Conservatives Report Less Autonomous Work Motivation and Less Intrinsic Values than Liberals, but are Happier Nonetheless: The Explanatory Role of Psychological Need-Satisfaction

Many studies have compared conservative and liberal personalities in terms of traits and cognitive styles. Fewer studies have compared the motivations and values of the two groups, and fewer still have used the perspective of self-determination theory. Using two large archival datasets (Ns = 16,058 university students and 4314 working lawyers), I tested the hypotheses that conservatives would score lower in autonomous work motivation (H1) and in relative intrinsic value orientation (H2), compared to liberals. Consistent support was found for these two hypotheses. Supporting H3, autonomous work motivation and intrinsic value orientation were positively correlated with subjective well-being (SWB), as is typical. Still, despite their seeming motivational vulnerabilities, conservatives reported more SWB and meaning in life than liberals, consistent with other recent studies (H4). Mediational analyses suggest that the conservative advantage in SWB can be partially explained by conservative advantages in relatedness and/or competence need-satisfaction.