Psychological Reports: Conservatives Are More Happy & Satisfied

Here's a PsyPost headline in a story featuring Republican governors Mike Pence and Doug Ducey speaking with supporters at a 2016 campaign rally at the Mesa Convention Center in Mesa, Arizona. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
Study suggests lower levels of neuroticism explain why conservative states are happier

Eric W. Dolan September 7, 2017

Source: http://www.psypost.org

Conservative states tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction because they have lower levels of neuroticism compared to liberal states, according to new research from a psychologist at Cape Breton University.
The study, published in the journal Psychological Reports, helps explain why there is a correlation between higher conservatism and higher life satisfaction.
“Previous research by others had shown that conservatives generally were happier and more satisfied with their lives than liberals. But why?
That question. - and another explanation - was posed by study author Stewart J. H. McCann: “Three different explanations had been put forward by others. However, I thought that there might be a fourth and more convincing explanation.” 

Mesa Mayor John Giles
Happy and more satisfied?

He went on to say,
“Existing research demonstrated that there are associations not only between higher conservatism and higher life satisfaction but also between lower neuroticism and higher life satisfaction and between lower neuroticism and higher conservatism. Perhaps if neuroticism was statistically controlled or effectively held constant, the association between higher conservatism and higher life satisfaction would vanish.”
“The relation between conservatism and life satisfaction might be dependent upon neuroticism levels. The present study was conducted to test this possibility in a state-level analysis.”

 

“The results of the present study strongly suggest that there is nothing inherent in a conservative worldview as opposed to a liberal worldview that promotes greater happiness and life satisfaction,” McCann explained. “Rather it is the underlying higher neuroticism that tends to be more likely in liberals and the underlying lower neuroticism that tends to be more likely in conservatives that accounts for the greater happiness and life satisfaction in conservatives.” . .

“For example, higher neuroticism is characterized by higher levels of vulnerability, self-consciousness, depression, tenseness, moodiness, angry hostility, impulsiveness, nervousness, anxiety, worry, emotional instability, and poor stress management.

Clearly, such a constellation does not bode well for happiness and satisfaction with life.”

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“I am assuming that the state-level relations are dependent upon parallel individual-level relations. Caution must be exercised in making such cross-level extrapolations. However, some comfort is taken from the fact that other researchers (Burton, Plaks, & Peterson, 2015) also have found the same dynamics in an individual-level analysis and reached the same conclusion regarding why conservatives tend to be happier and more satisfied with life.”
The study was titled: “State Resident Neuroticism Accounts for Life Satisfaction Differences Between Conservative and Liberal States of the USA“.

ARTICLE INFORMATION

Article first published online: August 11, 2017            

https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294117725072

 

Stewart J. H. McCann

Cape Breton University, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada

Corresponding Author: Stewart J. H. McCann, Department of Psychology, Cape Breton University, 1250 Grand Lake Road, Sydney, NS, Canada, B1P 6L2.

Email: stewart_mccann@cbu.ca 

 

Link >> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0033294117725072