tandempower

Surprise! Research finds people feel happier living in places where they can commute to work by bicycle.

Maelochs

Until they get to work .....

Maelochs

Of course, the study doesn't address whether those same people would be happy anyway ... I know if i cannot ride, my life goes on, and I keep myself happy, because it is after all, my life, and wasting it being miserable over something like not riding a bicycle would be pretty stupid.

And actually ... Exercise tends to improve physical health. When i wasn't riding to work but was hitting the gym four days a week i was in better shape than I am now.

Another BS study where people draw the conclusions they went into the study determined to prove.

Jim from Boston

Being Able to Bike to Work Makes People Happy

I have tried in the past to graph my “happiness”:However,

cooker

Or, you just trash stuff you don't happen to agree with. It's an open access journal, so have at it: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0196720

Maelochs

My question remains ... were the kind of people who considered riding to work as an alternative already happier people than average, or did the cycling fundamentally change them?

Seems to be the crux of the matter.

Here is my data: I used to ride to work. Now I don't. I am still happy.

bikingbill

For the last few months I have been cycling to work 100%.

In fact from Monday morning to Friday evening I have no car. I'm working in LA, staying in the town, and taking AmTrak home for the weekends.

It has brightened my mood.

Mobile 155

Maelochs

Must be the case because I see so many people cycling to low-wage and labor-pool jobs .... Correlation equals causation, right?

cooker

It could be either of those or even other explanations. What they found was that in communities where a lot of people bike to work, people are on average happier. I don't think they could even say if it was the cyclists who accounted for it. Thus it might be an effect of the milieu that is not even directly linked to cycling. Maybe areas where people bike to work tend to have other attributes, that either create or attract happy people through some other mechanism.

This uncertainty is clearly acknowledged even in the NPR article title that says "...But How Exactly?"

Maelochs

[QUOTE=cooker;20358460]It could be either of those or even other explanations.QUOTE] Which is why this isn't science, and isn't even helpful.

I understand people have to publish to get tenure, to increase professional standing, and just to make money ... but this .... whatever. if you like it, good for you.

But ... is it cycling that you like, or studies about cycling, or debating about cycling ....

Stay happy ... if that is what you prefer.

cooker

So the next step, after you find an association, is to try to establish causation. For example a study could be done where volunteers are recruited and randomly assigned to bike or not bike to work for a set period, with pre- and post-cycling measures of happiness.

cooker

I don't get your objection. The authors are doing large scale public health research using available databases, looking for factors associated with well-being. They have no illusions about establishing causality: "We can't prove causality at this point," Roy says. "We don't know if we improve these twelve factors, will we actually lead to improved well-being. But it certainly provides us with a first step in understanding what perhaps we should test."

How would you have done it differently?

Mobile 155

To be honest I don't know how they do some of these studies. Or how they justify the conclusions they come to. If people were all that happy cycling to work "I" would have thought more would cycle to work. Nationally we see numbers in the 1 percent to 1.6 percent range. (some cities are higher but don't effect national average) They will tout massive increases but that is what got them to 1.6 percent. Then again if you ask a cyclist how they feel about cycling wouldn't they say it made them happy? Yet having a choice it seems as if cycling doesn't make them happy enough to actually cycle to work. When I see studies like this I take them with a grain of salt. I saw a survey of what car made people the Happiest and Porsche came out on top. But when given the choice by far the most popular vehicle was the Ford F-150. Maybe they ask the wrong people or the wrong questions? I have friends that are happy when they can make a 5000 foot climb of 15 miles in an hour by bicycle. My best time is closer to two hours. But while they are happy getting there I am much happier on the way home. They need a study to see if climbers or a descender is happier so I will know.

Maelochs

I see these kinds of studies all day long.

A scientist gives 22 hungry planaria and injection of oxytocin and sees how they react when food is introduced, versus and equal number who are not exposed. if the oxytocin-affected planaria eat less or compete less for food ... the conclusion Might be that oxytocin at that dose makes planaria ill so they cannot eat ... or maybe it sends their internal chemistry haywire so they don't know they are hungry ... or they cannot sense food and only eat if they stumble over it .... really no conclusion can be drawn, the test is inconclusive---though dissection might reveal some of what systems were affected.

But the scientist wants to sell the "study" to a magazine, and some enterprising free-lance writer eats up such studies. So ... we see it in major magazines with the title "Science Proves That Love Makes People More Generous, Caring and Cooperative."

Because to laymen, oxytocin is the "love hormone," and the "study" Claims to show that "Oxytocin lowered greed and aggression and increased cooperation and sharing."

The writing Implies that the study was done on a huge group of humans, but in fact it was done on 44 planaria or 300 amoebas or 22 mice or something. The fact that the physiological effects might be completely different for people, and that there was no actual conclusion supported by the data and that basically the whole thing is a self-serving crap-factory set up to enrich the magazines, the writers, and the scientists, never get noticed.

In this case, if the original post had included the fact that the very title of the article said "And no one knows what it means" then that would have sent a Very different, and Much more honest message. Because, after all, the study is pure nonsense. If no one know s what the data means, the data are meaningless. Pure nonsense.

But by posting just the part about "Science proves that people who cycle to work are happier" on a forum where people are eager to believe that ... without the caveat ... well, that is the kind of disingenuous, self-serving postings that make this place fairly worthless for people grounded in reality.

PS: those climbers probably hate every second of the climb---they are in love with the numbers, which they focus on afterwards. It is the video-game "Bigger Numbers" mentality ... the "Must set a PR" mentality.

I often work to the point of discomfort on climbs ... but I like doing that for right then. I don't care about the numbers afterwards, i just like to push every now and then. But some days i would rather take it easy and let the bike do the work. To me life is lived Now ... and the experience is over by the time I can crunch the numbers. I cam play "Glory Days" with the best of them ... single-digit body fat, ridiculous stamina .... so what? Those days are over ... and so is the ride I just finished half an hour ago.

(Just kidding. Some people really only enjoy suffering on a bike ... pain really is pleasure for them.But that emphasizes your point---- How many meanings can the word "Happy" have even for a single person? How can a question about "happy" possibly yield definitive conclusions when even for a single individual, the word can encompass such a wide range of physical and mental states?)

cooker

They took that into account in the mathematical analysis, and identified independent factors that aren't influenced by other stuff they measured. So a poor area where people bike to work would be happier than a poor area where people don't bike to work, and a rich area where people bike to work would be happier than a rich area where they don't, even though both rich areas might be happier than both poor areas.

cooker

Data aren't meaningless, data are simply data. The conclusions that can be drawn from these data are limited, but they lead to hypotheses which can be further tested. And nobody said "Science proves that people who cycle to work are happier" except you, although in fact the data do at least suggest it might be true.

Mobile 155

cooker

The study only looked at American communities, but assuming the findings are generalizable, you'd have to look at all 12 factors to see how Finns and Danes are likely to stack up against each other and the US.

jon c. 

The largest number of people cycling to work that I see are from a work release program. They're probably not terribly happy to be in that position, on the other hand if the alternative is being in a cell at the county jail it might lead them to be happier.

Mobile 155

Still one has to wonder if the study had some kind of, oh what shall we say, agenda? If cycling indeed made people happier why is it the least popular form of commuting in the last census? It isn't even close, more people walked, took a taxi or worked from home. They must have had to search far and wide to find happy cyclists when they are such a small portion of the pool? https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-a...6-census-data/

Abu Mahendra

I'd be happier to just cycle, and not work.

Jim from Boston

I had a similar thought as @cooker even before reading [his] post. I have lived in two diametrically opposite car free cities, Boston and Detroit, and in my opinion, cycle commuting is much more prevalent in Boston. I have previously posted that the architectural critic of the Boston Globe, without reference to cycling, once compared and contrasted these two urban enviroments:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

I often tout Boston as the epitome of LCF/LCL in America, not to brag, but illustrate the possibilities. When I take visitors on a 4-5 mile walking tour of downtown Boston, I introduce it with this explanation:

Several years ago, the architectural critic of the Boston Globe, Robert Campbell, was visiting Southfield, Michigan, a town I know well, and described it as the “City of Towers and Cars” (including “busy highways and vast parking lots" [and tall office buildings, and sprawling office and retail parks]).

In his article, he contrasted that that to the “City of Outdoor Rooms” (Boston) which is visited as one would visit a person’s home, passing through the various portals, from room to room, admiring the furnishings within.

The City of Towers and Cars sounds forbidding and alienating, whereas the City of Outdoor Rooms is inviting and friendly. I don’t characterize the natives however, although Detroiters as Midwesterners are touted as friendly and outgoing, and Bostonian East Coasters as cold and unwelcoming.

Similarly Detroiters are said to be skilled and courteous drivers, and Bostonians insane. Such generalizations are probably as precise and predictive as obsevations in that article (and as applicable as @Maeloch's study of one).

prj71

See now...All of that would make me crabby and very unhappy.

LA = Rat Race
AmTrak = Have to work around their schedule and then sit on the train with a bunch of smelly people and possibly crying babies.

Maelochs

"People Who Cycle to Work Are Dangerously Unbalanced"

Despite the dirt, difficulty, and danger, they claim they are happier.

That's right. new research reveals that people who ride their bicycles to work think they enjoy their lives more than people who don't.

However, when you talk to them, all you hear are tales of being run off the road by uncaring drivers, dodging insults and occasionally projectiles (the fast-food beverage seems to be the motorists' missile of choice) and the need for dedicated infrastructure and diligent law enforcement, because in its current form, biking to work is (by their on estimation) insanely dangerous.

Add to that the weather---extremes of heat and cold, rain, snow in some places---and the lack of facilities at most job sites for securing their bikes and for washing and changing into work clothes ... one has to wonder how these people define "happiness>" A masochist getting whipped to death might be ecstatically happy until the end comes, after all .... perhaps.

And that is what this study seems to show---that people who ride their bikes to work, far from actually finding greater joy and contentment in daily life, actually suffer severe mental illness.

Not that it is bad to be a masochist---in theory. If a person truly finds joy in suffering, they that person might as well go suffer, so long s no one else is hurt. This is science--there are no value judgments here.

But what the science seems to say is that there is a class of people with mis-wired brains or malfunctioning limbic systems, who can clearly (and in Great detail---some threads on cycling forums run to a dozen pages of complaints on the smallest aspect of riding in traffic) and precisely delineate all the reasons why cycling to work is a terrible idea, full of danger and difficulty and frustration and pollution, yet who claim, when asked, that riding to work is the best part of the day.

At least this mis-wiring seems to leave the victims highly functional---most seem to do a good job at work once they finally get there (and after they finish recounting that day's tales of nearly being hit by cars and trucks, while riding on decaying pavement in dangerous traffic while breathing exhaust and dodging missiles, while trying to mop up the sweat which is mixing with the grit and road grime covering their bodies.)

So, go ahead an hire the cycle-commuter. He or she will potentially be a source of amusement and but will also probably be a solid worker. But be ready for the endless complaints about cycling to work.
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Same data, different take on the tone of the article.