On Friday when Yahoo! linked the latest study designed to show conservatives in a bad light, I wondered if they had ever featured a study showing that liberals are angrier, less happy or less generous than conservatives. And I wondered if the “journalists” reporting the “study” ever considered the politics of those who conducted the study. (It does seem that the media give more prominence to studies critical of conservatives.)
Seeing this study made me wonder how determined so many on the left are to find some psychological factor that sets us apart politically. They want to explain away our differences so they don’t have to consider our ideas.
Why can’t they just accept that we come to our political ideas sincerely? Do they even bother to consider that we might have read widely and have thought long and hard about politics? Why are so many so determined to dismiss us as suffering from some psychological disorder?
It seems that in their very determination to so dismiss us, they are the ones suffering under some kind of delusion, that they are projecting onto us. Lest you miss my point, let me clarify. Those liberals determined to find something psychological factor which defines conservatives are those who may well suffer the disorders they wish to ascribe to us. Other liberals who believe that conservatives, like them, are sincer in their beliefs, do not so suffer.
I wonder how such liberals react to this raft of studies.
So, here’s an idea: can it with the studies and start confronting our ideas — on the level of ideas.
UC Berkeley conducted a study like this about five years ago. It was a consortium of scholars from there who concluded through “research” that conservatism was a mental disorder. It’s only a matter of time before the left-leaning American Psychological Association declares it an official mental disorder. Two can play that game howerver. I’m not sure where it’ll get us each calling the other mentally ill in the political debate though….
Did Obama really say in Cairo…..”I’ve come to the conclusion that women are just as good at certain jobs as men….”
Such a strong (sarc) statement to muslims about womens rights. What a whimp.
I have found most liberals to be hyper emotional people more likely to be depressed.
In graduate school (psychology) I could barely tolerate the psych courses I had to take that were interested in finding a correlation between anything of particular interest to the ‘researcher.’ My path to psychology had followed through a route of the hard sciences and I couldn’t understand any of the ‘touchy-feely’ that came from many of my fellow graduate students. I kept quiet and confined myself to the laboratory. Somewhere along the way I did develop an abbreviated appreciation for those touchy-feely psychologists, but I have always felt they lacked some basic science training along the way. This type of study is nothing more than politics parading as a ‘science.’ Something we also see with the entire global warming hysteria. In those semesters when I teach an Intro course to undergraduates, I always take pause to reflect on the definition of psychology as a science, and reassure myself that I haven’t succumb to all the bad my science has inflicted on the population.
Dr Sanity is a must read on this very subject. She makes a very thorough analysis of the psychoses of the libtards who keep projecting their own insecurities onto others. Her articles on the narcissism of Obummer is very illuminating. Actually she could be talking about Australian PM Kevin (K)Rudd or Krudd.
p.s. to Scott, you got that right about Global Warming. It is hysteria but the little dears are trying to say that those who disagree with them are the ones who are unbalanced – it is typical of their projection that they cannot see that they are the ones who show signs of mental instability.
Dan, while the reporting may be biased, the research really isn’t. There’s been lots of insights over the last twenty years into how we decide things, insights that put to bed the notion that we are purely rational creatures — but also that we are purely emotive ones as well.
We’re a muddy mixture of both, sometimes searching for objective ideas that support our personal biases and other times reading objective information through subjective lenses. Humans are great pattern recognition machines, but because we’re so good at seeing patterns, we often see them where they don’t really exist or subscribe the wrong reasons to their existence when we do.
Books like Jonah Lehrer’s “How We Decide” or Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things” are great insights into research around these phenomena.
Looking at the post you linked to, the problem is the reporting. Science reporting in popular press is pretty bad. There was a study out last year that some people interpreted as saying that conservatives were more fearful and liberals were more easy going, when that wasn’t what the research showed.
People who supported and opposed socially protective policies had different instinctual threat responses. Neither instinctual response was good or bad, just different.
It informs but doesn’t change the fact that we come to our views on these issues for a variety of reasons, rational, subjective and, yes, biological. That’s what happens when you run legacy software built over 3.5 billion years. 😀
Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things ??
I will have to get that for my best friend. LOL But then again a lot of what he believes also has a lot to do with a certain weed…
Yes, obviously the liberals have it backwards. It is they who have the problem. In fact the idea for this silly study I think comes from the joke that has been going around conservatives among ourselves: Liberalism is a mental defect.
for some reason it would not print my post.
It did say “Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
If conservatism is simply selfishness and greed, then it is a disorder. If conservatism includes contributing to the social contract and protecting life at all stages, then conservatism is healthy.
I’m sorry, where in the linked article do they describe conservatism as a “social disorder”?
Projection is the liberal’s stock-in-trade, and anyone who has ever been one and is no longer knows this.
This mental disorder theory does not explain why so many people are lefty when young and either grow more conservative as they age, or have a shocking paradigm shift in their middle years (as I did) due to a cataclysmic event. Recovered lefties did not suddenly acquire mental illness (Dr. Sanity and Neo-neocon can attest to this). What turns folks conservative is reality, human nature, and a sudden, shocking and fundamental awareness and understanding of the world as it is and not as they perceived it to be. There really is reality and not just perception of reality. This is a very hard lesson to learn. The left live in a mental warp and project their dysfunctions onto their ideological enemies. They are absolutely obsessed with blaming others. They are mental and emotional children. Growing up mentally is hard! Lefties abhor and resist anything that is hard. It’s “cruel” and “unfair”!
As a former psych major myself, I can attest to the fact that many psychologists not only are not realists but when required actually cannot make the simplest everyday life decisions without agony. Reality does not exist for them. This is why they make the perfect lefties and churn out absurd studies whose results fly in the face of reality.
Reality always wins.
I follow the sage advice of the father of critical thinking, Yogi Berra, who said: “you can observe a lot by just looking.”
I know a few conservatives who cling to their guns and religion. I know a few liberals who want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. The problem comes when people wander off the stereotype reservation.
I would be interested in having a good, honest examination of the control group these researchers assemble. Unfortunately, many psychologists work hard to create a mystique and then concentrate on defending the miasma that ensues.
For my money, liberalism in the United States today is manipulative, based on power and deathly afraid of facts and sunlight. That is what I have observed by just looking. And when I ask a liberal to back up his charges, he either blows a gasket or two-steps onto an unrelated set of other charges. I cite anything whatsoever about Bush and Katrina as an example.
My conservatism lies somewhere between Hillary, Evan Bayh, and Ben Nelson on the left to John McCain, Colin Powell, and Olympia Snowe on the right. I didn’t vote for Obama but I wouldn’t vote for Gingrich either. I think Huckabee and I are in the same place on most social issues except gay civil unions. Conservatism isn’t defined by being as greedy and selfish as possible. You can believe that the foundation of a free market is a healthy, protected, educated society.
Personally, I think there is more evidence to prove that liberalism really is a mental disorder, than for conservatism to be described as such.
Regards,
Peter H.
Dan, interesting post and link. But I didn’t see the link saying that being conservative was a pschological disorder. It did say that some qualities seem to be more in line with conservatives, and some more in line with liberals. In fact, the article even linked to the study that said that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals. Frankly, I’m skeptical of these studies. And even if they are true, trying to generalize from these studies seems pointless.
What we have seen is that conservatives try to paint liberals of having a mental disorder, seeming to contradict your post. Go figure. Of course, it would be wrong to generalize this to all conservatives.
Heliotrope, I have almost the same exact observations with conservatives as well. This is something I see both sides equally guilty of.
It’s funny how libtards are almost always the ones to pontificate on The Myth of Mental Illness. By Thomas S. Szasz (1960) that mental illness is a social construct used to imprison dissident thinkers in society; but then they go right out and trumpet hoax research to claim thatrepublicans and conservatives are mentally ill.
Cognitive Dissonance/Hypocrisy at its finest.
Eagle, mental illness is very much real and very much affects both conservatives and liberals, but not because of their political outlook.
Equating political philosophy, in and of itself, with a mental illness is one of the more asinine things one can do.
Squeamish, eh?
I’ve seen things that would make these researchers puke or give others nightmares and then go out to lunch or dinner and discuss it with my co-workers. I’ve had the smell of death and decay in my nose for days on end. I’ve had the smell of smoke and burned flesh in my clothes.
Only time I was ever squeamish was when an elderly man reenacted his spinach dinner in reverse, but I wasn’t feeling to well to begin with.
We all dealt with it and moved on. Our politics had nothing to do with it. I might guesstimate that my co-workers were, more or less, socially conservative though.
Conservatism is rooted in insecurity. This is just more proof.
#20 – “an elderly man reenacted his spinach dinner in reverse”
Funny, the same thing happens around here when boob or gillie open their mouths as well.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 😉
(That one was for you, StraightAussie!)
Regards,
Peter H.
Pat, if the conservatives you engage are avoiding the points, facts and side stepping the debate, you are avoiding talking to the bulk of conservatives. Most folks who want to find a compatriot in how they “feel” about things are reluctant to discuss particulars. Conservatives place little value on policy based on “feelings.”
Well you certainly don’t argue with a crazy person which is what they think conservatives are so there, nice and tidy.
Except they vomit forth what should be coming out t’other end.
Heliotrope, I’m just pointing out that a lot of what is being said about liberals are also true about conservatives. If you are saying that conservative are, in general, better than liberals in this regard, I can’t agree or disagree with you. And I doubt someone’s “study” will be conclusive. And conservatives talk about feelings too. They are simply different feelings than liberal’s feelings. Each side just claims that theirs are not really feelings, but legitimate concerns. You may disagree with that, but that’s been my observation.
The Soviets defined opposition to socialism as a psychological disorder.