Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals (Religious Reason)

Arthur C. Brooks has been guest blogging on the Freakonomics blog about his new book, Gross National Happiness. The main point of the series is that conservatives are happier than liberals. Thus far, he has broken this down by religion. Religious people are more likely to be conservative, and religious people are much more likely to be happy. Half of religious conservatives are very happy, vs. less than a quarter of secular liberals. The other two cells of the table fall in between.

He has hinted that marriage is another big factor in conservatives' greater happiness. More on that hereafter.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So would that make political moderates . . . somewhat content?

Interesting premise, although one wonders about causation - does happiness tend to make one more conservative, or does holding to conservative tenets make one happy?

Does the study distinguish between social conservatives and more libertarian conservatives? I ask because the unhappiest people of my acquaintance are some secular, unmarried, libertarian male friends.

Stephanie