Jul 10, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from Mediate: Arthur C. Brooks, author of Gross National Happiness, explored how peoples’ political beliefs influence their happiness in a New York Times column Saturday, and revealed that conservatives are happier than liberals, although he points out it could have more to do with demographics than which cable news channel someone prefers.
“Scholars on both the left and right have studied this question extensively, and have reached a consensus that it is conservatives who possess the happiness edge,” Brooks wrote. “Many data sets show this. For example, the Pew Research Center in 2006 reported that conservative Republicans were 68 percent more likely than liberal Democrats to say they were “very happy” about their lives. This pattern has persisted for decades. The question isn’t whether this is true, but why.”
