Posted on 06/11/2016 12:13:51 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Social science can be so amusing. There is a bit of a contretemps over several recent articles that used datasets supposedly measuring the personality traits of liberals and conservatives which has resulted in several abashed corrections. The researchers used the data in an effort to show that personality traits are not the cause of political attitudes, but instead both are correlated with some other factor, most likely genetic. Interesting enough. This finding is not what is being corrected.
..... The original article, "Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies," in the American Journal of Political Science explains:
Having a high Psychoticism score is not a diagnosis of being clinically psychotic or psychopathic. Rather, P is positively correlated with tough-mindedness, risk-taking, sensation-seeking, impulsivity, and authoritarianism (Adorno et al. 1950; Altemeyer 1996; Eysenck and Eysenck 1985, McCourt et al. 1999). In social situations, those who score high on P are more uncooperative, hostile, troublesome, and socially withdrawn, but lack feelings of inferiority and have an absence of anxiety. At the extremes, those scoring high on P are manipulative, tough-minded, and practical (Eysenck 1954). By contrast, people low on P are more likely to be more altruistic, well socialized, empathic, and conventional (Eysenck and Eysenck 1985; Howarth 1986). As such, we expect higher P scores to be related to more conservative political attitudes, particularly for militarism and social conservatism.
There is one big problem, as the invaluable Retraction Watch noted: The dataset used in the studies actually found that liberals scored higher on Psychoticism. From the erratum:
The interpretation of the coding of the political attitude items in the descriptive and preliminary analyses portion of the manuscript was exactly reversed.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
How inconvenient...and funny. Something we all know so well about the left.
oops
Bump
Okey Dokey
In order to be a liberal or a progressive one has to swallow a LOT of self-contradictory positions, which means that the one side of your brain is constantly battling the other side.
This of course leads to multiple mental afflictions..
When this was first reported in 2012 I remember the Media having a field day with this...Conservatives are Psychos!...a day after the correction: crickets...won’t say I am surprised.
wups - wrong thread
Conservatives are better at math and science too...
Paging Captain Obvious!
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