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A new study found that conservative members of Congress used fewer words associated with happiness than did their liberal colleagues. Alex Wong, Getty Images

Republicans may be running the show in Congress but it seems it's the Democrats who are happier.

That's the finding from a wide-ranging study published in Science Thursday examining the happiness of conservatives and liberals. As part of the study, the researchers examined 432 million words in the Congressional Record over the past 18 years as well the "smiling behavior" of politicians in their publicly available photographs from 2013.

Liberal members of Congress used a higher ratio of positive words, such as "interested," "excited," "enthusiastic" and "proud" to negative words, such as "afraid," "upset," "distressed" and "irritable." Those with more conservative beliefs, meanwhile, were less likely to be found beaming in their portraits.

"Conservatism predicted significantly less intense facial action in the muscles around the eyes that indicates genuine happiness," the study found, adding that liberal politicians "smile more intensely and smile more genuinely."

The study expanded beyond politicians to look more broadly at the happiness of conservatives and liberals. Examining 47,257 Twitter status updates from conservatives and liberals as well as 457 photos from LinkedIn, they found a similar pattern.

"Together, our studies found that political liberals exhibited more frequent and intense happiness related behavior than political conservatives," the authors wrote. "Although the effects in these studies were small, they consistently revealed greater happiness-related behavior among liberals, rather than conservatives."

The findings run contrary to earlier studies, mostly from surveys, in which conservatives reported they were happier than liberals. Scientists in those studies credited the upbeat nature of conservatives to their optimism, a sense they are in control of their lives and their "transcendent moral values."

In the latest research, the authors said their findings reflected the limitations of self-reporting in the earlier work. But they also were careful to say that the expressions of happiness they found didn't mean one group of politicians or their supporters were any happier than another nor that this so-called happiness had anything to do with specific events, such as the tenure of President Obama.

"We are quite explicit that we are not arguing that liberals or Democrats are happier - or especially that becoming one will make you happier," the University of California, Irvine's Peter Ditto, a co-author on the study, told CBS News.

See the rest here:
Who are happier, liberals or conservatives?