Conservatives are happier than liberals, a new study has confirmed.
Researchers from the University of Chicago have discovered that people with conservative views are more likely to experience happiness and fulfilment.
Conservatives tend to have a higher level of belief in the fairness of society, which is an important basis for lifelong happiness.
In their paper, published in the Journal of Personality, Professor Shigehiro Oishi and his co-authors write: ‘Across six studies, we largely replicate earlier findings that happiness was associated with slightly more political conservatism.’
In contrast, liberals lead more psychologically rich lives marked by diverse and stimulating experiences.
According to the study, this could be because those with liberal views are typically more open to new experiences.
The researchers caution that these strong correlations do not necessarily mean psychological factors cause political views or vice versa.
‘Our work merely illustrates that a good life should not be narrowly construed as only either a happy life or a meaningful life,’ they added.
Scientists say that conservatives are more likely to be happy in their lives and to experience a greater sense of fulfilment and meaning. Pictured: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
Previous research into the connections between psychology and political views has largely focussed on happiness and meaning.
These two psychological metrics measure how satisfied someone is with their life and how much of a purpose or fulfilment they experience.
However, in this study, Professor Oishi and his colleagues also investigated the less-explored metric of ‘psychological richness’.
The researchers write: ‘A psychologically rich life is defined as a life filled with diverse, interesting experiences that result in perspective changes.’
This is distinct from happiness and meaning, since it emphasises diversity and complexity over contentment or purpose in life.
The connection between psychological richness and political leaning was tested across six different studies, each using slightly different sample groups, measures, and procedures.
These groups included four sets of university students in the US, 1,217 American adults, and 2,176 adults in South Korea.
However, despite these diverse samples, the results were extremely consistent across the different groups.
A new study has found that those with liberal views, such as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris (pictured), are more likely to live psychologically rich lives marked by diverse and challenging experiences
Generally, the higher someone scored for conservative views, the greater their score for happiness and meaning.
However, these six studies also revealed that conservatives tended to score worse for psychological richness.
This third aspect of wellbeing was more associated with liberal views, meaning the less conservative someone was the more likely they were to have a rich and diverse psychological life.
In their paper, Professor Oishi and his colleagues suggest that these trends can be explained by a few psychological factors.
Previous research has shown that conservatives feel more strongly that the current status quo and broader social order is fair, a trait called ‘system justification’.
The researchers write: ‘Happiness was also associated with system justification, or the tendency to see the current political, economic, and societal systems to be fair and defendable.’
Likewise, higher levels of meaning can be explained with reference to what the researchers described as a ‘Protestant work ethic’.
This is the belief, which is more common among conservatives, that hard work will inevitably lead to a justified reward and success in life.
The researchers say that liberalism is typically associated with a greater sense of openness. This leads to a greater chance of psychological richness but does not necessarily make people happy. Pictured, Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer
The researchers noted that when people had a stronger Protestant work ethic they also had a stronger belief that their life had purpose, value, or meaning.
As for psychological richness, the researchers suggest that this could be linked to the personality trait of openness.
Openness is one of the ‘big five’ personality traits which is associated with imaginative thinking, creativity, adaptability, and the ability to accept new information.
The researchers write: ‘Whereas extraversion and neuroticism are the strongest Big Five predictors of happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning in life, openness to experience is the strongest predictor of a psychologically rich life.’
Research has found that openness to experience is typically lower in conservatives, which could explain the trend for lower psychological richness and greater happiness.
However, Professor Oishi and his colleagues stress that their findings need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Firstly, while conservatism was almost always associated with greater happiness the Korean samples did not show the same correlation between political beliefs and psychological richness.
Conservatives, such as leader of the Conservative Party Kemi Badenoch (pictured), have a greater belief in the fairness of the status quo and in the idea that hard work will lead to reward. This typically lays the basis for more happiness and a sense of meaning
This suggests that the relationships could vary depending on cultural contexts.
Additionally, the researchers write: ‘We caution that our interpretation of the current findings is necessarily correlational, not causal.’
This means that conservatism does not necessarily make people happy nor has it been proved that being liberal causes someone to experience psychological richness.
Instead, it could be that there is some other factor such as socioeconomic background which jointly causes both of these traits.
The researchers conclude that the main importance of their findings is to show that happiness and meaning are not the only ways to think about happiness.
The authors conclude: ‘We are not claiming that a psychologically rich life is by any means better than a happy life or a meaningful life.
‘By broadening our understanding of what the “good” in a good life includes, the concept of psychological richness opens up new conceptual space within the science of well-being.’
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