Often in psychology articles I see phrases like “X is associated with Y”. These articles’ sections often read like the author thinks that X causes Y. But if they had evidence that X causes Y, surely they would’ve written exactly that. And in such cases I feel that I want to punish them, so in my mind I instead read it as “Y causes X”, just for contrarianism’s sake. Or, sometimes, I imagine what variable Z can exist which causes both X and Y. I think the latter is a useful exercise.
Examples:
It appears that some types of humor are more effective than others in reducing stress. Chen and Martin (2007) found that humor that is affiliative (used to engage or amuse others) or self-enhancing (maintaining a humorous perspective in the face of adversity) is related to better mental health. In contrast, coping through humor that is self-defeating (used at one’s own expense) or aggressive (criticizing or ridiculing others) is related to poorer mental health.
The author says that non-self-defeating non-agressive humor helps reduce stress. But notice the words “related”. For the first “related”, it seems plausible that not having a good mental health causes you to lose humor. For the second “related”, I think it’s very probable that poor mental health, such as depression and low self esteem, causes self-defeating humor.
How does humor help reduce the effects of stress and promote wellness? Several explanations have been proposed (see Figure 4.7). One possibility is that humor affects appraisals of stressful events. Jokes can help people put a less threatening spin on their trials and tribulations. Kuiper, Martin, and Olinger (1993) demonstrated that students who used coping humor were able to appraise a stressful exam as a positive challenge, which in turn lowered their perceived stress levels.
Or it could be that students, who are well prepared for the exams or simply tend to not be afraid of them, will obviously have lower perceived stress levels, and maybe will be able to think about the exams as a positive challenge, hence they″ able to joke about them in this way.
It’s possible in this example, that the original paper Kuiper, Martin, and Olinger (1993) actually did an intervention making students use humor, in which case the causality must go from humor to stress reduction. But I don’t want to look at every source, so screw you author of Psychology Applied to Modern Life (both quotes are from it) for not making it clear whether that study found causation or only correlation.
A few examples would help—the academic papers I see often call out this problem, and suggest possible Zs themselves. Generally, X and Y are more easily or precisely measured than the likely Zs, so make for better publications.
I definitely see the problem in popular articles and policy justification.
Often in psychology articles I see phrases like “X is associated with Y”. These articles’ sections often read like the author thinks that X causes Y. But if they had evidence that X causes Y, surely they would’ve written exactly that. And in such cases I feel that I want to punish them, so in my mind I instead read it as “Y causes X”, just for contrarianism’s sake. Or, sometimes, I imagine what variable Z can exist which causes both X and Y. I think the latter is a useful exercise.
Examples:
The author says that non-self-defeating non-agressive humor helps reduce stress. But notice the words “related”. For the first “related”, it seems plausible that not having a good mental health causes you to lose humor. For the second “related”, I think it’s very probable that poor mental health, such as depression and low self esteem, causes self-defeating humor.
Or it could be that students, who are well prepared for the exams or simply tend to not be afraid of them, will obviously have lower perceived stress levels, and maybe will be able to think about the exams as a positive challenge, hence they″ able to joke about them in this way.
It’s possible in this example, that the original paper Kuiper, Martin, and Olinger (1993) actually did an intervention making students use humor, in which case the causality must go from humor to stress reduction. But I don’t want to look at every source, so screw you author of Psychology Applied to Modern Life (both quotes are from it) for not making it clear whether that study found causation or only correlation.
A few examples would help—the academic papers I see often call out this problem, and suggest possible Zs themselves. Generally, X and Y are more easily or precisely measured than the likely Zs, so make for better publications.
I definitely see the problem in popular articles and policy justification.
I’ve added 2 examples.