Researchers help define what makes a political conservative

"http://www.zota.org/mt/archives/000157.html

System Justification
Two months ago a study was published in the APA's Psychological Bulletin called "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." It took a set of scientific studies from the last 50 years and attempted to parse out some of the motivating traits of a "conservative" worldview. Although the shorthand descriptions of conservative traits are definitely unflattering, it didn't really make any outrageous claims (conservatives tend to be intolerant of ambiguity. Yeah, that's a stretch.) And when it was published, nobody outside academia seemed to care much.

Until last week when Berkeley Media Relations put out an inflammatory press release, one sentence of which directly linked Hitler, Mussolini, and Reagan -- something the study doesn't actually do. They put the press release on the web and sent it far and wide, and that finally got some attention.

But only for the press release. Which is now described as the study itself on a wide array of conservative websites. There's reposting of the full press release even though it's already online. There's tedious line by line insulting of the press release. There's Rush Limbaugh ranting and flapping about the press release. There's cosmic pronouncements about the fallen nature of Man and how this differs from the press release. And in almost all the responses there are torrents of gibbering, howling, frothing hatred of Berkeley, who put out the press release... even though the lead author of the study is at the Stanford.Business School and has a PhD from our "president's" alma mater, Yale.

The full study itself is online at Stanford [1.7 MB pdf]. And since it was published in a reputable academic journal, there's a response to problems in the study, with a counter response by the authors [also online, 1.7MB pdf].

<snip>
So if a group of psychologists spend years looking at scientific surveys and publish a peer-reviewed paper suggesting there's a relationship between certain personal traits and a politically "conservative" worldview, then that is a scandalous example of junk science.

And if a single lapsed psychologist simply feels in his heart that "Leftism" is universally tied to various poisonous beliefs, then... he starts a blog. And Glenn Reynolds cites him as a reliable authority. And lots of other conservative bloggers attack a press release.

I think we've all learned something today.


Posted by zota at July 28, 2003 02:29 AM "

LOL, Sofia, I've got a stick and a baby seal.
How will you use the stick: beat the seal to death or impale it?

Okay, first of all, the actual study is fractionally less outright stoopid than the summary released to the media. Still, the summary is what 99 percent of the media will read and it contains what the authors presumably want the public to know about their work. Here's the first problem: When asked that this might be seen as a "partisan exercise," Dr. Jack Glaser explained that they studied conservatism simply because there have been a great deal of studies on conservatives but not on liberals. Now, putting aside the fact that the authors included in their research numerous speeches by conservatives and judicial opinions by conservatives and the last time I checked there was no shortage of liberal speeches and liberal judicial opinions, I take them at their word that there have been few psychological studies of liberalism and many of conservatism.

But perhaps, just perhaps, this fact illuminates a certain bias in the profession. Look at it this way. I have no doubt there is no shortage of psychological studies of murderers, rapists, people who think they're Napoleon, and people who think Carrot Top is funny. But I suspect there's very little data on people who like to have cereal and orange juice in the morning. Why? Because the former category of people are considered abnormal. People who eat cereal and juice in the morning aren't particularly interesting because they aren't seen as particularly different. So it is with conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are strange creatures. They have strange views. They defend cruelty and inequality while liberals, well, they're baseline. They're like, well, me. How else to explain the vast stockpile of research on conservatives and the comparative dearth of data on liberals? And if that is part of the equation, then maybe the data is skewed because researchers found what they wanted to find. They were only looking for their car keys where the light is good.

The idea that the psychiatric-therapeutic establishment is politically biased is hardly new. In 1964, 1,189 psychiatrists asserted that even though they'd never met Barry Goldwater, never mind diagnosed him, he was still so mentally unstable and paranoid that in their scientific opinion he could not be trusted with the power of the presidency. So outrageous was this "petition" of psychiatrists launched by Fact magazine, that Goldwater actually won a libel suit, which is almost impossible for a politician.

And that gets us to the heart of why this study is more bogus than a $6 dollar Rolex. Virtually all of the characteristics the authors attribute to the right can be equally laid at the feet of the left. If you think left-wingers have a high tolerance for ambiguity, tell one it's not clear that Head Start does any good at all. Talk to them about racial differences. Say: "Even if gay marriage were worth doing, there would be many devastating negative consequences." Mention that a factory closing can be a good thing. Tell them it's okay for economists to put a specific monetary value on a human life. Tell them intelligence tests measure intelligence. Tell them something can be simultaneously bad and constitutional. Indeed, don't get me started on the myopia of the left on constitutional questions; tell a campus liberal that Brown v. Board of Education had a good effect but was a terribly reasoned decision and they will look at you as if you'd said grobn gleebin grobbin grobin while standing on one foot. I've just watched my wife spend a year debating Title IX please don't tell me that feminists have a rich love of exchange and a gift for understanding nuance.

How anybody could look at the anti-globalization movement or anti-genetically engineered food crowd and say that the left isn't dependent on "fear and aggression" is beyond me. The Naderites have mastered the art of scaring the bejesus out of people on a wide spectrum of issues. Your cars are killing you and the planet, multinational corporations want to install pain collars on all carbon-based life, genetically modifying crops will result in 50-foot-tall ears of corn which will crush cities and enslave mankind. Children are taught that if their parents don't recycle, they must be turned in to the appropriate authorities. Not too long ago feminists insisted it was unsafe for a woman to be alone in the room with a guy if the Super Bowl was on. We spent much of the 1990s listening to one liberal after another insist that if we didn't do X, Y or Z, the children would be "left behind," presumably in a scary place without recycling.