Poor-quality relationships linked to greater distress than too few relationships
digest.bps.org.uk
digest.bps.org.uk
They say this, but people with integrity are typically made fun of secretly or even publicly, declared dismissive and asocial, instead of positively recognized in any fashion. They are seen as "rude", as "expecting too much", and at every point of their life, it is as if the society is telling them: "let it go, drop down to our level". Not in those words, but with actions and with the general atmosphere of the society.
A Seneca quote has reasoned with me for long time, I'll paraphrase it: you don't need a teacher for the vices!
It seems as if people prefer what objectively causes them harm (to their mental health and otherwise).
Lying, evil thoughts, friends envious of each other, talking behind their backs, unfaithfulness is more common than being a good person, trying to do your best in this world (which, I am sure, is not easy on anybody), be in a positive mood, if you can't help - at least don't interfere, and so on.
We need to somehow improve our ethics and morals on our own, willingly. I know exactly what I did in my life: I read a lot of philosophy. I also come from a very honest family, so that had some impact I am sure.
Compare this with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19238633 (Why Be Honest If Honesty Doesn't Pay)
You seem to be drawing a line between having integrity and being seen as unpleasant.
To remain silent is often to implictly agree with an assumed group consensus.
Being proud of one's integrity doesn't actually diminish it, except in the eyes of those who are looking for reasons to diminish or relabel it anyway.
It sounds like you are crutching on "integrity" when perhaps you need a more unbiased analysis of why you have been made fun of secretly or even publicly, declared dismissive and asocial, instead of positively recognized in any fashion.
You aren't seen as rude because you just have too much integrity. This is such a narcissistic view of the world. I mean just based on this post that you wrote I can tell you that your problems do not stem from an overload of virtue.
(If you want, we can talk about me, I have no problems with that - I think I am unusually lucky in this department though :), based on everything I see around. But I also spent my life building quality relationships with people, even before I really know what I was doing)
It's something I've noted that people do. It might just be my surroundings.
It was mostly generalized, but if I do this exercise in my head - think about all people I know, all relationships between them (friends, romantic, etc.), I still end up with the same conclusion. People are really not that nice to each other, so it's no wonder that the mental health would be suffering as this study portraits.
From the people that I know, the ones I think are really honest, good, well-mannered people, they all seem to struggle relationship-wise. And precisely those ones are deemed as too difficult, etc. even though they aren't that much different.
Ah, it seems as it is really sensitive topic :)
Also, I'm sure our definition of reasonable differs.
Look, if you get out there, and talk politics with people in person, in real life, you'll find that people are pretty reasonable. Their beliefs may be strange, but those are shaped by a massive amount of powerful outside factors. Yes, you have to go into it with an open mind, and find how to phrase your ideas in a way that they don't sound like an attack on the other person, but it's not too hard.
I have strong as well as unusual political beliefs, which you would imagine to be a problem. But of hundreds of political discussions, I've managed to have a reasonable discussion perhaps 98% of the time. I've talked with people who have political beliefs as radical as you can imagine: not simply hardcore Trump and Hillary supporters, but also people who:
- want to kill anyone who owns a business
- think <insert group here> is subhuman
- are strong anarcho-capitalists
- want to kill anyone who is <thing I am>
- support political executions
- think the world is controlled by an elite cabal of actors
Admittedly, most of these conversations are over hours or days, not years - if I was, say, roommates with them then I imagine things would be a bit trickier. But still, I've had long friendships with people who have very, very radical political beliefs in the opposite direction from mine.
Hmm. That really doesn't match my experience.
I'm lucky enough to know a handful of people who are really pure, kind, good-hearted people, and they all seem to get through life pretty well. Sure, some of them have endured severe challenges in life, but those would have happened regardless of who they were as a person (mostly not "winning the lottery at birth" aka growing up poorer or in the "wrong" place.)
Yes, people consider them different, but they consider them different in a good way, and they are very loved people.
I suspect that it's a number of other factors causing what you've seen. Ultimately, I just don't understand - why would most of the world dislike a good person because they're a good person? That seems like a really strange world.
I'm in my 30s and I have never witnessed this. Usually it's on a different axis: how blunt the person is.
As mentioned, I have generalized my thoughts based on what I see around me. People lack these (some or all of them) qualities enormously! If you ask me for a "proof" here, I am afraid I cannot provide one, nor anyone studying social sciences can. I can only talk from what I observe, so the surroundings will have an impact of any conclusions I am afraid.
With that said, and the simple fact that virtues and vices don't go hand in hand and they don't tolerate each other, I conclude most of my reasoning. La Rochefoucauld said "Hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue", and it will always be so. That's why I judge people by what they do, not what they say, and how much they smile to my face.
You cannot talk about honesty, if you are dishonest. Doesn't matter that you are smiling. Doesn't matter that you are not dishonest (yet) with me. You cannot talk about loyalty if you are unfaithful.
I mean, you technically can (are able), but that just reeks of hypocrisy.
Typically, if you go against the flow, or make your stance known on these fronts, you'll come to the same realization I think. It's as if people don't like being "judged" (for lack of a better word), even though they might be in the wrong. They would rather make sure they are not judged than do something to better themselves.
So the only option left for them is to "shoot the messenger", e.g. use social skills to diminish his value in any way possible ("asocial", "rude", "unpleasant", etc.)
Source?
Is there a source backing any of this up?
Here is an anecdote going against this idea.
In my junior high school, the person responsible for discipline was a strong woman. She was notoriously strict, walked around with a baton, you definitely didn't want to cross her path when you were misbehaving. She was always treated with respect: she wouldn't have it any other way.
And guess what, everyone loved her. In her office was a collection of sticks, batons and baseball bats given to her by students as a parting gift. When she retired, she got an article in the local newspaper, the subtitle was "discipline is always accepted as long as it is just".
Just to make things clear in case it wasn't obvious: she didn't beat students, threatened to do so or used any kind of violence in general. The baton was mostly just for show.
I'm not sure this goes against his thoughts (and possible experiences) on the matter. In your example, you've established a figure that is in charge for maintaining 'Law and Order'. This person is responsible for creating the rules in which others live by in this (subset of) society.
I have found, over the years, that people respect rules when applied to everyone evenly. They even respect the person charged with dispensing those rules (evenly and fairly).
OP's sentiment, I think, applies to a 'Lord of the Rings' mentality. There are no set rules for behavior that are overseen. Groupthink, group pressure, dominating (if not vulgar) voices may tend to lead. Not unlike the film 'Idiocracy'.
sidenote: I often start commenting on my text editor and paste into forms.
Oh my gosh, that is such a grim set of generalizations. What possible evidence do you have for those premises?
Is it possible you're thinking of the narrow set of people who have integrity and are public figures, then shifting to generalize to all people who have integrity? Because there are plenty of areas of life where people with integrity are not only valued but protected by their communities.
Going just a bit further, I would observe that people I have felt best modeled integrity... do not openly identify themselves as "someone of integrity". It's just something they do, it's just the way they are.
This sounds like it's potentially coming from a place of difficulty with social cues perhaps?
There are always going to be low-integrity people in the world. Obviously I agree it'd be great if there were a lower percentage, but the point is you're always going to have to seek out good people to associate with.
Luckily, low-integrity people usually make this way easier than they realize because while a few are subtle and crafty, most of them are not and have lots and lots of obvious tells. For example, if you want to know whether they will lie to you, watch what they do with others, and you'll see that many dishonest people not only lie but their lies aren't even very believable. Essentially, I'm saying you can use this tear down others behavior to your benefit: they are handing you information you need to decide who to (and who not to) trust and who to associate with closely.
On a side note, if you were raised in an environment that valued virtue, watch out for the trap of becoming judgmental or self-righteous. I know I had to face this in myself. Social groups praise people for being virtuous, and this is a legit social means to encourage virtue. But if you're not careful, you can catch yourself chasing virtue not for its own sake but for praise, to bolster your self-image, or to gain/preserve in-group status. Look at all these great things I do -- over and above what normal people do, in fact -- so I must be a great person, right? Or, look at all these great things I do, so you guys accept me, right?
I've heard rumors of groups of people falling so hard into this trap that they start trying to one-up each other by randomly donating a kidney. "After all, you can mostly live with just one..."
The altruistic masses are reared like cattle to serve the interests of the wealthy.
Good people tend to help everyone indiscriminately but evil people only help other evil people (not by explicit intention, but simply in the shared, win-at-all-cost pursuit of selfish interests; which happens to be the favorite activity of evil people). That is why evil people rule the world.
That was my initial thought.
Quality > quantity.
Beyond the simple fact of empiricism, having a study show this is valuable on a lot of practical levels:
- Common knowledge is often wrong, so it's worth validating.
- Common knowledge says "worse", but this starts to quantify the difference. (Maybe 10 crummy friendships are worse than 2 good friendships, but are they worse than 1? How much worse? Where does zero friendships fall?)
- "Everybody knows" isn't and shouldn't be a basis for law or policy, so studies like this are citable evidence for the problem's existence and severity; "bad friendships are depressing" doesn't help us evaluate loneliness as a public health risk. (Similarly, replacing "those districts look stupid and have biased results" with a statistical measure of gerrymandering has been quite important in some recent court cases.)
- Simple studies provide standard methodology and reference data for analyses and future work. There's a long history of people testing complex hypotheses like "can we fight loneliness using this intervention to help people make more friends?" which fall apart because they skipped foundational work like "is number of friends even a predictor of loneliness?"
Honestly, I feel a bit relieved to see studies like this at the moment. With the replication crisis taking "well understood" results down like dominos, there's a lot to be said for going out and checking the really fundamental stuff.
> People often get cross when you tell them there's no such thing as a sugar rush. Especially parents. They have witnessed, time and again, their offspring going ape at parties, after mainlining jelly and ice cream.
But let's not get distracted trying to convince me the study is wrong with anecdotes. That's the point: even ubiquitous "common sense" that anyone would swear is right can be debunked.
And I feel like there's another explanation for that - the party setting.
Also kids are different of course.
What does it matter what some study says when every kid i've ever seen get a bunch of sugar acts the same way? Studies mean nothing when you're with kids hyped up on sugar.
And honestly, I don't really eat sugar, when I have some pop or eat candy, I notice the way it makes me feel. It doesn't make me hyper, but it makes me antsy and twitchy.
I've done this. I didn't notice any difference. I suspect the difference people notice is down to their lack of skill at parenting rather than anything to do with sugar.
Things that seems common sense AND you see them happen anecdotally all the time can still be wrong.
"Nonetheless, other experiments show that sugar may at least influence behavior. Dr. Wesnes conducted a study in which he found that having a large amount of sugar for breakfast led to a severe deterioration of attention span when compared to having no breakfast or eating whole grain cereal. Dr. Tamborlane, also from Yale, reported that children given sugar had higher levels of adrenaline. A possible explanation for this effect is that since sugar is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, blood sugar rises quickly, which can lead to higher adrenaline levels and thus symptoms similar to those associated with hyperactivity. Furthermore, children with ADHD also tend to have higher levels of insulin." (1)
(1) http://www.yalescientific.org/2010/09/mythbusters-does-sugar...
That was physics and biology and here you are talking about correlation studies??
My comment was designed to stimulate discussion about this exact issue. Not because I really had a strong position. What if studies show one thing and other studies can’t reproduce the effect? What if something IS true despite current studies “debunking” it?
I don't know about children, but its vaguely true about adults. Increased sugar intake alters the fat burning process with the gift of quick energy followed by a period of depression, a sugar low, that impacts body energy and mental concentration. The resulting behavior is slowed/faulty decision making and a desire for napping.
I suspect if this same metabolic change occurs in children it would slow a child's mental concentration thereby allowing less controlled behavior, which may present as hyper activity at the loss of self-reflection.
Are you referring to the release of insulin in response to the intake of sugar? I believe the sugar high may just be a myth perpetuated by both the dopamine reward response, but also parents looking for explanations of children's hyperactivity. Kids are simply de facto hyperactive, there are disordered levels of hyperactivity, but simply: their motor cortex is overdeveloped and overactive relative to their prefrontal cortical control mechanisms (executive functions).
This difference in metabolism is due to physiology. It is not a myth. The implications of the difference are that energy created through the insulin process is immediately available and the unused remainder of energy after use is stored as fat. Fat in take, on the other hand, stores energy as fat the body thinks it will need and dumps the rest. Fat becomes energy when stored fat is metabolized in the liver resulting in slow but more consistent energy. Understanding that difference is significant to dropping weight.
Although I'd like to see continued studies also if this extends to internet or long-distance relationships, and if they do not, the exact categorical/mathematical models of this disparity.
It's the perfect feedback loop for "increasing engagement".
Most people find it hard to balance that, so they are likely better off to have a few high quality relationships without accounting for the outer layers
At least now I know there's a study to confirm why I've been so depressed lately. That counts for something I guess.
I have experienced this myself for a few years and I know people whose lives are seriously disrupted by a toxic family member.
The article may contain the information you require.
I'm curious as to the threshold you require as to that information, are you looking for an absolute minimum threshold of friends, and a succinct definition of a poor quality relationship in a title?