Here are the steps of how this happens, as I see it, though not every one of these steps occurs in every single case:

(1) Many people feel dissatisfied with the state of their society and its impact on their lives, and blame the groups that have long remained in power. (Sometimes these groups that have long been in power deserve blame for the bad state of affairs; other times, the bad state of affairs is due to circumstances largely outside of their control.) Blaming these groups that have long remained in power often also involves distrust in existing institutions.

(2) A new potential leader emerges who is perceived not to be a member of the groups that have historically been in power (or if they come from the original groups of power, then this potential leader typically claims outsider status, presenting themselves as a reformer who is different than the other insiders). Typically, this potential leader is viewed as being more “one of the people” than the prior groups in power.

(3) This leader is charismatic and, though potentially polarizing, many people find this person captivating and persuasive. Oftentimes, this leader is also high on traits commonly associated with grandiose narcissism (e.g., a belief in their own superiority and specialness, a need for admiration, arrogance, manipulative tendencies, a “with me or against me” mentality, and reduced empathy).

(4) This leader promotes a grand vision of what the country could become (or could be restored to again) under their leadership, which gets many people excited.

(5) The leader typically appears to be powerful and courageous, and willing to stand up against (and correct the errors and abuses of) the previous people in power who have held the country back.

(6) In addition to blaming society’s problems on the prior group in power, the leader also uses one or more other groups as scapegoats, and blames many of society’s problems on that group as well (typically a distrusted local minority group, immigrants, or some other country that the population sees as a potential threat). However, the scapegoat group(s) are either not actually a cause of any of the problems in that society, or are only a minor cause (with most of the problems being caused by other factors).

(7) The leader also exaggerates, lies to, and manipulates the people, claiming simple (but inaccurate) narratives about what’s gone wrong that make their solutions seem likely to be effective, and that paint themselves as the heroes and the prior groups in power (as well as the scapegoats) as villains.

(8) Through their charisma, exciting vision for the future, and promises to fix the problems in society by correcting the errors of the previous groups in power and by cracking down on the proposed scapegoats, the leader gets strong public support. The leader then gets into a position of executive power by one of a variety of means (e.g., being elected, being appointed, deal-making, coercion, or a coup).

(9) The leader then attempts to neutralize the power of formerly powerful groups that were in power (e.g., through violence, arrests, seizing their wealth, and/or disparaging them and damaging their reputations).

(10) The leader additionally harms the scapegoated group(s) (e.g., through arrests, preventing immigration, forced migration, tariffs, military action, and/or violence). Sometimes, though not always, the leader also cracks down on leading intellectuals and groups of intellectuals, attempting to weaken their influence or prevent them from being listened to.

(11) The leader amasses power and wealth for themselves while in charge, while also attempting to reduce the checks and balances on their power (e.g., by weakening or consolidating other parts of government, or by exerting control over media and journalism). Additionally, the leader typically engages in information control and propaganda in an attempt to get the population to view all of their actions as positive. The more effective their information control and propaganda are, the more they can get away with making terrible decisions on behalf of society and enriching themselves at the expense of the people.

(12) The leader’s actions sometimes produce no benefit at all for the bulk of the populace, and sometimes produce a short-term benefit to the populace, but ultimately, the leader’s actions come at a meaningful (and sometimes disastrous) long-term cost, leaving society worse off long-term than it was before that person rose to power.

And, with that, as has happened again and again in many societies throughout the world, populations end up trying to improve their country’s problems by electing an exciting new leader, but instead end up being lied to and manipulated, leaving the well-being of the people of their country worse off than it would have been. This is a worldwide phenomenon. It happened with Hitler in Germany, Kim Il-Sung in North Korea, Mao Zedong in China, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and Putin in Russia. And it will likely keep happening. A first step towards helping stop this pattern is if voters become more aware of it.

To be clear, populism isn’t bad, per se. The unmet needs and desires of ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded are very important. And widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo usually does mean that something needs to change. The real issue is that grandiose manipulators leverage populist sentiment to install themselves in power, leaving their people worse off in the long term.

It’s also important to observe that this pattern isn’t one of the right or the left – it’s a pattern that arises on both sides of the political spectrum.

This piece was first written on August 31, 2025, and first appeared on my website on October 23, 2025.

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LITTLE-KNOWN SELF-IMPROVEMENT CONCEPTS

1) Musterbating: Albert Ellis’ term for rigid, self-imposed ideas that many people hold that “I/you/they absolutely must (or should) do X.” Rather than seeing these as preferences or nice-to-haves, they see them as absolutes, which fuels irrational belief and negative emotions.

2) Hormetic exposure – Exposures that are beneficial precisely because they are mild stresses (e.g., exercise, fasting, hot/cold therapy). By putting the body under stress, in some cases, you can trigger helpful adaptive over-compensation (hormesis).

3) Healthspan – The length of time you spend in good health, free from chronic disease and disability (not merely alive). For some who see themselves as wanting to increase their lifespan, their values might be more accurately captured by aiming to increase their healthspan.

4) Valuism – Okay, this is mine. A personal life philosophy with 2 parts:

(i) figure out what you intrinsically value

(ii) seek to use effective methods to create more of what you intrinsically value.

It’s a framework for living without requiring belief in absolute moral truth.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS RELATED TO CRITICAL THINKING

5) Paltering – Misleading an audience by selectively stating only true facts that nonetheless foster a false overall impression. Some of the most effective public manipulators mainly palter instead of lying.

6) Deepity – A term coined by Daniel Dennett (piggybacking off of its usage by an unspecified friend of his teenage daughter) to refer to statements that seem profound by exploiting ambiguity: they have one interpretation by which they are trivially or boringly true and another interpretation by which they are meaningless or false (but where it would seem profound if true). Our brains can accidentally mix these interpretations together, leading to the mistaken impression that the statement is both true and profound (e.g., “Love is just a word.”)

7) Epistemics – The norms, methods, and quality standards governing how beliefs are formed, updated, and justified. If you think that society is bad at figuring out what’s true, you may want people to work on improving their epistemics.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD

8 ) M.E.C.E. – A useful principle for structuring information by dividing it into categories that are mutually exclusive (there’s no overlap between categories) and collectively exhaustive (no items are left out; everything has a category).

9) Hyperstition – A term coined by Nick Land for a narrative or idea that becomes true (or shapes reality) precisely because people believe and propagate it. For instance, if people believe a company to be very valuable, that can make it become very valuable, or if people believe a handbag is very popular (even if at that time it isn’t actually), that can make it become very popular.

10) Superstimuli – something that is optimized by human ingenuity to stimulate our naturally evolved reward circuits more than they could be stimulated by things in our natural environment. For instance, junk food is a food superstimulus, or social media is a social superstimulus.

11) Bezel – Galbraith’s term for the illusory wealth created by fraud or embezzlement before it gets discovered. It’s the gap between the perceived and real asset value. The bezel makes the defrauder and defrauded both have a psychological perception of wealth.

12) Gamable – Able to be strategically manipulated or “gamed,” i.e., its rules allow actors to extract advantage without fulfilling the system’s intended purpose. One of the most important aspects of system design in high-stakes situations lacking trust is that systems should be ungamable. Otherwise, the system will be exploited or not achieve its intended purpose.

13) QALY – A quality-adjusted life year (related to healthspan but in the context of improving the lives of others): a way of quantifying the benefit of any intervention designed to help people live longer or improve their health that takes into account both the number of extra years of life produced AND the quality of those years of life. So, 1 QALY is one extra year of life lived in full health.

14) Longtermism – An ethical view that “positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” Sometimes, it’s justified by arguing that the importance of actions may lie in their effects on the far future, given the vast potential number of future lives.

15) Familicide – Murder of one’s family (typically spouse/partner and children), often followed by suicide. Why bother having a word for this upsetting concept at all? Well, bizarrely, it’s statistically the most common form of mass murder (i.e., where three or more people are killed during one event).

16) Superorganism – A coordinated collective (e.g., an ant colony or tightly integrated human society) that functions as a single organism despite being composed of many organisms. Interestingly, even the human body is a superorganism since we’re composed of distinct living organisms.

17) Umwelt – An organism’s perceptual experience of the world or the slice of reality created by a particular creature’s unique sensory and cognitive apparatus. For instance, the Elephantnose Fish apparently gets a 3d sense of its surroundings by creating an electric field – their umwelt must be nearly unimaginably different than our own.

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LITTLE-KNOWN EMOTION-RELATED CONCEPTS

18) Alonely – negative feelings caused by not getting enough time alone (the opposite of loneliness).

19) Ego-syntonic – Experienced as consistent with one’s self-image, values, and goals. For instance, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is usually ego-syntonic, meaning that insofar as they’re willing to accept their traits, narcissists usually don’t see them as problematic.

20) Mudita – Buddhist “sympathetic joy,” that is, genuine happiness at another’s good fortune, which can be viewed as the inverse of envy or schadenfreude.

21) Compersion – Empathic pleasure or happiness felt when a loved one experiences pleasure or happiness. This word usually crops up in polyamorous circles, indicating feeling happy at the fact that one of your partners is experiencing happiness with another romantic or sexual partner. Some see it as the near opposite of jealousy.

22) JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) – Positive satisfaction you get from deliberately skipping social or popular activities in favor of using time for something more personally valuable (such as time with loved ones). Some see it as the near opposite of FOMO (fear of missing out).

23) Alexithymia – A condition where you struggle to identify, describe, and/or differentiate your emotions. If you often can’t tell how you feel or usually can’t put your emotions into words, you may have Alexithymia.

24) Defusion – The skill of viewing thoughts as transient mental events rather than literal truths – such as by viewing them from an external perspective – which reduces their emotional power over us. For example, instead of just having a thought X and being “inside” it, you observe that “you’re having the thought that X” or even “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that I’m having the thought that X.” You can ask yourself about a particular thought: are you “fused” with that thought (living inside of it, treating it as the truth) or defused from it?

25) Pronoid – A pervasive conviction that other people or the universe at large are conspiring for your benefit. It is the optimistic mirror-image of being paranoid: where a paranoid expects hidden threats, a pronoid expects hidden aid. Thanks to Andreea Alexuc for introducing me to this concept.

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LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE

26) Wamb – A term coined by John Nerst, which means the opposite of “nerd.” Things that are wamb tend to be socially mainstream, trendy, cool, and non-intellectual. Jock, prom king, football players in high school are often the epitome of wamb. We can also think about a wamb-to-nerd spectrum that people and things can be placed on.

27) D.A.R.V.O. – A tactic often used by abusers when they are accused of wrongdoing: (1) Deny wrongdoing, (2) Attack the accuser, and (3) Reverse Victim and Offender (so as to make the abuser appear to be the victim)
28) Mimophant – Someone who is simultaneously aggressive, forceful, or insensitive to other people’s feelings (charging forward like an elephant) yet hypersensitive to criticism or has their own feelings easily hurt (like a mimosa plant, which quickly retracts its leaves when touched).

29) Apophenia (Spectrum) – Apophenia is the cognitive bias of perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. I prefer, though, to adapt this concept to use it as a spectrum applied to people. I use it to indicate the extent to which you spot patterns and connections. Those who are high in apophenia find real patterns that others miss but also see more false patterns, whereas those who are low have fewer false patterns but may miss real patterns. There’s a fundamental trade-off related to pattern identification – some people have more false positives, whereas others have more false negatives. People with schizophrenia tend to be very high in apophenia.

30) Lightgassing – The opposite of gaslighting – when someone reinforces your false misconceptions about the world (e.g., “You’re right, your girlfriend [who broke up with you] is a terrible person and doesn’t deserve you.”) This is another one by me.

This piece was first written on July 8, 2025, and first appeared on my website on September 15, 2025.

Here are four incredibly bad ideas (that are still commonly believed):

1) That people should be judged for, blamed for, or feel shame about the behavior of their ancestors.

Of course, if your ancestors did bad things, you should condemn those acts. And if you directly benefit from something bad your family member did, you should consider if you can make amends.

But, logically, people cannot be morally responsible for events that they were unable to affect.

This bad idea (that we are responsible for the behavior of our ancestors) is partly responsible for numerous cycles of violent conflict, as well as for unjust punishments and unhelpful guilt.

2) That small differences in group means are a good justification for jumping to conclusions about members.

This idea is partly responsible for a variety of forms of prejudice and harmful stereotyping.

Epistemically, a small mean difference provides only a sliver of evidence about individuals. Morally, it’s unjust to treat individuals as though only their group matters.

3) That there’s a simple explanation for all or most human behavior.

Variations on this idea have led to a great deal of confusion about human nature.

Human behavior is not all about sex, or self-interest, or happiness, or status, or individual survival, or even love.

Humans have a very diverse set of forces that influence behavior: emotions, culture, values, habits, instincts, heuristics, goals, etc.

4) That you need to follow a prescribed template in order to have a fulfilling life.

This idea has led to countless people being pressured into or trapped in lives that are bad for them.

Some people will be happiest as homemakers, others as professionals, and still others as adventurers, etc. Sometimes, the best life for a person will match the stereotype for their gender or group; other times, it will be the opposite, and at other times, it will seem completely out of left field.

Our boxes are much too small to force people’s lives into.

This piece was first written on July 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2024.

I’ve included the details of the event format below, including materials you can use to throw your own version of it.

Important Note: this event format requires at least ten attendees to show up (I recommend at least five males and five females) so as to avoid de-anonymizing participants. When I ran it there was about 20 people, which is close to ideal, I think.

GOALS

The goals of this event are:

• to help attendees understand each other on a deeper level (including potentially gaining some insight into human nature in general)

• to enable attendees to see how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are similar or different to those around them on topics that typically are taboo to discuss

• to have an interesting and enjoyable time.

I got a very positive response to this event format from those who attended.

THE FORMAT IN BRIEF

• Attendees will be asked to completely honestly fill out an anonymous survey at a minimum of 24 hours before coming to the event, which will contain many controversial, taboo, embarrassing, uncomfortable, and rarely asked questions.
• You’ll then compile the responses (grouping them by question in a totally anonymous way and calculating the % of people that gave each response for multiple-choice questions).

• You’ll hand out printed versions of these responses to attendees when they arrive. After the attendees have time to read through all the responses, you’ll then go question by question, having a quick group discussion about the responses to each.

• At the end, you’ll discuss as a group what you all learned from the experience.

• Finally, you’ll collect the sheets from everyone and shred them so that no one has a record of people’s private responses.

HOW TO DO IT

Step 1: Make a copy of my online survey containing taboo, controversial, and rarely asked questions (using the survey of questions I already created is the easiest option – preview all the questions here: http://bit.ly/2o5GBjq, and make a copy of the survey here: http://bit.ly/2Cm9oVH so that you can send it out). Or, if you have more time and want to customize the questions, you can crowdsource them from attendees in advance and put them on a survey platform that doesn’t record any personally identifying information (i.e., no email address, no IP address). If you plan to crowdsource questions, you should send out an anonymous survey to attendees beforehand to ask what questions they would want to be answered by other attendees (anonymously) that they would never normally be able to ask (here is my survey for collecting these questions from attendees: http://bit.ly/2BYQDvM and you can make your own copy of this survey here: http://bit.ly/2EqVszY). Once you get the questions back, you’ll turn them into another anonymous survey (where you actually ask those questions) which you will also send out to attendees before the event (being sure to give yourself plenty of time to process the responses to prepare event materials).

Step 2: Send an invite to potential attendees (sample invitation down below), including a detailed explanation of the event format (so they can knowingly opt-in rather than having it sprung on them). If you have the survey questions already, you should include them in the invite as well. Make sure to make it clear what the deadline is for fill out the survey (I recommend setting it to be at least 24 hours before the event starts so that you have time to prepare the results). Be sure to send a reminder before this deadline to increase the percent those who respond.

HOW I CONSTRUCTED THE QUESTIONS

I constructed my set of “taboo, controversial and rarely asked” questions (available at my survey link above) using the following process:

A. I crowdsourced question ideas from all the people who planned to attend the event.

B. I brainstormed additional ideas on my own that seemed like they could be interesting.

C. I then ran a study where 100 people in the U.S. on the Amazon Mechanical Turk recruitment platform were asked to answer each question anonymously. I ended up with way too many questions for the final survey.

D. I winnowed them down by reading all the responses of people on Mechanical Turk, retaining for the final survey those questions that seemed to me to produce especially interesting or surprising or discussion-worthy results (see link below for anonymous Mechanical Turk user responses if you’re interested).

PREPARING FOR THE EVENT

After you’ve received everyone’s survey responses, you’ll want to prepare handouts for each participant with all of those responses in completely anonymized form. It is critical that you never read any one individuals responses while you’re preparing the materials. Group the responses immediately by the question, and shuffle their order, so that you can only ever see the responses for all respondents as a group. This helps ensure the anonymity of every respondent. For multiple-choice questions, you should calculate the percent of people that gave each response (I put these on PowerPoint slides which I presented to the group, but you could put them right on the handouts). For free form text responses, you’ll want to have a list of all responses to each question, grouped by question. Be sure to shuffle the order so that the 1st response to each question is not the same person each time (otherwise, participants may accidentally be de-anonymized).

If you use the exact questions that I did, you can also show alongside your group’s responses, the responses from Mechanical Turk respondents, which you can find here in the anonymized form: http://bit.ly/2HgzX2s. I recommend only doing this for the multiple-choice questions, as otherwise, the handouts might become unreasonably long (expect to give at least seven pages of handouts if you have 20 attendees and you use a small font and are smart about space on the page).

OPTIONAL: USING MY PYTHON CODE TO PROCESS RESPONSES

If you use my exact survey, you can also use python code (download it here: http://bit.ly/2Hgi6su) that I wrote to make the process of preparing responses easier and prettier (you’ll need to use Python 2.7 to use it, which you can easily install on Mac or PC). You’ll also need to install the pylab and text wrap libraries (first install pip, which is a python installation system, then you can easily install these using pip). The way the code works is that it takes two input files: one has the responses from mechanical Turk workers (which is already provided for you in the folder you download, so there is nothing for you to do), and the other is the CSV file you download yourself of your attendees’ responses to the survey (you can get to this download option from the edit page for your copy of my survey, just click on data and you’ll see a download button). Place that CSV file you downloaded into the “python code” folder once you unzip the code (usually, you can unzip just by double-clicking). Then change the line of code comparisonFileToProcess=”…” within the file prettyPlotYesNo.py so that the … is replaced with the name of your CSV file. Finally, run the python file prettyPlotYesNo.py by navigating to that folder in terminal (Mac) or Cygwin (Windows) and doing:

python prettyPlotYesNo.py

It should then automatically fill the folder “figures” with all the results (including both figures and text files of qualitative responses). The skinny bars will represent the responses of mechanical Turk workers, and the thick bars will represent the responses of your attendees, so you can compare them side by side (i.e., you can see how representative your attendees’ responses were).

AT THE EVENT

Hand out printed sheets that show the responses of all the attendees to each of the questions. Give people 10 minutes or so to read them all (to form initial impressions and reactions). You may want to provide pens so that people can jot down notes as they go or mark responses that were especially interesting. When people are done, start with the first question, have everyone quickly read the responses to that single question again to remind themselves what others said (if it was a qualitative question) or have them look at the percent of people that gave each response (if it was a quantitative question), and then have a short group discussion about the responses to that question. If people are quiet, you may want to ask the room questions like:

•What was your reaction to reading people’s responses to this question?

•What surprised you about the way people answered the question?

•What patterns did you notice in people’s responses?

After a few minutes, or if people no longer seem to be engaged in the discussion, or if the discussion has gone on a tangent, move onto the next question (having everyone quickly read the responses to that next question again before discussion ensues). Repeat this until you’ve gotten through all the questions.

At the end, ask people what they feel like they learned overall from the experience of seeing attendees answers to these questions and discussing them as a group. When we ran this, people had a very positive reaction to the experience!

Be sure to collect all the handout materials back at the end and shred them. Make sure everyone knows at the beginning that they will not get to keep the sheets of people’s responses and that they should hand them back to you before leaving to protect the private responses of all attendees.

SAMPLE INVITATION TO SEND FOR THE EVENT

I’d like to invite you to an event called “Anonymous Answers to Anonymous Questions,” where you’ll get to find out the (anonymous) answers that all the other attendees have to controversial, taboo, embarrassing, uncomfortable, and rarely asked questions.

Here’s how the format works in detail. Please read these instructions carefully if you plan to attend, and let me know that you’ll be coming!

Before coming, all attendees will fill out an anonymous survey (see link below) with a bunch of controversial, taboo, or otherwise unusual questions. At the beginning of the survey, you and the other attendees will be asked to swear that you will respond completely honestly.

When you arrive at the event, you’ll get to see all the responses given by other attendees to all the questions (in a completely anonymized format). We’ll then go question by question, reviewing them together, and discuss them as a group (without knowing who gave which answer)! You will not be able to take any materials with you when they leave because they will contain the personal responses of group members.

I explored this question by running two little studies across two different populations: mechanical turk (“mturk,” n=49, all U.S.) vs. my Facebook friends (“FB,” n=111, who tend to be in the U.S.) with different approaches, me hand categorizing written responses vs. participants selecting the category that best matches what they wrote using 24 categories in random order developed from the first study, including an “other” option.

Across the two studies, 71% of free form written responses to the question of “what you want more than anything else in the entire world” fell into just these nine categories:

1. a romantic partner (17% FB vs. 6% mturk)

2. the wellbeing of my family (5% FB vs. 17% mturk)

3. happiness (7% FB vs. 15% mturk)

4. money (8% FB vs. 14% mturk)

5. a markedly positive effect on the world (18% FB vs. 0% mturk)

6. good health (8% FB vs. 6% mturk)

7. a family or children (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

8. a job with meaning (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

9. freedom (5% FB vs. 2% mturk)

In the Facebook version, I also asked people to come up with something they could do in the next few days to increase the chance that they eventually get this thing they most want. Surprisingly, 95% of people were able to come up with something that they thought would increase their odds! When asked when they would do this thing, they came up with that would increase their odds of getting what they most want, 75% of people said they would do this thing within the next week, and 62% said they would do it within two days!

Tentative lessons from this data:

(1) The things that people most want in the U.S. tend to fall into just a small number of basic categories: a romantic partner, wellbeing of family, happiness, money, positive impact, health, family/children, meaningful work, freedom. In the mturk study, these nine categories covered 64% of responses, and in the FB study, 78% of responses.

(2) The median time for the entire FB study was 3 minutes, so if you take 3 minutes to think, you can decide how to take action toward the things you most want.

(3) There’s a good chance you can start really soon on this strategy to increase your odds of getting what you most want (e.g., within the next couple of days or at least within a week).

(4) If you have the nine things in the list below (or almost all of them), consider yourself very lucky! You have what people want! Extract every sliver of joy and meaning from what you have while you can!

If you’d like to try this procedure yourself in an easy, step by step fashion, here’s the link to the FB version of the study: http://bit.ly/2DtQQoK

Below are 166 (rather interesting!) size-ordered correlations that I calculated on 870 people in the United States, who were recruited using our study recruitment platform, Positly.

All responses are self-reported by the study participants, mostly measured on a scale of 1-4 or 1-5, except those that suggest a different scale (e.g., number of minutes doing something, age, symptom scores, etc.)

Keep in mind that if A and B are correlated, it could be that A causes B, it could be that B causes A, or it could be that some third thing causes both A and B.

The number shown on each row is the correlation between the thing on the left of the “vs.” and the thing on the right of the “vs.”

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Huge correlations (~67% of variance explained)

0.82: depression symptom score (PHQ9) vs. anxiety symptom score (GAD7)
0.82: “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale) vs. “In general, I feel confident and positive about myself.” (1-5 scale)
0.75: “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.75: satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife vs. howWellTreatedByRomanticPartner
0.74: socialLiberalness vs. economicLiberalness
0.73: placeOfWorshipAffiliation vs. “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.68: “In general, I feel confident and positive about myself.” (1-5 scale) vs. “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale)
0.67: parentsHappyWhenYouWereGrowingUp vs. parentsTreatedWellWhenGrowingUp
0.67: videoGameMinutesPerDayWhenPlays vs. videoGamePlayingDaysPerWeek
0.60: howGoodLifeIsRelativeToExpectations vs. “I feel satisfied with what I am achieving in life.” (1-5 scale)
0.60: enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably vs. moreWealthyThanFriends
0.60: hoursWorkedOnWorkDays vs. daysWorkedPerWeek
0.58: takesAntidepressants vs. hasMentalHealthDiagnosis
0.57: satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife vs. relationshipSeriousness
0.54: takesAntidepressants vs. seeingAMentalHealthProfessional
0.54: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. placeOfWorshipAffiliation
0.53: alcoholDaysDrinkingPerWeek vs. drinksPerTimeDrinking

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Large correlations (~25% of variance explained)

0.50: relationshipSeriousness vs. livesWithOtherPeople
0.49: conscientiousness (2-question big 5 scale) vs. howGoodIsWillpower
0.48: “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale) vs. satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife
0.48: hasDepressiveDisorder vs. takesAntidepressants
0.48: enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably vs. howGoodLifeIsRelativeToExpectations
0.46: relationshipSeriousness vs. hasChildren
0.45: hasDepressiveDisorder vs. hasAnxietyDisorder
0.42: selfReportedHowGoodAtMathComparedToOthers vs. selfReportedIntelligence
0.41: howWellTreatedByRomanticPartner vs. “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale)
0.40: “In general, I feel confident and positive about myself.” (1-5 scale) vs. howGoodIsWillpower
0.40: incomeScore vs. enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably
0.38: age vs. hasBeenDivorced
0.38: howOftenReadsBlogs vs. howOftenReadsTheNews
0.38 : timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days vs. howWellTreatedByRomanticPartner
0.37: moreWealthyThanFriends vs. “I feel satisfied with what I am achieving in life.” (1-5 scale)
0.36: howGoodLifeIsRelativeToExpectations vs. howWellTreatedByRomanticPartner
0.36: hasChildren vs. age
0.36: “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale) vs. enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably
0.36: selfReportedIntelligence vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.36: selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge vs. “In general, I feel confident and positive about myself.” (1-5 scale)
0.35 : timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days vs. satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife
0.35: parentsHappyWhenYouWereGrowingUp vs. “In general, I feel confident and positive about myself.” (1-5 scale)
0.34: selfReportedIntelligence vs. considersSelfLifelongLearner
0.34: exerciseDaysPerWeek vs. hoursOutsideWeekly
0.31: homeOwnershipLevel vs. age
0.31: seeingAMentalHealthProfessional vs. depression symptom score (PHQ9)

—
Medium correlations (~9% of variance explained)

0.3: “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale) vs. numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers
0.3: homeOwnershipLevel vs. enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably
0.3: depression symptom score (PHQ9) vs. takesAntidepressants
0.3: republican1DemocratNegative1 vs. “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.29: earlyTechnologyAdopter vs. appsTheyDownloadedAndUseWeekly
0.28: restednessUponWakingAfterIdealHoursOfSleep vs. “I feel satisfied with what I am achieving in life.” (1-5 scale)
0.28: healthLevel vs. exerciseDaysPerWeek
0.28: healthLevel vs. moreWealthyThanFriends
0.27: educationScore vs. incomeScore
0.27: selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge vs. moreWealthyThanFriends
0.27 : isChristian vs. republican1DemocratNegative1
0.27: hasAPet vs. isFemale
0.26: selfReportedIntelligence vs. selfReportedGoodnessAndMoralness
0.25: numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers vs. “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale)
0.24: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. age
0.23: age squared vs. “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.23: smokeCigarettesFrequency vs. addictedToADrugOtherThanCaffeineOrNicotine
0.23: hoursWorkedOnWorkDays vs. positivenessOfFeelingsAboutJob
0.23: hasAPet vs. isWhite
0.22: selfReportedIntelligence vs. educationScore
0.22: anxiety symptom score (GAD7) vs. takesAntidepressants
0.22: depression symptom score (PHQ9) vs. debtsCannotPayLevel
0.22: “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale) vs. parentsTreatedWellWhenGrowingUp
0.21: hoursPastMidnightGoesToSleep vs. videoGameMinutesPerDayWhenPlays
0.21: hoursOutsideWeekly vs. exerciseMinutesPerExerciseDay
0.21: satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife vs. parentsHappyWhenYouWereGrowingUp
0.21: socialLiberalness vs. homosexuality
0.21 : isChristian vs. hasChildren

—
Small correlations (~4% of variance explained)

0.2: howOftenReadsTheNews vs. considersSelfLifelongLearner
0.2: hoursPastMidnightGoesToSleep vs. depression symptom score (PHQ9)
0.2: earlyTechnologyAdopter vs. internetCapableSmartphone
0.2: howGoodIsWillpower vs. moreWealthyThanFriends
0.2: nightclubAttendance vs. timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days
0.2: daysPerWeekUsesTwitter vs. appsTheyDownloadedAndUseWeekly
0.2: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. republican1DemocratNegative1
0.2: enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably vs. positivenessOfFeelingsAboutJob
0.2: bookReadingDaysPerWeek vs. considersSelfLifelongLearner
0.19: daysPerWeekUsesFacebook vs. isFemale
0.19: bodyMassIndex vs. depression symptom score (PHQ9)
0.19: differenceBetweenAverageAndNeededSleepHours vs. “Taking all things together, I am happy.” (1-5 scale)
0.19: selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge vs. exerciseMinutesPerExerciseDay
0.19: selfReportedIntelligence vs. earlyTechnologyAdopter
0.18: hasAPet vs. daysPerWeekUsesFacebook
0.18: howWellTreatedByRomanticPartner vs. parentsTreatedWellWhenGrowingUp
0.18: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale)
0.18: moreWealthyThanFriends vs. timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days
0.18: nightclubAttendance vs. drinksPerTimeDrinking
0.18: incomeScore vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.17 : firedFromAJobInLast12Months vs. addictedToADrugOtherThanCaffeineOrNicotine
0.17: isFemale vs. “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.17: numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers vs. “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.17: selfReportedHowGoodAtMathComparedToOthers vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.17: educationScore vs. enoughMoneyToLiveComfortably
0.17: selfReportedIntelligence vs. moreWealthyThanFriends
0.17 : timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days vs. healthLevel
0.17: daysPerWeekSpeaksToFriends vs. numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers
0.17: “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. takingAllThingsTogetherIAmHAPPY
0.16: minutesOnComputerTypicalDay vs. hoursPastMidnightGoesToSleep
0.16: hasBeenDivorced vs. “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.16 : timesSexualActivityWithOtherPersonIn7Days vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.16: hoursOutsideWeekly vs. “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale)
0.16: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers
0.16: educationScore vs. bookReadingDaysPerWeek
0.16: howGoodIsWillpower vs. positivenessOfFeelingsAboutJob
0.16: gotDivorcedInLastTwoYears vs. addictedToADrugOtherThanCaffeineOrNicotine
0.16: howOftenReadsTheNews vs. educationScore
0.16: hasChildren vs. hasAPet
0.16: differenceBetweenAverageAndNeededSleepHours vs. exerciseDaysPerWeek
0.16: bodyMassIndex vs. chronicMedicalConditionSeriousness

—
Tiny correlation (~2% of variance explained)

0.15: anxiety symptom score (GAD7) vs. socialLiberalness
0.15: restednessUponWakingAfterIdealHoursOfSleep vs. positivenessOfFeelingsAboutJob
0.15: relationshipSeriousness vs. republican1DemocratNegative1
0.15: daysPerWeekSpeaksToFriends vs. howOftenReadsTheNews
0.15: alcoholDaysDrinkingPerWeek vs. smokeCigarettesFrequency
0.15: gotDivorcedInLastTwoYears vs. firedFromAJobInLast12Months
0.15: selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge vs. satisfactionWithDatingOrRomanticLife
0.15: videoGameMinutesPerDayWhenPlays vs. bookReadingMinutesPerDayWhenRead
0.14: parentsHappyWhenYouWereGrowingUp vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.14: isChristian vs. daysPerWeekUsesFacebook
0.14: considersSelfLifelongLearner vs. howOftenReadsBlogs
0.14: healthLevel vs. differenceBetweenAverageAndNeededSleepHours
0.14 : republican1DemocratNegative1 vs. homeOwnershipLevel
0.13: hasAPet vs. mentalIllnessInFamilyLevel
0.13: economicLiberalness vs. daysPerWeekUsesTwitter
0.13: economicLiberalness vs. hoursPastMidnightGoesToSleep
0.13: seeingAMentalHealthProfessional vs. gotDivorcedInLastTwoYears
0.13: videoGamePlayingDaysPerWeek vs. bodyMassIndex
0.13: “How spiritual do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale) vs. physicalDisabilityLevel
0.12: bornInUS vs. hasAPet
0.12: howGoodIsWillpower vs. numberOfCloseFriendsAndFamilyMembers
0.12: howOftenReadsBlogs vs. educationScore
0.12: “How optimistic a person are you usually?” (-2 to 2 scale) vs. hasBeenDivorced
0.12: parentsTreatedWellWhenGrowingUp vs. “How religious do you consider yourself to be?” (0-5 scale)
0.12: urbannessOfLocation vs. economicLiberalness
0.12: isFemale vs. depression symptom score (PHQ9)
0.11: nightclubAttendance vs. selfReportedGoodLookingnessForAge
0.11: howOftenReadsTheNews vs. daysPerWeekUsesTwitter
0.11: worksMoreThanWouldLike vs. depression symptom score (PHQ9)
0.11: incomeScore vs. hasAPet
0.11: parentsHappyWhenYouWereGrowingUp vs. howGoodIsWillpower
0.11: isFemale vs. hasMentalHealthDiagnosis
0.11: hasAnxietyDisorder vs. hasAPet
0.11: usCitizen vs. isWhite
0.11: howOftenReadsBlogs vs. socialLiberalness
0.11 : firedFromAJobInLast12Months vs. nightclubAttendance
0.11: educationScore vs. appsTheyDownloadedAndUseWeekly

—
Negligible correlations (~1% of variance explained)

0.10: videoGameMinutesPerDayWhenPlays vs. hasMentalHealthDiagnosis
0.09: Points (gad7) vs. smokeCigarettesFrequency
0.09: healthLevel vs. alcoholDaysDrinkingPerWeek
0.09: howOftenReadsTheNews vs. incomeScore
0.08: selfReportedHowGoodAtMathComparedToOthers vs. howOftenReadsTheNews
0.07: physicalDisabilityLevel vs. lookingForWork
0.07: isMidwestUSRegion vs. hasChildren
0.07: gotDivorcedInLastTwoY

This piece was first written on January 13, 2018, and first appeared on my website on July 30, 2025.