I don’t know anyone who has. Just the opposite, people who have worked hard all their lives and ended up the poorer for it.
Yikes. Either you only know one person, or you live in a very sad world.
I guess Der Trihs and I live in very different circles. It is hard for me to even imagine someone who knows no one who has. But assume that such really is the case, and Der Trihs, you know of no one who made it from poverty into the middle class. It hardly makes your point. Surely among those who you know who have stayed poor there are some who did not believe in work and who thought life was all bad breaks, and such a belief sure did not help them either.
As to your claim that a personal belief in control over one’s own destiny (again, also referred to as a strong internalized locus of control) may drive one to suicide when one loses a job or fails to prosper … well I’ve already provided the cites that documented that the opposite is true: a strong internal locus of control is associated with less depression in all age groups, higher “subjective well being” (more happiness) at matched income levels, and predictive of less illness later in life. If you are going to claim the opposite I’ll have to ask you to find some evidence to back that up.
I have learned the same thing about having a sense of control being linked to happiness. But I have also learned that religious people tend to be happier as well. How do these two things jibe?
Also, I’m wondering if the strength of one’s internalized locus of control is correlated with their belief in the Just World Hypothesis. They may be happy when things work out for them, but what happens to them when things don’t work out? Is there any indication that they are more likely to flip out than someone else?
Lots of possibilities.
[ul]
[li]They think they are supposed to be happier, so they lie.[/li]
[li]They get off on controlling the lives of others, or on hurting them. Gay bashers being happy doesn’t make gay bashing a good thing.[/li]
[li]They think they have more control than they actually do because they think God is on their side, such as praying for a good job and actually thinking it can work.[/li]
[li]The studies are deliberately slanted by believers who want to make religion look good.[/li]
[li]They are happier because of their imagined reward in the afterlife.[/li][/ul]
Considering the studies that show that religious people and societies aremore dysfunctional, I doubt that any reason for them being happier can be a good one. And happiness is not the only thing of importance in the world.
If they’re rich, religious people believe they earned their “blessings” in life.
If they’re poor, religious people believe that they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife for bravely struggling through each day. They may not have control over the trials that the devil sets in their path, but they have control over how they cope with it: by leaning on Jesus and being faithful like He expects them to.
Both sets of people believe they are in control of their destinies.
DSeid, your thought experiment is flawed. Very few people are going to think or admit that they became successful due to not working hard or being smart. Especially in a society that elevates these traits. Consider that half the population is below median intelligence, and yet almost everyone thinks they’re above average. The same bias is there for other socially desirable traits.
So I’m not surprised that all the people you know who rose out of poverty attribute their success to hard work and skill versus luck. It takes a very humble, very self-effacing person to say “Yeah I’m successful manager, but only because my 11th grade teacher took pity on me when we got evicted for the third time that year and allowed me to live with she and her husband, who was kind enough to hook me up with a kickass job during my last year of high school. In truth, I’m just a bumbling idiot who knows how to talk a good game!”
Not denying that hardwork and skill are important, though.
Well again, the data shows that for equal outcomes, including negative ones, those with a high locus of control are generally happier.
My guess is that the religious have a strong “just world” belief based not on their locus of control but that God will make it so. And that belief makes them happy.
And I see the risk that an excessive internalized locus of control could lead to a strong just world belief and with it the negative consequences of that belief, not perhaps to themselves but to a view of others. Yet many I see with a high internal locus of control do not delude themselves to think that the world is just. They know they have had lucky breaks and they know that much is outside of their control. The see the world as a very imperfect and often unfair place. They just see it as within their power to do something about it.
This is the first I’ve heard of this. Do you have a cite, perchance?
And how do you explain:
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that Asian kids who don’t speak Mandarin also do better in math than non-Asian kids?
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that Asian kids (whether they speak Mandarin or not) not only do better in math but also do better in other subjects?
I honestly don’t see how this has anything to do with anything. I do like the “behind the veil” argument–i.e., that the best way to construct a society is the way that people would agree to if they discussed it before anyone was born–but I can’t follow what you are saying. If you are arguing for anything, you seem to be arguing that a society should take babies away from parents at birth since babies totally depend on their parents for food.
I’ve never seen just world theory except in strawman form. That is, I’ve never seen someone say (or even indicate by what they do say that they believe) that poor people are poor because they are bad people. It only gets trotted out to be spat on.
I do believe there is an SES inertia. Based on the science we have now, I believe it’s largely (but not entirely) due to the fact that intelligence is (i) highly inheritable and (ii) highly determinative of a person’s outcomes.
Yes. I’d recommend you look up some papers like David C Rowe’s one on the Hernstein Syllogism, or papers on Linda Gottfredson’s faculty page.
Gottfredson, L. S. (in press). Intelligence and social inequality: Why the biological link? In T. Chamorro-Premuzic, A. Furhnam, & S. von Stumm (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences. Wiley-Blackwell.
She gave the cite - Gladwell’s Outliers. Here’s on on-line excerpt that address it. (Which is not to say that I completely agree with his hypothesis.)
Try reading my post about SES inertia again as you did not address it. At all.
And just for you, a study that documents that indeed a strong “just worlds” belief is associated with negative attitudes to the poor. And another study of interest.
I believe in personal responsibility but believing in a just world is to me, naivety. And because the world is unjust we also have a collective responsibility to each other.
You really didn’t understand my post? I suspect there was an intelligence failure, but I’m not sure if it was in the writing or the reading. Was anyone else unable to understand me?
Yes, your point seemed very clear to me. FWIW.
If you would like to believe I’m too stupid to understand your brilliant post, then that’s fine with me. It turns out that I don’t really care about your opinion of me. But perhaps you could explain a little more how you think your post has anything to do with what we are discussing.
Maybe it’s the baby aspect that’s throwing me. So let’s leave babies out of it.
Let’s say that everyone is born as a fully functioning adult. And in the first world, the only way to get food is to win the lottery–i.e., those who lose the lottery have no ability to get food from those who won. And in the second world, no one is handicapped, or has a mental deficiency such that they can’t appreciate the need for food, or gets depressed and decides to end their life, or has “the laziness gene” or anything like that.
And let’s leave out considerations other than food (i.e., the only thing of value in either world is food).
I would think that people about to enter the first world would all agree that they would create some system to forcibly equalize the distribution of food. And I would think that people in the second world would not create any such system–anyone in that world who doesn’t do the work necessary to get the food would essentially be making a conscious choice to kill themselves.
So, where does that leave us w/r/t the real world? By the way, I am totally fine with state support of people born with no ability to take care of themselves (i.e., they are extremely physically handicapped or have extreme mental problems or other health problems such that they can’t work).
It has to do with your question that he was answering.
One who believes that luck is the main factor feels more justified in mandating that resources be redistributed to prevent starvation, just as in that lottery example. One who thinks that the only reason people do not get food is because they are too lazy is unlikely to offer to help those without in any way.
His point was that those who appreciate the role that luck plays feel that the haves must help the have nots more than those who believe that there is equal opportunity for all with no role for luck.
Really? That wasn’t clear? You’re not whooshing?
Exactly, thank you.
Well, I guess that idea (ie, re-distributing resources to avoid starvation) is all well and good as far as it goes, but the problem is that it doesn’t go very far. Our society currently re-distributes wealth even in circumstances where it is not required to avoid starvation, and many liberals are constantly pushing to increase that re-distribution. Your analogy doesn’t really say much on this topic.
What if we took your analogy, replaced food with some luxury good, and made it where the exact split between luck and hard work in each scenario was unknown and unnowable? in that case, I could see how people would agree to not forcibly re-distribute the luxury goods.
My point wasn’t that poor people do or do not work harder. It was that my friend, who at 40, is an executive for a (the?) major bus line in the US, and I know plenty of other people equal or better in capability and willingness to work hard, but who don’t have a dad who was CEO of Pan-Am, and a major AA executive.
Guess who’s the executive, and who isn’t? That’s what I meant by my example. She was lucky enough to be born with both the mental capacity and the intelligence to do her job well, as well as to be born into a family that is extremely well connected in that particular business.
My SO’s brother is in private equity; I was talking to him one day and he mentioned that 85%-90% of the people he works with had friends/relatives already in the business, and they all went to one of a handful of business schools (which a relative probably attended and helped them apply for).
If you’re born poor your chances of getting in to those places is very slim. Most of the people who do make it have relatives who went through the process before them and who have helped guide their career to maximize their chances of getting in. And getting in to those places means that your income is many times what it would be if you went into any other line of business. Poor people simply don’t have that network, no matter how smart and hard-working they are.
I’m not saying that no poor people make it, I’m saying that the rich have huge networking advantages that the poor don’t have.
That’s pretty much the definition of luck to me; being born into the right family means you have many times the income of someone born into a different family** even though the other person is equally as well-educated, smart, and hard-working**.