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| Conservatives Happier Than Liberals |
| 2008-05-09 |
| 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 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." |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #5 Some are just rational, just like some liberals. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-05-09 17:29 |
| #4 Is it that conservatives rationalize, or are conservatives just rational? |
| Posted by: Clomoper Dark Lord of the Sith6587 2008-05-09 15:58 |
| #3 tu, Liberals making shit is certainly the thing they do best. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2008-05-09 10:50 |
| #2 Liberals look for shit to worry about. If there's nuthin there, they'll make it up. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-05-09 09:40 |
| #1 Modern liberals are professional grievance mongers. When the world is not sufficiently unfair to justify their worldview, these cultural Marxists manufacture an oppressor class and an oppressed class - a sure formula for a permanently embittered existence. |
| Posted by: Rupert Uleling8086 2008-05-09 04:11 |