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Conservatives tend to say they're more satisfied with life than do liberals, but when they open their mouths, it's liberals who seem to show more happiness, a new study suggests.

A handful of studies of late have shown that conservatives tend to report greater satisfaction in life than their liberal counterparts. Social scientists have suggested that this could be because the cultural, personal and religious beliefs of conservatives are simply more adaptive. Others suggest those values serve as palliative psychological armor to rationalize the social inequities that tend to trouble liberals.

But a study looking at the words and expressions of members of Congress, published online Thursday in the journal Science, tested this apparent "ideological happiness gap" against smiling behavior and the use of positive and negative words. It found that liberals smile more, their smiles tend to show more genuine enjoyment, and they use more positive language than their conservative counterparts.

So what gives? Are conservatives hiding an inner grumpiness? Are liberals out of touch with their inner happiness?

Here's what researchers think is going on, and it could have implications on the way social science is conducted and public policy is evaluated.

The ideological happiness gap that has received so much attention is largely based on self-reporting. UC Irvine social psychologist Sean Wojcik, the lead author of the study, suspected there could be a difference in the way conservatives and liberals filled out psychological questionnaires used to gauge life satisfaction and happiness.

Conservatives tend to have what we call more of a self-enhancing style of self-report, which involves a more flattering way of evaluating the self," Wojcik said.

Previous studies have shown that such self-enhancement is more common among individualists, in Western cultures, among those who believe more strongly in hierarchies, and among the religious, all of which are traits common to U.S. conservatives.

Researchers used YourMorals.org, a psychological research website, and it basically duplicated what other studies have found - conservatives report higher rates of happiness. But it also showed that "self-deceptive enhancement" was higher among conservatives than among liberals, and in fact was mediating the association between ideology and life satisfaction.

They next turned to the 113th Congress, a two-year session that just ended in January. Where else, they figured, is the liberal-conservative divide more apparent? The voting record of members provides an easy measure of their ideology. The Congressional Record records their words, and the Congressional Pictorial Directory captures their facial expressions.

Originally posted here:
If you're happy but don't show it, you're conservative

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By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter Latest Mental Health News

THURSDAY, March 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Offering a fresh spin on the red-blue political divide, new research suggests that Americans who lean liberal may be a little bit happier than their conservative counterparts.

The finding -- though far from definitive -- comes from a series of related studies that attempted to grade happiness based on the way roughly 5,000 people of varying political stripes spoke and smiled.

"When we looked at both behavior and political ideology, we found that liberals actually express greater happiness than conservatives," said study lead author Sean Wojcik, who conducted the research while a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine.

"But it's worth noting that the difference was pretty small," Wojcik added. "So I want to be cautious. The results were significant. And strikingly consistent. But it's not that liberals were elated, and conservatives were depressed. We did find a happiness gap. But that gap was small."

Wojcik and his colleagues reported their findings in the March 13 issue of the journal Science.

Wojcik said the finding that liberals seem slightly happier runs counter to several recent studies that found a small happiness gap favoring conservatives. That earlier research was based on "self-reports" -- meaning happiness levels were graded on whether study participants agreed or disagreed with statements such as: "In most ways my life is close to ideal."

But Wojcik said there can be problems with self-reports. An initial life satisfaction survey that Wojcik's team conducted with more than 1,400 men and women found that, while conservatives say they are happier, they're also more likely than liberals to enhance and elevate their own testimonials. This may owe to conservatives' political ideology that can emphasize traits such as individualism, he said.

With that in mind, Wojcik and his team based their happiness evaluations not on survey responses but on documented behavior.

The researchers started with the 113th Congress, which concluded its two-year run on Jan. 3, 2015. Texts drawn from the congressional record of 2013 -- along with 18 years of prior congressional notes -- were analyzed. The result: more conservative members of Congress were a little less likely to use positive language than their liberal colleagues, the study authors said.

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Are Liberals Happier Than Conservatives?