Conservatives are happier, but liberals lead more psychologically rich lives, research finds
Conservatives are happier, but liberals lead more psychologically rich lives, research finds

Conservatives are happier, but liberals lead more psychologically rich lives, research finds

Conservatives are happier? Since when?
Like, I can disprove that by turning on Fox News for two minutes. It's nothing but 24/7 anger porn and rage bait.
Maybe it's got the effect to externalise any of the sources of whatever is wrong in your life. Fox gives you easy answers for all your problems, and it's always some 'other'. You don't have to change or work on yourself to improve things, you just have to vote for the guys that will deport/jail the ones holding you back.
Id pay special attention to Study 4 which seems to really hit my key points of criticism as a layman. Study 4 controlled for census region but I’d really like to see this controlled for rural vs urban populations at a finer scale. Without that adjustment I question the validity of other studies included.
That said study 4, if I’m reading it right, still found a correlation with happiness in conservatives but that correlation did not survive when religion was accounted for. Which tells you everything you need to know.
The conservatism isn’t the primary ideology, this is just a roundabout way of asking if religious people report being happier and having more meaning and of course they do. The religious aspect almost overrules the political angle entirely.
You know how people in groups tend to do pretty bad stuff without reflection and proper teaching, like bullying and excluding others?
That's because it feels good to do these things, as long as you shield yourself from the negative consequences. It doesn't feel good once you develop real empathy, but until that point doing these things will make you happy.
You can’t develop empathy until you break out of the filter bubble. To understand a person you first need to know what their life is like, what motivates them, what values they hold.
Everything I’ve seen tells me that the opacity runs in both directions. Empathizing with someone who holds radically different, diametrically opposed values to your own is very difficult.
But making other people miserable is one of their favorite ways of making themselves happy
Have you seen a Lemmy feed recently? Pot meet kettle stuff.
Maybe that's what makes them happy?