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Are Conservatives a Happier Lot Compared to Liberals?

by Savitha C Muppala on May 9 2008 5:34 PM

A new study has suggested that those who live by conservative ideologies portray a higher happiness quotient as compared to those embracing liberal ideologies. And the reason why it is so is because conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

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

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.

According to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University, if your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened.

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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 conservative apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light," Live Science quoted the researchers, as saying.

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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. 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 researchers said.

The study is published in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science.

Source-ANI
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