This one is really waaaay too funny, and will definitely require all drinking vessels, flammables, and sharp objects be safely stowed. Posted on 01/19/2007 3:59:07 PM PST by lowbridge
Posted by Noel Sheppard on January 19, 2007 - 10:07.
This one is really waaaay too funny, and will definitely require all drinking vessels, flammables, and sharp objects be safely stowed.
Psychology Today magazine has a long study published in its January/February issue about the differing mindsets and personalities of conservatives and liberals. Who do you think the report praised, and who did it slam? Which ideological group was perceived as smarter, and which was considered more insecure?
If you’re having a hard time answering these questions, read this (emphasis mine throughout). However, please fasten your seatbelts, for you are about to be greatly insulted by one of America's leading psychology periodicals:
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.
Pretty funny stuff, right? But it gets better, although you might have to find a more intelligent liberal to explain it to you:
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.
I’m not kidding. Check the link, through some water on your face, and come back here because there’s more:
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."
Amazing. But there was more:
That's why the more educated people are, the more liberal they become—but only to a point. Once people begin pursuing certain types of graduate degrees, the curve flattens. Business students, for instance, become more conservative in their views toward minorities. As they become more established, doctors and lawyers tend to protect their economic interests by moving to the right. The findings demonstrate that conservative conversions are fueled not only by fear, but by other factors as well. And if the November election was any indicator, the pendulum that swung so forcefully to the right after 9/11 may be swinging back.
Incredible. Well, that’s all I have to say on this issue, for I have to go protect my economic interests. Have a nice day.
I hear this a lot (often from liberals themselves). I usually sit back and ask them about the gray areas in the abortion issue: if it isn't black and white, they should be able to explore times when abortion is wrong.
They then proceed to flip out and frame the issue in very stark black and white terms. Go figure.
The author of that "ironshrink.com" article rips the "study" we're talking about to shreds. This is a "study" of ideology in which Hitler is "conservative" and Stalin is - "conservative!"This "study" is just self-flattery on the part of the authors.
Well, the letters to the editor of Penthouse and Omni magazine (same publisher too) were both called "Forum." I often imagined one getting mixed up with the other.
"I'm a college student at a large midwestern university, and I was mixing chemicals, when...."
My experience exactly.
Thank you for the link. Very informative!
The fertility gap alone explains why conservatives have less time for books and "unconventional entertainments."
Roundup of related links:
http://tinyurl.com/2dysr9
Or use:
http://cinnamonstillwell.blogspot.com/2007/01/blogosphere-roundup-on-psychology.html
Liberals are too busy pleasuring themselves on a daily basis and stroking their fragile ego by searching for adulation to have time for serious business. For the most part, liberals are shallow and silly people constantly seeking instant gratification.
This article has all the markings of the product of a silly liberal writer stroking his ego and searching for adulation. Fear is something I see on the extreme left and extreme right. Fortunately, the extreme right doesn't conform the bulk of conservatism. There are many shades of conservatives, but what defines conservatives in general is their moral principles, their appreciation of free markets, their interest in a strong economy, their concern for private property rights, their pursuit of limited government and respect for our national institutions. None of this has much to do with fear. It's our responsible, reality-bound, and matter of fact way of thinking that makes conservatives different than liberals.
The most conservative person I know happens to be a Canadian, and he has a lot of the attributes you describe even though he's probably "simple" and "uneducated" (but he's smart as hell) by liberal standards.
Agreed, sometimes the quantity of books we read doesn't make us smarter.
"liberalism in its extreme form is not a coherent political philosophy, but rather a mental disorder!"
It's so true! :-)
I wonder what role reading/posting on FreeRepublic has to do with intelligence, though. LOL.
True, and what's the point of reading that much if they can't memorize any of it, LOL.
I gotta go out and grab some supper . . . I'll be back here in a little while. C.U. soon!
This is nothing more than the old "authoritarian personality" canard that the left has been pushing for years. One of their goals is to diagnose conservatives and conservative ideas as mentally ill/pathology.
Just like they did in the old Soviet Union.
"scratch a liberal, find a fascist"
Something to do with the brain migrating south I think.
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