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.

Liberal denial about all things conservative has passed the bizarre and arrived at the absurd.
The American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin has published a study of why conservatives are the way they are. The study was conducted by four researchers, who, according to a press release from the University of California at Berkeley's (UCB) media relations office, "culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism." (Two of the researchers are professors at UCB, which apparently remains imprisoned in '60s dysfunctionality.) The researchers conclude conservatives suffer from a disease or malady that makes them think the way they do.
"At the core of political conservatism," says the press release on the study, "is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality." Well, yes, conservatives are resistant to change for the sake of change, believing certain ideas about life, relationships and morality are true for all time regardless of the times.
Some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism, according to the study, include fear and aggression; dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure; and terror management.
On this last point, the researchers wrote that post-September 11, 2001, many conservatives "appear to shun and even punish outsiders and those who threaten the status of cherished worldviews." Conservatives would like to do more than punish "outsiders" if they come to our nation in order to do harm to us who are inside. They would like to keep them from getting here in the first place and arrest or expel those who make it through with plans to kill us.
Most conservatives welcome "outsiders" so long as they are seeking to become insiders ?- that is, Americans ?- and not to undermine our way of life.
A second "key dimension of conservatism," says the UCB press release about the study, is "an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, South Carolina Republican."
Get it? Conservatism equals racism, xenophobia and all sorts of other unappealing traits. In case the point is not clear, the press release says the researchers put some familiar faces on those they consider to be conservative icons: "Hitler, Mussolini and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form." The authors commented in a published reply to the article that "talk show host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way."
The researchers must have missed the name of Adolf Hitler's political party, the National Socialists (emphasis mine). There is nothing "conservative" about his beliefs. Eliminating the unwanted is a liberal position, as in abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. That some of the world's greatest modern tyrants are linked to Mr. Reagan and Mr. Limbaugh tells us much about the political leanings of the authors.
What amazes about this "research" is the incredible bias against anything regarded as conservative. There is the presumption that no conservative idea is even worth considering and that to be conservative is to be psychologically disturbed. These guys seem to think conservatism is a dormant affliction, ready to break out into a plague at any moment.
This is a view held by most liberals, although they express it in different ways. Anyone who does not subscribe to the liberal catechism is, by definition, flawed and sick and something to be "studied," like Joseph Mengele "studied" Jews, Gypsies and twins for his own twisted and demented purposes.
I suppose conservatives can take some solace in the study's conclusion that while conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others, said one researcher, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded." No, but anyone who would study conservatism as if it were a social disease is simple-minded.
Who is funding all this research?
The only advantage I see from this study is that it might result in the finding that conservatism is a disability. If that happens, maybe I'll be able to park in the handicapped spaces at the mall.