IF ANYONE IS UNHAPPY, NOBODY CAN BE HAPPY.

P. J. O'Rourke grasped the Woke Hive Mind years ago.  "At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, iII-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."  All that misery is apparently making the unsatisfied sniveling brats miserable themselves.  "‘Woke’ people more likely to be unhappy, anxious and depressed, new study suggests."

The study in question is by a Finnish researcher using Finnish subjects, which means you might want to temper it with that stereotypical Nordic gloominess.

Findings from its application in a Finnish study reveal that stronger alignment with these so-called “woke” beliefs correlates with heightened instances of anxiety and depression, as detailed in a publication in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

The rise of critical social justice, which focuses on identifying and addressing systemic inequalities across various identity groups, has prompted discussions on its influence in academia, politics, and everyday life. This particular orientation towards social justice — often associated with concepts like intersectionality, antiracism, and, colloquially, “wokeness” — has been both lauded for its recognition of systemic barriers faced by marginalized groups and critiqued for its approach to identity and free speech.

Yet, despite the debate surrounding critical social justice, there has been a noticeable gap in empirical data regarding the extent and impact of it. Recognizing this, the author of the new study aimed to create a reliable tool for assessing critical social justice and to explore its prevalence and effects.

The term "reliable" appears in the psychometric sense, meaning some sort of statistical inference, and it might eventually manifest itself as a diagnosis of a neurosis. (Revisions of the diagnostic manuals on political grounds are not unknown, are they?)  The sausage-making, er, research design, is interesting.  The excerpt below begins with a quote from author Oskari Lahtinen.

“While critical social justice (or intersectional or ‘woke’) discourse draws mainly from dynamics within American society it has now surfaced in other Western countries as well. The arrival of a critical social justice (often called ‘woke’) discourse sparked much debate in Finnish media in the last couple of years.”

“This debate was largely data-free and it could thus be considered a worthwhile question to study how prevalent these attitudes are. No reliable and valid instrument existed prior to the study to assess the extent and prevalence of these attitudes in different populations, so I set out to develop one.”

The initial phase of the research was dedicated to creating a pilot scale for assessing critical social justice attitudes. This process began with a thorough review of the literature on intersectional feminism, critical race theory, queer theory, and other relevant academic disciplines that inform critical social justice. Based on these theoretical frameworks, Lahtinen drafted candidate items for the scale related to beliefs about systemic oppression.

The pilot scale was then tested with a sample of 851 participants, comprising university staff and students primarily from the University of Turku, along with a smaller number of participants from other Finnish universities and the general public.

Following the pilot study, Lahtinen conducted a second study focusing on refining the scale based on the initial findings and validating it with a larger, more representative sample. This phase involved drafting additional items to better capture the ideas that embody critical social justice.

The refined scale was then administered to over 5,000 participants through a nationwide survey distributed via Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest newspaper. This approach aimed to reach a broad cross-section of the Finnish population, enhancing the generalizability of the findings.

The final version of the Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale demonstrated high reliability and a good model fit. This means that the scale was dependable across different samples and contexts, and effectively captured the underlying construct of critical social justice attitudes. The scale also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity, suggesting it is an effective tool for measuring critical social justice attitudes.

As is often the case with studies of attitudes, the positive and normative quickly entangle.

One of the central revelations of the study was that critical social justice attitudes are not as widespread in Finland as might be inferred from public and media discussions. Overall, the findings suggested a cautious reception towards critical social justice among the general population. This observation was particularly pronounced among male participants, who showed considerably lower agreement with the statements compared to their female counterparts.

“The gender divide was probably most surprising to me,” Lahtinen told PsyPost. “Three out of five women view ‘woke’ ideas positively, but only one out of seven men. This was the case in Finland, at least.”

The study also uncovered variations in critical social justice attitudes across different demographic and social groups. Higher levels of agreement with critical social justice were notably present among individuals who identified with left-wing political parties and female university students in fields such as social sciences, education, and humanities. On the other hand, individuals associated with STEM fields and right-wing political affiliations tended to show lower agreement with critical social justice principles.

None of those outcomes are surprising.  The author's survey questions focus on notions of racism, microaggression, and gender crossing.  Whether those questions proxy for awareness of notions of toxic masculinity or the strong form of postmodern deconstruction of coherent beliefs is for future, probably nearly impractical, research.

That noted, those of us who view leftism as a mental disorder are not surprised by what follows.

An intriguing aspect of the study was its exploration of the relationship between critical social justice and mental well-being. Lahtinen found a correlation between higher agreement with critical social justice attitudes and increased reports of anxiety and depression. Agreement with the statement “If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism” exhibited the largest positive correlation with anxiety and depression, and the largest negative correlation with happiness.

However, these associations were more strongly correlated with participants’ political orientation than with critical social justice attitudes per se. Specifically, being on the political left was more predictive of lower mental well-being than high critical social justice scores alone. This suggests that the link between critical social justice attitudes and mental health is complex and may be mediated by broader political and ideological beliefs.

The new research provides unique insight into critical social justice attitudes and their implications in contemporary society. But the study’s focus on Finland necessitates caution when generalizing its findings to other contexts.

The caveats about generalizing do not preclude a plethora of pundits pouncing.  "I'm not the first to ask whether Wokeness creates miserable people or if those who were already miserable chose Wokeness as a creative outlet for their preexisting emotional pathologies."  That's Stephen "Vodka Pundit" Green, who also found an environmentalist wacko scolding his fellow Seattleans for enjoying an early spring day.  No, seriously.  "[H]ow on earth is this possible when the brightness of the sun and the warmth of the air are freaks of nature? It should be cool and dark during this time of the year. Instead, we are breaking records all over the place."  Buy the man a ticket to Finland and hope for a randomized control trial to recruit him, that might affect the male-female crosstabs of Professor Lahtinen's study.

Twitchy's Grateful Calvin supplies the closing argument.  "It is the fact that non-woke people are happy that makes them the most unhappy. You really can't get much more toxic and damaged than that."  Exactly.  A few years ago progressivism was supposedly the Nurturant Parent.  Now, it's the Nagging Harridan.