This makes me happy. (h/t Balloon Juice)

Conservatives are happier than liberals, or so decades of surveys that ask about life satisfaction would suggest.

The existence of a so-called ideological happiness gap is so well established that recently social scientists have mostly tried to explain it.

But a new series of studies questions the gap itself, raising the possibility that although conservatives may report greater happiness than liberals, they are no more likely to act in ways that indicate that they really are happier…

…”What our evidence suggests is that it’s limited to self-reports of subjective well-being,” Professor Ditto said. The article appears in the March 13 issue of the journal Science.

In fact, when behaviors rather than self-reports were examined, liberals seemed to have a small but statistically significant happiness edge.

Conservatives may say they’re happy, but they’re seething under the surface. And they blame you.

nytimes.com