Holiday Stress?
'Tis the season to be jolly, but not everyone feels that way, at least not all the time. The holidays can be stressful, and every year, right about now, we talk about how bad the problem is, what causes it, and what might help.
Inevitably, too, we hear about the studies. You know...the studies telling us that holidays are stressful, and perhaps even more now than in the past. Statistics are routinely cited in support of whatever claim is made about national trends.
In theory, the accuracy of these statistics isn't terribly important for you personally. As long as you know that some people are feeling stressed, you can interact with others more sensitively – and take comfort in knowing you're that not alone, if you happen to be stressed yourself. The details of national trends in stress levels shouldn't affect you personally, right?
In this newsletter, I'll be making two claims: (i) A holiday stress statistic widely reported in the news this month is misleading. (ii) Society-level statistics like this actually can impact individuals. In other words, getting this statistic right matters for each of us personally.
Statistification and a new finding
Our society has been "statisfied", or transformed by the proliferation of statistical tools and data over the past century and a half. There are many signs of this transformation. For example, it's commonplace now for people to cite statistical data in support of a point, a practice that was rare, even among scientists, prior to the mid-19th century. Thus, in at least a dozen news reports over the past two weeks, you can see statements like the following:
"According to a new poll from the American Psychiatric Association (APA), 31% of Americans anticipate being more stressed this holiday season than last year, representing a 9% increase since 2021." (U.S. News, 12/2/2022.)
There's nothing remarkable about finding statistics like these in news reports nowadays. But the stats are mostly cited in passing. Given limited space and fierce competition for reader attention, it's rare for journalists to pause and reflect on the statistics they cite.
Here, though, I think that this 31% figure calls for a bit of reflection.
Most of the news reports merely cite the 31% statistic as evidence of holiday stress. Some also hint that Americans are experiencing more holiday stress than before (since 31% of respondents indicated as much, and since that figure is 9% higher than what was found in 2021).
In fact, the 31% statistic doesn't tell us much, because we don't know how the other 69% of people responded. This statistic is consistent with two strikingly different scenarios:
Scenario A: This holiday season, 31% of people expect to feel more stressed than they did last year, while 69% expect to feel less stressed this year. (Fairly good news.)
Scenario B: This holiday season, 31% of people expect to feel more stressed than they did last year, while 69% expect no changes in stress levels this year. (Fairly bad news.)
Scenario A seems like fairly good news, because it tells us that most people are looking forward to a less stressful holiday than they experienced in 2021.
Scenario B is bad news, because it tells us that everyone is anticipating at least the same amount of holiday stress this year as they experienced in 2021, if not more.
In short, because we don't know how the majority of people responded to the APA poll, we can't say much of anything about stress levels overall. That 31% statistic is consistent with radically different overall trends.
This interpretive issue was not addressed in any of the dozen-plus reports I skimmed, including one in the New York Times, presumably because the only publicly available information about the poll is provided on the APA website, and there's no information there on how the other 69% of people responded. Thus, most news organizations simply paraphrased the APA's own description of the findings. Here's the entirety of what the APA wrote:
"31% of adults say they expect to feel more stressed this upcoming holiday season compared to last. This is an increase of 9 percentage points since 2021."
That's clear enough, although one news organization actually got it wrong: CBS New York noted that according to the APA poll, 31% of Americans "expect to feel stress this season." They even wrote this phrase on one of their graphics, though it's obviously not what the 31% refers to.
Other news outlets paraphrased the APA findings accurately, but, as I've been saying, the APA didn't provide enough information to glean much from the 31% statistic. In particular, it doesn't sustain generalizations about changes in holiday stress levels.
Why care?
Why should we care whether the news media accurately describes holiday stress? We already know the holidays can be stressful, and it's easy to find expert advice on coping strategies (see here or here, for example). If we read that holiday stress levels are increasing, for example, what's the difference whether that description is accurate or not, so long as people who do experience stress can find support?
Data on peoples' emotional experiences are rarely neutral. In the case of holiday stress, here are three reasons we should worry about overestimates of the problem:
1. Stress is contagious.
Studies have repeatedly documented what psychologists call "emotional contagion" – i.e., when you observe emotional states such as stress in others, your own feelings may change to more closely resemble what you observe.
Although many of these studies focus on directly observed emotion (e.g., after watching a video of a visibly stressed person, people experience psychological and physiological changes indicating greater stress), some studies also include verbal descriptions. The most notorious example is a big data study conducted by researchers at Cornell and the University of California in collaboration with Facebook. One of the key findings of this 2014 study was that when users received more positive or negative status updates from friends, the emotional content of their own posts changed to more closely match whatever they had been receiving more of. (Facebook was widely criticized for secretly manipulating the posts that users received in order to gather data.) Although studies like this focus on emotional contagion in social networks, it's also clear that a news report describing a national trend, accompanied by quotes from a couple of stressed out individuals, could increase stress among readers.
2. The prospect of stress is stressful.
If you hear that people tend to expect more stress this holiday season, you may become concerned that you too will experience more stress. Worrying about this possibility will create additional stress for you. In other words, the fear of getting stressed out will stress you out. A news report describing rising levels of stress nationwide may therefore be, to some extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. Being reminded of stressors is stressful.
What's sometimes called "anticipatory stress" is the stress you experience merely by thinking about something that causes you stress. A news story describing national trends in holiday stress is likely to mention the usual holiday-related sources (family conflict, financial pressure, social obligations, etc.), which will get you thinking about them and possibly increase your own stress levels.
In sum, for any or all of the three reasons I provided here, news reports treating that 31% statistic as a sign of increasing holiday stress could cause some readers to become more stressed themselves.
What was actually found?
Earlier in the week I contacted the APA with a request for their data. Today, a media relations manager named Erin Connors was kind enough to email me a slide deck that the polling company (Media Consult) presented to the APA. Following are the results for 2022 (top) and 2021 (bottom).
In 2022, 31% of people anticipated more stress during the holiday compared to what they experienced in 2021, 51% anticipated no change, and 19% anticipated less stress.
In 2021, 22% of people anticipated more stress during the holiday compared to what they experienced in 2021, 51% anticipated no change, and 21% anticipated less stress. (6% said they didn't know, which was not an option on the 2022 version of the poll.)
What should we make of this?
Here's what I would say: For two years in a row, about half of people (51%) entered the holiday season anticipating no change in stress levels, while another one fifth (19% to 21%) expected less stress. The only appreciable change from one year to the next is a 9% increase in those who anticipated more stress (22% in 2021, 31% in 2022).
Should we conclude then that holiday stress levels have increased since last year? Please don't. For one thing, we don't know how the 2022 data would look if people had been able to choose the "don't know" option, as they could do in 2021. If, for example, all of the 2022 respondents who didn't know for sure chose the "somewhat more stress" option, then a reduction of 6% in that category leaves us with 25% of respondents expecting more stress, which is pretty close to the 22% value for 2021. (The margin of error for the 2022 results is +/- 2 points.)
Also, the slides I received did not report significance testing. We don't know whether the percentage of people who anticipate more stress this holiday season is significantly greater than the percentage who felt that way last year. Although the samples appear to be large enough to make this comparison viable (over 2,000 respondents per year), the difference in response options between the two years makes such a comparison problematic.
In sum, I don't see evidence here of much change in anticipated holiday stress over the past two years, in spite of what's implied in some media reports.
Conclusion
It matters whether we believe that Americans tend to be more stressed this holiday season, because what we believe may affect our own stress levels. As members of a "statisfied" society, we're accustomed to seeing statistical data used to describe broad social trends. What I've argued here, using the 31% example, is that there can be emotional consequences when we get the statistics wrong.
Thanks for reading! Take a breath, enjoy your weekend, and if you're still feeling tense, see here or here for some thoughtful advice about coping with holiday stress.