Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction
I can see a few compelling arguments for it, but personally I&#x27;d be very wary of concluding causation from this relationship. The two things are very complicated and have many confounding variables involved. I see it just as likely that the correlation is spurious, and people exposed to advertising have lower life satisfaction for a variety of complex reasons incidental to the ads themselves.<p>Capitalism affords many opportunities for someone to be unhappy and unsatisfied; advertising may cause this or simply exacerbate what is already there.<p>I&#x27;m disappointed with the way HBR reported this. The researchers are explicitly quoted as saying they found a &quot;negative connection&quot;, which, yes, is an inverse correlation. No matter how intuitively compelling, you can&#x27;t just extrapolate that to a conclusion of causation as the author of this article proceeded to do right in the introduction.<p>Edit: Why is this being downvoted? Do you disagree with my point that we can&#x27;t extrapolate causation from correlation, or do find my comment to be off topic?