http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354424,00.html

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.

Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance.

In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted both a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."

The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.

The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.

"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."

The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

How about "inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives, apparently because liberals have ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a negative (or at most neutral) light."

The pendulum swings both ways. At the end of the day, the importance of economic inequality is just an opinion, and this study is useless.

Conservatives have a much higher average age, a slightly higher average income, and are far more religious than moderates or liberals, so...

Wrong



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02916.html

Also, Democrats tend to be older:

Heh, this was the first result for "Ignorance is bliss" on Google images. I'm sure that thought came first to several of you.

That study is a giant pile of dumb.

You can ask people how happy they are on a scale of 1-10. You can ask them if they consider themselves a liberal or a conservative. You could then use those numbers to decide that "conservatives are happier than liberals".

But any attempt to explain the reasons for this are pure conjecture.

The whole implication that conservatives are somehow "okay" with social inequality is pretty bad, by itself. But to claim that this is the reason for their higher level of subjective happiness is just plain dumb. Correlation...possibly, causation...no way (at least not provable by any real means).

I agree, and a short way to say all that is, "Fuck you, Frank!"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... +you+frank

You can also turn this into a 'men are happier than women', but then there's the other side that more men than women commit suicide. Maybe 'we' are stronger. Or less fake. I mean, telling yourself you're happy when you actually should be worrying about everything is kinda fake .
Conservatives are fake

groetjes,
Mirella

Happier = More Blissfully ignorant

I'm neither Democrat nor Republican.

In general (this is not an absolute), I find that my Republican acquaintances think about moral topics on a much more superficial level than my Democratic acquaintances do. Republican acquaintances are typically more likely to spit out "everything happens for a reason".

Look at what party has been in control of the US government for the past 8 years. There's why those ignorant pricks are happy, they don't want change and are happy that we're "killing the terrorists and keeping the minorities down". Then they also got their precious Jeebus on their side too. I fucking hate conservatives.

I find so much irony in Jammer's post following the one that says "Happier = More Blissfully ignorant". I can only wonder how happy Jammer is.

Welcome back, Jammer.


On that note, some of the happiest people I've ever met were children with Downs Syndrome.

There's so much about everything that you don't understand.

Downs Syndrome kids are pretty damn happy.

We could probably relearn some important lessons from them. They live in the moment. They enjoy the simple things in life. They don't over think every little thing and fret about every conceivable problem that they ultimately have no control over anyway.

I definately don't have Downs Syndrome.

And even though I was generalizing, conservatives are happy because for the most part, they're ignorant and don't care about others all that often. Plus they had the government on their side for a while now so almost all their political wet dreams came true (except for overturning Roe v. Wade).

What a giant pile of shit.

Conservatives are happy because they are ignorant?

Ignorance is believing that things are as black and white as that statement. You've got to be one smiley dude.

they should have a survey on non-voting americans such as myself...i'm quite happy