

3. without access to the original data or the analysis it's hard to say...

...but I'm willing to bet those residuals are not Gaussian, LOL. In both that and the sick days graph, there is a much wider spread among the data points for conservative states. I wonder whether the analysis was performed on these raw data or whether the scores were transformed to reduce the influence of outliers and bring the residuals into line? If so, I'd suspect the trend is much less apparent, maybe not significant at all. It would be nice to see the original data.

[hughee99]

5. Given that a majority of people in America don't vote,

I wonder how "liberalism" is determined.

[mike_c]

10. looking at the graphs again, I see an entirely different result...

...particularly when we focus on the ends of the continuum, i.e. the most conservative and most liberal states. Some of the most conservative states have health scores just as high as those of the most liberal states, like Vermont. In fact, ALL but some of the southeastern conservative states have health scores as good or better than most liberal states, including those New England states that score high on both indices. So the real message, at least of this graph, is that the problem is regional rather than simply political, notwithstanding the role of politics in regional differences. But the states that make the apparent point are in the deep south and/or largely rural, with lots of poverty. Every one of them.

[obxhead]

11. I bet this graph would look just about the same if poverty were the comparison.

[HereSince1628]

15. yes, I think that's a factor that contributes much variability

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. Right wingers can't possibly be healthy. Fascist thinking can't possibly be good for anything nt

[TBF]

6. Well I think this is to be expected -

if you are an optimistic person who likes change you are probably pretty cheerful in outlook and more likely to vote for liberals. If you are conservative in nature and not as optimistic or enthusiastic for change you might not have as rosy of an outlook and go with the status quo. That sort of seems like common sense.

If they had actual health status or something it might be more indicative but this just strikes me as a silly article. I do like Mother Jones and have used some information repeatedly from there (like the income inequality charts they published a few years ago). This article doesn't seem as thought-provoking to me as some of their others.

[freshwest]

7. Senator Obama said, 'There seems to be more love in the blue states.' Loving others in your

community equally makes you feel better. Where your heart is also where your money and time is.

[polichick]

8. That's a good quote!

[applegrove]

9. Exactly. Interconnectedness is the height of psychological health. Other health follows.

[mindwalker_i]

12. There's a logical reason for this be be the case

Conservatism seems to come, in as large part, from fear. For example, the fight against gay rights and now gay marriage is a fear that things will be different - that not everyone follows the same path in marriage, and that acceptance of other people's preferences will somehow destroy their world. With abortion, there's a lot of fear that women won't be stuck with their husbands since they have kids (same goes for birth control). When minorities have rights, not necessarily even equal, that means that white dudes are no longer at the top of the social ladder, and that causes a lot of fear in conservatives.

All that fear, of things changing, of things not being like they were, isn't good for people. I think there's medical evidence for that! But here's the problem: stuff happens. And when stuff happens, it causes things to not be like they were before. that's really kind of how the world works though. People do things, discover stuff, and grow. Evolution kind of demands that people adapt to their environment, discover new things, and alter their environment which forces everyone else to deal with the new environment or face extinction. That probably is the core reason so many always feel like things are going downhill, but it's worse for conservatives.

[applegrove]

13. Yup. Living a life filled with hate and fear is no way to live. You gotta be connected with

others not exactly like you. Then you can cheer their success and luck as the world changes. Then you win more often. Life is happier. You are healthier.

[ErikJ]

19. Time to Stop Hating – It’s Bad For Your Health. CNN Reports

According to a recent study, hating is bad for your health! Dr. Charles Raison, associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine and CNNHealth’s Mental Health expert doctor states “bitterness is a nasty solvent that erodes every good thing”. So ask yourself one question, do you have hate in your blood? If so, you may be causing more harm to yourself than good.

Raison reasons that in feeling persistently resentful toward other people — the boss who told you to chuck the deuces, the girl that cheated on you, the person you envy for whatever reason — this can affect your physical health.

In fact, the negative power of feeling bitter is so strong that the authors call for the creation of a new diagnosis called PTED, or post-traumatic embitterment disorder, to describe people who can’t forgive others’ transgressions against them.

Studies have shown that bitter, angry people have higher blood pressure and heart rate and are more likely to die of heart disease and other illnesses.

http://flighered.com/2011/08/19/time-to-stop-hating-its-bad-for-your-health-cnn-reports/

[HereSince1628]

14. First look, appears to show a pattern in residuals

for a linear model. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher order interaction with poverty was at work

[mike_c]

16. exactly....

Yup.

[mindwalker_i]

17. Where I used to work, fear was in integral part of the corporate culture

My boss was sharp as a tack, but very conservative, and I think that came out of fear of failure. That culture of fear, I believe, made people work more conservatively, not trying new things because they might fail. so in the long run, fear, and hence, conservatism, are bad for the company. IMHO.

[ErikJ]

18. Rural conservative areas have higher unemployment

and so more without job-based health insurance. Makes you wonder why Cons defend employer-based health insurance system.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

21. Note: "how people rate their own health", not objective measures thereof.

Still kind of interesting, though.

[Scuba]

22. Labels can be so misleading. Here Wisconsin is listed as "Moderate" when in fact ...

... my State is pretty evenly divided between far-right Walker-backing neanderthals and far-left progressives. We're a lot of things, but "moderate" isn't really one of them.

[surrealAmerican]

23. Interesting chart

It seems to track climate more than political affiliation. Maybe people who live where it's colder just feel healthier than those in high-temperature states.