"Conservatives Are Happier, and Extremists Are Happiest of All"

[TheSubwayStation]

OPINION

 

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

 

 

Brock Davis

 

 

 

 

By ARTHUR C. BROOKS

 

Published: July 7, 2012

 

 

 

WHO is happier about life — liberals or conservatives? The answer might seem straightforward. After all, there is an entire academic literature in the social sciences dedicated to showing conservatives as naturally authoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking. And it was the candidate Barack Obama in 2008 who infamously labeled blue-collar voters “bitter,” as they “cling to guns or religion.” Obviously, liberals must be happier, right?

 

Wrong. Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge. Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.

Many conservatives favor an explanation focusing on lifestyle differences, such as marriage and faith. They note that most conservatives are married; most liberals are not. (The percentages are 53 percent to 33 percent, according to my calculations using data from the 2004 General Social Survey, and almost none of the gap is due to the fact that liberals tend to be younger than conservatives.) Marriage and happiness go together. If two people are demographically the same but one is married and the other is not, the married person will be 18 percentage points more likely to say he or she is very happy than the unmarried person.

The story on religion is much the same. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, conservatives who practice a faith outnumber religious liberals in America nearly four to one. And the link to happiness? You guessed it. Religious participants are nearly twice as likely to say they are very happy about their lives as are secularists (43 percent to 23 percent). The differences don’t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.

Whether religion and marriage should make people happy is a question you have to answer for yourself. But consider this: Fifty-two percent of married, religious, politically conservative people (with kids) are very happy — versus only 14 percent of single, secular, liberal people without kids.

An explanation for the happiness gap more congenial to liberals is that conservatives are simply inattentive to the misery of others. If they recognized the injustice in the world, they wouldn’t be so cheerful. In the words of Jaime Napier and John Jost, New York University psychologists, in the journal Psychological Science, “Liberals may be less happy than conservatives because they are less ideologically prepared to rationalize (or explain away) the degree of inequality in society.” The academic parlance for this is “system justification.”

The data show that conservatives do indeed see the free enterprise system in a sunnier light than liberals do, believing in each American’s ability to get ahead on the basis of achievement. Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that “While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages.” Liberals — even upper-income liberals — are a third less likely to say this.

So conservatives are ignorant, and ignorance is bliss, right? Not so fast, according to a study from the University of Florida psychologists Barry Schlenker and John Chambers and the University of Toronto psychologist Bonnie Le in the Journal of Research in Personality. These scholars note that liberals define fairness and an improved society in terms of greater economic equality. Liberals then condemn the happiness of conservatives, because conservatives are relatively untroubled by a problem that, it turns out, their political counterparts defined.

Imagine the opposite. Say liberals were the happy ones. Conservatives might charge that it is only because liberals are unperturbed by the social welfare state’s monstrous threat to economic liberty. Liberals would justifiably dismiss this argument as solipsistic and silly.

There is one other noteworthy political happiness gap that has gotten less scholarly attention than conservatives versus liberals: moderates versus extremists.

Political moderates must be happier than extremists, it always seemed to me. After all, extremists actually advertise their misery with strident bumper stickers that say things like, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention!”

But it turns out that’s wrong. People at the extremes are happier than political moderates. Correcting for income, education, age, race, family situation and religion, the happiest Americans are those who say they are either “extremely conservative” (48 percent very happy) or “extremely liberal” (35 percent). Everyone else is less happy, with the nadir at dead-center “moderate” (26 percent).

What explains this odd pattern? One possibility is that extremists have the whole world figured out, and sorted into good guys and bad guys. They have the security of knowing what’s wrong, and whom to fight. They are the happy warriors.

Whatever the explanation, the implications are striking. The Occupy Wall Street protesters may have looked like a miserable mess. In truth, they were probably happier than the moderates making fun of them from the offices above. And none, it seems, are happier than the Tea Partiers, many of whom cling to guns and faith with great tenacity. Which some moderately liberal readers of this newspaper might find quite depressing.

 

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Road to Freedom” and “Gross National Happiness.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/opinion/sunday/conservatives-are-happier-and-extremists-are-happiest-of-all.html

 

I find this quite interesting...

[Threxx]

I'm not going to even read that BS, b/c it's obvious: Conservatives are more wealthy, and as much as people deny it, money does bring happiness, even if it's temporary.

[TheSubwayStation]

I'm not going to even read that BS, b/c it's obvious: Conservatives are more wealthy, and as much as people deny it, money does bring happiness, even if it's temporary.

 

Good point, but that doesn't explain why extremists are happier than moderates. I think you should read the article . It's certainly not arguing in favor of conservatism.

[error46146]

Extremists and conservatives are happy because they only care for their own beliefs and don't weigh in the concerns of others. Less things to worry about for them.

[CenSin]

Marriage is happiness? I fail to see unanimous agreement on that.

[lilbluefoxie]

I'm not going to even read that BS, b/c it's obvious: Conservatives are more wealthy, and as much as people deny it, money does bring happiness, even if it's temporary.

 

 

There are plenty of poor people in rural parts of the South, Midwest, and West that are conservative, and there are plenty of wealthy socialite types here in New York and in places like Los Angeles and San Fransisco that are democrats.

 

Here on Long Island, Peter King's district includes middle to low end areas such as Hicksville, Long Beach, Levittown, Amityville and Gary Ackerman, a democrat has Great Neck, Manhasset, Little Neck, and Greenvale.

[Threxx]

There are plenty of poor people in rural parts of the South, Midwest, and West that are conservative, and there are plenty of wealthy socialite types here in New York and in places like Los Angeles and San Fransisco that are democrats.

 

Here on Long Island, Peter King's district includes middle to low end areas such as Hicksville, Long Beach, Levittown, Amityville and Gary Ackerman, a democrat has Great Neck, Manhasset, Little Neck, and Greenvale.

 

 

That doesn't mean they all voted for who's currently in office. I'm not going to change my opinions on the subject...

[lilbluefoxie]

That doesn't mean they all voted for who's currently in office. I'm not going to change my opinions on the subject...

 

 

I can easily look up the popular vote results for those new york state districts, your generalizations about people, income levels, and what their party affiliation is are quite inaccurate. Even if we go by a state by state thing, there are states out west like Oklahoma and Wyoming that nearly always vote for republicans, by your logic they should be the wealthiest places in the country and in reality the opposite is true.

[Grand Concourse]

To clear things up: GOP doesn't = conservative and Democrats doesn't always = liberal. That's what each party tends to lean towards for votes by default. In all honesty they should do away with the party labels. In NYC or the East coast in general, anyone that isn't a ( D ) is ignored.

[INDman]

I'm not going to even read that BS, b/c it's obvious: Conservatives are more wealthy, and as much as people deny it, money does bring happiness, even if it's temporary.

 

And everyone says it's the conservatives who are ignorant... I'm very conservative and I'm not wealthy at all so there goes your crack pot theory.

[MTARegional Bus]

This article is bull

[INDman]

This article bull

 

Are you sure about that? From your reaction it sounds like you might be a liberal and you don't seem that happy.

[MTARegional Bus]

Are you sure about that? From your reaction it sounds like you might be a liberal and you don't seem that happy.

 

 

Since when does a Party or group determine how happy they are? and am not Liberal or conservative, they both suck.

[TheSubwayStation]

Since when does a Party or group determine how happy they are? and am not Liberal or conservative, they both suck.

 

A party doesn't determine happiness, but certain viewpoints can lead to more happiness than others.

 

Actually, as a fairly moderate liberal, I enjoy reading this article. I don't see the idea of conservatives being happier as pro-conservative. To the contrary, I believe that conservatives are happier because of many important issues that don't bother them. For example, poverty: a liberal sees a homeless person and feels bad for him. A conservative sees a homeless person and says, "It's his fault for being poor." A liberal is more likely to see this situation as a problem, whereas a conservative doesn't think anything's wrong.

 

It also makes complete sense that extremists would be happier than moderates. If you're an extremist, your beliefs are so strong that there are no tough issues for you. You think you know exactly what is right, so you never have to worry about being wrong. A moderate, though, has less confidence in a specific belief, so he/she has to worry about what's right and wrong.

[MTARegional Bus]

 

 

It also makes complete sense that extremists would be happier than moderates. If you're an extremist, your beliefs are so strong that there are no tough issues for you. You think you know exactly what is right, so you never have to worry about being wrong. A moderate, though, has less confidence in a specific belief, so he/she has to worry about what's right and wrong.

 

 

I think that fits with some religious groups as well, which I won't name, but some have the same happiness as extremist to.

[QM1to6Ave]

This article is bull

 

Saying a number of carefully designed scientific studies are "bull" is just silly and ignorant. Clearly, the results they got in these different studies are valid, at least for the people that completed their surveys. That does not mean you can necessarily extrapolate the results to everyone else in the world, as they sort of do here, but properly collected social science data is, by definition, not simply "bull."

[MTARegional Bus]

Saying a number of carefully designed scientific studies are "bull" is just silly and ignorant. Clearly, the results they got in these different studies are valid, at least for the people that completed their surveys. That does not mean you can necessarily extrapolate the results to everyone else in the world, as they sort of do here, but properly collected social science data is, by definition, not simply "bull."

 

 

 

Well scientific fact show that people lie when they do surveys lol, just kidding.

 

 

You can tell someone that there happy but in reality there sad on the inside for what problems they have in there lives and they won't tell you that, that why I think the articular is bull. and I know what people are going to say '' your a liberal and sad'' nope. that's just reality regardless if you are liberal or conservative.

[QM1to6Ave]

Well scientific fact show that people lie when they do surveys lol, just kidding.

 

 

You can tell someone that there happy but in reality there sad on the inside for what problems they have in there lives and they won't tell you that, that why I think the articular is bull. and I know what people are going to say '' your a liberal and sad'' nope. that's just reality regardless if you are liberal or conservative.

 

 

I do completely understand where you are coming from, and you are correct in a sense--generally, thse surveys do not try to capture a person's entire "deep" emotions and deep-seated feelings. If they did, you would be correct in saying that you cannot capture that based on liberal or conservative ideologies, as that is an oversimplification.

 

However, in most of these cases, participants are generally asked how they feel, then are given a political statement, asked if they agree with it or not, and finally their emotion is measured again. This is just a way of seeing whether or not thinking about your ideology makes you happy, for example. It is not saying that all of their emotional well-being can be affected by it. These studies always look for small, specific effects on emotion, not to capture a person's entire range of emotions.

[MHV9218]

Not shocked by this report. Conservatives lie more!

 

[Tokkemon]

Lie, wut?

 

I'm a Conservative, myself, but idk how "happy" that makes me. I get happiness out of far more personal things like music, relationships, going for a subway ride (yes, even that), having a good meal, practicing my faith etc. I certainly don't get happiness out of voting or adversarialism against others politically. I think it really is the value system that conservatives generally hold.

[Grand Concourse]

Partisanship, you gotta love it....

[Phantom909]

Not shocked by this report. Conservatives lie more!

 

 

 

Proof? Still waiting for your proof on the other things you lied about

 

Joe