Survey Says
A Pew research poll found that people who identified themselves as Republicans are happier than people who identified themselves as Liberal Democrats. Not Democrats or Moderates, Liberal Democrats
The survey of more than 3,000 adults found that 47 percent of conservative Republicans are "very happy,” as are 45 percent of moderate/liberal Republicans. But only 28 percent of liberal Democrats say they are very happy, as do 31 percent of conservative/moderate Democrats. Among Independents, 29 percent are very happy.
It also seems true that Republicans in general are happier than Democrats in general and that's been true for a long time, according to Pew
Some 45% of all Republicans report being very happy, compared with just 30% of Democrats and 29% of independents. This finding has also been around a long time; Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey began taking its measurements in 1972. Pew surveys since 1991 also show a partisan gap on happiness; the current 16 percentage point gap is among the largest in Pew surveys, rivaled only by a 17 point gap in February 2003.
And it doesn't matter if you control for income
poor Republicans are happier than poor Democrats; middle-income Republicans are happier than middle-income Democrats, and rich Republicans are happier than rich Democrats.
To contrast this, a study by UC Berkley concluded that whiny kids grow up to be Conservatives.
In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.
Huh. Because personal experience is that the more Left the adult, the more whiny they are. Perhaps "Conservatives" outgrow their whinyness? Or perhaps there's another explaination.
Block admits in his paper that liberal Berkeley is not representative of the whole country. But within his sample, he says, the results hold.
Ah. Well I guess you can throw the words "random sample" out the window for this study. But there is a more insightful criticism of this study by JJ Sutherland at NPR
What bothers me here is the assumption that tradition and authority are found only in conservative politics. That is a big assumption. The dogmatic nature of the left can be just as rigid and stultifying, and many people of that political persuasion have a damned poor view of heterodoxy. (Go here for an article in Slate by Will Saletan on abortion orthodoxy on the left, and I would throw in gender roles, race, labor, and a few others. And don't even get me started on this piece from The New York Times today about tourist orthodox lefties swallowing Hugo Chavez's propaganda hook, line and sinker.)
If you're looking for a comfortable, predictable line that helps think your whiny thoughts for you, I'd say leftist ideology is also great, and would suffice.
A more interesting question might be, (instead of defining left as being open and loose, and right as being tight and controlled) what personality traits of children turn into political and ideological rigidity of any sort as adults? My money is that it's the whiny ones. So next time, give 'em something to really cry about.
Sounds about right.
