{"id":760,"date":"2017-02-17T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T22:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/?p=760"},"modified":"2017-02-24T13:48:54","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T18:48:54","slug":"the-stress-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/the-stress-of-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stress of Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>Since 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA)<\/a> has contracted with the Harris Poll to conduct an\u00a0annual survey of Stress in America<\/a>. Respondents are asked to rate their typical level of stress on a 10-point scale, where 1 = little or no stress and 10 = a great deal of stress. They are also\u00a0asked to rate a variety of sources of stress as either very significant, somewhat significant, not very significant or not significant.\n

Until now, the APA survey has been a lackluster affair, with average stress levels remaining pretty much the same from year to year, and\u00a0the most significant sources of stress being money, work and the economy. But that changed with the 2016 survey, due to the addition of some questions about politics.<\/p>\n

The 2016 survey was conducted in August<\/a>, with a sample of 3511 U. S. adults aged 18 or older. Because so many respondents\u00a0(52%) reported that the 2016 presidential campaign was a very or somewhat significant source of stress, APA did a followup in January 2017 to see if the political climate had cooled off. January\u2019s survey had a reduced sample size of 1,109\u2014still a respectable number. Unless otherwise specified, the data reported below are from this most recent survey.<\/p>\n

The overall stress level increased<\/a> between August and January, from 4.8 to 5.1 on the 10-point scale. While that may not sound like much of a change, this was the first time in the history of the survey that there was a statistically significant increase in stress between consecutive samples. The percentage of respondents reporting physical symptoms of stress also increased, from 71% in August to 80% in January. The most commonly-reported symptoms were headaches (34%), feeling overwhelmed (33%), feeling nervous or anxious (33%), and feeling depressed or sad (32%).<\/p>\n

As in previous years, economic and job-related sources of stress<\/a> were among the\u00a0the most important.\u00a0Sixty-one percent reported that money was a very or somewhat significant source of stress; 58% said the same for their work; and 50% for the nation\u2019s economy. However, these numbers were rivaled by three\u00a0stressors related to\u00a0politics.<\/p>\n

Not suprisingly, responses to two of these questions were influenced by political partisanship. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to be stressed by the election outcome (72% vs.<\/em> 26%), and by concern about the future of the country (76% vs.<\/em> 59%).<\/p>\n

Stress about the election outcome was influenced by several demographic variables<\/a>. It varied by race.<\/p>\n

It also varied with age.<\/p>\n

And it varied by place of residence.<\/p>\n

Education also made a difference, with 53% of those with more than a high school education being stressed out by the election outcome, compared to 38% with a high school education or less.<\/p>\n

Some stressors that were presidential campaign issues increased in importance since the last survey. Those saying that terrorism was a very or somewhat significant source of stress went from 51% in August to 59% in January. Those concerned about police violence toward minorities went from 36% to 44%. And the rate of concern over one\u2019s own personal safety increased from 29% to 34%.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the breakdown of concern about police violence by race. Black respondents appeared to show a ceiling effect<\/a>. Their stress level didn\u2019t increase very much because it was quite high to begin with.<\/p>\n

Americans are usually described as apathetic about politics<\/a>. \u00a0Partisan political conflict usually declines after a presidential campaign is over, but that hasn\u2019t happened this year. Stress over the election outcome is almost as high (49%) as stress over the campaign itself was (52%). It is tempting to attribute this to a growing awareness among Americans that they have elected a man who is unfit<\/a> to be president, or to the fact that Republicans seem determined to proceed with a political agenda most of which\u00a0 is not supported by a majority of citizens<\/a>. Unfortunately, we don\u2019t have historical data with which to compare stress over this election outcome to the same question\u00a0after the 2000 and 2008 elections.<\/p>\n

We also can\u2019t\u00a0be certain whether the rhetoric of the presidential campaign increased concern over\u00a0terrorism, police violence and our\u00a0personal safety, since perceptions of those stressors may have been influenced by real events that occurred between August and January, i.e.<\/i>, actual acts of terrorism or police violence. However, it seems obvious that Donald Trump tried to elevate anxiety about terrorism<\/a> and personal safety to an unrealistically high level. The\u00a0APA\u00a0survey suggest that he may have been successful. Whether Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign raised concerns about police violence is less clear, since she typically called for greater respect for the police<\/a> as well as clearer use of force guidelines.<\/p>\n

You may also be interested in reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

So Far, It Looks Like It Was the Racism<\/a><\/p>\n

Why the Minority Rules<\/a><\/p>\n

Framing the Debates<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 2007, the American Psychological Association (APA) has contracted with the Harris Poll to conduct an\u00a0annual survey of Stress in America. Respondents are asked to rate their typical level of stress on a 10-point scale, where 1 = little or no stress and 10 = a great deal of stress. They are also\u00a0asked to rate … Continue reading The Stress of Politics<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51,10,6],"tags":[44,127,4,129],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-politics","category-social-psychology","tag-demography","tag-mental-health","tag-presidential-campaign","tag-stress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6FkJj-cg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/l-stires.com\/thinking-slowly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}