http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/psychobabble/ en-us Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:34:48 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2085984/posts Fierce individualists, Americans figure that we choose our own political beliefs — but actually it could come down to biology. Individuals who are more easily startled by threats are more likely than others to support protective policies, such as military spending, the Iraq War and the death penalty, finds a new study. ... The researchers measured levels of skin moisture as indicators of stress and anxiety for each participant as he or she looked at threatening images, including a large spider on the face of a frightened person, a dazed individual with a bloody face and an open wound with... LiveScience http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2085984/posts#comment Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:34:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2052190/posts This piece operates at two levels: it engages with the debate in political theory over pluralism, but it does so through an analysis of the phenomenon we call ‘Coulterism’. Briefly, we regard Ann Coulter as indicative of a more general trend in the political styles and activities that dominate contemporary US politics. Moreover, we also suggest that this trend tends to be too easily dismissed by liberals – liberals who, we suggest, tend to systematically misunderstand it. Furthermore, we contend, no doubt controversially, that Coulter and her ilk in fact succeed in a political critique of mainstream political liberalism in... Borderlands http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2052190/posts#comment Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:57:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2046335/posts Former President Bill Clinton (D) warned voters against electing former prisoner-of-war Senator McCain president. “POWs are not like us,” Clinton observed. “They’ve been held captive in barbaric conditions, tortured and humiliated by this country’s enemies. How can they ever be objective enough to deal with our country’s enemies as president?” Clinton argued that his evasion of military service saved him “from building up the prejudices against and hatreds for different cultures and political systems that could have compromised my ability to govern effectively. My judgment was untainted by any suffering and privation that could have biased my views. The same... AZCONSERVATIVE http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2046335/posts#comment Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:29:10 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2042405/posts John McCain on Tuesday questioned Bill Clinton’s credentials to discuss the mental health of prisoners of war after the former president told an audience in Aspen that it’s just a matter of time before a former POW snaps and relives the nightmare of his imprisonment. FOXNews.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2042405/posts#comment Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:00:53 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2042406/posts Former President Bill Clinton told an audience that POWs often suffer "anger" long after the incident - which some took as a swipe at Vietnam vet and presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain. NY Post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2042406/posts#comment Tue, 8 Jul 2008 15:01:28 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2013284/posts There is a news report starting to make the rounds amongst the MSM on a study that claims to have discovered why conservatives tend to be happier than liberals and it is just the sort of bilge that the MSM loves to promulgate. We may see more of it over the next several days because, while it is titled "Conservatives Happier Than Liberals," it is basically saying that the reason conservatives are happier is because they just don't care about other people. This purported research claims to pinpoint the reason conservatives are happier and it is because they have theirs... RedState.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2013284/posts#comment Thu, 8 May 2008 22:36:33 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2007237/posts STYLES make fights — or so goes the boxing cliché. In 2008, they make presidential campaigns, too. This is especially true for the two remaining Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Reporters covering the candidates have already resorted to traditional analysis of style — fashion choices, manner of speaking, even the way they laugh. Yet, according to design experts, the candidates have left a clear blueprint of their personal style — perhaps even a window into their souls — through the Web sites they have created to raise money, recruit volunteers and generally meet-and-greet online. On one thing, the experts... The New York Times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2007237/posts#comment Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:35:27 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2000404/posts TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama was criticized Friday by his two fellow presidential candidates for statements he made recently at a San Francisco fundraiser that could be viewed as derogatory toward rural America. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said Sunday, according to the Huffington Post web site. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate... The Chicago Tribune http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2000404/posts#comment Sat, 12 Apr 2008 02:54:25 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1969574/posts There has been a disturbing increase in Global Warming Stress Syndrome (GWSS, pronounced gwiss) according to Dr. Ron N. Hyde, a clinical psychologist at the prestigious McKitrick Center for the Especially Disturbed. “Since April, there is been a 32.817% increase in public cases of GWSS,” he explained. “The rate now is almost double what it was this time last year.” He added the trend was very worrying to his colleagues. According to literature provided by the McKitrick Center, GWSS was at first a disease confined to academics, where it was thought to be controllable... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1969574/posts#comment Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:45:55 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1918988/posts "I saw something." Kucinich, whose UFO run-in came to light last week in a passage from Shirley MacLaine's new book, went on to joke that he planned to move his campaign office to Roswell, N.M. Roswell is the place where legend holds a spacecraft crash-landed in 1947 and was recovered and moved for investigation to nearby Area 51, a secretive U.S. government airbase in Nevada. Kucinich went on to defend himself, saying many Americans have shared his experience. "You have to keep in mind that more — that Jimmy Carter saw a UFO and also that more people in this... FOXnews.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1918988/posts#comment Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:21:18 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1902164/posts Source: Association for Psychological Science Date: September 26, 2007 Why Few People Are Devoid Of Racial Bias Science Daily — Why are some individuals not prejudiced? That is the question posed by a provocative new study appearing in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one's own group. Robert Livingston of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Brian Drwecki of the University of Wisconsin conducted studies that examined white college students... Science Daily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1902164/posts#comment Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:59:50 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1900224/posts Excerpt: In addition to being especially submissive to established authority, Altemeyer's research revealed that those he calls right-wing authoritarians also show "general aggressiveness" towards others, when such behavior is "perceived to be sanctioned" by established authorities. Finally, these people are always highly compliant with the social conventions endorsed by society and established authorities. These basic traits, submissiveness to authority and conventionality, are the essence of those Altemeyer describes as right-wing authoritarians. If these traits are not present in some significant (albeit varying) degree, he does not consider the subject to be a right-wing authoritarian. However, these people can, and often... Findlaw.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1900224/posts#comment Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:47:02 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897398/posts WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama may joke about preparing for debates by riding bumper cars, but the 2008 campaign has been fairly civil so far -- and that's not necessarily good for U.S. voters. Conventional wisdom, and some research, has held that negative campaigning turns off voters and prompts them to stay away from the voting booth, but recent scholarship is reversing that notion, researchers say. "Democracy itself requires negativity," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies negative political campaigning. "We want the right to be critical of those in power." With the country highly... Yahoo News/Reuters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897398/posts#comment Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:25:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1896668/posts Are liberals smarter than conservatives? It looks that way, according to a study published this week in Nature Neuroscience. In a rapid response test—you press a button if you're given one signal, but not if you're given a different signal—the authors found that conservatives were "more likely to make errors of commission," whereas "stronger liberalism was correlated with greater accuracy." They concluded that "a more conservative orientation is related to greater persistence in a habitual response pattern, despite signals that this response pattern should change." Does this mean liberal brains are fitter? Apparently. "Liberals are more responsive to informational complexity,... Slate http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1896668/posts#comment Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:29:14 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1893626/posts A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction. All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality". Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public... Guardian http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1893626/posts#comment Sun, 9 Sep 2007 20:22:49 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883314/posts SAN FRANCISCO - Stung by reports implicating mental health specialists in prisoner abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, the nation's largest group of psychologists is considering banning its members from interrogations of terror suspects. The American Psychological Association, which is holding its annual meeting in San Francisco, is scheduled to vote Sunday on two competing measures concerning its 148,000 members' participation in military interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. military detention centers. One measure would bar members from any involvement in interrogations at U.S. detention facilities where foreigners are held. The moratorium would not be backed by... breitbart.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1883314/posts#comment Sun, 19 Aug 2007 09:21:19 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1863144/posts (From an article titled:Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature)Most suicide bombers are Muslim Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex. www.psychologytoday.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1863144/posts#comment Mon, 9 Jul 2007 18:55:10 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1855481/posts Newsweek Writer Plays Psychologist--On GOP Only Posted by Lynn Davidson on June 23, 2007 - 18:45. Newsweek's June 19 edition had an interesting web-exclusive “Mind Matters” column by Wray Herbert called “Toothless is Beautiful,” which was about social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson's new book, “Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me).” The book and the column concerned the “psychological process known as cognitive dissonance.” Sound like an unlikely candidate for bias? Keep reading.Cognitive dissonance is “the extreme emotional discomfort we feel when two important beliefs, attitudes or perceptions collide. Humans cannot tolerate dissonance for long, so they ease... http://newsbusters.org/ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1855481/posts#comment Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:19:43 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1841290/posts Dyslexia is a social fig leaf used by middle-class parents who fear their children will be labelled as low achievers, a professor has claimed. Julian Elliott, a leading educational psychologist at Durham University, says he has found no evidence to identify dyslexia as a medical condition after more than 30 years of research. Drudge http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1841290/posts#comment Tue, 29 May 2007 10:55:31 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1824964/posts This is a quite big deal that most of us totally missed last night: John Edwards doesn't believe there's a "global war on terror," at least not in the simple-show-of-hands sense. This is something a lot of Democrats say privately -- and something mainstream pols everywhere else in the world say publicly -- but it contests a Bush administration premise in a way very few American politicians have been comfortable in the last five and a half years. His stance -- though it doesn't seem to have been all that deliberate -- matches the recent comments of a prominent British... The Politico http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1824964/posts#comment Sat, 28 Apr 2007 03:04:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1801767/posts Traditional Masculinity Can Aid Recovery from Serious Injuries, MU Study Finds COLUMBIA, Mo. - For years, experts have said that the strong, silent male is not one to ask for help when he's hurt, and therefore at a disadvantage when it comes to getting better. But new research says this might not be completely accurate. This masculine identity often associated with men in the armed forces and other high-risk occupations may actually encourage and quicken a man's recovery from serious injuries, says a new exploratory study from the University of Missouri-Columbia. The study is the first to quantitatively confirm correlations... U. of Missouri http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1801767/posts#comment Fri, 16 Mar 2007 10:55:36 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1795877/posts I wanted to write something about the degenerative effects of incivility in politics in the wake of the comments and commentary today. Instead, a CQ reader sent me a link to a speech three years ago by Heritage Foundation president Dr. Edwin J. Fuelner. In speaking to the graduating class of Hillsdale College on May 8, 2004, Dr. Fuelner warned the young men and women that our democracy depends on the healthy exchange of ideas and arguments -- and that incivility degrades the social compact on which that debate depends: This is the real danger of incivility. Our free, self-governing... Captains Quarters http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1795877/posts#comment Tue, 6 Mar 2007 05:10:33 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698396/posts What differentiates two candidates of color for a job? It's not always the résumé. In many cases, skin tone makes the difference, according to University of Georgia (UGA) doctoral student Matthew Harrison, who conducted the first study of the impact of skin tone in the workplace. Harrison conducted the study with 240 psychology undergraduates at UGA. Each participant received one of two résumés that varied by educational and work experience. Along with the résumés, the participants received one of six pictures of candidates, all black, who varied by skin tone and gender. They then were asked to rate the candidate... DiversityInc.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1698396/posts#comment Sat, 9 Sep 2006 15:38:12 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613190/posts Noted political psychologist Barbra Streisand says she has plumbed the depths of President Bush's psyche, and has come up with his deep-seated reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein. In her latest "Truth Alert," Dr. Streisand explores what she describes as the "psycho-social reasons relating to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq." Turns out, according to the oracle of Malibu, Bush has "a long-standing father and son competition based on feelings of jealousy and inadequacy." Posits Streisand: "Bush saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow and no longer be seen as the perpetual underachiever who consistently failed under the watchful eye... NewsMax http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1613190/posts#comment Tue, 11 Apr 2006 17:49:14 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1607136/posts I'm calling attention to this commercial site not to promote it, but just the opposite. Freepers as a whole are so witty and so, err, umm, "fond" of the latest NewAgey trendy fads, that I thought I would "get my LOLlies" by soliciting comments from you all. Have at it! I've been told this $70 doll has a deep slow voice that says, "Everything is going to be all right". LOL!! Here is the full "My Therapy Buddy" Photo Album page. The doll was unveiled this week on "American Inventor". My Therapy Buddy http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1607136/posts#comment Fri, 31 Mar 2006 23:41:16 GMT