Abstract
A recent article by Buttel et al. argued that the subjective satisfaction of individual respondents with their personal lives may be related to their political ideological beliefs. Employing survey data collected in Wisconsin in 1974 they demonstrated a significant linkage between total life satisfaction and political cynicism. This paper proceeds to reanalyze their results, employing 1972 election data collected by the Survey Research Center. The paper argues that one must differentiate a standard measure of political cynicism from the type of measure employed in the Buttel et al. work. For the standard measure of political cynicism no linkage was found with total life satisfaction, but for a personal measure that was similar to the one employed in the Buttel et al. article there was a relationship. The previous results suggest that the findings of the Buttel et al. article were brought about by the unique manner in which they defined political cynicism.
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The author would like to thank Arthur H. Miller of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan for his helpful comments regarding the theoretical organization of this paper and his suggestion that various types of political cynicism be identified. Naturally he is not responsible for any of the faults of the paper.
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Wasserman, I.M. Political beliefs and subjective indicators of quality of life. Soc Indic Res 11, 167–180 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00302747
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00302747