Apologies if this has already been diaried. I havent seen it and couldnt resist presenting a very short note on the subject of Conservatives vs. Liberals and life happiness.
As most of us at KOS know, there are a number of studies - Conservative brains vs. liberal brains seem to be of scientific interest lately - that show that conservatives are a significantly happier bunch than we liberals. Now honestly, I ask you, how many of you really buy this? Have you met a conservative? I mean a dyed in the wool teabagger? They are miserable about just about everything. And truly it doesnt seem to matter who is in charge in DC, they hate them. OK, maybe they hate Pres. Obama more, but they arent really happy with anyone. So this whole "conservatives are happier" seems like a mis-timed April fools joke - appropriate for today.
Now generally speaking this is simply anecdotal evidence. My parents were staunch conservative and never really had a nice word to say about anyone. But one could argue that that is one case and this is statistics. However, the recent spate of studies about the fight or flight differences in the conservative vs liberal mind doesnt seem to lend itself well to understanding a psychology that pretty much fear everything. So I was left with a quandary. How do we understand this? Are the Bible thumping, everything but missionary position hating, gun toting, sweet tea sipping crowd really that much happier with their lives? That just cant be right... right?
Well turns out it may not be. IF we are to believe a new paper in Science "Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness Sean P. Wojcik, Arpine Hovasapian, Jesse Graham, Matt Motyl, and Peter H. Ditto Science 13 March 2015: 1243-1246" This crowd has one other trait we scientific type liberals forgot about - they have a tendency to lie.
You see previous work relied exclusively on self reported levels of life happiness. But there are other metrics of happiness, like language, engagement, and so on. These are direct signs of the comfort and happiness one has with ones life situations. They assess the anxiety, the stress levels, and overall exertion each specific moment or circumstance places on a persons life. And as it happens, these "tells" point to (statistically) significantly greater life happiness for liberals generally.
So, if you go by what is self reported - that is what people say - conservatives are all quite happy with their lot in life. But if you go by the marks of a happy life, liberals are the happy ones. For you Animal House fans, it may just be a case of "thank you sir may I have another..." The desire to appear to be sooo happy with each whack on the bum that you have forgotten what it was like to be able to sit down without pain.