Social Justice Will Make You Miserable

Count this as extremely bizarre. It comes to us from a peer reviewed social psychology journal in Europe. The conclusion is clear, but the article’s authors refuse to accept that their research might mean exactly what it means. They twist and contort their findings in order to show that the research subjects were really wrong to feel as they felt.

Beth Ellwood reports for PsyPost:

Research from the European Journal of Social Psychology uncovered consistent evidence that women who deny that gender discrimination is an issue report greater well-being. 

Note the bias creeping into that sentence. If a woman does not allow her mind to be overcome with leftist narratives about gender discrimination, she is in denial. And yet, when she ignores gender discrimination she gains greater well being.

By the dim wits of the researchers gender discrimination is real, but it is not only real, it is pervasive. And in fact it is so real and so pervasive that we are obliged to conclude that anyone who ignores it is suffering from an emotional disturbance. The problem is, this emotional disturbance produces well-being. Get it?

If a woman does not see men as the enemy, if she does not turn her kitchen into a war zone, if she does not spend her time denouncing male chauvinist pigs for their toxic masculinity, she will have greater well being.

Apparently, pervasive gender discrimination is now a scientific fact. According to the researchers, it is truer than true. It is not just truer than true, it is also a social justice issue. And this makes it really, really true. If a woman refuses to sacrifice her life to the cause, she is wrong. Not only is she wrong, but her sense of well being, her happiness quota merely shows that she is a dupe of the patriarchy.

Ellwood summarizes:

Gender discrimination negatively impacts the lives of women and girls in all parts of the world. As a group, women are disadvantaged when it comes to wages, politics, and legal rights, and are frequent victims of violence at the hands of men. Study authors Jaime L. Napier and her colleagues note the magnitude of the issue, calling gender discrimination “easily the most widespread social justice issue in the world.”

Despite evidence that gender inequality remains strong, social psychologists have begun to document a commonly held belief that gender issues are a thing of the past. Napier and colleagues wanted to explore why women, in particular, might deny gender discrimination. The researchers suggest that the denial of gender issues may serve as a coping mechanism to protect well-being.

You might also say to yourself that there is good and bad in the world of relations between the sexes. You might say that while gender discrimination does exist, so too do positive aspects of relations between the sexes exist. And that people who belabor the negative suffer for as much.

And yet, the social psychologists cannot admit to nuance or to balanced judgment. They are in complete denial about the results of their research:

Interestingly, the results also showed that this effect was mediated by perceptions that the system is fair. In other words, women who denied gender discrimination, were more likely to perceive American society as fair, which in turn, was related to better life satisfaction. 

How appalling. Some women have greater life satisfaction. The women who have less life satisfaction are feminist activists and radical firebrands. Didn’t you suspect that those people were using their ideology to make themselves miserable-- the better to ensure that they remained true believers in a world that is defined in terms of good and evil?

Interestingly, the results also showed that this effect was mediated by perceptions that the system is fair. In other words, women who denied gender discrimination, were more likely to perceive American society as fair, which in turn, was related to better life satisfaction. 

We have known for some time, sadly, that much research in social psychology is bunk. We have also known that in our woke world researchers compromise their integrity in order to promote an ideology. Now we also know that they are opposed to life satisfaction and to well being. They prefer making everyone into miserable social justice warriors than in seeing that people have good lives.

Go figure.