When did the word 'liberal' start to be used as synonym of progressive or to mean 'opposed to conservative'? because I don't think it should be like that
> epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and coauthors identified a significant gap in depressive attitudes between liberal and conservative teens<p>Seems to be about teens as opposed to everyone
The problem with this and many other self-reported happiness surveys is that they measure <i>what people think about themselves,</i> rather than actually observing their behaviors.<p>Generally, Conservatives ideologies (by nature) lean toward conformism, and <i>being happy is a type of conformism</i>.<p>Looking at natural experiment representations of happiness (like obesity/compulsive eating, alcohol abuse, etc.), the narrative is much less clear<p>EDIT: Even moreso, at a global level, liberalism appears to be huge <i>positive</i> indicator of self-reported happiness [0], so take this with a grain of salt.<p>[0]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report</a>
In my experience liberals tend to have less coherent philosophies and understanding about how the world works, and more often than conservatives have "nothing matters" nihilistic beliefs, so I'm not too surprised they have more mental illness and lower happiness. They also more often advocate odd life paths (anti-marriage, anti-kids, pro-drugs, pro-transgenderism, sex-positive, polycules, etc.) that tend to result in more unhappiness.