You may have heard that when asked, conservatives will consistently report that that they are happier than progressives:
The purported happiness gap between liberals and conservatives has attracted considerable media attention. Conservative Americans, Canadians, and Europeans all seem to be happier than their liberal compatriots. Those results are generally based on surveys that ask respondents, for example, to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how well a statement applies to them. Examples include: “The conditions of my life are excellent. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing. I am satisfied with my life.”
Given that conservatives are known to operate from a highly negative, decidedly fear-based worldview, that may seem strange.
There is, however, a simple explanation for why people who see the world in such hostile, threatening terms might claim at the same time to be happier— they’re also less honest:
Psychologists have proposed myriad hypotheses to explain the gap. Conservatives could be more content with the status quo, according to one argument, or liberals may be prone to anxious self-reflection.
But there could be a simpler explanation. Rather than truly being happier than liberals, conservatives may be more prone to put a positive spin on their lives. (emphasis added)
Conservatives don’t seem to like science and scientists, evidence and critical thinking so much, and this may be an example why:
Sure enough, the new study finds that people’s political conservatism was slightly correlated with their tendency to self-enhance.
Conservatives aren’t happier in reality, but they feel a strong need to tell everyone else that they are happier. Because, presumably, that means the world is how it should be, and the deserving folk (conservatives) have a justifiably better life than all those lazy, godless parasites. They’re pretending to be happy:
The researchers also used two other measures to gauge the happiness of liberals and conservatives, neither of which indicated greater conservative happiness. First they used language-processing software to measure the positive and negative emotions of 47,257 tweets. People who follow the Republican Party on Twitter were somewhat more likely to use emotionally negative words than were followers of the Democratic Party. Second, the researchers hired an expert in facial expression analysis to examine the photos of current members of Congress. Democratic members were scored as having slightly more genuine smiles than Republicans.
“Conservatives don't seem to be any happier than liberals,” concludes Dan Kahan, a psychologist at Yale University (emphasis added)
What would make individuals, and entire communities, happier in reality?
How about higher overall quality of life? On that score, communities that embody all the values progressives espouse, and pursue progressive goals, do better by any measure:
In this nationwide study of more than 300,000 adults and more than 75 attributes of the counties in which they reside, we identified twelve county factors that were independently associated with a comprehensive, multi-dimensional assessment of individual well-being. Together, these twelve factors explained more than ninety percent of the variance in individual well-being scores. The final set of twelve factors were from the demographic, social and economic, clinical care, and physical environment categories. The majority of these factors were also independently associated with overall life evaluation. These findings suggest that promotion of diversity as well as targeted investments in education, transportation, and primary care may lead to higher well-being of community residents… (emphasis added)
Who knew? Oh right, progressives:
A prior study assessing correlates of well-being at the state level similarly reported that the well-being index was positively associated with measures of inclusiveness.[47] These findings are consistent with prior studies reporting that minority status is associated with greater eudemonic well-being (i.e., an individual’s judgments about the meaning and purpose in one’s life).[11, 50] Though our findings are inconsistent with results from one study stating that racial/ethnic minorities have lower life satisfaction,[51] this negative association may be explained by higher perceived discrimination among participants.[52–55] Taken together, the results of these studies and ours suggest that greater tolerance may raise well-being for all community members. (emphasis added)
And all progressive goals— environmental justice, social justice and economic justice— are of equal importance, and should be pursued simultaneously:
… all non-economic variables remaining in the final model were associated with well-being, independent of the included contemporaneous financial and economic factors…
There is some irony, of course, in the awareness that creating communities that align with a progressive vision of how the world should be, will make everyone not only better off, but happier as well, since that’ll also be the case for the conservatives so intent on opposing everything we hope to accomplish.
Conservatives would be happier too-- in actuality-- in society that is environmentally sustainable, that celebrates diversity, that provides health care and education for everyone, and promotes economic fairness and opportunity for all. They just might not be willing to admit it publicly.