Another thought—I think there is a risk of overcontrolling with some of the controls used in that paper. The controls in effect assume that if people were not drinking, they would do the same thing they were in fact doing while drinking, except without drinking. But drinking might lead people to be more likely to spend time with friends, go dancing etc. If you control for what people were doing and who they were doing it with, you assume that if they weren’t drinking, people would see their friends and go dancing sober. I think this is unlikely. I don’t like dancing, no matter what I have imbibed, but I think most people would basically never go dancing with friends if they didn’t drink. The uncontrolled effect on SWB is 10 points, though some of the controls seems sensible, so that probably overstates it.
Another thought—I think there is a risk of overcontrolling with some of the controls used in that paper. The controls in effect assume that if people were not drinking, they would do the same thing they were in fact doing while drinking, except without drinking. But drinking might lead people to be more likely to spend time with friends, go dancing etc. If you control for what people were doing and who they were doing it with, you assume that if they weren’t drinking, people would see their friends and go dancing sober. I think this is unlikely. I don’t like dancing, no matter what I have imbibed, but I think most people would basically never go dancing with friends if they didn’t drink. The uncontrolled effect on SWB is 10 points, though some of the controls seems sensible, so that probably overstates it.