Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Sean Wojcik; Arpine Hovasapian; Jesse Graham; Matt Motyl; Peter Ditto

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 1 data application/x-stata 54.5 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 1 syntax text/plain 1.4 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 1 syntax text/x-stata-syntax 1.4 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 2 additional data text/csv 1.1 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 2 additional data text/plain 1.1 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 2 data application/x-stata 50.7 KB 02/20/2015 07:34:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 2 syntax text/plain 2.6 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 2 syntax text/x-stata-syntax 2.6 KB 01/29/2015 02:27:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 3 data application/x-stata 16.2 MB 01/29/2015 02:28:PM
Wojcik et al - Behavioral Happiness - Study 3 syntax text/plain 923 bytes 01/29/2015 02:27:PM

Project Citation: 

Wojcik, S., Hovasapian, A., Graham, J., Motyl, M., & Ditto, P. (2015). Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor]. https://doi.org/10.3886/E26078V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary Research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals has relied exclusively on self-report measures of subjective well-being. We show that this finding is fully mediated by conservatives' self-enhancing style of self-report (Study 1; N=1433), and then describe three studies drawing from "big data" sources to assess liberal-conservative differences in happiness-related behavior (Studies 2-4; N=4936). Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech, and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs. Our results were consistent across large samples of online survey takers, American politicians, Twitter users, and LinkedIn users. Our findings illustrate the nuanced relationship between political ideology, self-enhancement, and happiness, and illuminate the contradictory ways that happiness differences can manifest across behavior and self-reports.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources n/a (n/a)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms self-enhancement; happiness; linguistic analys; FACS; political ideology
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States
Time Period(s):  View help for Time Period(s) 1/1/2008 – 6/1/2015


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V1 [2015-02-21]

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