The title is a bit miss leading. What I really meant was conservatives or Liberals not Republicans or Democrats. I just heard an interview with author, Jonathan Haidt. In December his book The Happiness Hypothesis. It is a historical look at happiness in the worlds cultures. The interviewer askes the question "Who is happier, conservatives or Liberals? Dr. Haidt responds quick and sure to the question. His research overwhelmingly reveals happiness to be on the side of right, the conservative side. This revelation comes in the early part of the interview. You can hear it here. He defines happiness and explains what it means to religious people and not religious people. His information is very scientific not self helpy.
4 comments:
any idea of where one could get text of that interview? sounds interesting. but I can't stream.
is he a liberal or a conservative?
i heard of another study that said that children who were pissy ended up being republicans.
thing is, when you only divide the question into two parts, the results are going to be off. there are so many other divisions within each of those huge groups (liberals and conservatives) that probably have more to do with happiness: like conservatives tend to be married and have families and to be more wealthy and that probably accounts for their greater reported happiness.
i think the interesting question is why people when they get families and some money no longer seem to want to care about people who don't have families and money. that's probably an unfair characterization of conservatives, huh. is everybody just looking out for their own interests in the end?
Emily, he is a Liberal. I must confess further, I used this part of the interview to try to catch some attention. He speaks about dems and reps very briefly. He said he had a lot of evidence to back up his argument. The over all idea is the nature of happiness. Conservitives get married and have families, this is true. One could argue that happy people get married, have kids and are rich. Maybe happy people choose these things.
Maybe happiness is some wierd selfishness. I do feel, like you, that Conservitives tend to quantate value using money. "I will buy a hybrid once I can save money on gas." It is natural for humans to be self-intrested. Maybe we could change the scripture to "The Republican man is an enemy to God". I joke.
Did you know that an international poll says that Danes are the happiest people. I guess they're all liberals.
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