Haidt on conservative happiness

Recall this post on Sam Harris discussing the science of morality. I sent an email to Haidt, since it seemed he was saying that conservatives were happier. And therefore by Harris' moral definition of right and wrong based on 'flourishing' conservatives were right. I won't quote from Haidt's email because he did not give me permission to do so, but the gist of it was that he agreed with the above, citing polls from Gallup analyzed by Arthur Brooks. He didn't provide links to that evidence so I searched and found Brooks' NYT article. This article by David Frum noted that Brook's criteria for happiness was basically a rich, older, religious, married, white person, which demographic just happens to be more on the conservative side.

I also asked him about statistics (like here and here) that find those countries with the more democratic socialist policies (aka liberal) are the happiest? And how that squares with his claim. He just responded that such comparisons are tricky, which isn't a response. The first linked article is a direct response to Brooks by Jeffrey Sachs, but on a different Brooks article than the above referenced. Therein Sachs cites the World Happiness Report (WHR), which surveyed people from several countries, including the US. Of course the criteria for 'happiness' was quite different than Brooks' and Haidt's conservative worldview picture, based more on the following:


"Economic prosperity that is broadly shared, very low poverty, low unemployment, social fairness, lower health care costs than in the United States, longer vacation times, guaranteed maternity and paternity leave, better pre-school and many more benefits that make people happy, and help them to raise happier and healthier children. In short, happier places are happier because they combine economic prosperity with social trust, a sense of equality, leisure as well as work, and good and honest governance."

Or as Harris responded below, "actually having our beliefs track reality, however loosely, is better in the long run than being delusional." Also when Harris noted that a better moral definition of flourishing includes everyone regardless of race, income, religious affiliation or marital status. That is, a more postconventional moral stance that goes beyond our in-group, as reflected in the criteria of the WHR.

The second link is to a Forbes article, not exactly a liberal bastion. Therein he uses research from the Legatum Institute, which uses 89 variables like economy, entrepreneurship, governance, education, health, safety, personal freedom and social capital. As in the WHR the results are pretty much the same, with Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden in the top. And what do they have in common? "They are all borderline socialist states, with generous welfare benefits and lots of redistribution of wealth. Yet they don’t let that socialism cross the line into autocracy." Not exactly conservative values or definition of happiness, eh?