In a recent essay for Social Science & Medicine – Mental Health, epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and co-authors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative teens. This gap was present in all years observed in the study (2005-2018). However, it grew significantly starting in 2012, as depressive affect unilaterally spiked among liberals. Three years later, conservatives also began reporting increases in depression – although that rise tapered off relatively quickly while the increases among liberals continued unabated.
Liberal girls tended to be significantly more depressed than boys, particularly after 2011. However, ideological differences swamped gender differences. Indeed, liberal boys were significantly more likely to report depression than conservatives of either gender.
The authors also found that the more educated a teen’s family was, the more likely the young people were to be depressed, and the more dramatic their rise in depression was after 2012.
Why is it that liberal teens are more consistently depressed than conservatives? Why might familial education correlate with heightened depression for liberal youth? Why was there a spike in depression (and a growing ideological divergence in depressive affect) post 2011, corresponding with the onset of the ‘Great Awokening’?
This essay will provide a deep dive into the literature on the relationship between ideology and subjective well-being in the hopes of shedding light on possible answers to these questions. The links will near-exclusively direct readers to peer reviewed research or (occasionally) preprints. It is my hope this essay serves as a one-stop shop for work on ideology and well-being in much the same way as a previous essay of mine has served as a key resource for understanding the (in)efficacy of diversity training. Let’s dive in.
Conservatives Report Greater Well-Being Than Liberals
Although the study by Gimbrone et al. was focused on trends among young people, the well-being gap between conservatives and liberals is not unique to youth. The gap manifests clearly across all age groups and is present as far back as the polling goes.
In the General Social Survey, for instance, there has been a consistent 10 percentage point gap between the share of conservatives versus liberals who report being ‘very happy’ in virtually every iteration since 1972 (when the GSS was launched).
Academic research consistently finds the same pattern. Conservatives do not just report higher levels of happiness, they also report higher levels of meaning in their lives (although they also report greater subjective well-being even when engaged in work they don’t find particularly meaningful).
The effects of conservativism seem to be enhanced when conservatives are surrounded by others like themselves. However, the pattern holds across social contexts. In an analysis looking at 90 countries from 1981 through 2014, the social psychologists Olga Stavrova and Maike Luhmann found “the positive association between conservative ideology and happiness only rarely reversed. Liberals were happier than conservatives in only 5 out of 92 countries and never in the United States.”
It is empirically unclear why this pattern is so ubiquitous, not just in the contemporary United States but also historically (virtually as far back as the record goes) and in most other regions as well. There are a handful of prominent theories.
Conservatives are more likely to be patriotic and religious. They are more likely to be (happily) married and less likely to divorce. Religiosity, in turn, correlates with greater subjective and objective well-being (here, here, here). So does patriotism. So does marriage. Consequently, some have argued that the apparent psychological benefit of conservativism actually comes from feeling deeper connections with one’s country, one’s family and the Divine. On this model, conservativism itself would be largely incidental to the happiness gap. A liberal who was similarly religious, or patriotic, or had a similarly happy marriage, would be expected to have similar levels of happiness as conservative peers.
In a similar vein, studies have repeatedly found that conservatives – both politicians and laymen – tend to be more conventionally attractive than liberals (and have better sex lives). Moreover, people who are healthier in childhood have been shown to be more likely to become conservative as adults. Meanwhile, people with high measured cognitive ability are also more likely to support economic conservativism.
In response to findings like these, some have speculated that the natural advantages and better treatment that some people enjoy predispose them towards conservativism (to justify the inequalities they benefit from). The happiness gap between liberals and conservatives may, in turn, be a simple product of the reality that conservatives tend to find themselves in more fortunate social positions (more attractive, healthy, intelligent, socially-integrated). And conservativism may help these folks maintain their happiness by legitimizing the privileges they exploit to maintain or enhance their social position.
However, there are some deep problems with these hypotheses.
As it relates to cognitive ability, there doesn’t seem to be a meaningful relationship between smartness and happiness (really low intelligence is associated with lower subjective well-being, but after that it’s a wash). And, again, the relationship between measured cognitive ability and ideology is mixed: people who score highly on aptitude tests tend to be economically conservative, yes, but they also skew culturally liberal. Innate intellectual advantages, therefore, cannot easily explain the broader observed well-being gap between conservatives and liberals.
With respect to other advantages conservatives are more likely to have, the relationship between many of these assets and conservativism likely flows both ways.
For instance, the conservative emphasis on personal responsibility and agency may help explain observed differences in physical health and appearance (due to conservatives trying to control what they can control in their lives through diet and exercise) rather than positive physical attributes driving people towards conservativism. Indeed, belief in free will and self-efficacy have been shown to strongly influence people’s behaviors and subjective well-being.
Conservativism may likewise render people more likely to get married and stay married. Hence even if it was established that it is differential patterns of marriage rather than conservativism per se that drive the happiness gap, insofar as conservativism is a critical influence on differential marriage outcomes, ideology would still significantly inform happiness in an indirect way.
Likewise, political scientist Ryan Burge has demonstrated that independent of religious attendance, liberals are roughly twice as likely to report mental illness as conservatives. This is just as true for people who regularly attend religious services as it is for people who never attend.
Religiosity does provide benefits independent of conservativism. However, Burge demonstrates, the effects of religion are dramatically enhanced among conservatives in a way that is distinct from moderates and liberals. The well-being gap is not simply a product of conservatives being more religious, it also seems to be a product of conservativism itself, and it manifests even when controlling for level of religiosity.
However, the most challenging reality for the ‘privilege + system justification’ narrative of the ideological happiness gap is that, as I spell out in my forthcoming book (and this talk), wealth increasingly correlates with liberal political parties and views in the U.S. and many other countries. That is, the ‘winners’ in the current economy are increasingly the people who are most depressed. This is hard to explain if the happiness gap is purely a function of privilege.
It’s further the case that immigrants and minorities in the U.S. are more likely to be religious and socially conservative as compared to native-born whites. Likely not coincidentally, immigrants and racial or ethnic minorities are also significantly less likely to be diagnosed with depression as compared to non-Hispanic white peers. This is likely not a result of the ‘privilege’ they enjoy relative to native-born non-Hispanic whites.
In a similar vein, conservativism has been shown to have even larger well-being effects for senior citizens than younger people. It helps adherents preserve a sense of value, meaning and self-esteem even when they are no longer as physical vital, sexually attractive, mentally acute or economically productive as they once were.
Likewise, the relationship between conservativism and happiness is especially pronounced in countries facing threat or adversity (and the well-being benefits of religion and patriotism are also enhanced by adverse material circumstances) – further undermining the idea that the relationship between conservativism and happiness is driven primarily by social advantage and system justification.
Instead, it seems likely that conservativism and ideological fellow travelers (religiosity, patriotism) may help people make sense of, remain resilient in the face of, and respond constructively to, inequality and misfortune – irrespective of where they fall on the social strata. Liberal ideology, by contrast, may not provide the same benefits to adherents.
Liberals Are Far More Likely to be Depressed or Anxious Compared to Conservatives
Conservatives report significantly higher levels of happiness than liberals. On the other end of the spectrum, liberals are significantly more likely to experience adverse mental and emotional conditions. Some have argued that these differences in negative psychic states may explain most of the persistent divergence between liberals and conservatives in subjective well-being measures.
Investigations consistently find that people who identify with liberal ideology are significantly more likely than others to be depressed, anxious. Liberals are also much more likely than conservatives to be diagnosed with mental illnesses or disorders. As Jonathan Haidt recently illustrated with Pew Research data, these trends hold across genders and across age groups.
Contemporary young people are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental condition than older Americans. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric condition than men – and the gaps that are much larger among contemporary cohorts as compared to earlier ones (incidentally, the political and ideological gap between men and women has grown over this same period). However, across all age groups and for both genders, liberals are roughly twice as likely as conservatives to report being diagnosed with a mental illness:
What’s going on here?
Explaining these patterns is actually somewhat difficult, in part because social researchers lean liberal over conservative at a ratio of more than 10:1. As a consequence, scholars tend to spend a lot of their energy defining conservativism and Republican voting behavior in terms of deficits and pathologies, or otherwise blaming the political right for unfortunate states of affairs.
As we have seen, even the conservative advantage in happiness has been broadly defined as pathological in the literature – portrayed as an outgrowth of privilege, system justification, and a lack of awareness or empathy. In a scholarly environment where well-being is defined in pathological terms when experienced by conservatives, one should not be surprised that there is comparably little work exploring how and to what extent liberal ideology may contribute to unfortunate patterns of cognition or behavior, or adverse states of affairs. However, there are some plausible hypotheses that have compelling empirical support:
Explaining the General Link Between Liberalism and Mental Illness or Disorders
It may be that the differences between liberals and conservatives on subjective well-being come down to basic personality differences.
A recent multi-country, large sample (N = 22k), multimethod study found that personality trait differences seem to explain the vast majority of differences in life satisfaction. In particular, with respect to the “Big 5” personality traits, people who are low in conscientiousness, high in neuroticism, and who are introverted, are likely to be dissatisfied with life irrespective of their circumstances. As discussed in an earlier section, high conscientiousness people tend to skew “right.” Low conscientiousness folks tend to go the other way. Liberals are also especially like to rank high on neuroticism (here, here), and are more likely to be introverted. That is, they are more likely to possess the personality traits associated with life dissatisfaction (while the opposite holds true for conservatives).
Put another way, the difference between liberals and conservatives in subjective well-being may simply be a product of fundamental personality traits that both 1) inform life satisfaction and, 2) influence which political ideologies people gravitate towards.
It’s also possible that genetics and biology could explain much of the observed relationship between liberal identification and mental illness.
After all, there is robust evidence that individuals’ political, ideological and moral dispositions are biology-based and heritable to a significant degree (here, here, here, here, here, here). One might hope that cultural interventions such as education could help people transcend biological differences and approach common ground. However, the opposite seems true: cognitive sophistication reinforces and exacerbates intrinsic differences rather than reducing them.
Incidentally, psychological dispositions and disorders are also significantly influenced by genes and biology. They, too, are quite heritable (here, here, here, here, here, here). Cognitive sophistication likewise tends to exacerbate ideological differences rather than ameliorating them.
Consequently, it could be that the observed correlation between liberalism and mental illness is a product of some common set of biological or genetic factors that simultaneously predispose some people to both liberal worldviews and depression, anxiety, etc. (even as they dispose others towards conservativism and mental well-being).
Alternatively (or perhaps additionally), there could be a direct causal relationship between liberalism and mental illness. For example, it may be that certain psychological conditions drive people towards liberal ideology. On the other hand, it could be that some aspect of liberalism routinely undermines adherents’ subjective well-being. A case could be made in either direction.
For instance, there is some evidence that children who are maladjusted (angry, aggressive, otherwise antisocial) are more likely to align themselves with leftwing parties as adults. Other studies have found that people who experienced abuse, insecurity and trauma as children were much more likely to identify as liberal as adults. These populations are also especially likely to report mental illness as adults. Hence, it could be that much of the correlation between liberalism and mental illness is driven by people with antecedent mental distress favoring liberal ideology over conservativism.
Other studies have found that people who score highly on ‘Dark Triad’ characteristics (narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) may be especially likely to gravitate towards certain strains of ‘social justice’ ideology and activism (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). Ditto with many inclined towards authoritarianism (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here).
Here, a point of clarification is necessary. The fact that many who are high in Dark Triad or authoritarian traits gravitate towards certain leftwing cultural movements (as a means of exercising power over others and advancing their own status and goals) neither entails nor implies that most people who subscribe to left-wing cultural views are, themselves, narcissistic, psychopathic, Machiavellian or authoritarian. Nor is it the case that Dark Triad or authoritarian political associations skew uniquely left overall. As the links provided illustrate, there are right-aligned ideologies and social movements that are also attractive to Dark Triad and authoritarian personalities, even if they’re less well-institutionalized than ‘cultural left’ views within knowledge economy spaces (thereby providing them less opportunity to leverage ideology in the service of self-enhancement, or to exert influence within mainstream professional and cultural domains, as compared to left-wing dispositional peers).
In any case, although some combination of genetic/biological influences and an elective affinity between mental or emotional unwellness and leftwing political views may go a long way to explaining the general gaps in well-being between liberals and conservatives, they can do little to explain the huge and unilateral spike in depression among liberals in 2012, nor the divergent patterns between liberals and conservatives thereafter. Explaining these phenomena would require us to explore the extent to which ideology may influence mental illness (rather than vice-versa), and to account for how the influence of that ideology might’ve changed after 2011. It’s to these points we now turn.
Did the ‘Great Awokening’ Significantly Exacerbate Psychological Distress in Liberals?
In addition to conservativism offering psychological benefits for adherents, it may be that some versions of liberal ideology impose mental costs on those who embrace them. That is, certain strains of leftwing views might render people more likely to be depressed, anxious or unwell than they otherwise would have been.
A causal relationship of this nature could help explain the general gap between liberals and conservatives observed across time. However, it could also help explain the rapid rise in mental disorder post-2011: Insofar as certain strains of leftism may be pernicious to mental health, if those ideologies rapidly grew more prominent, or suddenly began to exert significantly more influence over U.S. institutions and culture, this would likely have a significant adverse effect on Americans’ mental well-being – including and especially among those who most eagerly embrace these views.
However, positing that the ‘Great Awokening’ may have influenced levels of reported mental distress seems to beg a more fundamental question: are there compelling empirically-based reasons to suspect that liberalism does not just correlate with adverse psychological states but might actually exacerbate depression, anxiety or other problems among those who embrace it? The short answer is ‘yes.’
Cross-cultural studies have shown that more liberal countries, and more liberal regions within countries, tend to have higher rates of mental disorders. It’s been theorized that reduced levels of social constraints may be a key factor driving this pattern. In contexts where traditional forms of life, traditional social roles and social structures are undermined, the acts of self-presentation, self-management, and self-creation become much more demanding and fraught. This, it has been argued, contributes to heightened anxiety and depression within liberal areas.
Moreover, as the flip side to conservativism helping people cope with adversity productive ways, liberalism may encourage some to respond to difficult circumstances in ways that undermine their well-being. For instance, liberals’ more permissive social and cultural dispositions also interact with substance use and abuse: not only are liberals more permissive towards others consuming drugs and alcohol (or even abusing them), they are also much more likely to personally use or abuse alcohol and drugs. Heavy use of these substances is associated with low subjective well-being, and can exacerbate these sentiments further in oneself and others. In short, it may be that liberal cultural attitudes facilitate people engaging in activities that ultimately lower their subjective well-being, or normalize people responding to low-subjective well-being in ways (such as through the use of drugs and alcohol) that ultimately render them worse off in an objective sense (in terms of health, social relationships, employment stability, and so on).
Alternatively, research consistently finds that the Americans who give most frequently, give the highest shares of their income, or donate specifically to causes to alleviate human poverty and suffering are those who are right-leaning and religious. Despite these gaps in behaviors, liberals have a broader sphere of moral concern and tend to feel higher levels of empathy (even if those sentiments don’t lead them to incur actual costs and risks on others’ behalf in the same manner as conservatives). Liberals tend to be troubled not just by the state of their own nation and community, but by the plight of animals and nature, of people and events in other countries, by hypothetical and projected future trends as well as historical injustices – most of which the typical person has little-to-no meaningful control or influence over. This can be a source of significant depression or anxiety (or “moral distress” to borrow a term from healthcare).
Although liberals tend to be less emotionally stable than conservatives, they are also far more likely to prize emotionality and to dwell on their emotion and the emotions of others. They tend to react much more severely to unfortunate events – from public tragedies, to political defeats, to global catastrophes and beyond. Not only are their initial responses significantly more dramatic, but liberals are also adversely affected for longer periods of time.
Put another way, reversing the popular narrative about conservatives being apathetic towards others’ suffering, it may be that many liberals are too concerned about stakeholders that are far removed from themselves and issues they have no control over. They may care too much, in a way that is actually unhealthy (and often not particularly useful for the targets of their concern).
Additionally, compared to conservatives or moderates, liberals are much more likely to find meaning in their lives through political causes or activism. They tend to follow politics much more closely and participate more in political action. However, following politics closely, and regular engagement on politics, has been shown to adversely affect people’s mental and physiological well-being (here, here, here, here).
Politics may also undermine liberals’ social relationships (which are, themselves, important for mental health). Surveys consistently find that liberals have more politically homogenous communities and social networks. They are also far more willing to avoid, break off or curb relationships over political differences. White liberal women are especially likely to strike this posture (here, here, here, here). They also happen to report especially high levels of anxiety, depression and other disorders compared to other Americans. This may not be a coincidence: a willingness to ‘cancel’ one’s family and friends over political or ideological differences is unlikely to enhance one’s happiness or well-being.
Here the discerning reader may object that perhaps the main reason for observed difference in reported mental illness across ideological lines is that conservatives are more likely to dismiss or stigmatize mental illness and may be less likely to seek help when they are struggling. In fact, as demographer Lyman Stone has illustrated, conservatives in the highest third of reported symptoms of mental disorder actually seem more likely to pursue assistance than liberals:
The main difference across ideological lines is that liberals are much more likely to seek out diagnoses even when they have moderate-to-low symptoms of poor mental health, whereas others do not. They’re also more likely to self-diagnose as mentally ill — even when they are not facing significant distress or impairment — largely as a result of adopting really expansive (and nonclinical) understandings of these disorders.
In the case of moderate illness — people who have symptoms that are non-trivial but also non-severe — we perhaps see evidence that part of the gap may be driven by liberals feeling more comfortable to seek out help when it is reasonable to do so. However, at the high end of the spectrum, this dynamic is reversed (conservatives are more likely to seek help), undermining the stigma/ comfort narrative’s ability to fully explain the divergence. Indeed, these same data show liberals are also far more likely to seek out diagnoses even when they have few symptoms of mental disorders.
Across the board, liberals are much more likely to dwell on their mental illnesses, talk about them even with strangers and acquaintances, and render these illnesses part of their identity and public persona. It is difficult to explain any of these patterns by appeal to conservative stigma. Instead, the moral culture of many left-spaces may play an important role.
Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning have argued that in many liberal, affluent, highly-educated spaces one increasingly gains moral status through association with formerly stigmatized identities – for instance by identifying as a racial, ethnic or religious minority, a sexual minority, or as a person with a mental or physical disability. Unwellness can even be a monetizable asset contemporary left-spaces. As one social media influencer recently put it, “There absolutely is a concerted effort to really capitalize on mental illness and particularly on young women’s mental illness. It’s a very marketable commodity right now.”
Consequently, perverse incentive structures in certain liberal spaces may push many to seek out diagnoses even when they are not experiencing severe symptoms. Others who are not part of that moral culture would feel less pressure or eagerness to get themselves classified as ‘disabled.’ This may help further explain the ideological gap in reported mental illness.
Another consideration: discrepancies between how people see themselves and how people believe the would ideally be can be a significant source of anxiety and depression — particularly among people who have strong aspirational ideals that they feel unable to live out (such as living an authentically feminist, antiracist or environmentalist life).
Highly-educated and relatively affluent white liberals are the Americans most likely to identify as ‘feminists,’ ‘antiracists,’ or ‘allies’ or hold far left views on ‘cultural’ issues (here, here, here, here, here, here). However, according to many of the belief systems in question, affluent whites are the source of virtually all the world’s problems. That is, these ideologies villainize the very people who are most likely to embrace them.
Reflective of this mentality, white liberals view all other racial and ethnic subgroups more warmly than their own. There is no other combination of ideology and race or ethnicity that produces a similar pattern. This tension – being part of a group that one hates – creates strong dissociative pressures on many white liberals. This may help explain the racialized differences among liberals with respect to mental health. As one reader helpfully visualized:
Liberals, especially white liberals, are also much more anxious about interactions across difference. The perceptions, judgements and behaviors of liberals change dramatically based on the demographic characteristics of the people they are engaging with or referring to, while conservatives are generally more consistent down the line (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). As a result of these tendencies, liberals (and white liberals in particular) may be more likely to second-guess their behaviors and motives, dwell on awkward past interactions, and worry about how others perceive them. This type of rumination, in turn, is associated with heightened anxiety and depression.
Analyses by political scientists Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufmann have indeed found significant interactions between race and ideology with respect to reported mental struggles. White liberals are far more likely than anyone else to claim to have a mental illness or disorder. Whites who identify as ‘very liberal’ or ‘liberal’ are nearly twice as likely to claim mental illness as non-whites who share the same ideological identification:
However, the ideological gap in mental health is not purely something that manifests among whites. Non-white liberals are also significantly more likely to report mental illness than non-white moderates or conservatives of any stripe. In fact, there are reasons to suspect that certain strains of liberal ideology may exert uniquely pernicious effects among women and people of color.
In many left circles, great efforts are made to sensitize everyone to historical and ongoing bias and discrimination. Women and minorities are told to attribute negative outcomes in their lives to racism or sexism. They are encouraged to interpret ambiguous encounters or situations uncharitably (i.e. as manifestations of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.). These tendencies likely undermine the well-being of the very populations they are supposed to help.
Heightened perceptions of bias and discrimination are robustly associated with mental anguish, social strain and adverse physical outcomes. The more people perceive themselves to be surrounded by others who harbor bias or hostility against them, and the more they view their life prospects as hostage to a system that is fundamentally rigged against them, the more likely they become to experience anxiety, depression, psychogenic and psychosomatic health problems, or to behave in antisocial ways.
On the one hand, this seems obvious. However, the implications are underappreciated: to the extent that certain strains of liberal ideology push adherents to perceive people and phenomena as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. when they otherwise wouldn’t have, a predictable consequence of this shift in worldview would be increased levels of anxiety, depression and other disorders.
This is not mere speculation: liberal ideology is associated with heightened perceptions of bias and discrimination and significantly expanded notions of what counts as ‘harm’ (relative to conservatives and moderates). Liberal women, for instance, are significantly more likely than others to perceive themselves to have been victims of sexual harassment or sex-based discrimination. High levels of education exacerbate these tendencies (here, here, here, here).
Of course, it’s possible that these differences in perceived harassment and discrimination are based on objective realities – for instance, men in liberal spaces could be significantly more misogynistic in practice than men in other contexts. However, it seems more likely that the ideological perception gap in sexual harassment and discrimination is mostly a product of heightened sensitivity among liberal women, and highly-educated liberal women in particular, as compared to other Americans.
Likewise, among racial and ethnic minorities, perceptions of discrimination correlate strongly with educational attainment (which, itself, strongly informs ideological lean). Black Americans are significantly more likely to perceive themselves to be victims of prejudice and discrimination the higher the level of educational attainment they or their parents have. As a result of these heightened perceptions of discrimination, socioeconomic status has diminishing mental health returns for African Americans as compared to whites. Similar realities hold for Latinos and Asian Americans: higher educational attainment leads to heightened perceptions of discrimination – to the detriment of mental health.
For people of color, to get ‘educated’ in America is to be cudgeled relentlessly with messages about how oppressed, exploited and powerless we are, and how white people need to ‘get it together’ to change this (but probably never will). Narratives like these grew especially pronounced during the post-2011 “Great Awokening.” The internalization of these messages — and attendant undermining adherents’ locus of control — may contribute to the observed ideological gaps in psychic distress among women and people of color (here, here).
Research has, indeed, found that people who subscribe to cynical views on race and gender progress seem especially likely to experience depression. And people who are depressed are more likely to support extreme political views and behaviors (which can, in turn, make them more miserable).
And even when minorities don’t directly suffer from anxiety or depression, they regularly suffer because of these disorders nonetheless. Studies have found that the challenges of dealing with white liberal peers and their idiosyncratic neuroses and dispositions may be a key source of burnout for minorities in progressive spaces (here, here, here).
More broadly, psychologist Jon Haidt and legal scholar Greg Lukianoff have argued (e.g. here, here) that many strains of liberal ideology fashionable among highly-educated and relatively affluent Americans function, in practice, as a form of reverse cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
Cognitive behavioral therapy encourages people to avoid global labeling and black-and-white or zero-sum thinking. It pushes people to abstain from hyperbole and catastrophizing or filtering out the good while highlighting the bad. CBT encourages people to resist emotional reasoning, jumping to conclusions, mind-reading and uncharitable motive attribution. It tells adherents not to make strong assumptions about what others should do or feel, or how the world should be. Instead, folks are encouraged to meet the world as it is, and to engage the actual over the ideal. CBT instructs people to look for solutions to problems rather than focusing inordinately on who to blame (and punish). It tells patients to focus on controlling what they can in the present rather than ruminating on misfortunes of the past or stressing out about futures that may or may not come to pass. It encourages people to see themselves as resilient and capable rather than weak, vulnerable, helpless or ‘damaged.’ It is easy to see how popular strains of liberal thinking basically invert this guidance, likely to the detriment of adherents.
Insofar as certain sectors of the American public became more likely to internalize certain strains of liberal ideologies (U.S. whites became much more likely to self-identify as ‘liberal’ after 2011), and to the extent that these ideologies gained increasingly salience and influence in American society and culture after 2011 as a result of the ‘Great Awokening,’ we might expect to see a corresponding significant increase in depression, anxiety and other disorders — particularly among the sectors of society most likely to embrace these ideological frameworks (highly-educated Americans, whites, liberals, women, young people). That is, in fact, what we do see.
Could the ‘Great Awokening’ Have Exacerbated Distress Among Conservatives Too?
The chart we led with by Gimbrone et al. showed a dramatic rise in depression among liberal teens starting in 2012. However, there was also a rise among conservatives that started a couple years later and tapered off around 2017. The ‘Great Awokening’ may have played an important role in the rise of depression among liberals, but could it have plausibly influenced conservatives as well? Again, the answer is ‘yes.’
Insofar as liberal peers became much more aggressive post-2011 in villainizing, suppressing and punishing anyone who disagreed with them on contentious cultural issues, this likely had a pernicious effect conservative teens too: being branded as a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc., and treated as a moral monster, can have major deleterious effects on one’s well-being.
However, attempts by external parties to shame people into compliance typically generates resistance, backlash and deviance over the longer term. What we might expect to see, then, is a dramatic increase in negative affect among conservatives in the early years of the Awokening (as a result of being more aggressively mocked, derided, censored and purged), followed by a leveling off or decline as right-aligned Americans increasingly dismiss and resist progressive attempts to characterize them as evil people.
On this model, liberals would move first, with the conservative increase in negative emotionality emerging as a reaction to shifts in liberal discourse and behaviors. However, there should be a disjuncture over time because the prevailing liberal ideologies would continue to exert a powerful influence over the mental state of liberals but would come to exercise diminishing influence over conservatives. These patterns are, in fact, reflected in the data.
There are, of course, many other factors at play in the observed trends post 2010 – from evolving socioeconomic conditions for various subsets of the population (which, as I explain in my forthcoming book, play an important role in the timing of ‘Great Awokenings’), to technological changes and beyond. However, the different ways liberals and conservatives interpret the world and respond to adversity may also play an important role in the ideological polarization in subjective well-being independent of these other changes.
Conclusion
The well-being gap between liberals and conservatives is one of the most robust patterns in social science research. It is not a product of things that happened over the last decade or so – it goes back as far as the available data reach. The differences manifest across age, gender, race, religion and other dimensions. They are not merely present in the United States, but in most other studied countries as well. Consequently, satisfying explanations of the gaps in reported well-being between liberals and conservatives would have to generalize beyond the present moment, beyond isolated cultural or geographic contexts, and beyond specific demographic groups. This essay has explored some of the most likely and well-explored drivers of the observed patterns:
- There are likely some genetic and biological factors that simultaneously predispose people towards both mental illness/ wellness and liberalism/ conservativism respectively.
- Net of these predispositions, conservativism probably helps adherents make sense of, and respond constructively to, adverse states of affairs. These effects are independent of, but enhanced by, religiosity and patriotism (which tend to be ideological fellow-travelers with conservativism).
- Some strains of liberal ideology, on the other hand, likely exacerbate (and even incentivize) anxiety, depression and other forms of unhealthy thinking. The increased power and prevalence of these ideological frameworks post-2011 may have contributed to the dramatic and asymmetrical rise in mental distress among liberals over the past decade.
- People who are unwell may be especially attracted to liberal politics over conservativism for a variety of reasons, and this may exacerbate observed ideological gaps net of other factors.
The amount of observed variance that each of these theories explain relative to one-another is, at present, empirically unclear and hotly contested. However, the general pattern is clear: conservatives report significantly higher levels of happiness, meaning and satisfaction in their lives as compared to liberals. Meanwhile, liberals are much more likely to exhibit anxiety, depression and other forms of psychic distress.
Critically, these facts don’t tell us anything about which worldview is morally correct. Outside of Randian objectivism, it is widely acknowledged that what is maximally advantageous for oneself is not necessarily the most moral thing to do. Doing the right thing instead regularly imposes risks and costs on those who step up. Consequently, the fact that conservativism has practical advantages for adherents while liberalism may undermine well-being – this doesn’t necessarily tell us which ideology is more ethical to hold. Those are questions better suited for theology and philosophy than social science.
Likewise, the facts explored here tell us nothing about which worldview best helps us most accurately capture reality. It’s not clear that there’s a tight correspondence between truth and well-being. In fact, as Nietzsche repeatedly emphasized, deep commitment to ‘the facts’ may be an impediment to flourishing. Hence conservativism being more congenial to individual well-being may be perfectly compatible with claims that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Again, that’s a type of question that’s beyond the scope of this research.
Put another way: it’s a scientific fact that conservatives tend to be happier and more well-adjusted than liberals, and ideological gaps in well-being have expanded since 2011. The implications and applications of these realities are wide open to interpretation.