The old notion that people of faith are stern, severe, and unhappy, has little merit.  In fact, the opposite is true.

The Haskell, et al study showing that growing churches tend to be theologically conservative, which I referenced in an earlier post, brought to my attention an earlier study from 2008 showing that religious conservatives tend to be happier:

Twenty-four years of the General Social Surveys are analyzed to test eight hypotheses derived from the scattered literature on religion and happiness. The hypothesis that religiousness is positively related to happiness is supported, as is the hypothesis that the religious effect is primarily “social.”

An abstract can be found here.