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Republicans are happier than Democrats,
according to the report "Are We Happy Yet?" recently
released by the Pew Research Center. Based on a nationally representative,
random sample in the United States, 45% of Republicans report
being "very happy," compared with just 30% of Democrats
and 19% of Independents.
What is particularly striking
about this finding is that it is not simply a reflection of the
current political environment. Rather, as the Pew report notes,
Republicans have been consistently happier than Democrats throughout
the entire period since 1972, when the General Social Survey
(GSS) began measuring happiness in the US.
What's more, Republicans are
happier than Democrats even after controlling for other factors.
For instance, among individuals making less than $30,000 per
year, 28% of Republicans report being "very happy,"
versus 23% of Democrats. Among individuals making over $75,000
per year, 52% of Republicans report being very happy versus 41%
of Democrats.
So how can these consistent
differences in happiness be explained? Three types of causal
relationships that may be invoked to explain this association
between party affiliation and happiness. Being a Republican may
cause greater happiness. Or it may be that happier people
are more likely to become Republican. Or, perhaps both happiness
and party affiliation are related because both are determined
by some other causal factor.
To better understand how these
causal relationships might operate let's look at some potential
sources of happiness, or subjective well being, at a more general
level.
Part of individual happiness
is likely determined by complex psychological dispositions, from
more stable elements such as personality traits and attitudes
to more transitory elements like emotional states or moods. However,
there is no apparent reason to assume that these psychological
characteristics vary systematically with political affiliation.
That is, it's hard to imagine any reason why, if there are individuals
that are genetically or psychologically predisposed to be happier,
they are also are more likely to become Republicans.
What seems more probable is
that, if some individuals are more genetically or psychologically
predisposed to be happy than others, then such characteristics
are randomly distributed in the population. Turning from purely
psychological sources of happiness, then, let's look at some
more social psychological and sociological sources. The scholarly
literature on subjective well-being, particularly research on
job satisfaction, suggests another place to look: how individuals
interpret and evaluate objective situations and how successful
they are in achieving their goals and aspirations.
One potential source of happiness,
then, is individual interpretations and evaluations of objective
conditions. Is a given individual satisfied with a particular
state of affairs in which they find themselves, with their job
or their community? What about the economic and social situations
of their country and/or the world?
It may be that for most individuals,
happiness is based on evaluations of such objective circumstances.
But people tend to selectively perceive and emphasize aspects
their "objective situation" any two individuals
in the same circumstances may perceive, and hence understand
the same situation differently. A further complication is that
happiness likely depends not only on how the objective situation
is perceived and defined, but also on what are an individual's
goals and aspirations, and how successful one is in achieving
these.
Even if most people define
subjective well-being in broadly comparable terms, such as "economic
concerns," individuals may vary in the specific criteria
by which such broad concerns are evaluated and how they prioritize
goals and aspirations. Thus, individual happiness may primarily
be determined by what an individual defines as important in terms
of her objective situation, what her goals are and how successful
she is in achieving them.
These social psychological
sources of happiness, particularly in terms of what goals are
prioritized and how one identifies with others, may vary systematically
with party affiliation. That is, it may be that Republicans are
happier than non-Republicans because they actually interpret
the world differently, prioritizing different goals and identifying
with different groups of people.
This explanation is similar
to a theory of job satisfaction offered by sociologist Randy
Hodson, who makes a distinction between different types of workers:
"smooth operators" and "good soldiers." Smooth
operators advance their own goals in the workplace as a first
priority and thus are likely to be satisfied, but they may or
may not advance organizational goals. In contrast, good soldiers
are likely to identify with their employer and thus be committed
to the organization, but may be unsatisfied, for example, if
they observe less effort on the part of smooth operators.
A similar difference in goal
prioritization and identification may be related to party affiliation.
I hypothesize that Republicans, as a group, may be happier because,
on average, they prioritize personal goals and largely
identify with people similar to them. Compared with Democrats
and Independents, their main goals are narrower and more selfish,
and thus more easily obtained. Despite having had to endure some
political defeats, including the Carter and Clinton administrations,
over the last 30 years, the economic situations of Republicans
and the people they care about most have remained relatively
good.
This is not to say that all
Republicans are selfish and unconcerned with the welfare of others.
But, as a group, the data on happiness are consistent with the
argument that they are more self-centered and less concerned
with social problems than Democrats or Independents. Republicans
certainly have opinions on social problems such as growing inequality
and war, but these problems may not enter into their definitions
of subjective well-being, or at least not as much as non-Republicans.
In contrast, Democrats and
Independents may be less happy because, on average, they define
their personal goals more broadly and they identify with less
fortunate groups of people. Thus, they are less happy, as a group,
because they are more concerned with growing problems in their
communities, in the US and the world.
If the foregoing interpretation
is correct, then it is neither happiness that leads to political
affiliation nor a particular political affiliation that determines
happiness. Rather, it is how one interprets the world, the goals
one prioritizes and the groups that one identifies with that
determine both party affiliation and happiness. This makes sense
intuitively. In short, it appears that Republicans are happier,
on average, than non-Republicans because they are more
likely to be individuals that selectively perceive their objective
circumstances so that they do not get overly concerned with the
misery and poverty of the world, and they more selfishly define
their own role in the world.
Matt Vidal is pursuing his doctorate at the University
of Wisconsin in Madison. He
can be reached at: mvidal@ssc.wisc.edu
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