ScienceDaily has an article today on happiness and politics.
The article summarizes a research report (Wojcik, et al., 2015) that appeared in Science recently. A group of five psychologists have taken another look at the previously reported result that political conservatives are happier than liberals. That earlier research was based on what the research subjects reported. On average, conservatives reported being happier than liberals.
This new research ignores what people claim about their own happiness and instead focuses on observable behaviors that are linked to happiness. The abstract from the Science article has this quote: "Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs."
So there you have it. Conservatives claim to be happier. Liberals actually are happier.
This result actually tallies well with much of the essential message of Jesus. Happy ("blessed") are the meek who don't force their ways upon others, but instead appeal for agreement. Happy are those who give mercy instead of insisting on everybody (that is, everybody else) getting the punishments that they so richly deserve. Happy are those who try to achieve peace.
Happiness comes through following the two most important laws: Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Just in case you've heard and repeated that second one so many times that it has lost its meaning, go back and look at it afresh: In whatever way you would like to treat yourself, treat everybody else on the planet in the same way. Get rid of selfishness. Don't put yourself first. Put others ahead of you. Give liberally to others who need it.
Live that way and you'll be happier.
References:
University of California - Irvine. (2015, March 12). Political liberals display greater happiness, study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150312142909.htm
Wojcik, S.P., Hovasapian, A., Graham, J., Moty, M., & Ditto, P.H. (2015). Conservatives report, but liberals display, greater happiness. Science, 347(627) 143-1246, doi: 10.1126/science.1260817
2015-03-13
I'm Happy to Report that I'm Happy!
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2 comments:
What I find interesting is that this is, to my knowledge, the first real use of actual, measurable, behaviors to define happiness.
You may be right, but I have not yet read the actual report in Science -- so I'm not sure how accurate the word "measurable" is. I can buy "observable", though.
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