How Your Happiness Impacts Your Political Preferences

Foreign this is Crappy to Happy and I am your host, Cass Dunn.

I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappy to Happy books.

In this show I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy.

Foreign hello and welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to Happy.

I've been toying with the idea of calling these solo episodes something different because solo episode just doesn't really have a catchy ring to it, does it?

I was thinking of, I don't know, coffee with Cass or something like that because it feels like just sitting down and having a chat together and that way, yeah, it would just be kind of a casual catch up.

Sometimes I feel like I need to come up with something like really amazing and interesting and scientific to share with you when what I really want to do is like talk about the severance finale or, or adolescence or something I've been watching on tv.

Anyway, actually adolescence would make a great topic for an episode.

So note to self, we should come back to that one.

As it turns out though, I have just been reading the World Happiness Report and that's on brand and that's kind of interesting.

So I wanted to share with you something that I was reading in the 2025 World Happiness Report just published and it's to do with the link between satisfaction with life, which is one measure of happiness, and voting preferences.

So let's dive into that because it is pretty interesting.

So here is what I discovered.

First up, when it comes to the way people vote, your degree of satisfaction with life.

And you can measure that just by looking at a scale, on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied you are with your life right now.

It's something that we do use in positive psychology, actually.

Satisfaction with Life scale.

People who are less satisfied with life are more likely to be kind of anti party politics.

They're kind of dissatisfied with the system.

Basically.

They're disenfranchised with the status quo.

They're more likely to vote independently or to go to an extreme, an extreme left or an extreme right.

So typically bipartisan politics is pretty centrist.

You know, it's like to the slightly right of center or slightly left of center, but it's fairly centrist.

And this is why people get so frustrated.

It's like they're just the same, same, same.

So people who are dissatisfied with life tend to blame the institutions for their level of dissatisfaction, and therefore they start to look for alternatives to the main political parties.

It's also been found that people with lower, like basically unhappy people, people who are less happy with their life, they tend to be quite drawn to authoritarian ideals.

Basically, they looking for someone to be strong and to take control and to fix things.

But when people start going to the extremes, what is the factor that swings them towards the right or swings them towards the left?

And interestingly, that factor is the level of social trust that they have.

So people who are typically trusting have a high degree of social trust.

This means interpersonal trust.

Trust your neighbors, trust your fellow human beings, that they're generally good people.

Those people, if they're unhappy with life, but they have a high level of social trust, they will go to far left kind of ideologies.

People who have low levels of satisfaction with life, but they have low levels of trust in their fellow human being, they're the ones swinging to the far right.

So when we talk about low levels of trust, the, the platforms or the issues that tend to get focused on are things like immigration.

People are coming to steal our jobs.

It's the immigrants coming and causing all the problems.

Low levels of trust and sexuality and gender.

So I find that fascinating given that the two things that Donald Trump really campaigned hard on.

And to this day, if you come across a MAGA voter in any sort of online thread, the first thing they will say to you is, oh, what, so you're okay with men playing women's sports?

It's like, there's seriously like six trans women who might potentially be looking at playing sport at some competitive level.

But that's your issue.

Like it's ins.

To me, that is insane that that is the thing that they are holding on so tightly to.

But whether gay people should be entitled to be married, whether gay people should be entitled to adopt children, People with high levels of social trust are like, oh, yeah, of course they should.

Low levels of social trust.

No, very much no to those things.

High levels of social trust.

Immigration is great diversity, contributing to the economy, bringing all of this cultural opportunity and experience into our culture.

Great.

Low levels of trust.

No, keep that away from here.

So if we go back to the 2016 election, the people who had high levels of satisfaction with life, doing well financially, you know, on the whole, happy with their lot in life, and also had high levels of trust, they were the ones who were satisfied with the status quo.

So they were the Hillary, Hillary Clinton supporters.

Right party politics with left ideals.

The people who had the high levels of Trust, but weren't happy with the status quo.

They were the Bernie Sanders voters.

So they were going to the, to the, the extreme.

You know, like this left socialist, really redistributing wealth, taxing the wealthy to take care of the poor, looking for an alternative to the bipartisan model.

But their level of trust in people shifted them to the left, to Bernie.

They've got another option available to them and that is to not vote at all, to abstain from voting.

Now, obviously in Australia and even in the UK we have compulsory voting.

So I know that people can still just do a donkey vote and opt out of the whole thing, but where you can actually measure that in the US is that the people with the highest degree of dissatisfaction and the lowest level of trust, they just abstain completely.

They just don't vote at all.

In Europe, what they see is those are the people that, the very low satisfaction and the very low trust.

They're the people who will go for the far right.

And this idea, these abstainers, these people who just opt out completely.

Like there's a kind of a profile of those people that they tend to be the most socially disconnected.

They tend to be the people who are really not optimistic about the future, much more solitary in both in life and at work, don't have a really strong social network.

And they have a very.

The abstainers have a very specific distrust of institutions.

You know, courts, police, government.

And over time it has been this.

The stats indicate that over time that level of trust in institutions has been deteriorating.

What I find interesting about this too is that over time what has happened is that while there might be just as many people unhappy with life, which interestingly, despite the fact that globally we have enjoyed the most prosperous, most safe period Since World War II, people are really generally unhappy with life, dissatisfied with life.

But while the levels of dissatisfaction may remain consistent, the level of trust, social trust, has declined.

People are more mistrusting of their neighbors, their friends, their, their other people in their community, even their own family members.

And there's this kind of shift towards the appeal of far right ideologies.

And that's what we're seeing.

That's what we're seeing all around the world.

What's causing that, like what's causing this erosion of trust in our fellow human beings?

Is it to do with social media and the polarization that that is creating?

Is it to do with just technology generally and the fact that we don't talk to each other face to face anymore, that we're not, we don't have community like we used to, that we tend to be more isolated.

I think we know that.

I think we're seeing that anyway.

Anyway.

So what this led me to when I found that all quite fascinating, what it tells me is that or the takeaway is, well, what do we do about improving our satisfaction with life?

But more to the point, what do we do about improving our degree of trust?

Social connection is the single biggest predictor.

The quality of our social connections is the single biggest predictor of our longevity of our health.

Even while controlling for lifestyle choices, genetics, income, like literally everything, social connection is what it's about.

We need to be investing in our social connection if we are really interested in living a long, healthy, happy life.

That is the major thing.

It's not the only thing, but it is the biggest thing that is going to make a difference.

They often will do a survey where they will ask people, how many people do you feel you can count on if you are going through a difficult time?

And in 2023, 19% of young adults, so young adults is they counted as 18 to 29, 19% of young adults reported that they have no one that they could count on for social support.

But here's the thing about that.

It's not actually about the number of people that you could rely on.

It's the number of people you think you could rely on.

It's your perception of other people's kindness and empathy that makes the difference to your well being.

When you perceive other people to be kind and you perceive other people to be, to have empathy and to be benevolent, then that increases your level of trust and your level of satisfaction with life.

So I think this is so important and clearly this is not just important for your own well being.

This, this.

Have a look around the world like have a look at, around at what is going on in the world and politically.

Then this comes back to each of us taking responsibility for asking ourselves how trusting am I of other people?

How much do I see the good in other people?

When it comes to perceived benevolence, what they found with these young people was that actually 19% said that they didn't have anybody that they could rely on.

However, they were probably underestimating how many people they had that they could rely on.

Because generally speaking, that's what we do.

We underestimate people's empathy, we underestimate people's kindness.

And when presented with evidence to the contrary, then that immediately increases our well being and our level of trust in other people.

When you don't perceive other people to be kind or you assume other people won't care, you assume other people wouldn't be there for you if you needed them to be, then that contributes to your feeling of loneliness and social disconnection and your lack of trust in other people.

They did a study and they found that there's a really clear gap.

So when they ask everybody, how much empathy do you think your peers have?

I think this was like at a university or something.

Actually it was, it was at Stanford when they asked them to measure, like to, to give their opinion about how likely their peers would be to have empathy if they were having a hard time.

The response was something like, you know, 86%, 86% would be empathetic, would be kind.

Then when they asked all of the, the peer group, how empathetic would you be, how much empathy would you have if one of your peers was suffering or struggling?

The actual percentage of people who would have empathy was more like 98%.

Like was really high.

So there's this gap.

It was a gap of about 12%, right?

The perception gap.

How much you think that there would be, there would be empathy or there would be kindness or somebody willing to help you out versus the actual amount of people who would be willing to help you out.

And when you perceive that there's not empathy, then that, that means that you're less likely to, to reach out and connect with people.

You're less likely to put yourself into social situations, you're less likely to reach out when you are struggling.

You're less likely to take risks socially to try to make connections.

Like it impacts that it becomes this self reinforcing process because you opt out and then they, you have no people in your life.

Like in a round and around we go.

So then what they did was they started putting signs up around the university saying, do you know that your peers are really friendly and they have empathy and they want you to join in and why don't you reach out to somebody for a coffee today?

Or why don't you make a connection with somebody today?

And it actually increased people's willingness and increased the rate that, at which those students would like actually put themselves out there and connect socially, go to an event.

They also did this thing where they just put nudges on their phone like they sent them a notification saying oh hey, why don't you pay somebody a compliment today?

Why don't you invite somebody for a coffee today?

And that also increased their willingness to reach out and connect with somebody.

And then when they do that, so Again, positive cycle, right?

You reach out and connect with somebody, you have a positive experience, builds your sense of community and connection and your level of trust in people.

We've got to be building trust back into society.

We've got to be connecting and recognizing that people aren't all out to get us like that.

People are generally good.

And I feel like the more we're going down this really extreme path, this really polarized path that the world seems to be on, then the more that we're just increasing that divide and lowering those levels of trust in our fellow human beings.

So while we are talking about empathy and kindness and being there for other people, obviously in your own social circle there can be, we can all individually take more responsibility for reaching out, for doing kind things, for making social connections with others.

But we can also at a community level, be engaging in pro social behavior.

So pro social behavior is things like volunteering, donating, helping out.

And pro social behavior is proven to benefit both the person on the receiving end of that and the person doing the kind act, the volunteering or the helping.

So if it's possible, maybe engaging in some pro social behavior that's also going to increase your level of connection to your community, increase your satisfaction with life, increase your wellbeing, but have this ripple effect of flowing on an increasing other people's well being and maybe increasing other people's level of trust and their interpersonal trust, their social trust.

So I don't know about you, I thought that was pretty interesting.

And having just come out of my 30 days to a happier you, which is the 30 day series that I created for the Beyond Happy podcast subscribers, the people who've upgraded to the paid version of Crappy to Happy, you are most welcome.

I would love to see you there.

But within that 30 days, the we talked about, some of it was about kindness and giving and social connection and so many of these themes, we don't pay enough attention to them.

And I think we, we consider them, when we do consider them, we probably consider them from our own very individual selfish reasons, but not necessarily the wider impact of that.

Like I personally find that fascinating how that your level of satisfaction with life, your happiness and your level of trust in other people, maybe that seems really obvious to some people, but the fact that there's research now that that points to how that directly influences your voting preferences and as we know, voting preferences can massively impact the world that we live in, for better or worse.

And right now, fucking worse, going by what's happening in the US at the moment, and, and generally, like there's just this rise in popularity of some of these really far right wing political parties and people really subscribing to those kinds of ideologies, which is a direct reflection of people's low levels, not just their low levels of satisfaction with the status quo.

Like I get that, I get that people are dissatisfied with the status quo, but low levels of trust in their fellow human beings.

Like, can we just get back to seeing the good in each other and doing what we can to build that trust and those connections and to also be really wary of our pessimism about kindness.

People are pessimistic about kindness.

They underestimate people's kindness.

They underestimate people's empathy, underestimate people's benevolence.

People are good, people are kind.

If you think that they're not, it may just be your own cognitive bias in your own mind.

It may not be based in any reality.

And so the more that we can find examples to prove us wrong and to rebuild that trust, the better for our well being, the better for our happiness, the better for the world.

I'm going to leave you with that.

And before I go, one final thing, the other thing that is happening for my paid subscribers is that we've got a Q and A, like a private zoom call with Michelle McQuade, who, as you know, she was on the pod a few weeks ago and she talked about good girl syndrome and good girl conditioning and how girls and women are conditioned to down to, you know, be pleasers and perfectionists, et cetera.

And she's really done a lot of research into that and has got strategies for unpacking that and overcoming that.

And so she has agreed to come back for a private session, a Q and a zoom call with my paid subscribers.

And if you would like to be in on that, you can subscribe at my substack.

It's $10 for a month.

Even if you just subscribe for a month and it cost you 10 bucks just to come to that session, it would probably be worthwhile.

It would also give you access to that 30 day happiness series and whatever else is happening in the meantime for paid subscribers.

So just wanted to let you know about that in case it's of interest.

That's it from me.

I will be back next week for another fabulous episode of Crappy to Happy.