Fascinating article in Psychology Today about the personality traits of libs/cons

[beachmom]

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20061222-000001&page=2

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.

Liberals, on the other hand, are "more likely to see gray areas and reconcile seemingly conflicting information," says Jost. As a result, liberals like John Kerry, who see many sides to every issue, are portrayed as flip-floppers. "Whatever the cause, Bush and Kerry exemplify the cognitive styles we see in the research," says Jack Glaser, one of the study's authors, "Bush in appearing more rigid in his thinking and intolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity, and Kerry in appearing more open to ambiguity and to considering alternative positions."

This article is just fantastic not just for public people, but for ourselves. This paragraph is very telling as far as the temperament differences between liberals and conservatives:

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.

I'm still reading it. Very interesting.

[beachmom]

1. Very, very telling:

As a follow-up, Solomon primed one group of subjects to think about death, a state of mind called "mortality salience." A second group was primed to think about 9/11. And a third was induced to think about pain—something unpleasant but non-deadly. When people were in a benign state of mind, they tended to oppose Bush and his policies in Iraq. But after thinking about either death or 9/11, they tended to favor him. Such findings were further corroborated by Cornell sociologist Robert Willer, who found that whenever the color-coded terror alert level was raised, support for Bush increased significantly, not only on domestic security but also in unrelated domains, such as the economy.




I think that this paragraph is in a nutshell why Bush won. The Swift Boat stuff was to make sure people wouldn't think JK was their hero who'd save them. But I still think they got far more bang for their buck with the terror alerts, with OBL's appearance at the end, the final terror alert.

[beachmom]

2. The psychologist agrees:

We can use this, by the way, with people who keep saying Kerry lost to the worst president ever:

"Without 9/11 we would have a different president," says Solomon. "I would even say that the Osama bin Laden tape that was released the Thursday before the election was sufficient to swing the election. It was basically a giant mortality salience induction."



Perhaps Kerry should use this in his campaign, if he chooses to run:

"People have two modes of thought," concludes Solomon. "There's the intuitive gut-level mode, which is what most of us are in most of the time. And then there's a rational analytic mode, which takes effort and attention."

The solution, then, is remarkably simple. The effects of psychological terror on political decision making can be eliminated just by asking people to think rationally. Simply reminding us to use our heads, it turns out, can be enough to make us do it.

[Blaukraut]

3. fascinating study

I bookmarked it for later reading. Your excerpts tell us nothing we don't already know, although, generally I have to say that most conservatives' homes I've seen are messy, dirty, and unorganized. Then again, there are different social classes among conservatives and liberals, so that probably plays a part in the type of environment they live in.
Everything else is absolutely accurate.

[ProSense]

4. Stuff like this fascinates me

The profile in the second snip is excellent, the article interesting, but this caught my attention:

"Bush in appearing more rigid in his thinking and intolerant of uncertainty and ambiguity, and Kerry in appearing more open to ambiguity and to considering alternative positions."

I'm no psychologist, but ambiguity is not the same as considering alternatives and being nuances in one's thinking. Everything that comes out of Bush's mouth is laced with ambiguity (lies often are). It's his actions that are stubborn. How does McCain fit into this profile of being ambiguous? Or even the more consistent Hagel (well he consistently says exactly the opposite of what he does)?

[rockymountaindem]

5. This is often what I have thought:

"I would even say that the Osama bin Laden tape that was released the Thursday before the election was sufficient to swing the election. It was basically a giant mortality salience induction."

For most of the election, I didn't think we had a chance in hell. Then, towards the end, I thought things might work out. But, the night that video came out, showing Osama bin Laden and telling Americans to be afraid, I knew it was over. I've always thought that was the day we lost the election.

This is going to sound silly, but the Bin Laden tape and the color-coded alert system etc. have always made me think of an episode of the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh that I used to watch when I was a little kid. I hadn't seen it for years, but when they started with the color coded alert system, it immediately came back to mind. The episode was called, IIRC, "King of the Beasties". Tigger found out that he was related to lions, the king of beasts. So, he figured, he deserved to be King of the Hundred Acre Wood. Nobody bought it. So Tigger made a fake Jagular out of a tablecloth, a pillow and a broom that he stole from Rabbit, and used the phantom threat of the jagular to make all the other characters think they needed Tigger to protect them. After all, Tiggers are related to lions, so who better to fend off the Jagular threat? Pooh, Piglet and the others fell right into line and started treating Tigger like a king, even painting the Hundred Acre Wood with orange and black stripes. Rabbit, noticing his missing possessions, figured out what Tigger was up to and set out to expose him. Rabbit started planting evidence of "Jagular" activity all over the wood until Tigger was so wound up worrying about a real Jagular he ended up attacking his own model that Rabbit had stolen back. Thus, the jig was up and Tigger gave up his crown and apologized to everyone.

That color-coded thing is so ridiculous, and was ratcheted up just in time for the DNC and all. With the OBL tape just 4 days before the election, all I could think about was that episode of Winnie the Pooh from when I was a little kid.

On edit: I was right... from the Winnie the Pooh Episode Guide: http://www.lavasurfer.com/episodes/pooh-episodes.html

"KING OF THE BEASTIES"
"Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he's related to a bear/ Tiger looks through the pictures, and gets upset that he's got no relatives. Eeyore tells him that he's not related to a donkey. Tigger things he might be related to a lion, who's king of the beasties. To prove himself he attacks a pretend Jagular. Tigger proclaims himself Kind and wants to called the 100 Aker Wood Tiggeropolis and paint it stripey. And now he wants everyone to bounce! Rabbit finds out it's a fake Jagular and teaches Tigger a lesson. Upset, he confesses to the gang. Piglet wants to forgive him and they have a kind un-crowning and he feels like a new Tigger! He thinks he may be related to a snake or shark or a hippopotamus, octopus or an elevator... But then he is the only one."