
New High of 90% of Americans Satisfied with Personal Life - datashow
https://news.gallup.com/poll/284285/new-high-americans-satisfied-personal-life.aspx
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happytoexplain
"Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for
different people to the point of being useless. I feel underpaid and am
unspeakably sad about the ways in which my society is declining, but I would
answer "yes, extremely" if somebody asked if I was satisfied with my
"personal" life. I think there are other people in my exact same position and
with my exact same level of happiness who would answer differently if asked
this specific question.

~~~
datashow
> "Satisfaction with personal life" will have very different implications for
> different people to the point of being useless.

Of course "satisfaction with personal life", like many things in survey, can
have very different implications for different people. But it does not
necessarily make it being useless.

You could ask more questions about people specific satisfactions with personal
life, it does not make the general sense of satisfaction with personal life
useless.

~~~
happytoexplain
I'm not saying the problem is that people are made satisfied by different
things. I'm saying that I don't believe the concept of "general satisfaction
with personal life" is a useful or meaningful concept because of _the English
language_ \- because of the different interpretations of what it means. For a
counter-example, I think people have a much more consistent feeling of what it
means to be "happy" in general.

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2bitencryption
I wonder what the difference is between this poll and this other poll from
last month, with a writeup by the same author:

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/276503/happiness-not-quite-
wide...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/276503/happiness-not-quite-widespread-
usual.aspx)

EDIT: It seems the primary difference is in the question:

Asking "are you satisfied with your _personal life_ " garners much more of an
enthusiastic response than "are you happy", apparently?

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93po
I'm satisfied but it's only because I make more than twice the median
household income by myself with no kids and can work remotely at an easy job.
I don't know how 90% is satisfied with so much less.

~~~
bob33212
Super rich Hollywood people can't understand how you are happy without hanging
out with models and celebrities at your Oceanview house.

~~~
virgilp
It’s not even true - they may be _less_ likely to be satisfied, for reasons
tht you may find ridiculoous (but are not to them). I believe satisfaction
comes mostly from within, not necessarily with what you have. It’s largely on
you to observe either what you have - or what you don’t.

~~~
dwaltrip
Yes exactly. Satisfaction is significantly affected by your expectations. If
your expectations change, then satisfaction changes as well.

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smileysteve
This seems to contradict the opioid and suicide epidemics that reduced the
American life expectancy statistic; But is a welcome change.

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ravenstine
I have my doubts in people's ability to assess their own emotions. I'm fairly
conscientious, but I often have trouble boiling down my thoughts and feelings
into simple words like "happy" or "satisfied". If I were asked if I'm
satisfied with my personal life, I'd say yes, but only because saying I'm
dissatisfied is negative and gets interpreted the wrong way. People assume too
much and make judgments when you give them even the slightest hint that not
everything is perfect with you. Life is too complicated for me to actually
satisfied or dissatisfied.

~~~
dhdejejdhfyx
I feel like there's too many "I" and "me" statements here to substantiate the
conclusion that people at large can't assess their own emotions.

~~~
ravenstine
I didn't say that people at large can't assess their emotions. When I said I
have my doubts, what I meant is that I think that people are generally poor at
it, which doesn't mean I don't think they're capable. There's a difference.

The rest of what I wrote wasn't really my full reasoning for that conclusion.
I can only experience my own emotions, so I have to go with that. And I don't
have any diagnosed psychiatric conditions, so I don't think it's that unfair
to reflect on my emotional introspection. I never dictated anything other than
that I have "doubts".

I don't have a specific reason why I think people aren't very good at
assessing their emotions. It's a conclusion from an amalgam of my experiences
with other people. People can certainly recognize if they are happy or sad,
for instance, but I don't find they are very good at distinguishing between
things like contentment and happiness. I've met lots of people who think that
an absence of happiness is sadness, when in reality someone can be emotionally
neutral.(the connotations around the word unhappy don't help) It's common for
people to confuse depression for sadness. Personality and how someone can
respond to emotion can mask their feelings, making them less obvious to both
others and themselves.

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acephal
"Tepid satisfaction"?

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simmanian
If everyone is satisfied, what then is everyone chasing after all the time?

~~~
Jach
Having something to chase is part of being satisfied.

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Moodles
I understand the topic is naturally political, but it would be nice to see
discussions not super political bashing Trump vs Clinton and so on. A lot of
the comments I see here are pretty subjective, anecdotal and emotional. I
really don't like seeing this on Hacker News.

Note in the article it says: "WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nine in 10 Americans are
satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in
Gallup's four-decade trend. The latest figure bests the previous high of 88%
recorded in 2003."

In 2003 there were a lot of issues too. 9/11 recently happened, some wars in
the Middle East... So why not read the actual article? They try to go into
details as to why people are feeling happier. E.g.

"Household income, political party affiliation and marital status are
associated with the largest subgroup differences in Americans' satisfaction
with their personal life . Roughly 95% of Americans who live in high-income
households, who identify as Republicans and who are married say they are
satisfied with their personal life -- and about three in four among each of
these groups are very satisfied.

Meanwhile, adults in low-income households are the least likely to say they
are satisfied with their life, followed by Democrats and unmarried adults.
Among each of these groups, small majorities report being very satisfied. Low-
income Americans hold the distinction of having the lowest percentage very
satisfied

It's likely no coincidence that Americans' heightened satisfaction with their
personal life comes as confidence in the U.S. economy and their personal
finances are also at long-term or record highs."

The article even talks about races and genders, which again is correlated with
income. Being married too. So presumably this happiness is in large part due
to the economic boom of late. The article even concludes with this. Comments
here can say the question is ambiguous or people don't know how they feel
themselves all they want, but the evidence, and just plain intuition, strongly
suggests it has a lot to do with the economy. People reeeeaaaallllyy care
about bread on the table for their family, not tweets from the president, or
the "political climate", or Bad Thing X, or any of the other comments here.

I fully expect downvotes, but hey ho, that's emotional politics for you. What
I've actually written should be pretty non-controversial honestly: TL,DR;
"People care about family and bread on the table a lot".

~~~
thrower123
Somewhere on Twitter that I can't find, this survey was charted back into the
1970s. The lowest the positive response was reported was during stagflation,
oil embargo, post-Vietnam years, and it was in the 70%.

~~~
Moodles
Yup. The economy matters A LOT. Perhaps the crowd on Hacker News have stable
careers so don't value it quite as much, so we find other things to worry
about ;-)

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daachi
Based on 0.0003099022% of the population. Sure thing, I believe this.

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shadow-banned
This cannot be accurate. I've traveled the midwest, and so many are miserable.
I don't buy this at all.

~~~
hastes
Anecdotal at best.. your experience meeting maybe upwards of 50 people across
the midwest cannot possibly be taken with the same consideration as a major
polling outlet with 2500x the reach.

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blowski
Why are all these comments so grumpy? _“People are happy? What on earth is
wrong with them?”_

The awful political situation right now has encouraged me to spend less time
keeping up with news, and to spend more time reading classic literature. So,
thanks to Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, I am feeling more satisfied with
life - just not in the way you’d assume if I just said “I’m happy in my
personal life”.

~~~
happytoexplain
This is dismissive and insulting. Justified or not, the people you're
referring to are clearly incredulous that the poll accurately measures
happiness, not that they think there is something wrong with being happy.

~~~
blowski
I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured. However, there
seems to be a lot of confirmation bias going on in this thread - “This
surprises me, therefore it must be wrong”. They’re not point to any more
reliable evidence that suggests the poll is wrong, just giving anecdotal
opinions.

~~~
guidance
> 'I agree with you that the poll is probably poorly measured.'

In point of fact, it's a blatant lie. Not a shred of truth to it. 90% of
Americans happy with their lives? LOL. "Step away from the crack pipe."

People are so happy to be alive they are at each other's throats daily over
any one of millions of political disagreements.

People are so happy they are checking out by the millions via drug overdoses
and suicide.

Close to 10% of the entire nation is in prison. Most of those work in sweat
shops for big corporations at 50 cents an hour. I bet they're thrilled to be
alive also.

We're told unemployment is 2.7%, but when we calculate the numbers ourselves
using the exact same methodology as the U.S. government used during the
_previous_ Great Depression, we find they have somehow misplaced a decimal
point--and that unemployment now is in fact _worse_ than it was in the 1930s.

Which is obvious, to those of us who have eyes to see and ears to hear of all
the "I hurt muh back" types roaming about the land, "getting a check", with no
gainful employment to speak of.

Anyone who doesn't believe me can go calculate the numbers themselves; but
most won't.

What about all of those people screaming about lack of health care, racism,
etc; all roses and butterflies in the USA, amirite?

Definitely no major shootouts going on between gangs in Baltimore and Detroit
right now. No mile after mile of economic devastation, bombed out
neighborhoods as far as the eye can see. Yet another example of the zen garden
of bliss that is the USA, with 90% of everyone happy as can be.

Tent cities full of homeless, as far as the eye can see, in major and
increasingly even _minor_ cities across the land?

Must I really continue???

The USA, much like the rest of the entire world, is controlled by _lying
psychopaths_. And you're complicit.

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dylan604
Do we really trust the results of polls anymore? After the 2016 election where
all of the polls showed Hillary winning the election, I just don't trust them
at all.

It's almost like people are treating polls like SPAM calls, and just tell them
anything to keep them on the line as long as possible intentionally giving
bogus answers.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust
them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true. A poll
showing 90% of Americans are satisfied with their personal life is a pretty
strong refutation of claims like "suchandsuch trend has propelled America to
unknown depths of misery", even accounting for the possibility of bias.

~~~
Seenso
> We shouldn't treat the results of polls as gospel truth, but we should trust
> them more than we trust our intuitive sense of what's gotta be true.

Yes and no. Polls shouldn't be treated as gospel truth, _but they shouldn 't
override our intuitions either_. If there's a discrepancy, it means you have
to dig _deeper_ find the truth.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I think there's a level of discrepancy where they should override our
intuitions. If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction
to seeing this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not
to look for ways the might be biased.

~~~
Seenso
> If I thought most Americans were unhappy these days, my reaction to seeing
> this poll would be to question how my intuition went so wrong, not to look
> for ways the might be biased.

That's putting undue weight on quantified data, and letting it shut down
attempts to actually find the truth. Polls can be biased or badly designed,
metrics can be gamed or not actually measure what they claim to, or the poll
could be founded some flawed assumptions. If you assume your intuition is
wrong when you see a "strong" poll result, you'll never discover errors of the
kind I just enumerated.

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lunias
This has got to be fake right? Economic disparity, environmental uncertainty,
political nonsense. Either the people surveyed are completely tuned out and
just glad to be able to watch Netflix all day or mass-shootings are a new way
of expressing how personally happy you are.

