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A lot of behavior can be predatory and exploitive without it violating the NAP. I know coercion has a very strict definition in the libertarian legal sense, but I think it can be worthwhile to consider how the researchers define and measure sexual coercion and take it from there: Defined as: Measured as: This is exploitive behavior and the fact that 43 % of these young men have experienced this I think is something to take very seriously.Something to also take into account is that the respondents were instructed to only include sexual experiences with a nonrelative peer such as boyfriend/girlfriend, friend, acquaintance, etc. but do not include potential sexual experiences with a family member.And this is only what was admitted.

Whether the coercion can be constituted as criminal behavior is relevant in many contexts but in terms of pscyhology it is for the most part not.

A scientific article was published almost two weeks ago with some, for me, surprising statistics which examined sexual coercion and psychosocial correlates among 284 diverse adolescents and emerging adult males in high school and college. Some stats: Over 4 in 10 participants (43%) experienced sexual coercion. 95 percent said a female acquaintance was the aggressor. I am shocked as it is much more than I thought would be the case. Both in terms of prevalence and the proportion of aggressors reported to be female. Moreover, they talked about four kinds of sexual coercion (from the press release): Link to the article: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/men-a0035915.pdf Link to press release: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/03/coerced-sex.aspx

Good criticisms! In the article they write: What I deduct from this is that in Uchida et al., 2004 they surveyed Westerners and found that they tend to define happiness in terms of personal outcomes, meaning (I assume) that they tend to look at happiness as something that solely pertains to oneself with no thought of how it relates to others. That is the only way I can make sense of it atleast. I have to agree on this: I don't have any good counter-arguments. I guess what might be taken from the results of this study is that how many define happiness and pursue it can lead to the opposite outcome of what they intended if happiness was their goal. However, the pursuit of happiness if diagnosed correctly may still be worthwhile. We already knew this I think, but it was nonetheless interesting to see it confirmed in a scientific paper.

I really don't see where I have said what you write I have. Person does A which results in D even though he or she thought it would result in C. If, however, the person had done B, he or she would have ended up at C. I don't see how this can mean what you write it means. No matter if I am wrong (I most likely am in some regard) or you are wrong the association still stands: Striving for happiness (as most people tend to define it) seems to be associated with feelings of loneliness statistically speaking. And yes, there are exceptions. Why have noone acknowledged this piece of reality and tried to make sense of it? People here are empiricists meaning reality trumphs preconceived notions right? I think tongue-in-cheek-but-true it is best for me to subside from this thread as I did not get what I expected out of it even though I thought I would get what I expected In all seriousness I think we are stuck and no progress is being made and I am for the most part an impatient dude. It was both frustrating and interesting nonetheless. Time to move on to other things, thanks for all the responses! I wish you all happiness! PS: If anyone enjoyed this thread and found any of my contributions valuable please let me know so I do not leave this conversation thinking that I did not add any value to the community by posting here. I.e. I might make more threads about psychological research like this in the future if someone valued it. Feel free to suggest improvements as well.

I think what I am missing here is that people do more of something like this: "Look, although i acknowledge what the data and subsequent analysis show, I do not agree with neither the authors interpretation nor your interpretation for this and that reason. I think x, y and z is the reason this phenomenon occurs". The fact that this association is found in several studies is not something that can be brushed aside with syllogisms or logic. Philosophy can not make reality obsolete. As to your syllogism: Let us replace happiness with C and unhappiness with D and see if we can't make sense of this: Those who seek A for C, and not B will ultimately become D because they will not get B. In other words, there are people who seek A for C and there are people who seek B for C. Those who seek A for C will get D which is the opposite of C and those who seek B for C gets C which is the opposite of D. Let us say I wanted to do a successful surgery. A = Some surgic actions which does not lead to C. B = Some surgic actions different from A which leads to C. C = Successful surgery and D = unsuccessful surgery. Is it not possible to imagine that an unskilled person with the wrong tools and diagnosis systems could, despite a wish for a successful surgery, still end up with an unsuccessful surgery? In other words: The person would seek A for C, and not B, and will ultimately end up with D because he or she did not do B which would have been the "right values" to pursue to actually get to C. There are more studies which have found links between high valuation of happiness and feelings of loneliness. Furtermore it is published in a scientific journal and not a magazine which to my ears are quite distinct things and a mark of a certain quality.

The terms (happiness, well-being and health) does not necessarily equate the way you propose. Although I think you could argue that both well-being and health are two of the personal outcomes of happiness, you forget the many other outcomes it can represent for most people: Money, popularity, status, a nice car, professional success etc.. It might also include more short-sighted personal outcomes which includes acts of promiscuity, lying and so on. Maybe the people who have lied and obfuscated the truth which you have confronted in the past have done so because they value their own personal short-term happiness as they know it? Maybe these same people would have been more honest and compassionate with you if they defined happiness as something communal? I have mulled over Lians post which I found very insightful and thought-provoking, but it only addresses the interpretation the authors does of the data. Lians sentence might also serve as an alternative interpretation of the data but it does need some more content and backing up before I could accept it. However, the data still show the same association no matter what syllogisms you put together. You are of course free to propose your own interpretations and I want to encourage that. I myself proposed one in the initial post and Stef puts his own twists and interpretations of data on various topics, and at the same time he often disregards/ignores the interpretations the authors who report the data bring forth. As is his right and I find him very convincing most of the time. But, the data still stands. I know this might sound passive-aggressive but that is not my intention because I pose it to improve my communication skills: I am thinking I should have prefaced the post with more of an easing-in-tone so people could be given more of a chance to activate their curiosity and imagination surrounding the study, the data and my theories. I think a more open and interesting discussion could have ensued (as I see it). I suspect these posts of mine have been uncomfortable to people. However, I am open to the possibility of being wrong. Let me know what you guys think. I am also sorry about linking to an article which is behind a paywall, as it sort of gives me more power than necessary and it inhibits you guys to double-check and make up your own mind. I should have said something about this in the initial post as well maybe.

I do not doubt that in how you define happiness, your childs happiness is intertwined with it. However, this study is based on how most people define it which has been found is in terms of personal outcomes. That means that these findings may not apply to your situation since maybe you are an outlier which they mention might be the case in many instances: Maybe most people need to redefine happiness. What do you mean by screwy and why is the study screwy? I think this thread is an interesting meeting between philosophy and psychology by the way

They did not ask whether the respondents was happy, only how much they valued it. Good one I need to think about that.

It does not really matter how myopic the authors define happiness if the data suggests an association between striving for happiness and feeling lonely. The data and subsequent analysis showed the following (Happiness was measured with items like 'Feeling happy is extremely important to me'; feeling lonely was measured through a diary record). And; Moreover; Regarding your questions regarding their myopic definition of happiness, I think this quote answers it somewhat: In a way it also validates your criticism for I suspect you mean something else when defining happiness than what most people tend to do. I was impressed by that they found associations between valuation of happiness (as people tend to define it) and feelings of loneliness in biological markers through hormonal levels as well as in experimental designs. I think this is very cool. The experimental design in particular suggests a causation where high valuation of happiness leads to feelings of loneliness.

I don't think the chain of causality was vague, it was very explicit as I see it: Value happiness highly -> egotistical -> interpersonal disconnection -> loneliness -> unhappiness. Unless you meant something else was vague?

Today, I came over this article from the scientific journal Emotion I found rather interesting. From the paper: In the Freedomain Radio conversation there is a lot of talk about interpersonal connection and the old Aristotelic quote that goes something like this: This had me thinking that happiness may have some parallells to what Edelstein talked with Stef about regarding self-esteem. In this interview Edelstein outlines certain negative consequences origining from the self-esteem movement. If I'm not mistaken he talked about that the focus on praise with no regard of the reality of what is praised; whether it actually is praiseworthy, can lead to detrimental effects on the praise recipient's efficacy. I concur with this notion, and I also find it somewhat manipulative and disrespectful. I also remember something Stef said that stuck with me: The point here is that self-esteem is not what is focused on in his daily life, but that it sort of comes along as a bi-product of his other activities. Maybe the same thing goes for happiness: An overly focus on happiness as an end in itself distorts your happiness because it leads you to become overly egotistical which leads to interpersonal disconnection which leads to loneliness which leads to unhappiness. A solution to such a problem might be to for example focus on compassion and reason as well as honesty with oneself and others as a primary without second thoughts of you doing it because you want it to lead you to a happy place down the line. However, as a mere bi-product of this kind of living you get happiness. I don't know. These are big thoughts and big theories and I haven't really mulled them over for more than an hour so I do not claim scientific authority by any stretch of the imagination. I also have not scrutinized the theories and methods in the article enough to trust them 100% although the journal is of good quality.Let me know what you Freedomainers think; it would make me happy!

I understand your theory, and I do believe that it has explanatory value, but I suspect the reality to be more nuanced though I do not have data to support such a claim. A t-test compares the means of two groups and checks whether they are different to a significant degree (meaning there is 95 % or more probability that the difference is not due to chance alone)(I retracted my analysis in the previous post because this was not the intended use for it when I think about the terms the data were collected) Thanks!

Thanks for the reply. I think you are right about it not saying much because it did not control for public and private sector.

Hey Everyone. In doing research for my Master's thesis in Organizational Psychology I came over this article with a piece of data which I found interesting and that I thought may be of interest for the Freedomain Radio conversation as well. No matter what comes of this I atleast want it to be out there. I apologize in advance for my English as it is not my native language. The tentative conclusion of this board post is that men are more likely to attend work while sick when they have autocratic managers, while women are not. I will provide the data for this conclusion and continue to speculate with that this may have its genesis in the upbringing of boys, which are to a greater degree than girls conditioned to follow orders and act in the interests of their superiors. Limitations to both the conclusion and the speculation will be provided before I turn the virtual microphone over to you the readers and request your feedback. I borrow support for the claim of this board post from an article published by Scandinavian Journal of Public Health in 2008 written by Nyberg, Westerlund, Hanson and Theorell with the title: Managerial leadership is associated with self-reported sickness absence and sickness presenteeism among Swedish men and women. Link: http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/36/8/803.short (My apologies, behind Paywall) The rest of this board post up until the last two paragraphs present relevant details of the study for increased legitimacy, persuasiveness and ability for others to scrutinize: Sample: 5141 Swedish employees. Design: Cross-sectional questionnaire study. Definitions and measurements as used by the authors of the article: Sickness presenteeism defined as "attending work while sick". The authors did not provide the wording of the question, but it can be deducted that it was a question which requested the frequency of the act of sickness presenteeism over the past 12 months. Autocratic leadership was not defined, but the details surrounding how it was measured I think will give a sufficient understanding: Autocratic leadership is a subscale developed in the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness Programme (GLOBE). Again, the exact wording of how it was measured was not provided, but the "Autocratic leadership" dimension contained four questions which asked whether the management style was: Autocratic (makes decisions in a dictatorial way) Bossy (tells subordinates what to do in a commanding way) Elitist (believes that a small number of people with similar backgrounds are superior and should enjoy privileges) Dictatorial (forces her/his values and opinions on others) The statistical analysis was a multiple logistic regression built in three steps (Models): The following table provide the results of the analysis. The numbers without parentheses represent the odds ratio for sickness presenteeism and were calculated as the risk of having four or more such occasions over the past year. The numbers inside the parentheses represent the Confidence Intervals. In conclusion: The data support that men are associated with a statistically significant increased likelihood (OR = 1.76) of exhibiting sickness presenteeism when their manager show autocratic leadership at an often frequency as opposed to when their manager does so seldom. Women do not show such a statistically significant behavior pattern. I speculate that this may have its genesis in the upbringing of boys, which are perhaps to a greater degree than girls conditioned to follow orders and act in the interests of their superiors. Showing up to work while sick can perhaps be interpreted as a fullfillment of obligations and/or interests of a superior. Keywords here can e.g. be: The military, the disposable male, tax cattle. I could have written much more about this, but I think this post is long enough as it is. I will now provide limitations to both the conclusion and the speculation: Limitations of the conclusion: Cross-sectional and self-report design When demands, control, social support and satisfaction with life in general is accounted for as in M2 and M3 the pattern does not show up. Gender segregation between the private and public sectors in Sweden (67 % of men worked in private sector as opposed to 34 % of the women) Different labour markets for men and women Differences in communication patterns between male- and female dominated occupations. Limitations of the speculation: My own biases My greatly limited knowledge of gender studies It can be a million other reasons I do not, however, want to sell my conclusion and speculation short as I do think there might be some truths to them. What do you think of it? Finally, I want to ask you what you think of this board post in general be it form or content. I, for one, do suspect that it is too inaccessible for laymen. Please be constructive if you choose to give feedback. Kind Regards

http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2588_Wednesday_Show_15_Jan_2014.mp3 I just finished listening to this one and I really enjoyed Michaels contribution to the conversation (It's in the last call). I have not heard a podcast where he does so before (?). In writing this I hope to encourage more of that! Also, it is in my opinion one of the best podcasts in a while with great conversations all over. Worth the time spent and the sub, thanks!