A new study is the perfect response to that one know-it-all who decided to criticize something about the way you’ve chosen to live. This new study confirms exactly what you’ve known all along, but now you have the authority and legitimacy of a peer-reviewed journal to bolster your preferences in the face of haters.
It’s especially the case that your granola-eating Aunt, who always had it out for you, will feel the burn once she reads definitive evidence that your choice on vaccines is the correct one. And your business-minded friend Dave, who thinks his success is actually based on his work ethic and intelligence, will melt when he finds out that people who sleep in are actually more intelligent and creative and a person’s wealth is actually more dependent on chance than effort.
This new study is so much more effective at silencing your opposition than all those online quizzes telling you which Lord of the Rings character you are. Sure, they confirmed that you were either Aragorn or Legolas, and that made you feel good, but were they really scientific? Probably not. Not nearly as good as that app that determined your mental age from your profile picture to declare you “young at heart,” or that Meyers-Briggs survey that declared your biggest weaknesses were thinking too much, being too handsome, and being such a saint that other people took advantage of your generosity. Let’s not forget that harder-than-it-would-seem challenge where you had to name one city that didn’t begin with the letter X. 98% of people couldn’t do it. You always knew you were part of that 2%.
But this new study is in a whole new tier of self-justification. Never before have you experienced such confirmation that you’ve always been exactly right about climate change, politics, poverty, medicine, capitalism, child-rearing, life planning, economics, sustainable agriculture, and personal finance. You didn’t even know how spot on every little opinion you have ever had actually was.
So carry on! Change absolutely nothing about your life. There’s no need for you to listen to your opposition, especially when they cite some manipulative, fact-starved peer-reviewed article confirming their own position.
Ignore the nagging feeling that perhaps your vanity, self-centeredness, and confirmation bias are being harnessed by your real enemies for their own benefit against yours. Yes, ignore that nagging feeling. There’s a new study that proves that feeling is either narcissism or early-onset senility. And you are decidedly not narcissistic or senile—not according to all those uncannily accurate online quizzes anyway.