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-- Just to Confirm What We Already Know....
Just to Confirm What We Already Know....
.... psychological study finds that conservatives are neurotic:
| quote: |
| 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". |
Ahhh yes I was waiting to see if that study would pop up on these forums 
. I actually argued about it in a different forum. At any rate, for futher clarification here is the actual study that was done at UC Berkely (ahem ahem I'm not saying anything about that at this point).
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/..._politics.shtml
What the guardian article doesn't mention (hmmm now why wouldn't they mention this?), is that the study concedes that there were notable cases of left-wing dictators, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro which may ruin its theory slightly. However, the article concludes that these left-wing dictators are 'conservative' in the sense that they resisted change to stay in power ... uhhhuhhhh nice cop out.
Now you gotta love psychology because it essentially lets you make any point you'd like. Of course there's a grain of truth here, but it's hardly science.
It's rediculous to believe that conservativeness is inherently better or worse than liberalness because they are two theoretical end points on a hypothetical spectrum. In other words, half the people in this country who call themselves conservative are not in the dictionary sense of the word. I'd say the same with 'liberals' except that we've somehow turned that into a tainted word, so most of us say 'progressive' now, or 'left'. 50 years ago most Catholics were thought of as liberal because they were strongly in favor of social justice issues (like welfare) and protecting the weak. But they started voting republican because the gay thing (and the abortion thing) trumped everything else. Now they're conservative. Things like that happen, but the underlying reasons still stay the same.
At any rate this guy makes a good argument against the case study albeit the fact he is obviously conservative:
RECYCLING MISINFORMATION ABOUT CONSERVATIVES
Some psychologists at Berkeley have just done a big rehash job on the last 50 years of conservative-bashing in the psychology literature. The rehash seems to have attracted a bit of attention in the blogosphere (e.g. here and here and here and here) so I guess I should point out a few things that people might not generally be aware of. Since I have had many articles on the psychology of conservatism published in the academic journals, I might be considered a relevant expert.
For a start, there is nothing new in it. It is the same old refrain that the Marxist Adorno and his collaborators said in their 1950 book: �The authoritarian personality�. Yet that book must have some sort of record for the amount of criticism it has attracted. In the first half of his 1981 book Right-wing authoritarianism Bob Altemeyer summarized the criticism that had been made of it in the psychological literature up to about 1973 and concluded that the Adorno work just could not prove what it purported to prove. Altemeyer, however, then went on to do some research of his own that was in some ways even more ludicrous.
The latest Berkeley rehash is remarkable for its quantity versus quality approach. They seem to agree with the dictum of Dr. Goebbels that if you tell a big enough lie often enough people will believe it. In the Berkeley case the fact that almost all psychologists have been saying the same thing about conservatives seems to be taken as good proof that what they are saying is correct. A survey taken in Galileo�s day would have concluded with equal vehemence that the earth is flat. The Berkeley group seem to have given little or no weight to the fact that psychologists are overwhelmingly Leftist and so lean over backwards to find fault with conservatives. In other words, a survey of biased �science� has just produced more biased �science�!
What would have been much more productive would have been to look at the criticisms that have been made of the orthodoxy. Let me take just one example. The Berkeley group say that one of the five characteristics of conservatives is �Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity�. This is a straight rehash of the old 1950 Marxist nonsense and ignores heaps of evidence that such general traits as intolerance of ambiguity and psychological rigidity simply do not exist. People who are rigid about one thing will probably not be rigid about other things. My paper here sets out the evidence for that at some length. And much the same goes for dogmatism. Maybe there are people who are in fact generally dogmatic but psychologists have not yet succeeded in finding a way to pick them out. Milton Rokeach in 1960 wrote a book that purported to offer a way of picking out dogmatic people but there is now plenty of evidence that the questionnaire he used for that purpose simply does not work. It is an �invalid scale� in psychometrician�s jargon.
So the Berkeley findings can best be summarized in terms of an old computer saying: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
For those who would like to see some of the data that the Berkeley results do not take into account, I list below some of my academic journal articles on the question. The best counterblast of all, however, is probably my article here which (Surprise, Surprise!) the most relevant psychology journal refused to print! Isn�t that a good way to get consensus? Just refuse to print anything that does not suit your biases! No wonder the Berkeley group found great unanimity in the the publications they surveyed!
Listed below are just those of my relevant publications that are available online. Most of the relevant articles are still only available from university libraries. More compehensive listings of relevant articles can be found here and here. "
If you're confused by all the here's and references here is the guy's website
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/200...896176405231943
Edit: Just realized that guy's an australian!
lmao! i always knew that there was something wrong with the right wings
that was a fantastic study... every point they made was completely correct... I gather that we should now go out round up all conservatives, line them up on their knees and shoot them in the back of the head. 
Occrider is right, its what they believe, who is to say they are right or wrong in the end. (albeit the article is quite funny, and being a liberal I found myself agreeing with many aspects.)
haha. i'm too lazy to actually read the articles right now
but i think if your either extremely conservative or liberal you suffer from some sort of neurosis or extreme ignorance.
if you look at many extreme conservatives vs. extreme liberals, they are just the same thing just with totaly different appereances.
same emporores just with different clothes.
oh and wait, this study was done at UC Berkley??? hmmmmmmmmm.....
| quote: |
| Originally posted by occrider What the guardian article doesn't mention (hmmm now why wouldn't they mention this?), is that the study concedes that there were notable cases of left-wing dictators, such as Stalin, Khrushchev or Castro which may ruin its theory slightly. However, the article concludes that these left-wing dictators are 'conservative' in the sense that they resisted change to stay in power ... uhhhuhhhh nice cop out. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Arbiter Stalin, Krushchev and Castro are only left-wing in terms of economic policy. They were all very harshly right-wing and autoritarian on social policy. Social policy would likely be a more accurate reflection of the personalities of the so-called "left-wing" dictators than their economic policy, since their Socialist policies were more a reflection of the mechanism they used to get into power than their actual beliefs or desires. That said, I think "liberals" have their fair share of psychological problems as well. |
| quote: |
There are radicals and reactionaries � psychologically speaking � in all ideological camps. There are leftists and rightists afraid of change and in love of change. There are leftists and rightists who love ambiguity and there are those who hate it. But this study is classic scientific poppycock because it is confirmed by contradictory facts. When Stalin or Castro kill people it is because they are crypto-rightwingers when Hitler kills people, he's being consistent. In other words, conservatives are always the bad guys. |
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