Right wingers experienced 'more positive
interactions with parents'
Posted on 05/25/2007 11:34:56 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Psychologists attempt to make sense of politics, reports Roger Highfield
The rise in the numbers of mothers who work may be linked with a subsequent rise in liberal politics, according to a study that suggests New Labour should thank career opportunities for women as much as policy spin for its appeal.
Liberal and conservative politics were not invented by the power hungry but evolved to help us to survive, according to research on more than 100 young adults conducted by by psychologists.
The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, backs the idea that politics is useful, contrary to what many may believe.
It also suggests that liberals had a more difficult upbringing, such as a father who is absent and a disinterested mother, than right wingers.
Although the differences between liberals and conservatives are well studied, Prof Randy Thornhill and Corey Fincher from the Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, were interested to find out whether the differences between right and left were "functional and socially strategic in human evolutionary history.
In other words, did politics evolve to help our ancestors to survive and reproduce?
Conservatives, they propose, are focused more on working within family groups (so called ingroup alliances), while liberals are better at dealing with other groups (outgroup alliances).
They go on to suggest that these different values could be linked with stress during upbringing - the more stress, the more liberal leanings. "Results from our study of 123 young adults support the hypotheses," said Prof Thornhill.
Liberals are more interested in novelty, while conservatives are more interested in stability, and the study suggests that, overall, this blend of skills was an advantage for our ancestors. "Under certain conditions of human evolutionary history outgroup alliances are highly advantageous whereas under others close ingroup alliances better promote survival," said Prof Thornhill.
For each of their subjects, the team recorded political leanings, outlook, upbringing and relationships with parents. There was no link with short-termism and long-termism, as some have suggested, but an association did emerge with childhood experiences, "a link between childhood feelings of abandonment, the resultant psychological state of insecure attachment and a corresponding later belief in liberal values."
"I would say that conservatives and liberals raised their kids differently," Prof Thornhill told The Daily Telegraph. Tories and right wingers experienced "more positive interactions with parents", and hands on parenting, compared with liberals.
The increasing number of working mothers could have influenced politics, since his study suggests that being looked after in a nursery was more likely to generate future liberal leanings. However, to say left wingers had an unhappy childhood was misleading since the term "happy" carried a lot of baggage, he stressed.
However, this is a tricky field. Last year, another group at the University of California, Berkeley, came to the opposite conclusion; insecure children were more likely to grow up into conservatives, and that confident kids were more likely to become liberal.
How do we tell right from left?
The differences between left and right were detailed by an earlier study of 23,000 people in 12 countries. "Conservatives, in comparison to liberals, are risk averse and prefer social inequality, traditionally established and familiar in-group values, and familial allegiance," they say.
"Liberals are risk prone, are open to new views and ways, value equality and out-group relations, and exhibit high independence and self-reliance."
The earlier work shows that liberals tend to be: against, skeptical of, or cynical about familiar and traditional ideology; open to new experiences; individualistic and uncompromising, pursuing a place in the world on personal terms; private; disobedient, even rebellious rule-breakers; sensation seekers and pleasure seekers, including in the frequency and diversity of sexual experiences; socially and economically egalitarian; and risk prone; furthermore, they value diversity, imagination, intellectualism, logic, and scientific progress.
Conservatives "exhibit the reverse in all these domains. Moreover, the felt need for order, structure, closure, family and national security, salvation, sexual restraint, and self-control, in general, as well as the effort devoted to avoidance of change, novelty, unpredictability, ambiguity, and complexity, is a well-established characteristic of conservatives."
In other words, lefties are damaged goods...
“Liberals are risk prone, are open to new views and ways, value equality and out-group relations, and exhibit high independence and self-reliance.”
What total BS.
Lefties look to government to solve their problems.
Righties look to themselves and family.
My experiences left me decidedly right. To start with, dad dumped us...cuz he could. As large a sphincter as he was..I doubt he's have let us starve and die. Law of unintended consequences.
That ain’t no conservative there.
“Does a poor upbringing make you more left wing?”
Any upbringing that leaves you more left wing is a poor upbringing.
Next bro is a doctor, painter, musician, writer. Political moderate.
I'm a retired cop. Now I play music for a living. Moonbat right winger.
Little sister runs her own business. Computer geek. Wedding planner. Moderate.
One sister with mental disabilities, probably cuz of the vicious beating dad gave her..brain damage. She's a screaming liberal...btw.
Mom is a very smart lady, and gave us a love of reading early. I was a wild child...the stuff I put her through....
We all turned out OK. I remember how ashamed she was to return to her hometown like that. She worked when possible...with chronic back pain.... because she was proud, and hated receiving aid. She had it really hard. I think she still feels responsible. Dad was a violent, foul-mouthed, nasty, cheatin' SOB. And she feels like it was her fault. yeah...she loved us. Still does...when she can remember our names...Alzheimer's.
Every few years a psychological study comes out that says that the Marxists and Stalinists are original, sophisticated, tolerant free-thinkers while conservatives who believe in personal freedom and appreciate the complexity of a market economy are simple-minded authoritarians. Yawn.
“I’m a retired cop. Now I play music for a living. Moonbat right winger.”
I call shenanigans. If you’re Conservative, you can’t be a moonbat. That’s a province solely occupied by the left.
Sorry to hear about the Alzheimer's. It's obvious that mom was special in your upbringing and gave all for her children.
Why would working mothers breed parasites and goofballs?
I was born to a dirt poor family in the hills of Washington State.
I lived as a street rat in Berkeley during the 60s. I spent time in juvenile halls, children’s shelters, a couple of low income foster homes and a two or three years back with my still dysfunctional and low income family before joining the Navy -- and nowhere, at no time, was I ever tempted by the idiocy of the left.
I’m not the greatest success now, never will be a millionaire, but what I have I earned and bought with hard cash and work. That’s the way it should be.
Welfare of course, that and “commodities” which meant government cheese, powdered milk, dried split pea soup, 100 pound bags of potatoes.
Meat was mostly venison and bear donated by hunters and distributed by local churches. We got dragged down to the “city” by the welfare lady and were treated like zoo animals by the kids in public school because we didn’t know anything.
Mom learned that California paid a lot more in welfare than Washington, so she learned how to drive, rented a car (stole it basically) and loaded us all up to drive to Oakland. Family broke apart soon after that.
I ended up with my eldest sister in Berkeley because she thought a skinny kid could pan-handle spare change better than she could, being a fat teenager. This was mid-sixties as I recall and I was about 6 at the time.
It took about a year, maybe less before the cops finally cornered me and threw me in the children’s shelter. Summer of love my A$$. It was vicious on the streets.
To be more specific, how was the relationship with your Mother prior to you leaving?
Not great, frankly. She was always tired, always screaming. With six kids — two of them teenagers, she didn’t have much time to spend on any one of them.
It wasn’t the Waltons, that’s for sure. I try not to think about those days too much.
I didn’t start becoming politically aware until my mid-teens but even then I felt no inclination to follow the herd of kids into the liberal mind-set being pushed by the teachers.
I guess my rebellious teens expressed themselves by turning to the opposite side of the political trends of the time.
I could see that they were trying to push slogans down my throat... overpopulation being the big boogieman then — Watergate and Nixon as the fascist criminal who caused Vietnam (I remember how pissed off one teacher was when I pointed out that the war had been going on a long time before Nixon was elected).
I just developed an overriding contempt for liberal-democrats, for hippies, for anything that had to do with the sixties and early seventies (except for some of the music) and it stuck.
Later as my political knowledge became more comprehensive, I found no reason to change the opinions I had developed and haven’t.
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