mental health
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Is ignorance bliss?
Finnish psychology researchers have created an assessment that helps measure an individual's commitment to social justice principles, and found a negative correlation between progressive ideals and happiness levels among the Finnish population as a whole. has led to some surprising discoveries.
Their findings, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, suggest that similar patterns may be found among socially conscious populations in other Western countries.
Oskari Lahtinen, study author and senior researcher at the INVEST Research Flagship Center at the University of Turku, said the “woke” discourse has since permeated Finnish discourse.
“There has been little data on this debate, so the extent to which these attitudes are prevalent seems like a question worth studying,” he continued. “Prior to this study, no reliable and valid instrument existed to assess the extent and prevalence of these attitudes in different populations, so I set out to develop one.”
Their research trajectory included extensive reading on intersectional feminism, critical race theory, queer theory, and other related academic fields that inform critical social justice, Cypost reports.
The pilot study included 851 adult participants, most of whom were affiliated with the University of Turku. After refining the initial scale, the study was expanded to a more representative national sample of 5,000 participants distributed through Finland's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat.
Ultimately, their final Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale identified seven truisms of woke people.
- “If white people have a higher average income than black people, it's because of racism.”
- “We should reduce the number of white or European authors on university reading lists.”
- “Microaggressions should be challenged frequently and aggressively.”
- “Trans* women competing against women in sports is not helping women’s rights.” (reverse scoring)
- “We don't need to talk anymore about the color of people's skin.”
- “White people cannot understand how black people feel like other black people.”
- “Members of more privileged groups can adopt characteristics and cultural elements of less privileged groups.” (reverse scoring)
“Probably what surprised me the most was the disparity between men and women,” Lahtinen told Cypost about Finnish attitudes. “Three in five women view 'woke' ideas positively, compared to just one in seven men.”
This is especially true for women in fields such as social sciences, education, and humanities. In contrast, participants who worked in STEM fields were more likely to criticize social justice initiatives related to wokeness.
However, the most concerning finding was the relationship between mental health and scale agreement. Specifically, the researchers found that people who believed that racism is the reason white people have higher incomes than black people on average had higher rates of anxiety and depression. discovered. More broadly, we found that people who identified as left-wing were most likely to report poor mental well-being.
Lahtinen cautioned against extrapolating their findings to an international audience, especially Western countries, just yet.
“The study was very robust, with a sample size of over 5,000 and good psychometric properties,” Lahtinen said. “But to know how these attitudes manifest in North America, we need to validate the scale in a North American sample. I encourage my colleagues in the United States to study the prevalence of these attitudes in their countries of origin. I recommend it.”
