“A Longitudinal Test of the Conservative-Liberal Well-Being Gap”, 2022-07-07 ():
In this article, we test if conservatism predicts psychological well-being longitudinally. We based the study on previous findings showing that conservatives score higher on different measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and happiness. Most explanations in the literature have assumed that conservatism precedes well-being without considering the alternative—that well-being may predict conservatism.
In Study 1, using multilevel cross-lagged panel models with a two-wave longitudinal sample consisting of data from 19 countries (n = 8,740), we found that conservatism did not predict well-being over time.
We found similar results in Study 2 (n = 2,554), using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models with a four-wave longitudinal sample from Chile.
We discuss the main implications of these results for the literature examining the association between conservatism and well-being.