Psychology Today: The Ideological Animal

[Taxloss]

(A fascinating article about the differences between liberals and conservatives. Via Metafilter)

We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect.

Cinnamon Stillwell never thought she'd be the founder of a political organization. She certainly never expected to start a group for conservatives, most of whom became conservatives on the same day—September 11, 2001. She organized the group, the 911 Neocons, as a haven for people like her—"former lefties" who did political 180s after 9/11.

Stillwell, now a conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, had been a liberal her whole life, writing off all Republicans as "ignorant, intolerant yahoos." Yet on 9/11, everything changed for her, as it did for so many. In the days after the attacks, the world seemed "topsy-turvy." On the political left, she wrote, "There was little sympathy for the victims," and it seemed to her that progressives were "consumed with hatred for this country" and had "extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists."

Disgusted, she looked elsewhere. She found solace among conservative talk-show hosts and columnists. At first, she felt resonance with the right about the war on terror. But soon she found herself concurring about "smaller government, traditional societal structures, respect and reverence for life, the importance of family, personal responsibility, national unity over identity politics." She embraced gun rights for the first time, drawn to "the idea of self-preservation in perilous times." Her marriage broke up due in part to political differences. In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, she began going to pro-war rallies.

(snip)

Most people are surprised to learn that there are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament. Psychologists John Jost of New York University, Dana Carney of Harvard, and Sam Gosling of the University of Texas have demonstrated that conservatives and liberals boast markedly different home and office decor. Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious. Liberals are more likely to like classical music and jazz, conservatives, country music. Liberals are more likely to enjoy abstract art. Conservative men are more likely than liberal men to prefer conventional forms of entertainment like TV and talk radio. Liberal men like romantic comedies more than conservative men. Liberal women are more likely than conservative women to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.

Much more:

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml

[JuniperLea]

1. Cinnamon... hmmm... I know there's a joke there somewhere

I don't recall any of those horrid things she talks about. "consumed with hatred for this country" and had "extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists." ??? Didn't that happen much later when we started actually talking about LIHOP and such? All I remember in that regard was a huge coming together of peoples. Strange.


Edited to say... the personality trait bit is spot on, imho! :)

[Taxloss]

3. If you liked that bit ...

... there's tonnes more deeper in the piece:

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers—John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley—found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.

The study's authors also concluded that conservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.

[patrice]

2. There are physical archetypes, each with a spectrum of sub-archetypes.

Organismic Classes.

Behavior IS Biology.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Liberals have at least one book in their home. n/t

[Taxloss]

5. ... And it isn't "My Pet Goat". n/t

[Crunchy Frog]

6. That whole thing with Ms Stillwell seems very contrived.

She sounds more like a piece of RW propaganda than a real person.

[Stuckinthebush]

8. No kidding

No self-described liberal would become "disgusted" with liberals after 9/11 and say that they were filled with hate. That is such crap. This person is a RW plant...no doubt about it.

[ShortnFiery]

7. Cute, but needs to be replicated and specific variables must be controlled for.

As a person who has actually earned a Masters in the field of Experimental Psychology, I find the above data anecdotal at best. Social Science findings must be replicated multiple times to control for outside variables.

BTW if you get all inspired by that, here's some more findings without tight controls.

1) Left-handed people tend to die at a younger age than right handed people;

2) Highly intelligent men tend to marry tall (5'10" an above) women;

3) No one knows more about the field of Social Psychology than a person who has read a few sexy Journal Articles, i.e., my mother and a few acquaintances.

.
.
. BTW 3) was tongue-in-cheek but has stood up to twenty years of case study. ;)


Nothing occurs in a vacuum, i.e, the other variables don't seem to be controlled for. Even if there is some sort of trend to these hypotheses regarding personality traits of liberals vs. conservatives, social science is restricted. This basic research must be replicated multiple times before the findings are accepted as viable theories.

Now the real work begins as others attempt to replicate such *cute* findings. :P

If I was involved in future research efforts, I'd separate the Conservative Group into "the intellectuals (AEI types)" versus "the koolaid converted." We have some very intelligent and classy conservatives in this country. IMO, they are a different "character trait" subset to their Authoritarian loving choir. These people are more like liberals save for the fact that they know what they are preaching is incongruent - however, it's the bottom line that's all important, i.e., willful ignorance.

IMO, the more education you are blessed with in both the science and social science aspects of Psychology, the more you realize how LITTLE we truly know about the functioning of the human mind. :crazy: :hi:

p.s. I adore my firearms. ;)