{"id":53471,"date":"2013-01-29T11:31:32","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T16:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53471"},"modified":"2013-01-29T16:36:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T21:36:56","slug":"are-conservatives-happier-than-liberals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/29\/are-conservatives-happier-than-liberals\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Conservatives Happier than Liberals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair Socioblog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Arthur Brooks argues that conservatives are happier than liberals.<\/p>\n

Brooks starts with a reference to Barack Obama\u2019s remark four years ago\u00a0 about \u201cbitter\u201d blue-collar Whites who \u201ccling to guns or religion.\u201d Misleading, says Brooks.\u00a0 So is a large body of research showing conservatives as \u201cauthoritarian, dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity, fearful of threat and loss, low in self-esteem and uncomfortable with complex modes of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that research, it\u2019s conservatives, not liberals, who identify themselves as happy.\u00a0 And, Brooks adds, the farther right you go on the political spectrum, the more happy campers you find.<\/p>\n

Brooks cites a couple of surveys that support this view.\u00a0 I was a bit skeptical, so I went to the GSS.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Sure enough, by about 10 percentage points, more conservatives identify themselves as \u201cvery happy\u201d than do liberals.\u00a0 The difference is even higher among the extreme conservatives.\u00a0\u00a0 As Brooks says, \u201cnone, it seems, are happier than the Tea Partiers, many of whom cling to guns and faith with great tenacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brooks cites two important factors linking political views and happiness: marriage (with children) and religion.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t depend on education, race, sex or age; the happiness difference exists even when you account for income.*<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I still found it hard to reconcile these sunny right-wingers with the image of bitter and angry Tea Partiers.\u00a0 Then I remembered that the Tea Party is a very recent phenomenon.\u00a0 To a great extent, it\u2019s a reaction to the election of President Obama.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But Brooks is looking at pre-Obama studies of happiness.\u00a0 The most recent one he cites is from 2006.\u00a0 As the GSS graph above shows, Brooks is correct when he says, \u201cThis pattern has persisted for decades.\u201d\u00a0 But those decades don\u2019t include the Tea Party.<\/p>\n

Maybe conservatives were happy because until recently, they didn\u2019t have much to be bitter about.\u00a0 The US was their country, and they knew it.\u00a0\u00a0 Then Obama was elected, and ever since November 2008 conservatives have kept talking about \u201ctaking back our country.\u201d (See my \u201cRepo Men\u201d post<\/a> from 2 1\/2 years ago.)<\/p>\n

What if we look at the data from the Obama years?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Maybe that bitter Tea Party image isn\u2019t such a distortion.\u00a0 The GSS does not offer \u201cbitter\u201d or \u201cTea Party\u201d\u00a0 as choices, but those who identify themselves as \u201cextreme conservative\u201d are nearly three times as likely as others to be \u201cnot too happy.\u201d\u00a0 And overall, the happiness gap between conservatives and liberals is hard to find.<\/p>\n

For all I know, Brooks\u2019s general conclusion may be correct, but the recent data do at least raise some questions and suggest that the political context is itself a relevant variable.<\/p>\n

Nearly eighty years ago, Harold Lasswell said that politics is about \u201cwho gets what, when, and how.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe the lesson here is that if you are going to study the connection between political views and happiness, you should take account of who is getting what, and when.<\/p>\n

*That\u2019s a bit misleading.\u00a0 Happiness is in fact related to income, race, and education in exactly the ways you would expect, though for some reason Brooks does not include those variables in his analysis.\u00a0 What Brooks means is that the religion effect holds even when you control for those variables.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Jay Livingston is\u00a0the\u00a0chair of the Sociology Department at\u00a0Montclair State University<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him at\u00a0Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair Socioblog. In the New York Times, Arthur Brooks argues that conservatives are happier than liberals. Brooks starts with a reference to Barack Obama\u2019s remark four years ago\u00a0 about \u201cbitter\u201d blue-collar Whites who \u201ccling to guns or religion.\u201d Misleading, says Brooks.\u00a0 So is a large body of research showing conservatives as \u201cauthoritarian, dogmatic, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[329,85],"class_list":["post-53471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emotion","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53471"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53476,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53471\/revisions\/53476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}