Studies show liberals are more mentally ill than conservatives

Multiple studies in psychology and epidemiology suggest that self-identified liberals report higher rates of depression, anxiety, and lower life satisfaction than conservatives. For instance, a Columbia University study examining more than 86,000 U.S. high-school seniors over 13 years found that depression rates have been increasing for all adolescents, but the increase is sharpest among liberal-identifying students, particularly liberal girls (magazine.columbia.edu, 2024). Likewise, research in Social Psychological and Personality Science demonstrates that conservatives report a higher sense of meaning and purpose in life than liberals—even after controlling for religious belief (dornsife.usc.edu, 2019).

A large comparative study across 92 countries and 200,000 respondents showed that conservatives generally rate their life satisfaction more positively than liberals, particularly when living in societies with more conservative cultural norms (phys.org, 2016). In “Conservatives Are Happier than Liberals: The Mediating Role of Perceived Goal Progress and Flow Experience,” a U.S. sample study revealed that conservatives tend to feel greater subjective well-being, in part because they perceive more goal progress and experience flow, especially under stressful or threatening conditions (link.springer.com, 2020).

Real life examples also illustrate the pattern. Many liberal activists and thinkers are deeply attuned to generate chronic stress, moral distress, and rumination. By contrast, conservative individuals often draw strength from more stable institutions—religion, family, traditions—and tend to find meaning in continuity, order, and communal belonging.

Of course, these findings do not imply that all or most liberals suffer mental illness, nor that conservatives are immune; there are many countervailing factors. But the data supports the claim that, on average, liberals have more mental health challenges and lower subjective well-being compared to conservatives.

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samueltyler2 · 80-89, M

One study with many limitations. The study does suggest that those defined as conservatives by the researchers may have better feelings that there world is good and doesn't need much improvement. That may make someone happier, but also may limit creativity and the desire to do better. Here is the discussion's end, the perceived limitations, etc.

However, our study contains some limitations, and a major one refers to its correlational nature. Therefore, complementary studies should employ more rigorous causal designs such as experiments. For example, studies could experimentally test the effects of political ideologies (with their characteristic values) and situational threat (e.g., loss vs. no-loss conditions) on perceived goal progress, flow, self-control, and positive emotions. A second major limitation refers to the fact that we used a single item to measure political ideology. However, although the use of a limited number of items could have facilitated survey completion and thus could have ensured reliability of data, ideology constitutes a multifaceted and complex phenomenon that may require the use of several items to be properly captured (Okulicz-Kozaryn et al. 2014). However, the literature shows a lack of psychometric studies on the political ideology construct (Okulicz-Kozaryn et al. 2014). A third limitation refers to the fact that the study used a sample of participants coming from a Western country only (the United States). Because the notions of “conservatism” and “liberalism” can be differently interpreted according to the countries and cultures, the generalizability of our results to other Western countries should be done with cautious. Hence, this study should be replicated with other Western (and even non-Western) samples of participants. Lastly, this study was performed online, which may have generated a self-selection bias in the sampling, as the participants who voluntarily decided to take part in the survey would not represent the entire target population. However, the goal of our study was more about the investigation of general relationships between variables than about examining how a given group or community can function. However, the data collection through the online platform may have led to reduce the accuracy of participants’ responses, even if we attempted to limit this bias by encouraging participants’ task commitment through a financial remuneration. Moreover, as for any investigations using self-report measures, desirability social could have biased participants’ responses. Nonetheless, the methodology of this study attempted to prevent such a bias by informing the participants that their data would remain anonymous and confidential.

From an applied standpoint, our study has some implications. This study suggests that endorsing the view that the world comprises social and economic injustices (palliative function of system-justification), combined with the idea that inequalities are not fatalities and thus can be overcome through commitment to goal attainment process (perception of control), could help people maintain or even increase engagement in their goals despite the existence of obstacles. If this way of thinking would be more salient in conservatives than in liberals, adopting such a reasoning would not be enough to make conservative a liberal individual, since political ideology is inherently complex and thus cannot be reduced to separated cognitive variables.