Buddhists 'really are happier'

[Dancing David]

Some buddhists are sheep, some are not, as Yrreg has pointedly ignored, many sceptics find buddhism to be about 90% nonsense.

 

[JetLeg]

From


http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2005/01/index.html

While this new study revealed that even novice meditators can reap health benefits, other recent research has some extraordinary effects from long-term meditation practice. When Dr. Davidson had the chance to test a senior Tibetan Buddhist monk at his laboratory, he found that the monk's brain had the highest ratio of left versus right activity out of all the 175 people tested, suggesting an unusual degree of emotional contentment. Paul Ekman, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, tested the startle reflex of a different Buddhist monk by exposing him to noises as loud as a gunshot: While meditating, the monk was able to suppress this reflex, his face not moving a muscle. This was unprecedented display of mental control over a supposedly automatic response.

Why is this not enough to prove the effect of meditation? What else can cause this, if not the meditation - any alternative explanations?

 

[lolurigeller]

So what if buddhist meditation makes people a little calmer and 'happier', you can't quantify happiness. Happiness to me can mean shooting up some coke on my arm and getting an endorphin rush in my brain, no basic difference.

In buddhism the goal should be the cultivation of character into becoming more ethical, moral, and virtous and who looks after the benefit of one-self and everyone else.

Some buddhists are sheep, some are not, as Yrreg has pointedly ignored, many sceptics find buddhism to be about 90% nonsense.

Agreed but I was talking about the paradox of good press buddhism gets. It makes it easy for buddhists to delude themselves into growing prideful and then eventually corrupt themselves. This is evident in E-sangha just look at them quote Einstein in the mainpage, it's such a load of crap.

 

[JetLeg]

So what if buddhist meditation makes people a little calmer and 'happier', you can't quantify happiness.

First, not a little but a lot. So it does matter.

And second, why can't you quantifiy happiness?


How happy do you feel 1..10 is one way

 

[Phlebas]

First, not a little but a lot. So it does matter.

And second, why can't you quantifiy happiness?


How happy do you feel 1..10 is one way

If I say I'm a 7 right now, and you say you're a 7 right now, does that mean that we're both currently equally happy?

If I suspected I was happier than you, how would I show that at least one of us was wrong about our self-reported 7?

 

[JetLeg]

If I say I'm a 7 right now, and you say you're a 7 right now, does that mean that we're both currently equally happy?

If I suspected I was happier than you, how would I show that at least one of us was wrong about our self-reported 7?

Ehh..

Seems right. But if so, why is it so popular to measure how content students were with the courses they were given in exactly such a way?

Besides, fMRI studies can show that buddhists are happier.

 

[Dancing David]

From


http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2005/01/index.html



Why is this not enough to prove the effect of meditation? What else can cause this, if not the meditation - any alternative explanations?

It is the nature of the experimental model.

Unless there is a cohort control you do not know if the meditation caused the effect or if it was an innate ability. There are other conflated ideas and erroneous assumptions in that paragraph as well.

 

[Dancing David]

So what if buddhist meditation makes people a little calmer and 'happier', you can't quantify happiness. Happiness to me can mean shooting up some coke on my arm and getting an endorphin rush in my brain, no basic difference.

In buddhism the goal should be the cultivation of character into becoming more ethical, moral, and virtous and who looks after the benefit of one-self and everyone else.



Agreed but I was talking about the paradox of good press buddhism gets. It makes it easy for buddhists to delude themselves into growing prideful and then eventually corrupt themselves. This is evident in E-sangha just look at them quote Einstein in the mainpage, it's such a load of crap.

Yeah, I agree, I tried the E-sngha but i found the woo overwhelming. I am not sure it is prideful, I think it is just human nature. There is a definite spin there to keep the calm, I think that some of the posters are people who they want to have because of their qualities and they don't want them confronted. (There are some very senior members of the monastic community who post there).

 

[Dancing David]

First, not a little but a lot. So it does matter.

And second, why can't you quantifiy happiness?


How happy do you feel 1..10 is one way

Just a colsarned minute there, you can put the cart before the horse but hitching the horse behind the car?

The statement that buddhism makes people alot happier has not been extablished.

The emotions are vague enough to make quantifcation difficult. I would prefer something along a quality of life survey.

And you have to remember the self selecting nature of humans, you can't just assume that buddhism is the cause. They may self select buddhism for the reasons that they already are the way that you are trying to test for.

Now that side, i do belive that buddhism is very similar to cognitive behavioral therapy is some ways.

 

[Dancing David]

Besides, fMRI studies can show that buddhists are happier.

Only by placing arbitray values on the data found in the scans without any sort of controls and data to make assertions supported. Left hemisphere activity does not mean one thing and right hemisphere another, you could have the same effect for someone who is in extreme agitated depression.

 

[JetLeg]

Now that side, i do belive that buddhism is very similar to cognitive behavioral therapy is some ways.

Well, if you

-1- test five persons that have taken CBT for 10 years, five hours per day, and find that they are extremely happier than the average, 4 Standard Deviations, doesn't it prove that it was caused by CBT, and that CBT is effective? Do you have other explanations?


-2- Test one person who has taken a lot of CBT (matthieu ricard), and you find him to be the happiest person in the world, does that not prove that CBT works? Other explanations?

I am really overwhelmed by the emotional impact, maybe because of that I can't see alternatives, but I woudl appreciate examples.

 

[Dancing David]

Well, if you

-1- test five persons that have taken CBT for 10 years, five hours per day, and find that they are extremely happier than the average, 4 Standard Deviations, doesn't it prove that it was caused by CBT, and that CBT is effective? Do you have other explanations?


-2- Test one person who has taken a lot of CBT (matthieu ricard), and you find him to be the happiest person in the world, does that not prove that CBT works? Other explanations?

I am really overwhelmed by the emotional impact, maybe because of that I can't see alternatives, but I woudl appreciate examples.

It is a matter of psot facto sampling. In CBT a baseline is found through the monitoring of the individual. they record a certain negative thought when they experience it and that creates the baseline or they use the gross measurement of the Beck Depression Inventory (or some such tool). Then as the process continues the individual continues to score how often they have the negative thought or they continue to score the BDI. You have a baseline and you have the data that might have been caused by the intervention. Ideally you would have a matching control group that also scores but does not have the intervetion.

And the issue of a single data point is that it is not consistent across settings.

To have a good study means a number of things:

1. the samples should be randomly accessed.

2. they should be devided into control and experiemental groups. with equal distribution of demographics in the groups.

3. baselines should be obtained on both groups

4. the intervention begins with the experimental group and not the control group, although some protocols would have them do some task a certain number of times a day. (In this case it would be ideal to have two control groups, one that does crosswords three times fiveteen minutes a day and another groups that just tracks negative thoughts without the intervention)

5. a new score is then generated at the end of the study and during the study as well. if the intervention is successful there should be a large change in the experimental group not seen in the control groups.

As far as examples of self selection

-a person who is introspective and understands that attitude and choices effect consequences is more likely to find buddhism attractive.

confounding effects

-regression to the mean, people seeking mental health intervention are generally in great distress, they have waited until the leventh hour to get help. so a randomly chosen sample of people who seek mental health intervention will imporve because they return to their baseline (the crisis passes, they become more stable , etc.). this is an issue in medical treatment in general

-there is no way to control for who seeks mental health treatmen, an argument could be made that knowing when to get help makes a person a healthier person in general, so those who seek mental health treatment may be healthier in general than those who don't seek mental health treatment