There are two types of people in this world, positive and negative. I have been a positive person with a sunny outlook on life for as long as I can remember. When someone asks me how I am doing, I try to avoid “fine” and “okay.” My preferred response is “Marvelous.”
Studies have shown many benefits of positive thinking, one being better health. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Aging Research found that having a positive mental attitude was linked to decreased mortality over a 35-year period.
Positive thinkers also have lower rates of depression, more excellent resistance to the common cold and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease-related death.
For anyone who reads my column, you know that I am also conservative in my political leaning. This is not a coincidence. On the “happy scale,” conservatives are generally happier than liberals.
Part of the happiness gap is a different philosophy between liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to believe that societal problems come from capitalism, systemic racism and the patriarchy. In other words, if you are not a white male heterosexual, the deck is stacked against you. You have no control over the problems you face. Their solution is more government control over our lives.
Conservatives tend to believe they are in more control of their lives as opposed to external forces.
A paper titled “Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals, but Why?” by Barry R. Schlenker, John Chambers and Bonnie Le confirms this idea. “Conservatives score higher than liberals on personality and attitude measures that are traditionally associated with positive adjustment and mental health, including personal agency, positive outlook, transcendent moral beliefs, and generalized belief in fairness. These constructs, in turn, can account for why conservatives are happier than liberals and have declined less in happiness in recent decades.”
An interesting article by Gurwinder Bhogal on unheard.com puts it this way, “Research shows conservatives tend to have an internal locus of control, which means they believe that their decisions, as opposed to external forces, control their destiny. Liberals, meanwhile, tend to have an external locus, which means they believe their lives are determined by forces beyond their control.”
This philosophy of doom and gloom, enforced by college professors, hits young adults the most.
“A 2020 Pew survey of over 10,000 people,” as reported by Bhogal, “found that self-described liberals aged 18-29 were more likely than self-described conservatives of the same age to report suffering psychological problems over the last week. They were also more than twice as likely to say they’d ever been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Furthermore, those who were “very liberal” were more likely than those who were just “liberal” to report poor mental health. The group most likely to report poor mental health was white liberal females, an alarming 56 percent of whom reported having received a mental illness diagnosis.”
“Crucially, controlling for worldview narrowed the gender gap considerably: liberal men were more likely to report poor mental health than conservative women. It would seem, then, that the mental health epidemic among girls and young women is associated with their tendency to have a more Left-liberal mindset than boys and young men.”
In his paper Bhogal also pointed out that “an analysis of data from 86,138 adolescents found, in line with the Pew survey, that between 2005 and 2018 the self-reported mental health of liberals had deteriorated more than conservatives’, and that this deterioration was worst for girls.”
At his conclusion Bhogal says, “Many of the misfortunes that befall you will not be your fault, but if you seek explanations for your suffering in things beyond your control, you risk falling prey to a culture and industry that are motivated to keep you feeling ill. Look within for the causes and, most times, you’ll find the cures. Modern society will tell you otherwise, of course, but it’s within your power to defy it, for you are not a helpless leaf in the wind but a mind that holds a world, which, depending on how you think, could be a Hell in Heaven, or a Heaven in Hell.”
I have only touched on a fragment of Bhogal’s paper of over 3,000 words. This is an enlightening article. If you are at all interested in this, go to https://unherd.com/2023/06/is-liberal-society-making-us-ill/.
