I don't know how I got so lucky, but I've managed to find a small group of conservative professors to have lunch with every week--three of them are even socially conservative. What are the odds of four of those in the same room? One fellow is retired and gets angry all the time because greedy, selfish, short-sighted businessmen are ruining the country with mass immigration. He thinks the Southwest is finished.
I worry about his health (he's 79 and has a various health problems), so I told him that this is where religion comes in (he converted to Roman Catholicism a few years back). Thinking about your country will only make you mad, but rest assured that, in the end, everything will be alright. Life is only a moment; focus on eternity.
After, I wondered if it is true that religious people are less angry than the irreligious. I regressed a GSS question on the frequency of feeling angry onto a list of demographic variables and church attendance. Here are the results (sample size = 1,181)
Standardized OLS Regression Coefficients
Age -.18*
Male -.02
Black .02
Education -.03
Income .05
Church attendance -.06*
*statistically significant effect
Older people and those who attend church frequently are significantly less angry than their counterparts. The other characteristics don't matter. (I'm surprised blacks are not angrier than whites. Anger cannot explain their higher rates of violence).
In addition to giving a person "the big picture," religion--most religions, at least--frowns on anger. My priest patiently hears my confessions of anger far too often. Angry white dude--I'm such a stereotype.
Showing posts with label Emotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emotions. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
-
Which factor reduces family size the most? Below are the standardized OLS regression coefficients for a sample of whites ages 40-59: Stand...
-
More on trust: As a follow-up to the last post, I wondered about the level of trust in Asian and Muslim countries. Based on World Values Sur...
-
The plot thickens: As a follow-up to the last post, I wanted to see if the risk of arrest varies by hair color. I found that people with red...