Is ignorance bliss?
Psychological researchers in Finland have created an assessment to help measure an individual’s commitment to principles of social justice and made some surprising findings across the Finnish population — including a negative correlation between progressive ideals and levels of happiness.
Their findings, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, suggest other Western nations may see similar patterns among their socially conscious citizens.
Study author Oskari Lahtinen, a senior researcher at the INVEST Research Flagship Centre at the University of Turku, remarked that the “woke” discourse has since worked its way into Finnish discourse.
“This debate was largely data-free and it could thus be considered a worthwhile question to study how prevalent these attitudes are,” he continued. “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.”
In the end, their final Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale identified seven truisms of woke people:
“If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.”
“University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.”
“Microaggressions should be challenged often and actively.”
“Trans* women who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights.” (reverse scored)
“We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin.”
“A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.”
