Tuesday, November 04, 2014

The pain of losing elections is stronger than the pleasure of winning



A press release from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard tells us:
A new study co-authored by Assistant Professor Todd Rogers of Harvard Kennedy School finds that winning elections barely improves the happiness of those affiliated with the winning political party, but that losing reduces self-reported happiness and increases sadness substantially. 
Rogers, along with coauthors Lamar Pierce of Washington University in St. Louis and Jason Snyder of UCLA, analyzed thousands of daily online survey responses from CivicScience, a market research and data intelligence company, to compare the happiness and sadness reported by those who identifed closely with political parties in the days surrounding the 2012 Presidential Election. 
The researchers learned that the sadness effect lasted for about a week, but eventually partisan losers recovered.
You can download the full study from the School's website.

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