Liveblogging Lindgren

Volokh Conspirator (and NU law professor) James Lindgren is here at UCLA today to present a paper on Chasing Cherished Superstitions About Conservatives to the Federalist Society. I'm a big fan of Lindgren's work, which is widely acknowledged to be fair and balanced in assessing empirical data. His talk today is a reply to the "study" by John Jost et al. that "found," as Byron York put it, that "conservatives are crazy."

Lindgren points out some flaws with the data Jost et al. used. First, they use a definition of conservative that includes people like Hitler and Stalin. Second, the data they rely on claims that women are more conservative than men, while Lindgren points out that every major survey find the opposite. Third, the surveys used in the Jost et al. meta-analysis assume that conservatives are less well-educated than liberals, while the widely used General Social Survey finds the opposite.

An email by Lindgren that was quoted some months ago by a blogger summarizes some of the many other data points Lindgren offers as rebutting the Jost analysis:

The Jost article claims that conservatives are angry and fearful and it builds on a literature that claims that conservatives are unhappy. I find this strange, given the decades of superb data showing the opposite. In the NORC General Social Survey (a standard social science database, second only to the U.S. Census in use by U.S. sociologists), the GSS asks the standard survey question about happiness in general. In the 1998-2002 GSS, extreme conservatives are much more likely to report being "very happy" than extreme liberals--47.1% to 31.6%. Earlier years show a similar pattern.

This conservative happiness carries over into most other aspects of life as well. Conservatives usually report being happier in their jobs than liberals. In the 2002 GSS, for example 65.2% of extreme conservatives report being "very satisfied" with their jobs in general, while only 50% of extreme liberals report being very satisfied. When the question is broadened to satisfaction with job or housework, a similar pattern obtains. In the 1998-2002 GSS, 61.0% of extreme conservatives reported being very satisfied, compared to 53.6% of extreme liberals.

As to finances, in the 1998-2002 GSS 34% of extreme conservatives report being satisfied with their finances compared to 26.4% of extreme liberals. More extreme liberals (34.5%) than extreme conservatives (25.8%) report being "not at all satisfied" with their finances.

Conservatives usually tend to report less marital unhappiness than liberals. In the 1998-2002 GSS, 5.1% of those who report being "slightly liberal" say that they are "not too happy" in their marriages, compared to 0.9% of those who are "slightly conservative." Ordinary liberals (3.7%) and extreme liberals (8.9%) also differ from ordinary conservatives (2.4%) and extreme conservatives (4.1%) in the levels of reported marital unhappiness. Indeed, in the 1998 GSS, 18.2% of extreme liberals reported that their marriages were "not too happy," while only 1.6% of extreme conservatives reported marital unhappiness.

Earlier General Social Surveys found that conservatives were more satisfied with their health, their friendships, their family life, and the city or place they live--all in all, a remarkably consistent picture.

Another claim in the Jost paper is that conservativism is driven by anger and fear. Again, their claims conflict with some of the highest quality data available. In the 1996 GSS, questions were asked about anger and fearfulness. Extreme conservatives were much less likely to report being mad at someone every day in the last week--7.3% to 24.2% for extreme liberals. Extreme conservatives were also less likely to report being fearful in the last week--32.5% to 56.3% for extreme liberals. In other words, a staggering one-quarter of extreme liberals report being mad at someone EVERY DAY and most extreme liberals report being fearful at least once a week.

I am surprised that the Jost group was not aware of the very strong and remarkably consistent data that conservatives report being happier than liberals about their lives in general, their jobs, their finances, their health, their friendships, their family life, and where they live. Nor does the Jost group deal with the less extensive data suggesting that conservatives are less fearful and less angry than liberals. I will have to look into more of the studies that Jost cites to see why these fairly obvious patterns are missed. I wonder whether Jost relied too much on studies that either used unrepresentative samples (such as undergraduates) or used biased questions or indices -- asking about issues on which conservatives tend to be unhappy but not about issues on which liberals tend to be unhappy. In either event, the Jost group seems to have missed decades of very high quality survey data that undercut their thesis.

More by Lindgren on this topic here. See also non-Lindgren commentary here.

All of this does raise an interesting question: what makes someone a liberal or conservative? Nature or nuture? Environment, education, or economic success/failure? My guess is that conservatives and liberals tend to be born, not made. Doubtless factors like environmental and class play into it, but my guess is that we tend to be hardwired for one side or the other. (When I asked Lindgren this question, he suggested looking at twin studies, which apparently are the classic way of doing nature versus nurture studies. A post over at the 2Blowhards discusses a twin study that seems to confirm the nature hypothesis.)

Sidenote: Lindgren notes that he can't study libertarian attitudes is because the number of people who self-report to the GSS as libertarians is so small that they don't even collect the data. Heh.