This is NOT a first-world problem

[clevermanka]

Most of you know that the issue of privilege is a pretty big deal to me. I came pretty late to the party on the issue, and only started to learn the nuanced details via some of the smart commenters on ontd_political. Yesterday, mckitterick sent me the link to a study done by someone at KU that perfectly shows a staggering amount of privileged thought in academia and developed nations.

Link between emotions, physical health universal, researcher says Much research has demonstrated a link between individuals’ emotional and physical health. For example, depression and stress have been tied to self-reports of increased pain, fatigue and disease, whereas positive emotions have been tied to decreases in those ailments.

There is, however, a caveat. Nearly all of this research is limited to industrialized nations – places where individuals’ basic needs like food and shelter are typically met. This has left unanswered the question of whether the emotions-health link also exists in undeveloped nations.

Absent research from these poorer countries, many observers have speculated that the emotions-health link isn’t universal across the world, theorizing that emotions are a “luxury” that only first-world inhabitants can afford to focus on because their more basic needs are being met.

So there was a significant number of people who thought the citizens of underdeveloped nations were less susceptible to health risks due to negative emotions just because they were poor? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK. Do we need better proof of the fact that poor people, not to mention poor non-white people are seen as less-than-human compared to those of us who are well-off, white, and with disposable incomes? I guess the fact that Mr. Lopez got the funds to devote an entire study to this phenomenon is my answer to that question.

I've had several conversations with mckitterick lately about prejudice, bigotry, and hatred, and how I believe those are all based on fear of people who are different. This story is a perfect example of how far humans will take our ignorance and distrust of the other--going so far as to think it's possible that humans who have a different standard of living are less affected by emotions. They are, effectively, seen as less-than-human.

Although I know it shouldn't, because staggeringly stupid research projects get funded every day, it baffles me that we needed a study about this. I suppose we need studies to prove truths. What I'd like to see, though, is a study that examines why human beings are so prone to lazy thinking and willful ignorance. That's some research I'd be interested in hearing.

Comments

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

Heck, that's some research I'd be interested in funding. (The lazy/willful ignorance thing.)

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my jaw just sorta fell open when I saw that research question. Do poor people have feelings, is that what this researcher wondered? JEEBUS CHRIST.

I suspect he also thinks that animal emotions have no connection to their health, either... or if he does, then I'm just all WHAT?! that he would grant animals higher cognition than poor humans. I mean, there's an actual syndrome that animals experience when they're too scared, and it can cause heart attack. This is well-known and widely acknowledged, and human doctors are only now becoming aware (http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154523594/what-animals-can-teach-humans-about-healing) of what they can learn from veterinarians.

What I'd like to see, though, is a study that examines why human beings are so prone to lazy thinking and willful ignorance. That's some research I'd be interested in hearing.

I think a LOT of people could get behind a study like that.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Do poor people have feelings, is that what this researcher wondered?

I would like to to second-guess this particular researcher's motives. It would be awesome if he'd seen the opinions of people who thought that and decided FUCK A BUNCH OF THAT I AM DOING A STUDY TO PROVE THEM WRONG. But his wording of "“It seems plausible" that poor people don't have feelings kinda scuttles that line of thinking.

So yeah, fuck you, dude. Just fuck you and the reasons why this study was "necessary."

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

The focus was on whether emotions have an effect on health, either positively or negatively, not whether or not people have emotions. The study set out to find out if people with basic needs met are more susceptible to health affected by emotion than those who do not have basic needs met. I think the focus is based on the refuting Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

The full article is here (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/02/22/0956797612457382.full?keytype=ref&siteid=sppss&ijkey=Omy.5VmeZCYAQ), if that helps.

[amjhawk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm optimistic about people not being willfully ignorant or lazy:

But I didn't read the initial excerpt as "poor people don't have feelings" but as "health might not correlate as strongly to emotional feeling" in less-privileged communities. In many ways, reading it that way shows due diligence. "Our sample dealt with the US, so we can't speak for the rest of the world. We're throwing out a (not well thought out, admittedly) theory, we should research this next."

Look at Dan Pink, for example - author of Drive - past a certain point, ~$80k in most of the US, increasing pay leads to decreased job happiness. There's a weird "sweet spot" of happiness when correlated to money that falls where an individual can't quite afford everything they want, and still have to make some hard choices. When they're able to obtain say, a big ticket item that they really had to work and sacrifice for, there's a lot of satisfaction that comes along with that. Whereas Richie Rich buying a new home or something doesn't really tip his emotional scale.

Another place to look is at the increased suicide rates in first-world countries when compared to the rest of the world. There is an interesting link between developed countries and depression, there.

Anyway, those are my thoughts as devil's advocate. I may very well be wrong, but I hope not - for the sake of believing that academia is a good place with non-ignorant people.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

Because poor people are never stressed out or anything, and never have their hearts broken, and are never happy about anything.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I thought we already disproved this shit? There used to be an idea that romantic love only exists in well-off societies because everyone else is too busy surviving, but it's bullshit--romantic love exists in every culture that they bother to really look at. (In some it's not seen as a positive thing because it doesn't follow the rules and is distracting, but it's still there.)

People who are starving still make art.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

People who are starving still make art.

Another excellent and seemingly obvious point. Why is this so hard to grasp?

God. People.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

ALSO

[hdsqrl.livejournal.com]

The other day I was on the phone with a group of people who were all part of a client company - most of the people were based in the US, but one man was calling in from India, and was the person I was told I'd be working with on an upcoming project. "Don't worry," said the US-based woman leading the meeting, "He's very good with English and things."

W.T.F.??? Umm, ma'am, you DO REALIZE that he is ON THIS CALL, do you not?

I hope I have an opportunity to prove to this gentleman that not all U.S. women are complete asshats.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry," said the US-based woman leading the meeting, "He's very good with English and things."

JEEEEEZUUUUUUUS.

"He's a brown person who doesn't speak Native English! He's not a real person, so he wouldn't care that I'm speaking about him like this."


I hate people.

[fairgoldberry.livejournal.com]

I sort of sat there and thought, "Wait, what? Poor people don't have emotions and their emotions don't affect their health? WHO IS STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THAT?"

I will say that on some level I tend to think of the possibility of different levels of extremity. For me, if a friend says something unintentionally hurtful that triggers a depressed or anxious afternoon, that can be the worst thing all week. Not because I'm more sensitive to my emotions or more affected by them, but because my life is, generally speaking good enough that one grumpy afternoon can be a significant event.

If you're living in a war zone with no running water and a cholera outbreak, hurt feelings and a sad afternoon are still bad and serious, but they're not the worst thing to happen to you all week. They do, however, affect your ability to deal with whatever *is* the worst thing to happen to you all week.

I guess I see it that emotional problems are like burning your finger while cooking. It hurts like a bitch, impedes your normal function, and keeps reminding you it's there until it heals. It leaves you open to further infection and will probably put you at a physical disadvantage.

If you're like me, fairly privileged and affluent, that burn itself is a focus, an event in itself, that means you have to make use of the available resources to work around it and get past it. If someone says, "How are you" you answer "I BURNED my HAND and it SUCKS!" It is an order of magnitude worse than everything else I might have to cope with.

However, people in poverty are living the analogous equivalent of being double-amputees. No, their burn doesn't hurt any less in itself and it isn't any less serious or damaging or likely to impede their normal movements. They have the exact same set of experiences in getting burned that I do, but they have this whole other frame of reference of tragedy and pain that is completely outside my experience, and they have the position by which that burn is simultaneously less significant than their other pain and MORE significant for the amount of their remaining resources it consumes. If you ask them how they are, they say, "Well, I have no feet, and the phantom pains in my legs are pretty bad, and on top of that I BURNED my HAND and it really SUCKS because now I can't wheel myself down to the drugstore to get my pain medication."

What is, to me, a centrally significant and focal experience of pain is to them just another damn thing that makes it all that much harder to deal with all the other damn things that are even worse than the worst thing that happened to me all week.

I won't try to defend "Poor people don't have emotions" by saying that's how people are viewing it, but it's possible that someone who has a sort of vague understanding of that relative scale of "things that suck in your life" may jump to an unconsidered conclusion that because getting depressed over a fight with a friend is not as bad as a warlord's militia raping your only daughter, it is insignificant.

There's also something in this about our tendency to write off invisible illnesses, especially mental illness, as inherent self-indulgent weakness. I am betting that the same people who believe depression is a rich person's luxury are the ones who say to depressed people, "Well, though, have you tried just being happy and getting over it?" If you've got the idea that depression and anxiety are just the selfishness of a weak or undisciplined mind, you might assume that someone living in horrible conditions is 'tougher' and less likely to feel its effect. If you don't think depression or anxiety is real, then you assume that people with 'real' things to worry about don't waste time on them.

Love,
Rowan

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I am betting that the same people who believe depression is a rich person's luxury are the ones who say to depressed people, "Well, though, have you tried just being happy and getting over it?"

I would not take that bet against you.

[djangodurango.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound like he means poor people don't have emotions, but that people of lesser means have less resources to invest in them. He doesn't say the emotions themselves are the luxury, but the ability to focus on them.

I don't think his hypothesis would be correct in that poorer people wouldn't be adversely affected at all by emotional distress, but he might be right in that those who simply do not have the option of prioritizing their emotional health above other more basic needs may have a higher threshold for coping with it before their health begins to decline. People who have to worry about housing and food may be "used" to powering through emotional upheaval because they see it as a lesser problem or, because it is something they understand they cannot fix presently, they might be more likely to accept their depression or what have you as just the way things are.

There's probably a lot of psychological influences that may determine just how proportional one's emotional health is to one's physical. It doesn't sound like he's saying third-world people are subhuman neanderthals who haven't developed emotions at all, so much as that they may process and cope with them differently out of necessity. Therefore, the conclusions he reached with his first-world study group may not carry over.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

He doesn't say the emotions themselves are the luxury, but the ability to focus on them.

Interesting. That's not the the impression I got from the study. I understood it to be looking at physical manifestations of negative emotions. And it doesn't matter if you're focusing on the emotions. They can still affect your health no matter what.

[dotar-sojat.livejournal.com]

I’m almost certain that you are misinterpreting Dr. Lopez’ findings. He’s not the one saying “that emotions are a “luxury” that only first-world inhabitants can afford to focus on because their more basic needs are being met.”—he is the one testing that theory.

More importantly, he is the one testing that theory and finding it to be FALSE: “According to Lopez, the emotions-health link exists across nations and, perhaps most surprisingly, is even more pronounced in lesser developed nations.”

Further: “The take-home message is that emotions matter for health, and that’s true everywhere on Earth, regardless of how developed or undeveloped a nation may be,”

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I'm not interpreting his findings at all, so I can't be misinterpreting.

[redheadfae.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

Heck, that's some research I'd be interested in funding. (The lazy/willful ignorance thing.)

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my jaw just sorta fell open when I saw that research question. Do poor people have feelings, is that what this researcher wondered? JEEBUS CHRIST.

I suspect he also thinks that animal emotions have no connection to their health, either... or if he does, then I'm just all WHAT?! that he would grant animals higher cognition than poor humans. I mean, there's an actual syndrome that animals experience when they're too scared, and it can cause heart attack. This is well-known and widely acknowledged, and human doctors are only now becoming aware (http://www.npr.org/2012/06/12/154523594/what-animals-can-teach-humans-about-healing) of what they can learn from veterinarians.

What I'd like to see, though, is a study that examines why human beings are so prone to lazy thinking and willful ignorance. That's some research I'd be interested in hearing.

I think a LOT of people could get behind a study like that.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

Do poor people have feelings, is that what this researcher wondered?

I would like to to second-guess this particular researcher's motives. It would be awesome if he'd seen the opinions of people who thought that and decided FUCK A BUNCH OF THAT I AM DOING A STUDY TO PROVE THEM WRONG. But his wording of "“It seems plausible" that poor people don't have feelings kinda scuttles that line of thinking.

So yeah, fuck you, dude. Just fuck you and the reasons why this study was "necessary."

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

Because poor people are never stressed out or anything, and never have their hearts broken, and are never happy about anything.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I thought we already disproved this shit? There used to be an idea that romantic love only exists in well-off societies because everyone else is too busy surviving, but it's bullshit--romantic love exists in every culture that they bother to really look at. (In some it's not seen as a positive thing because it doesn't follow the rules and is distracting, but it's still there.)

People who are starving still make art.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

People who are starving still make art.

Another excellent and seemingly obvious point. Why is this so hard to grasp?

God. People.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

ALSO

[hdsqrl.livejournal.com]

The other day I was on the phone with a group of people who were all part of a client company - most of the people were based in the US, but one man was calling in from India, and was the person I was told I'd be working with on an upcoming project. "Don't worry," said the US-based woman leading the meeting, "He's very good with English and things."

W.T.F.??? Umm, ma'am, you DO REALIZE that he is ON THIS CALL, do you not?

I hope I have an opportunity to prove to this gentleman that not all U.S. women are complete asshats.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry," said the US-based woman leading the meeting, "He's very good with English and things."

JEEEEEZUUUUUUUS.

"He's a brown person who doesn't speak Native English! He's not a real person, so he wouldn't care that I'm speaking about him like this."


I hate people.

[fairgoldberry.livejournal.com]

I sort of sat there and thought, "Wait, what? Poor people don't have emotions and their emotions don't affect their health? WHO IS STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THAT?"

I will say that on some level I tend to think of the possibility of different levels of extremity. For me, if a friend says something unintentionally hurtful that triggers a depressed or anxious afternoon, that can be the worst thing all week. Not because I'm more sensitive to my emotions or more affected by them, but because my life is, generally speaking good enough that one grumpy afternoon can be a significant event.

If you're living in a war zone with no running water and a cholera outbreak, hurt feelings and a sad afternoon are still bad and serious, but they're not the worst thing to happen to you all week. They do, however, affect your ability to deal with whatever *is* the worst thing to happen to you all week.

I guess I see it that emotional problems are like burning your finger while cooking. It hurts like a bitch, impedes your normal function, and keeps reminding you it's there until it heals. It leaves you open to further infection and will probably put you at a physical disadvantage.

If you're like me, fairly privileged and affluent, that burn itself is a focus, an event in itself, that means you have to make use of the available resources to work around it and get past it. If someone says, "How are you" you answer "I BURNED my HAND and it SUCKS!" It is an order of magnitude worse than everything else I might have to cope with.

However, people in poverty are living the analogous equivalent of being double-amputees. No, their burn doesn't hurt any less in itself and it isn't any less serious or damaging or likely to impede their normal movements. They have the exact same set of experiences in getting burned that I do, but they have this whole other frame of reference of tragedy and pain that is completely outside my experience, and they have the position by which that burn is simultaneously less significant than their other pain and MORE significant for the amount of their remaining resources it consumes. If you ask them how they are, they say, "Well, I have no feet, and the phantom pains in my legs are pretty bad, and on top of that I BURNED my HAND and it really SUCKS because now I can't wheel myself down to the drugstore to get my pain medication."

What is, to me, a centrally significant and focal experience of pain is to them just another damn thing that makes it all that much harder to deal with all the other damn things that are even worse than the worst thing that happened to me all week.

I won't try to defend "Poor people don't have emotions" by saying that's how people are viewing it, but it's possible that someone who has a sort of vague understanding of that relative scale of "things that suck in your life" may jump to an unconsidered conclusion that because getting depressed over a fight with a friend is not as bad as a warlord's militia raping your only daughter, it is insignificant.

There's also something in this about our tendency to write off invisible illnesses, especially mental illness, as inherent self-indulgent weakness. I am betting that the same people who believe depression is a rich person's luxury are the ones who say to depressed people, "Well, though, have you tried just being happy and getting over it?" If you've got the idea that depression and anxiety are just the selfishness of a weak or undisciplined mind, you might assume that someone living in horrible conditions is 'tougher' and less likely to feel its effect. If you don't think depression or anxiety is real, then you assume that people with 'real' things to worry about don't waste time on them.

Love,
Rowan

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I am betting that the same people who believe depression is a rich person's luxury are the ones who say to depressed people, "Well, though, have you tried just being happy and getting over it?"

I would not take that bet against you.

[djangodurango.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound like he means poor people don't have emotions, but that people of lesser means have less resources to invest in them. He doesn't say the emotions themselves are the luxury, but the ability to focus on them.

I don't think his hypothesis would be correct in that poorer people wouldn't be adversely affected at all by emotional distress, but he might be right in that those who simply do not have the option of prioritizing their emotional health above other more basic needs may have a higher threshold for coping with it before their health begins to decline. People who have to worry about housing and food may be "used" to powering through emotional upheaval because they see it as a lesser problem or, because it is something they understand they cannot fix presently, they might be more likely to accept their depression or what have you as just the way things are.

There's probably a lot of psychological influences that may determine just how proportional one's emotional health is to one's physical. It doesn't sound like he's saying third-world people are subhuman neanderthals who haven't developed emotions at all, so much as that they may process and cope with them differently out of necessity. Therefore, the conclusions he reached with his first-world study group may not carry over.

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

He doesn't say the emotions themselves are the luxury, but the ability to focus on them.

Interesting. That's not the the impression I got from the study. I understood it to be looking at physical manifestations of negative emotions. And it doesn't matter if you're focusing on the emotions. They can still affect your health no matter what.

[dotar-sojat.livejournal.com]

I’m almost certain that you are misinterpreting Dr. Lopez’ findings. He’s not the one saying “that emotions are a “luxury” that only first-world inhabitants can afford to focus on because their more basic needs are being met.”—he is the one testing that theory.

More importantly, he is the one testing that theory and finding it to be FALSE: “According to Lopez, the emotions-health link exists across nations and, perhaps most surprisingly, is even more pronounced in lesser developed nations.”

Further: “The take-home message is that emotions matter for health, and that’s true everywhere on Earth, regardless of how developed or undeveloped a nation may be,”

[clevermanka.livejournal.com]

I'm not interpreting his findings at all, so I can't be misinterpreting.