Ignorance is bliss

According to a study conducted by researchers at New York University, conservatives are happier than liberals. The reason: in a word, ignorance.

Now, that's not exactly how the study phrased it, but that's the gist of it:

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

"Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives," the researchers write in the June issue of the journal Psychological Science, "apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."

Translating from academic-ese, the study is saying that conservatives simply don't give a shit about inequality. Yeah, I know, and the sky is blue, too. But apparently, from a scientific point of view, conservatives just don't worry about the kinds of things that, well, make liberals like us worry ... like poverty, discrimination, war, etc.

So I guess all you have to do to be as happy as a conservative is to rationalize all the bad things in society -- brought on predominately by Republicans, I should add -- and give the standard response, "I've got mine, so screw you!" ...

You can't get a job? I have one, so screw you! ...

You're losing your home? Well, I have one, so screw you! ...

Your child is fighting in Iraq? Well, mine's not, so screw you!

Wow -- I feel more happily conservative already!