Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness

Science
Sean P WojcikPeter H Ditto

Abstract

Research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals has relied exclusively on self-report measures of subjective well-being. We show that this finding is fully mediated by conservatives' self-enhancing style of self-report (study 1; N = 1433) and then describe three studies drawing from "big data" sources to assess liberal-conservative differences in happiness-related behavior (studies 2 to 4; N = 4936). Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs. Our results were consistent across large samples of online survey takers, U.S. politicians, Twitter users, and LinkedIn users. Our findings illustrate the nuanced relationship between political ideology, self-enhancement, and happiness and illuminate the contradictory ways that happiness differences can manifest across behavior and self-reports.

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Citations

Mar 6, 2016·Behavior Research Methods·Morteza DehghaniNiki Jitendra Parmar
Mar 20, 2016·Behavioural Brain Research·Mark MillsMichael D Dodd
Jun 19, 2018·Evolutionary Psychology : an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior·John T JostH Hannah Nam
Oct 19, 2017·Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking·Kaisheng LaiRongjun Yu
Dec 13, 2018·Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin·Jeremy A FrimerMatt Motyl
Mar 7, 2019·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Jonathan Baron, John T Jost
Mar 7, 2019·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Peter H DittoJoanne F Zinger
Mar 23, 2019·Journal of Interpersonal Violence·Rupa JoseAnita Raj
Aug 2, 2017·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Pauline Grosjean, Robert C Brooks
Feb 17, 2017·Journal of Nonverbal Behavior·Phoebe H C MuiArpine Hovasapian
Nov 2, 2018·Telemedicine Journal and E-health : the Official Journal of the American Telemedicine Association·Xuan LiuJia Li
Jan 22, 2020·Nature Communications·Shahrzad GoudarziEric D Knowles
Jun 1, 2018·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Peter H DittoJoanne F Zinger
Apr 10, 2021·Frontiers in Psychology·Robert N CollinsSarah S Schywiola
Sep 25, 2021·PloS One·Christopher P Reinders FolmerBenjamin van Rooij

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