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Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

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Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#121

Post by ksec »

xtracto wrote: post #8

This reminds me of an anecdote a friend told me: This friend dedicates his time in going to very rural areas/towns here in Mexico to implement government programs. At some point in the past he got to a town were the cantina had just gotten the only TV in town... apparently people in the town were generally happy, and they had everything they needed... so in their view they were not poor. But once they started watchin…

It is not just advert, I think there is similar pattern to knowledge of something better exists. The internet, or Social Media with instagram, Facebook etc, has make you realise how much better something / life could be.

All that stuff you couldn't get.

Ignorance is bliss.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#122

Post by nickelcitymario »

iN7h33nD wrote: post #113
nickelcitymario wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you cherry picked the worst examples, let me cherry pick some of the best: - Ads for charities - Political ads (which are only good or bad if you agree or disagree with their positions) - Ads for schools - Movie trailers (a form of entertainment in it of themselves) Also: I suspect (but don't have the means to prove) a positive correlation between advertising spending and national GDP. Look, if your point is th…

I did not cherry pick the worst examples, just the most common. Only one of your examples could possibly lead to a good aspiration in people, charities. Even that seems like a stretch though as many advertisements for charities are scams or to charities that only use a low percentage of the donation for the charities cause. It could push people to look up a list charities and donate, which is why it could be positive…

Alright, clearly we don't have a shared understanding of what is good or bad. That's cool. I understand your position, even if I don't agree with it.

> Why do we need to be socialist or a utopia to ban most advertising?

You don't, as long as you don't mind a sudden drop in national GDP.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#123

Post by newscracker »

It’s ironic that an article about advertising having an inverse correlation with life satisfaction thrusts a popup ad when the page is opened! sigh It reminded me of the New York Times article on tracking on the web while NYT itself was using several trackers.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#124

Post by tombert »

slumdev wrote: post #112
tombert wrote: post #39

I was the first person in my family to do the "cord cutting" thing, where I only had an Amazon Prime and Netflix account, and a bunch of DVDs and Blu-Rays (around 2012). People asked me why, and I said that I think it's dumb to pay money for advertisements, and that I think ads are bad for you. My brother-in-law is overall a smart guy, but he works at Taco Bell full-time, making minimum wage in NYC (~$15/hour). He de…

These stories are too common. I would guess that the median* wage on HN is probably around 5x what your brother-in-law makes. And I would also guess that many of us are perfectly content with old phones, old cars, and generally reduced consumption. Hell, I buy clothes at thrift/resale shops when I find something nice that fits. What are people of means (relatively) seeing? Is it because we have more leisure time and…

That's what I find strange too; I can afford to get the new iPhone every year or two if I wanted (most software engineers probably can), and yet I plan on keeping mine until it's dead, broken, or stolen. I don't own a car, but if I did it would probably the cheapest car in reasonably good shape that gets reasonably good gas mileage.

There's a part of me that wonders if a lot of it boils down to education. My brother-in-law is relatively smart and able to learn new stuff fairly quickly, but he doesn't really have any education past high-school. Being better trained at math and compsci would probably help him realize the value for his purchases a bit better.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#125

Post by narag »

7sigma wrote: post #78
eloff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example, Apartheid South Africa got TV in 1976, six months later the riots started, coincidence? I think as soon as black people in South Africa could see how black people in America lived, they truly realized how bad they had it. Here it contributed to the undoing of an unjust government, so it's not always a force for evil. I think the most dangerous thing to North Korea is western media. I know the South K…

I heard of a similar story from my history teacher, but with eastern block and the show Dallas. From what I remember authorities were hoping that it would show the decadence of the west, but I think people mainly saw the higher living standards.

IIRC they were oil moguls. What I found confusing was that guys that were complaining of their salary, like policemen, lived in 2000 sqft houses, like in the show with a kid named Urkell.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#126

Post by wutbrodo »

whatshisface wrote: post #91
kerkeslager wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but what are you giving up to do that?

Video games and Netflix, for most people. I really don't think the trade-off between Netflix time and house cleanliness is a false perception synthesized by advertisers.

Netflix and videogsmes are very passive activities, and time cleaning your house presumably isn't fungible with them, from a mental energy perspective. I'm not in the habit of watching TV, but my sister is a good example: over the course of her medical education and early career, her Netflix addiction has tracked pretty directly with how mentally exhausting her workload is. If she was at full-enough capacity during Netflix time to be cleaning house, she'd be spending it on one of her hobbies, or reading.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#127

Post by nickelcitymario »

newnewpdro wrote: post #120
nickelcitymario wrote: post #28

I'm gonna take the contrarian viewpoint here. Full disclosure: I'm in advertising. The researcher states that increasing "aspiration" (their term) leads to dissatisfaction and more unhappiness. Sure! But aspiration is also why we invented the wheel, harnessed fire, founded fancy schools like Harvard, try to be good parents, etc. I don't disagree that ambition and aspiration can make a person unhappy. But it's also wh…

Necessity, not aspiration, is the mother of invention. Please change careers.

I would, but the position of "snarky internet commentator" has been filled.

If only I had pithy quotes that I could paste to make my arguments for me, rather than, I dunno, using original thought.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#128

Post by mtmalla »

wutbrodo wrote: post #115
JohnFen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite sayings is "never compare yourself to others, for it will make you both vain and bitter. There will always be someone worse than you, and always someone better."

Ive always felt quite the opposite: comparing myself to those better off than me motivates me and to those worse off makes me grateful for what I have. This started pretty immediately after I entered the workforce. I don't know what accounts for me ending up on the win-win side of the coin, but I'm evidence that you can't take for granted that the lose-lose situation you describe will happen.

It's probably more accurate to say that it's a quadrant with the axes being 'comparison' and 'gratitude'. Being high on gratitude and high on comparison accounts for your quadrant of possibilities. It seems like the moral is to either be lower in comparison, or higher in gratitude. Or both :)

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#129

Post by nck4222 »

banads wrote: post #64
nck4222 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That question is addressed in the article: "Their line is that advertising is trying to expose the public to new and exciting things to buy, and their task is to simply provide information, and in that way they raise human well-being. But the alternative argument, which goes back to Thorstein Veblen and others, is that exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own…

I guess I just think it's funny that we need scientific studies for blatantly disingenuous claims: "their task is to simply provide information and in that way they raise human well-being." It's like doing a scientific study on the common claim of advertisers that "the internet would not exist without advertising".

The research wasn't done to test a "blatantly disingenuous" claim, it was done to determine the effect of advertising on mood.

They're able to quantify how much of an effect it has on happiness as well.

"Our analysis shows that if you doubled advertising spending, it would result in a 3% drop in life satisfaction. That’s about half the drop in life satisfaction you’d see in a person who had gotten divorced or about one-third the drop you’d see in someone who’d become unemployed."

That's a pretty significant amount, and if confirmed could certainly be used as an argument to regulate advertising, or a way for therapists to help improve the lives of their patients, or in many additional ways I haven't thought of in the 30 seconds I've spent thinking about it.

I wouldn't be so quick to be dismissive of "blatantly obvious" scientific studies.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#130

Post by whatshisface »

wutbrodo wrote: post #126
whatshisface wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games and Netflix, for most people. I really don't think the trade-off between Netflix time and house cleanliness is a false perception synthesized by advertisers.

Netflix and videogsmes are very passive activities, and time cleaning your house presumably isn't fungible with them, from a mental energy perspective. I'm not in the habit of watching TV, but my sister is a good example: over the course of her medical education and early career, her Netflix addiction has tracked pretty directly with how mentally exhausting her workload is. If she was at full-enough capacity during N…

Studies on ego depletion have failed to replicate, which means that the idea of a limited supply of mental energy may not be true.
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