Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?
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| Research Article Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals? Jaime L. Napier and John T. Jost New York University ABSTRACT— In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine addi- tional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well- being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality. In our third study, we found that increasing economic inequality (as measured by the Gini index) from 1974 to 2004 has exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives, apparently because conserva- tives (more than liberals) possess an ideological buffer against the negative hedonic effects of economic inequality. In 2006, a public-opinion survey addressing the relation be- tween political orientation and happiness inspired headlines and editorials around the world. Specifically, according to the Pew Research Center, 47% of conservative Republicans in the United States described themselves as ‘‘very happy,’’ as com- pared with only 28% of liberal Democrats (Taylor, Funk, & Craighill, 2006, p. 16). The conservative columnist George Will relished these statistics, writing that ‘‘liberalism is a compli- cated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness’’ (Will, 2006). There are several reasons why conservatives might be happier than liberals, and only a few of these were considered by the Pew researchers. The least interesting of these, from a psychological perspective, involve demographic differences between liberals and conservatives with respect to income, age, education, sex, religiosity, and marital status. The results of the Pew survey sug- gest that the happiness gap associated with ideology is not entirely due to demographic factors, although religiosity does seem to play a significant role (Haidt, 2006). Nevertheless, at least two psy- chologically intriguing possibilities remain. First, there is a sizable research literature documenting robust differences between liberals and conservatives in terms of cog- nitive styles and motivation (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). To the extent that liberals tend to enjoy thinking more and to prolong cognitive closure, whereas conservatives tend to prefer relatively simple, unambiguous answers to life’s questions (Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & De Grada, 2006), liberals might become less satisfied with their current situation because of the deleterious effects of rumination and introspection (e.g., Wilson, Kraft, & Dunn, 1989). If this is the case, then one would expect that ideological differences in the need for cognition (Petty & Jarvis, 1996) would account for the gap in subjective well-being. A second possibility arises from system-justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Research shows that political conservatism is a system-justifying ideology in that it is associated with the endorsement of a fairly wide range of rationalizations of current social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements (Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008). Previous work reveals that the endorsement of system-justifying beliefs is generally associated with high personal satisfaction, as well as increased positive af- fect and decreased negative affect (Lerner, 1980; Major, 1994; Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007); this is referred to as the palliative function of system-justifying ideology (Jost & Hunyady, 2002). It follows from this line of reasoning that system-justification tendencies could provide a kind of ideological buffer against the negative hedonic consequences of social and economic in- equality. Given that equality—at least with respect to opportu- nities, if not always outcomes—is something of a cultural ideal and that most people (especially liberals) view equality as de- sirable and just (Rawls, 1971/1999), the presence of inequality poses a potential threat to the legitimacy of the status quo (Jost & Hunyady, 2002). Accordingly, Alesina, Di Tella, and MacCulloch (2004) found that there is a general tendency (stronger among Europeans than among Americans) for people to report less happiness as economic inequality in society increases. To the Address correspondence to Jaime L. Napier, Department of Psy- chology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003-6634, e-mail: jnapier@nyu.edu. P S Y C H O L O G I C A L S C I E N C E Volume 19—Number 6 565 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science extent that political conservatives are more likely than liberals and moderates to accept and justify the existence of unequal outcomes and to see them as fair and legitimate (Jost, Glaser, et al., 2003), it follows that they should be less adversely affected by inequality. Conversely, liberals may be less happy than con- servatives because they are less ideologically prepared to ratio- nalize (or explain away) the degree of inequality in society. It is well known by economists that the degree of inequality in the United States and other industrialized societies has been in- creasing over the past three decades (Milanovic, 2002; Saez & Piketty, 2006). If conservative ideology, as we have argued, serves a palliative function and buffers its adherents from discontent arising from societal inequality, then as inequality has grown, the gap in subjective well-being between liberals and conservatives should also have grown. In other words, the negative hedonic consequences of increasing inequality should have been felt more strongly by liberals, who lack ideological justifications for dis- parities, than by conservatives. To investigate why conservatives are happier than liberals (if indeed they are), we conducted three studies in which we ex- amined potential mediators of the relation between ideology and subjective well-being. In Study 1, we investigated all three ex- planations mentioned in this introduction—demographic fac- tors, differences in need for cognition, and the rationalization of inequality—using a nationally representative sample from the United States. In Study 2, we took a cross-national approach, analyzing data on both life satisfaction and self-reported hap- piness from 10 different countries included in the World Values Survey. In Study 3, we used macroeconomic data (i.e., the Gini index) to gauge the actual degree of inequality in the United States over a 31-year period and to determine whether, as hy- pothesized, the happiness gap between liberals and conserva- tives tended to widen as inequality grew. STUDY 1
Method For this study, we used data from the 2000 American National Election Study (NES; National Election Studies, n.d.). Partici- pants in the 2000 NES were selected and interviewed 1 to 2 months prior to the 2000 presidential election (Time 1) using a dual-frame sample, with some participants selected by prob- ability area sampling and interviewed in person and others selected through random digit dialing and interviewed by telephone. All participants were reinterviewed by telephone 2 to 3 months after the election (Time 2). Complete data were available for 1,142 respondents. Political orientation was assessed at Time 1 by taking the mean of responses to two items, one concerning ideology (liberal vs. conservative) and the other concerning party affiliation (Democrat vs. Republican). Responses were given on scales ranging from 1 (strong liberal/Democrat) to 7 (strong conservative/Republican) and were centered at the scale’s midpoint. The two items were highly intercorrelated (r 5 .46, p < .001). Need for cognition (Bizer et al., 2002) was assessed at Time 1 by taking the mean of responses to two items. The first was prefer- ence for difficult (vs. simple) problems, a dichotomous variable. The second was liking responsibility for thinking, which was rated on a 5-point scale ranging from dislike a lot to like a lot, but re- scaled to range from 0 to 1. These two items formed a reliable measure (r 5 .49, p < .001). Rationalization of inequality was assessed at Time 2 by taking the mean of responses to the six antiegalitarianism items in- cluded in the NES (a 5 .66; e.g., ‘‘It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others,’’ and ‘‘This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are’’). Life satisfaction was measured at Time 2, with participants indicating how satisfying their life was on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all satisfying) to 2 (completely satisfying). In addition to examining these variables of primary theoretical interest, we adjusted for demographic variables that could affect happiness: sex (0 5 male, 1 5 female), marital status (0 5 un- married, 1 5 married), church attendance (on a 6-point scale ranging from never to more than once a week), employment status (0 5 employed or not looking for work, 1 5 unemployed), age (6 intervals), education (7 intervals), and income (22 intervals). We also included the square of the centered age variable to account for the quadratic effect of age on happiness (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004). We used NES-recommended weights to adjust for nonre- sponse, within-household selection, poststratification of age and education, and attrition from Time 1 to Time 2. Results We constructed a five-step linear regression model predicting life satisfaction with political orientation in the first step; demo- graphic variables in the second step; church attendance in the third step; and the explanatory variables, need for cognition and rationalization of inequality, entered in the fourth and fifth steps, respectively. Because the dependent variable contained only three response categories, we used robust standard errors to correct for nonnormality of the residuals. As Table 1 shows, there was a significant positive relation between political orientation and life satisfaction, replicating the results of the Pew survey. In Step 2, we found that this relation persisted even after we adjusted for demographic variables. Furthermore, adjusting for church attendance in Step 3 and need for cognition in Step 4 brought about no change in the relation between conservatism and hap- piness. After adjusting for rationalization of inequality in Step 5, however, we found that the effect of conservatism on life satis- faction was no longer reliable. To test for the hypothesized role of rationalization of inequality as a mediator, we ran a regression model with liberalism-con- 566 Volume 19—Number 6 Why Are Conservatives Happier? servatism predicting rationalization of inequality. After adjusting for other variables in the model, we found that conservatism was significantly associated with rationalization of inequality, b 5
0.29, SE 5 0.02, p < .001. A Sobel test (Baron & Kenny, 1986) confirmed that, as hypothesized, rationalizing inequality significantly accounted for increased life satisfaction among conservatives, Sobel statistic 5 2.22, p < .03. Discussion The results from Study 1 offered initial support for our predictions using a nationally representative sample of American voters. Above and beyond the effects of church attendance, income, marital status, and other demographic variables, there was a significant effect of political orientation on life satisfaction; the difference between conservatives’ and liberals’ satisfaction with life was explained at least in part by conservatives’ stronger tendencies to rationalize economic inequality. However, we ob- tained no evidence that differences in cognitive style (as mea- sured by need for cognition) accounted for differences in life satisfaction. There were some clear limitations to Study 1. First, we used a fairly broad measure of the tendency to accept and rationalize inequality. According to system-justification theory, however, people (and especially conservatives) not only accept inequality in society, but also are motivated to see inequality as being caused by fair procedures and legitimate systems, such as meritocracy (e.g., Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003; Major, 1994). Second, it is at least conceiv- able that conservatives’ greater satisfaction in the 2000 NES was due to the fact that the Republican party had recently won the presidency. Third, Study 1 examined the palliative effect of conservative ideology in a single cultural context. We could not know whether the same effect would be found in other cultural contexts, and whether the relation between ideology and well- being would be more pronounced in countries with greater economic hardships. In Study 2, we addressed these issues using data from the World Values Survey. STUDY 2
We conducted two sets of statistical analyses for Study 2. First, we used nationally representative survey data from American citizens to further explore the relation between political orien- tation and subjective well-being, thereby replicating Study 1 with new measures of system justification and subjective well- being. Second, we expanded the cultural and geographic scope of this research by analyzing data from 10 countries using multilevel modeling. Specifically, we hypothesized that en- dorsing a meritocratic belief system (Kluegel & Smith, 1986), which is one very common means of rationalizing economic inequality, would account for the relation between political conservatism (or right-wing orientation) and subjective well- being. Furthermore, we expected that we would observe this pattern not only in the United States, but around the world, and that the palliative effects of ideology would be particularly strong in countries with a relatively low standard of living. Method Our sample came from the third wave of the World Values Survey (2006), which was administered from 1994 to 1999. The U.S. data were collected in 1995, during a Democratic presidency, and there were 1,176 U.S. respondents with complete data available. For the multicountry analyses, complete data were available for all of the person- and nation-level variables (de- scribed later in this section) for respondents in 10 countries. Thus, the multilevel analyses included respondents from the following countries, in addition to the United States: Czech Republic (1998; n 5 819), Finland (1996; n 5 794), Germany TABLE 1
Unstandardized Coefficients From Linear Regression Analyses of Self-Reported Life Satisfaction in the 2000 American National Election Study Predictor Step 1
Step 2 Step 3
Step 4 Step 5
Political conservatism 0.25 (0.06) nnn 0.19 (0.06) nn 0.15 (0.06) n 0.15 (0.06) n 0.09 (0.07) Income 0.13 (0.11) 0.15 (0.11) 0.15 (0.11) 0.15 (0.11) Education 0.19 (0.08) nn 0.16 (0.08) n 0.15 (0.08) + 0.18 (0.08) n Sex
À0.00 (0.04) À0.02 (0.04) À0.02 (0.04) À0.01 (0.03) Age 0.08 (0.06) 0.04 (0.06) 0.04 (0.06) 0.02 (0.06) Age squared 0.21 (0.05) nnn
0.20 (0.05) nnn
0.20 (0.05) nnn
0.21 (0.05) nnn
Marital status 0.14 (0.04) nnn 0.12 (0.04) nn 0.13 (0.04) nn 0.12 (0.04) nn Employment status À0.28 (0.12) n À0.27 (0.12) n À0.27 (0.12) n À0.27 (0.12) n Church attendance 0.20 (0.05) nnn
0.20 (0.05) nnn
0.19 (0.05) nnn
Need for cognition 0.04 (0.06) 0.03 (0.06) 0.23 (0.10) n Rationalization of inequality Note. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses. This analysis is based on a sample size of 1,142. + p < .10. n p < .05.
nn p < .01.
nnn p < .001. Volume 19—Number 6 567
Jaime L. Napier and John T. Jost (1997; n 5 1,511), New Zealand (1998; n 5 699), Norway (1996; n 5 1,019), Slovakia (1998; n 5 804), Spain (1995; n 5 634), Sweden (1996; n 5 880), and Switzerland (1996; n 5 715). Person-Level Measures Participants were asked to rate how personally satisfied they were with their lives, using a scale ranging from 1 (not at all satisfied ) to 10 (very satisfied). In addition, they were asked how happy they felt, on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all happy) to 4 (very happy). A final measure of subjective well-being was ob- tained by taking the mean of the life-satisfaction and happiness ratings after both were rescaled to range from 1 to 10 (mean a 5 .66, range 5 .53–.73). Political orientation was assessed using a single ideological self-placement item: Participants located themselves on a scale ranging from 1 (left-wing) to 10 (right-wing). Previous research shows that this item possesses good test-retest reliability and strong predictive validity (see Jost, 2006). Endorsement of mer- itocracy was measured with a single item; participants rated their beliefs on a scale ranging from 1 (hard work doesn’t generally bring success—it’s more a matter of luck ) to 10 (in the long run, hard work usually brings a better life ). We adjusted for several demographic characteristics: sex (0 5 male, 1 5 female), marital status (0 5 unmarried, 1 5 married), church attendance (on an 8-point scale ranging from never to more than once a week ), employment status (0 5 employed or not looking for work, 1 5 unemployed), income (three intervals), age (three intervals), age squared, and education (three intervals). All individual-level variables in the model were rescaled to range from 0 to 1. Nation-Level Predictors In a multilevel model involving respondents from the 10 countries, we adjusted for several macroeconomic indicators that relate to national happiness levels, including inflation and unemployment rates (Di Tella, MacCulloch, & Oswalk, 2001) and real gross do- mestic product (GDP) per capita (Diener & Oishi, 2000). Inflation and unemployment rates from the year of the survey were obtained from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop- ment (n.d.) database. GDP data from 1999 were obtained from the Penn World Table (Heston, Summers, & Aten, 2002); because GDPs are not normally distributed, the natural log of the GDP was used in the analyses (e.g., Diener & Tov, 2007). We used the United Nations Development Programme’s (1995) human development index (HDI) as a quality-of-life indicator. Nation-level predictor variables were centered at their grand means. Results
Subjective Well-Being Among Left- and Right-Wingers in the United States We first constructed a stepwise linear regression model to predict subjective well-being in the United States. Political orientation was entered in the first step, adjustment variables were entered in the second and third steps, and endorsement of meritocracy was entered in the fourth step. As Table 2 shows, political orientation was again a significant predictor of subjective well-being in Steps 1 and 2, even after we adjusted for demographic variables. 1 It remained significant in Step 3, after adjusting for church atten- dance. In Step 4, we found that the endorsement of meritocratic beliefs was, as hypothesized, positively related to subjective well- being. More important, adding this variable reduced the effect of right-wing orientation on well-being to the point of marginal significance. A mediational analysis revealed that right-wing orientation predicted endorsement of meritocratic beliefs, b 5 0.12, SE 5 0.04, p < .001, and that this endorsement accounted significantly for the relation between right-wing orientation and subjective well-being, Sobel statistic 5 2.49, p < .02. Subjective Well-Being Among Left- and Right-Wingers in All 10 Countries We also constructed a multilevel model, adjusting the intercept of each nation for GDP, unemployment rate, inflation rate, and the HDI. The results for Model 1 in Table 3 show that right-wing orientation was positively and significantly related to well-being after we adjusted for country-level variations in economic and other circumstances. Furthermore, in Model 2, meritocratic beliefs were significantly and positively associated with sub- jective well-being. A mediational analysis revealed that right- wing orientation predicted endorsement of meritocratic beliefs, b 5
0.13, SE 5 0.02, p < .001, and that this endorsement mediated the relation between ideology and well-being, Sobel statistic 5 5.82, p < .001. 2 In Models 3 and 4, we also examined interactions between ideological variables and quality of life (as measured by the HDI). As Table 3 shows, there was a marginally significant in- teraction between right-wing orientation and HDI, but no in- teraction between meritocratic ideology and HDI. Simple slopes analysis revealed that political orientation had a somewhat stronger effect on well-being in low-HDI countries, b 5 0.13, SE 5 0.03, p < .001, than in high-HDI countries, b 5 0.04, SE 5 0.02, p < .02, but that the effect of political orientation on well-being was significant in high-HDI countries as well. Discussion In Study 2, we addressed several limitations of Study 1 and obtained strong additional support for the hypothesis that ra- 1 We also examined the notion that the palliative effect of ideology is strongest for those persons who are most disadvantaged. In Study 2, we observed a sig- nificant interactive effect of ideology and income on well-being in the U.S. sample, b 5 À0.12, SE 5 0.06, p < .05; conservatives were relatively happy regardless of income level, whereas poor liberals were significantly less happy than wealthy liberals. However, this interaction was not replicated for the other countries examined in Study 2, nor did it attain significance in Study 1 or Study 2. 2 There was no significant random variation in the slope of the regression of subjective well-being on meritocratic beliefs (s 2 5 0.00, p > .40), so we fixed the variance of this slope to zero in order to test for mediation (e.g., Kenny, Korchmaros, & Bolger, 2003). 568
Volume 19—Number 6 Why Are Conservatives Happier? tionalizing inequality—for example, by seeing it as emerging from a fair, legitimate, and meritocratic system—serves a palliative function not only in the United States, but in nine other countries as well. That is, right-wingers report greater happiness and satisfac- tion than left-wingers around the world, and most especially in countries where the overall quality of life is relatively low. The endorsement of meritocratic beliefs is also associated with sub- jective well-being in these countries. Furthermore, meritocratic beliefs account for the association between political orientation and subjective well-being to a significant degree. In Study 3, we used data from the General Social Survey and the U.S. Census to test the hypothesis that as economic inequality in society has in- creased in recent decades, self-reported happiness has decreased, especially among liberals. We expected that conservatives’ ideo- logical beliefs have provided an emotional buffer against the negative hedonic consequences of inequality in society. TABLE 2 Unstandardized Coefficients From Linear Regression Analyses of Subjective Well-Being in the World Values Survey: United States Predictor Step 1 Step 2
Step 3 Step 4
Constant 0.78 (0.01) nnn 0.70 (0.02) nnn 0.68 (0.02) nnn 0.64 (0.02) nnn Right-wing orientation 0.07 (0.02) nnn
0.06 (0.02) n 0.05 (0.02) n 0.04 (0.02) + Income
0.05 (0.02) nnn
0.05 (0.02) nnn
0.05 (0.01) nnn
Education 0.02 (0.01) 0.02 (0.01) 0.01 (0.01) Sex 0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) Age À0.00 (0.02) À0.01 (0.02) À0.01 (0.02) Age squared 0.04 (0.01) nnn 0.04 (0.01) nnn 0.04 (0.01) nnn Marital status 0.08 (0.01) nnn
0.08 (0.01) nnn
0.07 (0.01) nnn
Employment status À0.05 (0.02) n À0.04 (0.02) n À0.04 (0.02) + Church attendance 0.04 (0.02) n 0.03 (0.02) n Meritocratic beliefs 0.07 (0.02) nnn
Note. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses. This analysis is based on a sample size of 1,176. + p < .10. n p < .05.
nnn p < .001. TABLE 3 Unstandardized Coefficients From Multilevel Linear Regression Analyses of Subjective Well-Being in the World Values Survey: 10 Countries Predictor Model 1 Model 2
Model 3 Model 4
Nation-level variables Intercept 0.66 (0.01) nnn
0.66 (0.01) nnn
0.66 (0.01) nnn
0.66 (0.01) nnn
Unemployment À0.01 (0.00) n À0.01 (0.00) n À0.01 (0.00) n À0.01 (0.00) n Inflation
À0.00 (0.00) À0.00 (0.00) À0.00 (0.00) À0.00 (0.00) + Gross domestic product À0.04 (0.04) À0.04 (0.03) À0.04 (0.04) À0.05 (0.03) HDI 1.81 (0.38) nn 1.88 (0.38) nnn 1.89 (0.37) nnn 1.93 (0.34) nnn Person-level variables Sex 0.01 (0.00) nn 0.02 (0.00) nn 0.01 (0.00) nn 0.02 (0.00) nn Age
À0.04 (0.01) nn À0.04 (0.01) nnn À0.04 (0.01) nn À0.04 (0.01) nnn Age squared 0.03 (0.01) nn 0.02 (0.01) nn 0.03 (0.01) nnn 0.02 (0.01) nn Marital status 0.06 (0.01) nnn
0.06 (0.01) nnn
0.06 (0.01) nnn
0.06 (0.01) nnn
Income 0.05 (0.01) nnn 0.04 (0.01) nnn 0.05 (0.01) nnn 0.04 (0.01) nnn Education 0.02 (0.01) n 0.02 (0.01) n 0.02 (0.01) n 0.02 (0.01) n Employment status À0.08 (0.02) nn À0.08 (0.02) nn À0.08 (0.02) nnn À0.08 (0.02) nn Church attendance 0.04 (0.01) nnn
0.03 (0.01) nnn
0.04 (0.01) nnn
0.03 (0.01) nnn
Right-wing orientation 0.07 (0.01) nnn 0.06 (0.01) nn 0.07 (0.01) nnn 0.06 (0.01) nn Right-Wing Orientation  HDI À0.66 (0.32) + À0.68 (0.32) + Meritocratic beliefs 0.07 (0.01) nnn
0.07 (0.01) nnn
Meritocratic Beliefs  HDI
À0.09 (0.23) Note. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses. HDI 5 human development index. + p < .10.
n p < .05.
nn p < .01.
nnn p < .001. Volume 19—Number 6 569
Jaime L. Napier and John T. Jost STUDY 3 After decades of relative economic stability following World War II, the gap between rich and poor in the United States has in- creased sharply since the 1970s (Saez & Piketty, 2006). In a period of rapidly growing inequality, conservatives should find it easier than liberals to be happy, insofar as their attitudes about inequality provide a psychological buffer against discontent with the system. Method Individual-level variables were available for 20 of the 31 years of the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1974 through 2004 (Davis, Smith, & Marsden, 2005). Sample sizes ranged from 695 to 2,536. Data were weighted to reflect national distributions. Survey respondents indicated their own level of happiness on a scale ranging from 1 (not at all happy) to 3 (very happy). The individual-level predictor variables included political orientation, which was measured by self-placement on a scale ranging from 1 (strong liberal) to 7 (strong conservative). We also adjusted for the following demographic characteristics: sex (0 5 male, 1 5 female), marital status (0 5 unmarried, 1 5 married), employment status (0 5 employed or not looking for work, 1 5 unemployed), age (nine intervals), age squared, income (three intervals), health status (four intervals), and education (five in- tervals). These variables were rescaled to range from 0 to 1. Year-level predictor variables—unemployment, inflation, and levels of income inequality—were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau (2005). A dummy variable indicated whether the president was Republican (vs. Democrat). Our measure of in- come inequality was the Gini index, which ranged from .395 in 1974 to .466 in 2004. All year-level variables except for the party-in-power dummy code were centered at their grand means. Results
We constructed a two-level model using robust standard errors to predict individual-level happiness. On the year level, the intercept was adjusted for unemployment, inflation, party in power, and the Gini index. At the individual level, we used political orientation and demographic adjustment variables to predict happiness. We also allowed political orientation to interact with the Gini index and with the party-in-power variable. As Table 4 shows, with the notable exception of the Gini co- efficient, the year-level variables had relatively slight influence on happiness scores. We found that happiness was inversely related to economic inequality; thus, increased inequality was indeed associated with decreased subjective well-being. There was again a significant effect of political orientation on happi- ness, indicating that conservatives tended to be happier than liberals, even after we adjusted for other variables. This effect was qualified by a two-way interaction between political orien- tation and the degree of economic inequality, b 5 1.52, SE 5 0.36, p < .001. As Figure 1 illustrates, inequality exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives. That is, increasing inequality was associated with a steeper decrease in happiness among liberals than among conservatives. 3 Analyses of simple slopes (Preacher, Curran, & Bauer, 2006) revealed that for liberals, happiness was significantly related to increasing inequality, b 5 À2.57, SE 5 0.79, p < .01, whereas for con- servatives, it was not, b 5 À1.06, SE 5 0.69, n.s. GENERAL DISCUSSION In three studies, using nationally representative samples from the United States and nine additional countries, we consistently found that conservatives (or right-wingers) are happier than lib- erals (or left-wingers). This ideological gap in happiness is not accounted for by demographic differences or by differences in cognitive style (as measured by the need for cognition in Study 1). We did find, however, that the rationalization of inequality—a core component of conservative ideology (Jost, Glaser, et al., 2003)—helps to explain why conservatives are, on average, happier than liberals. These findings are consistent with system- TABLE 4
Unstandardized Coefficients From a Multilevel Linear Regression Analysis of Self-Reported Happiness in the General Social Surveys, 1974–2004 Predictor Coefficient Year-level variables Intercept 2.07 (0.01) nnn Unemployment À0.01 (0.00) nnn
Inflation À0.00 (0.00) + Republican president À0.01 (0.01) Gini index À1.82 (0.72) n Individual-level variables Marital status 0.23 (0.02) nnn Education 0.08 (0.01) nnn
Sex 0.04 (0.01) nn Income
0.10 (0.01) nnn
Employment status À0.19 (0.03) nnn Age
0.20 (0.03) nnn
Age squared 0.13 (0.01) nnn Health status 0.44 (0.04) nnn
Political conservatism 0.06 (0.02) n Political Conservatism  Republican President À0.01 (0.02) Political Conservatism  Gini Index 1.52 (0.36) nnn
Note. Robust standard errors are given in parentheses. + p < .10. n p < .05.
nn p < .01.
nnn p < .001. 3 We also investigated additional measures of macroeconomic inequality, including the household-income-distribution ratio of the 90th to the 10th per- centile, the household-income-distribution ratio of the 80th to the 20th per- centile, the Theil entropy measure, and the mean logarithmic deviation of income (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). The same pattern of results was observed for all of these measures. 570
Volume 19—Number 6 Why Are Conservatives Happier? justification theory, which posits that viewing the status quo (with its attendant degree of inequality) as fair and legitimate serves a palliative function (Jost & Hunyady, 2002). Study 3, in particular, suggests that conservatism provides an emotional buffer against the negative hedonic impact of inequality in society. These findings contribute to the research literatures on the economic and psychological determinants of nation-level hap- piness. Our finding that worsening inequality is associated with decreased overall happiness levels is broadly consistent with previous findings that indicators of liberal development, includ- ing social capital, democratic governance, human rights, and peace, predict increased happiness at the national level (Diener & Seligman, 2004; Diener & Tov, 2007). However, our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives, apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light. This could explain, in part, why conservative governments tend to increase inequality more than liberal governments (Bartels, 2004). In addition, our work offers a theoretical framework that could help to explain why the negative relation between in- equality and happiness is stronger in Europe than it is in the United States. Alesina et al. (2004) proposed that the American emphasis on meritocratic ideology renders economic inequality less aversive to Americans than to Europeans (see also Hartz, 1955). Our studies provide support for the notion that ideological differences can, in fact, explain certain effects of inequality on happiness. There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality. Research sug- gests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their mar- riages compared with their more traditional counterparts (Wilcox & Nock, 2006), apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor (Coltrane, 2000). System-justifica- tion theory provides a powerful means of analyzing and appre- ciating the palliative effects of rationalizing various forms of inequality in social relations, as well as the costs of failing to do so.
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