For years, surveys have suggested that political conservatives in the United States tend to report better mental health than liberals. These differences have sparked debates in popular media and academic circles alike, fueling theories about ideology, worldview, and emotional resilience. But a new study published in PLOS One challenges the idea that this gap reflects a real difference in mental well-being. Instead, the researchers found that the wording of the question—specifically, whether people are asked about their “mental health” or “overall mood”—can dramatically shift the results.
The study was conducted by political scientist Brian F. Schaffner at Tufts University and his colleagues, including a team of undergraduate students. They set out to understand the persistent and well-publicized finding that conservatives tend to rate their mental health more positively than liberals. This pattern has been widely reported in American survey data for decades. But the research team wondered whether these results reflect genuine differences in well-being—or if they might be skewed by how people interpret and respond to survey questions.
The research was inspired by “three students in my lab (who ended up as co-authors on the article),” explained Schaffner, the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science.”They had taken a course on American conservatism taught by one of my colleagues in which they had learned about the finding that conservatives are generally happier and have better mental health than liberals.”
“The students had some doubts about that finding and were particularly interested in whether conservatives may be overstating how good their mental health was when answering surveys. So we decided to work together on this project to try to better understand the gap between conservatives and liberals when it comes to well being.”
The researchers conducted two related studies. The first used data from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, which surveyed 60,000 American adults about their mental health, ideology, and a wide range of life circumstances. The second was a randomized experiment conducted as part of the 2023 Cooperative Election Study, which asked 1,000 participants to rate either their mental health or their overall mood. The goal was to see whether changing the language of the question would affect the ideological gap.
In the first study, participants were asked to rate their mental health on a five-point scale ranging from “poor” to “excellent.” The researchers then compared responses across the ideological spectrum, while also controlling for more than two dozen variables that could affect well-being—such as age, income, religion, education, marital status, and recent life events. These controls allowed the team to separate the influence of political ideology from other factors that are often tied to both mental health and political orientation.
As expected, conservatives were more likely than liberals to rate their mental health as good or excellent. Moving from the most liberal to the most conservative end of the ideological scale was associated with a 19-percentage-point increase in the likelihood of reporting high mental health. However, after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables, the gap shrank to 11 percentage points. This means that nearly 40% of the ideological difference could be explained by factors like age, religious involvement, and economic stability—traits that tend to be more common among conservatives and are also linked to better self-reported mental health.
But even after these adjustments, ideology remained one of the strongest predictors of mental health ratings in the dataset. The researchers found that being conservative was as influential as other known factors like regular church attendance or being older. On the negative end of the spectrum, factors such as experiencing a recent crime, visiting the emergency room, or being unable to cover an unexpected expense were strongly associated with worse mental health ratings.
These results aligned with past research showing a persistent mental health advantage for conservatives. But they didn’t answer an important question: do liberals and conservatives interpret and respond to the phrase “mental health” in the same way?
To explore this, the researchers designed a follow-up experiment. They recruited a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults and randomly assigned each participant to one of two groups. One group was asked the same mental health question used in the earlier survey. The other group saw an identical question, except the phrase “mental health” was replaced with “overall mood.” This subtle change was designed to see whether the ideological gap would remain when a less politically loaded term was used.
Among those asked about their mental health, conservatives were much more likely than liberals to give positive assessments. But among those asked about their overall mood, the difference disappeared. In fact, conservatives were slightly less likely to rate their mood as excellent or very good compared to liberals, although this difference was not statistically significant.
“I thought that we would see a smaller gap in conservative versus liberal responses to the overall mood question, but I did not expect that the gap would disappear entirely,” Schaffner told PsyPost. “It was quite striking to see how similarly liberals and conservatives assessed their overall mood given the large differences in how they rated their mental health.”
The shift was especially pronounced among conservatives. When asked about their mental health, 64% rated it as excellent or very good. But when asked about their mood, only 49% of conservatives gave similarly high ratings. Liberals, on the other hand, gave nearly identical ratings in both conditions. This pattern suggests that conservatives may inflate their self-reported mental health—possibly due to social stigma around the term.
Why would the phrase “mental health” provoke different responses? The researchers point to existing literature on stigma and political ideology. Conservative values tend to emphasize self-reliance, strength, and personal responsibility. These traits can lead to discomfort with acknowledging mental health struggles, which are sometimes seen as signs of weakness or failure.
People who hold these beliefs may downplay their symptoms or avoid the label of “mental illness.” In survey settings, this could mean rating their mental health more positively than they truly feel, especially if they see the term as stigmatized or politically loaded.
“What we found is that the conservative-liberal gap disappears entirely when the question is about overall mood instead of mental health, something that we hypothesize happens because conservatives are answering the question about ‘overall mood’ more honestly than the one about ‘mental health,’” Schaffner said.
This research has important implications for how we interpret survey data on mental health and well-being. It suggests that some of the ideological differences reported in past studies may be shaped by how respondents interpret key terms rather than reflecting real psychological differences. The phrase “mental health” might trigger defensiveness or social desirability among conservatives, leading to artificially inflated ratings. By contrast, the more neutral term “overall mood” may allow for more honest responses across the political spectrum.
But that doesn’t mean there are no real ideological differences in well-being. Conservatives might still have advantages in long-term resilience or coping strategies tied to their worldview. Or liberals might be more emotionally affected by social injustice or political events. But these findings underscore the importance of language in psychological research, especially in politically polarized environments.
“This is just one experiment that it would be wonderful to see replicated,” Schaffner noted. “Additionally, the term ‘overall mood’ is not perfectly synonymous with ‘mental health’ even though they are closely related, so it is possible that there really is an ideological gap in mental health but not for overall mood.”
Looking ahead, “I would like to test more directly whether and how conservatives stigmatize mental health and how that might affect the way they report on this in surveys or even in conversations with other people,” Schaffner added.
The study, “Do conservatives really have better mental well-being than liberals?,” was authored by Brian F. Schaffner, Thomas Hershewe, Zoe Kava, and Jael Strell.
