Arthur Brooks — who has appeared on this blog a few times — has just published a new book, Gross National Happiness. He has agreed to blog here periodically on this subject and we are very pleased to have him.
Last week I posted on the happiness difference between conservatives and liberals. Non-partisan survey data clearly show a large, persistent “happiness gap” favoring the political right.
Lots of readers weighed in, offering explanations for these data patterns. Here were their most frequent explanations:
1. Conservatives and liberals have different lifestyles, particularly regarding religion and marriage, which explains why conservatives are happier.
2. Conservatives have a world-view that — right or wrong — lends itself to greater happiness.
3. Brooks is an untrustworthy fool.
While #3 might be meritorious, let’s leave it aside and just focus on explanation #1 here and #2 in the next post.
There is good evidence to back up demographic explanations for the happiness gap, and I have found in my research that they soak up about half the gap between left and right. Religion is arguably the most important of these characteristics.
Consider a couple of facts:
The 2004 General Social Survey (G.S.S.) reveals that 43 percent of people who attended a house of worship weekly (“religious” people, for short) said they were “very happy” with their lives, versus 23 percent of people who attended seldom or never (“secularists”).
Religious people are a third more likely than secularists to say they are optimistic about the future. Secularists are nearly twice as likely as religious people to say, “I am inclined to feel I am a failure.” Big happiness differences persist between religious and secular folks even when we correct for income, education, race, sex, and age.
Now combine these with the familiar evidence on politics and religion:
According to the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, religious conservatives outnumber religious liberals in America by nearly four to one.
The American political left is getting more godless, while the right is turning ever-churchier. While 27 percent of “extremely liberal” American liberals attended religious services weekly in 1974, only 16 percent did so by 2004.
In contrast, the percentage of “extremely conservative” church-attending conservatives rose over the same period from 29 percent to 57 percent.
No surprise, then: religious practice explains a good portion of the left-right happiness gap. In fact, when we combine religion and politics, happiness differences explode: see the chart below.
Religion, politics, and happiness, 2004. Source: General Social SurveyEven after accounting for religion (and a few other things, like marriage), however, a lot of the gap is still unexplained, and thus we also need to talk about world-view differences that might also affect happiness. My next post will dig into some of these differences.
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Jinsto, when you say, “religion was introduced to the slaves in the Caribbean Islands,” do you mean Christianity?
REPORTED feeling more happy being the operative term. They filled out a questionnaire.
Questionnaires are notoriously bad judges of these sorts of things… I think it’s important to look at other variables.
My personal opinion is that you’re probably right: a religion builds a community, and belonging to a community is one of the big things that makes someone happier. Especially among older people, church communities are probably the most common kind of community.
But… it should be investigated with more care, and hopefully using something besides questionnaires.
lol to a previous poster who said we should ask a spouse/significant friend to find out if a person is REALLY happy- the book of Ecclesiastes explicates this well- with wisdom comes unhappiness- and no Christian can thus argue against this point!?
Maybe this came around in an earlier discussion and I missed it, but…
Are the respondents ever asked by what criteria they judge happiness? Compared to how happy they have been before, or to some ideal, or to others, real or imagined? Maybe one group compares themselves to the less fortunate, and one group compares themselves to where they would like to be.
It’s like asking me if I feel safe in my neighborhood. Safe compared to where? How safe do I have to feel before I say “yes” when safety is never absolute.
Is anyone else reminded of the old adage, “Ignorance is bliss”?
Religious conservatives are happy? Ignorance, they say, is bliss.
Maybe Republicans on average are happier because of a psychological defect. I presume psychopaths are less unhappy about murder and mayhem than the typical person, and that the deaf are less pertubed by the din of city streets than those with more normal hearing. Maybe Republicans, on average, suffer from the psychological defect of Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, i.e. what they see around them is “the best of all possible worlds” while progressives and liberals see all around them a multitude of human suffering and a crying need for social intervention to increase the general public good.
I think this difference is entirely based on the world-view differences and the religious part is just a consequence. In my mind conservatives are characterized with a more dogmatic world-view. They tend to live by a relatively small set of rules in which they strongly BELIEVE. They also believe that there is only one RIGHT way of doing things and if you follow that way, you will be alright. That I think is the basis on which any monotheistic religion would flourish. Thus the more wide-spread church-going among the conservatives.
Liberals on the other hand tend to accept that there are more than one right way of doing things. They would question the status quo more frequently and are less likely to believe that there is one single book of rules that defines our lives. Therefore they are less likely to follow any major religion.
I also like very much what Cypher said to Neo in the movie Matrix:
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“You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? IGNORANCE IS BLISS.”
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The smaller your inner world is, the more significant you are in it. And the more fulfilled and happy you are