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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