Trahison Des Clercs

Napier and Jost (2008, Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?, Psychological Science, Vol 19, pp 565-572) write:

"In this research, we drew on system-justification theory and the notion that conservative ideology serves a palliative function to explain why conservatives are happier than liberals. Specifically, in three studies using nationally representative data from the United States and nine additional countries, we found that right-wing (vs. left-wing) orientation is indeed associated with greater subjective well-being and that the relation between political orientation and subjective well-being is mediated by the rationalization of inequality. In our third study, we found that increasing economic inequality (as measured by the Gini index) from 1974 to 2004 has exacerbated the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives, apparently because conservatives (more than liberals) possess an ideological buffer against the negative hedonic effects of economic inequality"

So how we explain this rampant rejoicing amongst our conservative colleagues? We could, one supposes, simply have Conservatives being more homogeneous over their blind acceptance of ideology. A happy herd no less! The repercussions do make me awfully sad. The willingness to accept more extreme income inequality, where clearly the notion of a meritocracy has been put on the back burner, is a concern for all 'Anglo-Saxon' regimes.