The Psych Student

WTO protests in Seattle, November 30, 1999. Photo by djbones via flickr.

I decided to go with a somewhat smug and overbearing headline for this post on purpose since I think a lot of people tend to look at activists as sort of self-righteous, arrogant pricks. I like to sprinkle a modest amount self deprecating humor here and there. After all, aside from being a dad, a hubby, a full-time wage slave, a borderline obsessive technophile, bookworm and caffeine junky, I’m also an activist, usually interested in the human rights end of things. I coordinate The Committee to Protect Bloggers, am working on a crisis map in Farsi for the Iranian reform movement and run with folks in the International Solidarity Movement among other pursuits. Why would anyone engage in all this stuff instead of just getting a good night’s rest or playing more video games?

A while back I came across news about a study by by Tim Kasser and Malte Klar, entitled “Some Benefits of Being an Activist: Measuring Activism and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being.” I bookmarked the item and several related articles as potential fodder for this blog, but I was also particularly interested in getting some insight into possibly my own motivations for “getting involved.”

The study, Some Benefits of Being an Activist ¹ employed two online surveys, one using college students and a national sample of activists, and another using a control group of similarly matched participants were surveyed for a control group. Activists were seen to have positive correlations with the studies categories: hedonic, eudaimonic, and social well-being.

The study results also said activists were more likely to be ‘flourishing’ than were nonactivists. A third survey looked at the potential of a causal link between activism and wellbeing after the subjects had participated in brief activist behavior, brif nonactivist behavior, or no behavior. While I’d like to know more about what those last two actually mean, it’s worth pointing out here that the study found that the participants who had accomplished a brief spat of do-goodery reported higher levels of subjective vitality than did the subjects who engaged in the nonactivist behavior.”

So what does this mean? Should we all run out and build houses with Jimmy Carter, block Japanese whaling ships or lock arms to form human barriers in front of weapon convoys bound for Iraq? Well, sure. But will doing so make us all happier, satified well balanced people? My own impirical evidence would suggest not. We remain the same people we were before joining The Cause. The same problems, issues are their waiting for us, from the utility bills to relationships, and the same core reason that got a person involved wil likely greet them upon finishing. For much of the last decade, I spent time working with groups on the issue of Palestine and the occupation. Even now, whenever I meet someone just joining the International Solidarity Movement, or embarking on one of the Free Gaza runs, the first thing I say is “congratulations.” The next thing I ask is “why?” The latter is always a thing nagging me. I’m interested in what drew them that way in the first place. Why that and why then?

There was another study on volunteer work that relates to this one. in Volunteer Work and Well-Being ² Peggy Thoits and Lyndi Hewitt looked at the correlation between volunteer work and six aspects of personal well-being: happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of control over life, physical health, and depression. While the study indicated positive results in all six among volunteers, the researchers noted the study raised a question rather than solving one. “Do positive, healthy people actively seek out volunteer opportunities, or do organizations actively recruit individuals of these types (or both)?”

It’s an interesting question. Dr. John Van Eenwyk, the faculty director of International Trauma Treatment Program, suggested to me once — during a discussion about a workshop for activists dealing with witnessing traumatic events — that in helping activists deal with what they had gone through, one needs to understand the underlying personal issues that drove them to get involved in the first place. In activist circles you find a lot of stories. While it’s true people get involved for the cause itself, there’s something that attracted them to the cause in the first place. Something could just as likely be lacking in a life as opposed to having a high life satisfaction level. And while I haven’t run any tests myself and didn’t come across the follow-up study by Thoits and Hewitt, I imagine that it wouldn’t show an across-the-board high level in all six areas if they looked at where people were beforehand. My own anecdotal knowledge of activists would suggest a mix in areas of satisfaction and happiness, little introspection about personal wellbeing, overall good physical health and various scores on depression. Control issues can run high, though. What’s missing in the study would be a way to measure a sense of purpose, though. And here you’d likely see a low level before and a much higher level after becoming involved, and I would suggest that this is the prime mover, at least in western society.

The Boston Globe reported, somewhat humerously, that the research showed protesters and activists are “enjoying their lives more than the rest of us.” The article reports that the researches “found that it provides people with a sense of empowerment, of community, of freedom, and of transcendence. Political activists, in other words, are all happy warriors.” I’m thinking of some friends of mine that engaged in a week-long hunger strike in an Israeli jail once. They were much happier warriors upon being out of the pen, showered and fed, but felt the ordeal worth it all the same. A bit better said than the article’s take was the quote by Knox University Psychology Professor Tim Kasser, who puts it thusly: “people have psychological needs. If those needs are well satisfied, then people thrive, and if any of those needs are poorly satisfied, people don’t thrive. “Activism is a kind of activity that people can engage in that satisfies all of those needs.”

Thriving and satisfaction are much better words than happy for describing the personal feedback people get from being antagonist for a cause. Happiness is an ephemeral thing, and people can be seiously pissed off after an altercation with authority, especially if it ended with blindness due to pepper spray or a trip to the emergency room or a jail cell. There is discomfort in these situations to different degrees and an associated level of unhappiness, but you can also see the same very unhappy people exhbiting a degree of satisfaction or ability to deal with the situation in ways you might not expect. They could be said to be thriving off of it.

Part of the problem is that the baseline success rating is based on happiness as the standard. In other parts of the word where “the right to pursue happiness” isn’t enshrined in an historical document, you might hear other definitions of full living. A person may thrive by being an active participant in a community as opposed to obtaining individual hedonistic fullfilment (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Happiness just doesn’t come close to describing the feeling of satisfaction.

What is also missing from this study is the correlation of negative emotions following confrontation. People in vocal of physical altercations often have higher levels of anger and anxiety afterwords. Part of the problem is getting a handle on who they consider their target activists to be. What behavior is being measured. Political activism and direct action can be antagonistic and stress causing. Pulling a shift at the local soup kitchen or helping out with Meals on Wheels is something of an entirely different order. Both can possibly achieve levels of satisfaction. But happiness?

In a study on Facilitating achievement by social capital in Japan³ you don’t see the word happiness anywhere. But through structural social capital, respondents in that survey expected better results building social capital along with its expected knock-on effects of increased trust, and reciprocity. Evolutionary psychology points to these sort of status building traits as prime movers behind altruistic behavior. You may be exerting more energy and resources than you’ll receive for a single good deed, but the earned reputation will give you some security in the community (not that there’s anything wrong with that). This, like the above, would also indicate a higher level of satisfaction than simple happiness, which is a fleeting, short-term and highly conditional feeling.

Speaking of social capital, Thomas Sander, Executive Director of the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard was quoted in the Boston Globe piece and wasn’t entirely at ease with the idea that activism causes happiness. In his blog at socialcapital.wordpress.com, he asserts that it’s the social aspect of activism, like anything, that brings about happiness. Meanwhile, there are other reasons for becoming policically active which can be positive, but of an entirely different nature:

“The Globe article neglected to quote me that there are lots of reason to support activism — it may increase people’s confidence in making a difference, it may improve governmental quality and leaders’ accountability, it may spark extra-governmental change or reveal the immorality of laws (as seen in the Civil Rights Era).

That said, I am skeptical, as the Globe article noted that it is activism per se that is causing happiness, based on our forthcoming religious research.  Religious Americans are more happy, but it has nothing to do with their theology, or what they hear from the pulpit, or a sense of calling.  It is explained by being in a morally-infused social network.  Praying alone or attending a church where you hear the sermons (but don’t make friends) makes you no happier.  Similarly if one looks at research by Alan Krueger and others, it is social activities that bring happiness.

So while I’m not sure that bowlers are doing as much for government accountability as protesters, my guess would be that they are equally happy.”

— Thomas Sander

I would agree with Kemper’s view strictly from personal experience. The people I’ve met thorugh activist circles have given me far more happiness than the activities themselves. They’re just on the whole an interesting group to know and have conversations with. What activism has done for me personally, would be to infuse me with a sense of empowerment and DIY enthusiasm about tackling problems. It makes things more manageable and gives me an alternative to feeling helpless. There’s also the issue of perspective. At the end of the day, you can’t change an entire world issue. You can simply do what you can do. Perhaps somewhere down the line it aids a greater change, but at any rate, you find your place as a part of it all.